Coraggio Consulting
Prince William Board of County Supervisors Meeting — Work Session, Tuesday, May 7, 2024

Date: Tuesday, May 7, 2024
Place: Prince William County Board of County Supervisors, Virginia
Length: 3h 13m (video)
Official meeting video (Prince William County, Granicus): https://pwcgov.granicus.com/player/clip/3471
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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[00:00:14] - All right, good afternoon everyone. It is two o'clock on Thursday, I'm sorry, Tuesday, May 7th. I'm getting on myself. Please join me for a moment of silence.

[00:00:37] - All right, thank you. All rise, if you are able, so that we can recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

[00:00:59] All right, before we begin, as a procedural matter, we have a request from Supervisor Tom Gorey to participate remotely through electronic communications means, and this will require a vote. May I have a motion to approve?

[00:01:17] - Second. All right, is Mr., do we have him on the screen or? Okay. All right, any discussion? If not, let's vote. Vote unanimous.

[00:01:35] Supervisor Weir absent from meeting. Supervisor Gordy absent from vote. All right, thank you so very much. We are going to go on to proclamation and commendations. All right, Mr. Supervisor Gordy, can you hear us? I can hear you.

[00:01:52] All right, thank you, good sir. So today we have seven proclamations to proclaim May 2024. Foster Care Month, to proclaim May 2024 is Building Safety Month, to proclaim May 2024 Historic Preservation Month, to proclaim May 2024 Treatment Docket Month, to proclaim May 12th to May 18th, 2024 National Substance Abuse Prevention Week, to proclaim May 13th through 19th National Salvation Army Week, and to proclaim May 15th National Peace Officers Memorial Day.

[00:02:31] And one more, proclaim the week of May 12th, the 18th, National Police Week. Since we have a number of proclamations before we have a vote, I just want to make the public aware that I'm just going to read a brief synopsis rather than the entire proclamation this week and next, because we have a number of proclamations next week as well, so that we can save time and move through the meeting.

[00:02:53] So do I have a motion to approve agenda items 4A through 4G? So moved, Madam Chair. Second. All right. I don't think there's any, is there any discussion? not let's take a vote thank you supervisor gordy can you give me your vote please i vote aye

[00:03:13] thank you all right thank you i'm going to make my way down to the microphone all right the first

[00:03:50] one is foster care mark um miss tierney you want to your team all right thank you ladies as of 2023 99 children were in need of care 86 local families volunteered themselves and their homes to care for these children's children we have 37 dss employees who work with these children and families so I want to thank the employees and families who provide a safe haven for our youth miss Tierney do you have anything you would like to say good afternoon chair Jefferson and the board

[00:04:28] of County Supervisors we'd like to thank you for this proclamation and for recognizing the families provide foster care in Prince William County right the next one is building safety in month mr. O'Connor or if there's anyone else for

[00:05:07] building safety month proclamation please come to the front thank you our county employees work year-round to ensure built to ensure buildings are safely maintained built and maintained building safety month promotes awareness to educate the public on what the codes are and how they protect citizens from harm especially natural disasters and what code and safety officials do to help them

[00:05:45] this year's theme mission impossible outlines the staff of preparing and executing a safety plan to make sure our homes and communities are safe i'd like to thank the officials in the building departments and fire departments for the work that they do to protect lives do you have anything you would like to say thank you madam chair members of the board i'm ricky o'connor with development services every day our pwc workforce that comprises of building development fire marshal's office and neighborhood services work hard focusing on building safety issues that impact each of our

[00:06:18] daily lives thank you again for proclamation um now we're moving on to proclaim may is historic preservation month. Mr. Patton and if there's anyone here from the historic preservation month

[00:06:57] for here for the proclamation please come to the front. All righty. Prince William is committed to preserving protecting and learning about his history with numerous historical sites and educational programming. This is also a tourism drive for us. Approximately 42 percent of visitors to the region visited a historic site or museum in 2019. So I'd like to thank the county organizations and agencies that help further our mission of preservation. This is a historical commission and architectural review board historic preservation division our county archaeologists our historic communities coordinator cemetery preservation coordinator and our heritage

[00:07:35] resources specialist mr patten do you have anything you'd like to say just uh brief i just want to introduce rob orson uh behind me here on my left he's a manager of our office of historic preservation behind him is yolanda green chair of our historical commission behind uh next in line is Brian Landrum. I probably butchered his last name. He's our chair of our architectural review board and our most recent hire is Eric Griffiths. He's in the planning office. He's a heritage resource specialist and principal

[00:08:10] planner as well and if it's okay if Yolanda the chairs could say a few words. So good afternoon. Hope all of you are doing well. Just want to thank you so much for this acknowledgement and to know that we are here to serve and to preserve the history of this county. Thank you so much. Thank you. Prince William County is a county rich in history, the archaeological, the architectural, and the living history that we all represent. And I'd just like to take this time to thank this board and to thank the county staff for your efforts to preserve the history of this county, including through the purchase and

[00:08:50] preservation of the Williams-Dawes House. So thank you very much. We are on to 4-D, Proclaim A as

[00:09:27] Treatment Docket Month. Mr. Mayers, if you or if there's anyone else here for this proclamation please come down you had the biggest entourage yet all right treatment courts are an integral part of community safety they empower individuals through education employment and housing and have been shown to reduce family separation can be partnerships for health as well as safety they demonstrate when one person rises we all rise I'd like to thank the

[00:10:06] county employees who work hard to keep to help citizens through the treatment docket process. Do you have anything you want to add? Yes, ma'am. Thank you. I'd like to thank Chair Jefferson. Thank you. And the Board of County Supervisors for your continued support of specialty dockets in Prince William County. You have made change happen to those struggling with addiction. This month, our specialty docket celebrated our first graduate from the adult drug treatment court and the 12th graduate of the Veterans Treatment Docket. Nationally, there are

[00:10:44] 4,000 treatment courts which reduce crime by 58% and on average save $6,000 per participant who would otherwise be incarcerated. In Virginia, there are 63 drug courts and seven veterans dockets. I just wanted to point that out because that means we're kind of ahead of the game. In Prince William County, our specialty docket uses best practices of very well proven intervention methods for leading people with mental health, trauma, and substance use disorders out of the justice system and into lives of health and recovery.

[00:11:23] The staff you see here today, they're a mix and a hodgepodge of the entire justice system. I want you to take a look at that because that's what it takes to run these courts. Thank you.

[00:11:36] Just for the vertically challenged people, I'm actually very vertically challenged in my family,

[00:12:25] even though I'm 5'7". All right. So next we have is National Prevention Week, Ms. Martinson, and anyone else here who is here for National Prevention Week? All right. Focusing on preventing mental health and substance abuse issues, you know, is important, particularly when they're impacting residents, you know, even as young as 12 years old. And with the focus on evidence-based accessible resources to build partnerships and empower individuals I'd really like to commend the Prince

[00:13:02] William community services services wellness and prevention team and prevention coalition of Greater Prince William for creating networks for people to lean on in their wellness journeys and tackling severe severe issues do you have anything you'd like to add or say you madam chair thank you board mr.

[00:13:25] shorter mr johnson over there for your continued support of prevention programming and prince william county i would be remiss that we are a party of five in prevention over at community services and so i just like to recognize my team natalie lazano jim wooler wendy hunt and our newest member danielle winkworth they were all out and about doing things today but we may seem like we are a team of 50 some days because we rely heavily on our partnerships with our prevention coalition members, which I know some of you are on that email distribution list, and we am happy

[00:14:05] when you all show up to those meetings. Want to encourage, we do have webinars going on all of next week. The first one kicks off on Monday. It is about the new drug talk, and it is focusing on opioids and how we, as parents, community members, concerned peers, need to start reframing our drug talks a bit different with our young people.

[00:14:31] And we have a great panel of local experts that will be sharing their perspective and our initiatives. So thank you once again for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you. To 4F, proclaim May 15th, National Peace Officers Memorial Day, and May 12th to May 18th as

[00:15:05] national police week um police chief newsham if you have anyone else too now actually i was privileged last week to attend a promotion ceremony to see the next generation of leaders and criminal justice is another key element or key component of community safety and so you know i want to recognize those who are putting themselves you know those on the line of duty who are putting themselves in harm way and who have dedicated themselves to protecting both our liberty and our safety. So, you know, thank you to your team, your department for working hard to keep the

[00:15:42] community safe. Do you have any remarks or anything you'd like to add? Good afternoon, Chair Jefferson and members of the board. I'm Pete Newsham. I'm the chief of police here in Prince William County. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy signed a proclamation which designated May 15th as Peace Officers Memorial Day and the week in which the date falls as Police Week. The proclamation was to ensure that our country took the time out to pay tribute to the men and women in law enforcement who paid the ultimate sacrifice and gave their lives in service to others.

[00:16:17] In 2023, 137 officers lost their lives in the line of duty in the United States. This year, their names will be etched on the National Law Enforcement Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., with over 23,000 other law enforcement officers who have lost their lives in the line of duty.

[00:16:35] Four Prince William County police officers already have their name on that wall. Officer Pete White, who was killed in a traffic crash while responding to a call for service. His end of watch was October 27, 1973.

[00:16:52] Officer Mike Pennington, who was shot and killed while attempting to apprehend a suspect who shot an Arlington County sheriff. End of watch, November 22, 1990. Officer Chris Young was killed in a traffic crash while responding to a call for service.

[00:17:11] End of watch, December 31st, 2012. And Officer Ashley Gwinden, who was shot and killed while responding to a domestic violence homicide. Her end of watch was February 27th, 2016.

[00:17:27] During Police Week, we rightfully honor these heroes and we pay tribute to their survivors who have had to endure the loss of their loved ones. In passing this proclamation, Chair Jefferson and other members of the Board of County Supervisors, I want to personally thank you for standing with us and saying to the survivors that Prince William County will never forget these officers' service and we will never forget their sacrifice.

[00:17:53] Thank you.

[00:18:18] And our final one for today is to proclaim May 13th through May 19th is Salvation Army Week. Captain Harold, would you like to? So, Salvation Army serves vulnerable populations and has since the mid-19th century, making it one of the longest-standing social services providers.

[00:18:38] Salvation Army established a dedicated Prince William County resource in 1974, allowing them to serve tens of thousands of our residents through crucial services like rent and mortgage assistance, Utility assistance, medical financing assistance, and providing key program and financial assistance for our children.

[00:18:58] Each month, I believe you guys distribute approximately like 3,000 meals county-wide. That's impressive. So I want to thank you for your service. If you have any remarks, please come to the... Thank you, Madam Chair. Jefferson, the executive board members, we really thank you so much for providing an environment for us to be able to serve the community.

[00:19:21] I'm here today. Behind me, there's a lot of staff, team that works alongside us, the advisory council board, staff, volunteers, and even the church members. We've been able to continue serving the community in so many ways, making sure that they have food, they have shelter, their lights are kept on, they still have rent, we pay for the rent, and continue serving the community in different capacities.

[00:19:49] More so, we want just to let you know that not only are we serving them in the parcel of a physical need, but according to the mission of the Salvation Army, which is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and meet human needs in his name without discrimination in all capacities and always.

[00:20:07] As long as there is a need, they know where to come for hope and to provide anything they need. And where we can't, we collaborate with other agencies and team members. I know I think a couple of you have already come and joined a couple of events and welcome each one of you to be able to participate in some of our events.

[00:20:26] And thank you. I know Mr. Victor is coming to do a guest speaker during our event. I appreciate you so much and we're looking forward to that.

[00:20:34] - Thank you.

[00:21:18] - All right, we are now on to public comment time. How many do we know?

[00:21:35] Wow, okay. All right, so no public comment. This is a first. We're gonna go on to, I guess we go on to County Executive Time. Mr. Shorter, the floor is now yours. - Thank you very much, Madam Chair and board members.

[00:21:53] Just a few announcements and I'll be relatively quick, but wanna get through this first. And this is just a reminder, we are sending out the community survey at the end of this week, beginning of next, by way of postcards, just to notify residents that they'll be getting the survey.

[00:22:12] Remember, this goes out to about 6,000 residents. The Office of Communications and Engagement will also be sending out notice that there is an open invitation online for any resident to participate in the community survey.

[00:22:29] As always, we will use the results from the community survey to inform the public and the board about ways that we can better serve our community. In terms of early voting, I did send a memo to the board last week about early voting and our intent to allow for signs at the early voting polling site or election sites. I wanted to make sure that the board saw that, and if there are any questions, I'm certainly available to answer those questions. Last year, you may remember that

[00:23:06] the Department of Public Works Solid Waste Division was asked to really work to make sure that the lines, the Saturday morning lines to queue to get into the landfill, that we work to reduce those lines and the wait time. In addition to some of the strategies that we implemented last year, I was just recently informed that we've used technology to, instead of verifying residency for residents based on a sort of visual, from a visual basis, what we are doing now is

[00:23:42] verifying it using technology software. So it's going to very much speed up the process. I think that what we've seen is sort of a night and day difference in terms of the queue on Saturday mornings. This will improve that even more. I just wanted to really thank staff for continuing to be creative and working towards a solution there. I wanted to just acknowledge also Rob Mancini. He was just recently recognized by Government Technology Magazine as one of its top 25 doers, dreamers, and drivers for 2024. The magazine highlights the importance of teamwork

[00:24:21] in driving the county's infrastructure around modernizing our IT program. So just want to just acknowledge Rob and thank him for his continued service and leadership. Last but not least, just wanted to take a moment to recognize that this is public service recognition week. So all week we'll be around with staff and wanted to certainly just acknowledge thank everyone who has who certainly I will see this week but who has dedicated their lives to public service

[00:24:54] serving this county serving our community thank you for all that you do each and every day for for our county now we spend this week acknowledging you and acknowledging that and eating some ice screen, but know that we honor you. We appreciate you each and every day. So thank you for all you do. And with that, Madam Chair, that is all for me. All right. Thank you. I'm going to turn it over to Madam County Attorney. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. We have no items for closed

[00:25:27] session this afternoon. So I always say that I like speeding meetings, you know. All right. So then Our next item is today's a work session for Safe and Secure Community. Mr. Shorter, do you want to kick our presentation?

[00:25:42] Sure. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. As our Deputy CXO comes to stand and give an introduction, just want to give some context. Last year we reorganized into quadrants what we have thought through as a team and as the Safe and Secure Quadrant comes in together.

[00:26:03] We are going to be providing the board this year and moving forward with opportunities to bring our agency leaders into the board chambers to, by quadrant area, talk about the latest and greatest, to talk about what agencies are doing just by way of an opportunity to provide an update to the board and to the community and the viewing audience.

[00:26:27] And so what you have here is all of our safe and secure community directors as well, and this is unique to safe and secure communities, many of our partner agencies and systems. And some of them are here, and I'm sure our deputy CXO will acknowledge those who are here.

[00:26:49] So with that, Madam Chair, board members, I'm going to turn it over to our deputy CXO, Dan Alexander. Thank you, Mr. Shorter, Madam Chair, members of the board, Dan Alexander, your Deputy County Executive for Safe and Secure Community. I'll give a brief overview of the quadrant, talk a little bit about our key partners that we have.

[00:27:08] Also, our core agencies will come up later on as we go through this. There will be six presenters, so I'll ask in advance as we'll get through the presentations. The slides will be numbered. We can go back and answer questions if we could. And, again, you know, it's quite a quadrant in the sense that someone said earlier they had a party of five.

[00:27:28] We got a party of about 2,600 in this quadrant alone in terms of the folks that are committed to providing a safe and secure community. As you look at this overview here, on the right side, it's kind of budgetary, talking about the different agencies and the budget and the numbers.

[00:27:47] But, again, about over $500 million, 2,624 folks represented in this quadrant, again, committed to a safe and secure community. This quadrant really originated within the last three or four years.

[00:28:04] It wasn't a quadrant before 2022. It's a recognition of the span of control for the CXO and for the board in terms of coordination and communication. But I think it's also recognized as an opportunity to improve that coordination between our agencies internally and our partners throughout this very large, I would call it, ecosystem of safety and security in our community.

[00:28:28] So what I'll do real quickly is talk about our partner agencies. We have some folks here that are represented before we get into our five core agencies. And so it's a mixture, as you see, of both public safety, what we traditionally think is public safety, and judicial.

[00:28:45] Of course, you're gonna know more about some of these agencies and others because they've been here to present, or they're higher profile. We have some other partners that aren't, quite frankly, as high profile. They're absolutely key to the work that we do in this quadrant. We have the Adult Detention Center.

[00:29:01] We have our court system. We saw Judge Irving here earlier. I know that she was here for the presentation, and she is our chief of the circuit court. Our clerk of the circuit court, Jackie Smith, is here. Appreciate her being here. They're integral to what we do. There's a lot of services, and I recommend you go to the website to check out some of the things that our different partners do that, again, are key to our work.

[00:29:26] Our Commonwealth Attorney is here also. Ms. Ashworth, thank you. At the General District Court, Chief Rollins has been our primary contact, and at the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Courts, Judge Baird. So we have ongoing communication with each of these levels of the courts in terms of coordinating our work.

[00:29:44] A key component that we deal with probably from a policing standpoint that doesn't get as much attention is our magistrate, and we have an excellent chief magistrate in Chief Kirk. You saw Mike Carlson up here earlier, and his team is in the back from state probation and parole.

[00:30:00] They do more than supervision. They're also key in what we saw earlier with the treatment docket, but also providing reentry services, and there's a lot of work they do around that. Again, it's not as high profile, but it's absolutely key to ensuring our ecosystem works the way that it should.

[00:30:16] Tracy Lennox is our public defender. I met with her yesterday. We have an ongoing discussion about ensuring fair and appropriate representation throughout our community. And we spent some time earlier talking about the Office of the Sheriff. I think we had a good overview in the budget process with Sheriff Hill.

[00:30:34] Again, in total, 15 agencies that are working together on a common theme of providing a kind, safe, and just environment here in our community. So that's the overview. In the interest of time, I'm going to start us with our first agency in the quadrant that reports up directly through to the BOCS.

[00:30:56] And I'll ask Mr. Dawson to come forward and give us an overview of community safety. Madam Chair. Supervisor Ingrid. do you want questions per each breakout or wait to the end of the presentation we can do um i just want to make sure it's a little easier let's i'm just going through the presentation i think perhaps per each section you know i don't think that should be i mean did you have questions or anything not not yet okay good afternoon uh thank you dan for uh bringing the introduction uh good afternoon

[00:31:33] chair jefferson members of the board uh and those listening virtually at home my name is wesley Dawson. I serve as the director of the Prince William County Office of Community Safety. I've had the pleasure of meeting many of the supervisors and really excited to be here to present out on some of the developments that we've experienced as well as some progress within our office. As you all may know, in December of 2022, the board approved the community safety initiative, which led to the establishment of our office, and the office

[00:32:10] began under my operation in June of 2023 under my leadership. Our mission as you can see is as shown on the slide is an all hazards approach that revolves around three primary areas of focus.

[00:32:27] It's going to be a public health approach to community safety, community engagement, interagency coordination, and evidence-informed evaluation and accountability. And just to that last point of evidence-informed evaluation and accountability, I appreciate Supervisor Vega. We were at the CCJB a week or two ago, and we talked a little bit about our data visualization efforts with Steve Austin and the team with CJS. I'm really excited to start doing that work and really putting that out there and having you all support. And in addition to those

[00:33:06] core areas, we have some interconnected core values listed here. Empowering our community, engaging with our youth, sustainability and resiliency of when we see things that are working, that we continue those things. Next slide. So since establishing our office, our efforts have been focused on laying a strong foundation and framework. We know that this work does not happen overnight. But we have been able to redirect, reimagine, and realign

[00:33:40] our efforts as we have navigated through what we have coined as a discovery period. What already exists? What stock do we have to take into account of programs, of agency priorities as it relates to the development of our office? And working with our community partners as well as our government and agency partners at every single level. I know Dan has already mentioned many of the partners who are in this room that we look forward to continuing to engage with as we develop our program. This includes short-term and long-term intervention strategies that reactively

[00:34:20] and proactively address community violence in our community. And what do I mean by that? We have to redirect our efforts to focus on our collective county priorities as it relates to community safety and the perceptions of safety, reimagine our vision for how to define community safety with community and not to community, how do we engage with public and private partners, as well as being keenly focused on things that we do with people and not to them, being intentional about asking who needs to be at the table, who is missing, and how do we see a

[00:34:58] path forward. And lastly, realign our approach in taking stock again of existing county programs and initiatives, as well as identifying possible areas for intersection, for better coordinated interagency collaboration. And what we found is that there is some amazing work happening in the county, and we want to continue to elevate those things. So I'll move on to the next slide.

[00:35:26] Actually, I'm sorry, let me go back to the last slide. What I did not mention is some of the work that we're already doing, and I'll point you to the right side of the screen, depending on your orientation, the left side of the screen, that we are excited to start doing some outward-facing engagement. We've done a lot over the last 10 months under my leadership, and one of the big culminations that has come from that is launching an open house, community safety open house, which will be taking place this coming Saturday, May 11th, from 10 to 1 at the A.J. Falazzo building. What we heard from residents, what we've heard from our community partners is there's a lot

[00:36:06] of great work, but how do we connect those things together? How are we making sure that there's an interconnected piece? And the culmination of this event is bringing all of those elements of the community safety or community violence intervention ecosystem, as Dan mentioned, all together under one roof so that residents and community partners are aware of the resources that are available, as well as making sure that we're aligning our efforts in a more coordinated direction.

[00:36:35] Another piece that we're excited about doing is the Community Safety Advisory Committee. We mentioned that back in December 2022, and we have already launched the interest form, which went live on May 1st, and excited to have that conclude for submissions by the end of this month, where that group will specifically be working with community members, with other stakeholders for listening sessions to hear directly from residents.

[00:37:03] We want to hear exactly what the experience has been and how we can continue to improve in drafting safety recommendations for the county. Thank you, Dan. Next slide. What we know is this is not overnight work, and it will take the full weight of government and community to achieve tangible change in the county.

[00:37:22] And we are diligently focused on meeting these ambitious goals and targets established during our foundational year. Now about 10 months into the job, the county will continue to build strong foundation, working with our partners, which is going to be necessary and needed to establish the work of violence prevention and intervention in our county.

[00:37:48] Some of the things I've already mentioned are open house resource fair, some of the data dashboard visualization work that we have done, as well as continuing to build and foster key partnerships, working directly with residents, working directly with homeowners associations, things of that nature.

[00:38:06] We've already attended a number of supervisor meetings. I know Supervisor Bodie, Supervisor Bailey, as well as Supervisor Weir. I appreciate you all for having us be a part of those discussions with your constituents and look forward to doing that with other community groups as we continue.

[00:38:23] But our ultimate goal is clear. We want to continue to improve outcomes for every resident in this county. We can only achieve those things if we do those things together. I want to see as many folks in our community, not in the backs of police cars and not in the backs of ambulances, but getting them connected to direct services and the resources that they absolutely need.

[00:38:46] So I will stop there, and I'm happy to answer any questions that you all may have, and I appreciate the time again. Thank you so very much. Does anyone have any questions for Mr. Dawson? Madam Chair. Supervisor Bailey. Okay, I'm sorry I didn't hit my button. Mr. Dawson, no questions. Just wanted to thank you.

[00:39:05] I've gotten exceptional responses back from the community when you came to Potomac Shores, and we really appreciate you addressing the community that evening. We didn't have a large crowd for you, but that will be growing. But the thing that you addressed was public safety and things that you are putting in place, and you shared a little bit of this prior to your presentation, and so I think it gave a sense of security for the community, and I really appreciate you coming on.

[00:39:34] And it wasn't short notice, but it was short notice, you know, so I really appreciate that. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you for your leadership. Madam Chair. So just our systems are down, so if anyone has anything, just ping me. Supervisor Franklin. Sure, yes. Thank you.

[00:39:51] Make very brief comment. You had listed on there Easy Street. I would love for you to talk just for five seconds about what that means. I know what it means. It's obviously in my district. Many of you know we had a lot of challenges over the past couple of years with regards to a certain section of the Route 1 corridor, particularly around Prince William Parkway.

[00:40:13] We worked very diligently to clean that area up, and I'm proud of the work that, you know, Dan and your team has done. Wesley came on board and really just jumped right in, and a lot of that led to this public safety initiative that we have. And Easy Street was kind of the next goal, cleaning up that area, cleaning up under the bridge there.

[00:40:34] So if you can just talk a little bit about what that is and what you all did and how it's impacted the Woodbridge District. Absolutely. Thank you for that question. And my apologies for running over it. So much going on in the space. So really excited to talk about that. As you alluded to, Supervisor Franklin, we have been working diligently with our partners within county government as well as some partners within the state.

[00:41:01] This particular picture here is under the Easy Street Bridge right off the Route 1 corridor where we had an interagency coordinated effort, which we're coining the coordinated community safety response. We're still building out that framework, but without that framework, the goal was to make sure that agencies and partners that aren't typically at the table when we have these types of discussions after a traumatic event, that we pull those folks together.

[00:41:30] And this was a culmination of that. We had support from VDOT to help with some of the cleanup effort, the police department, as well as our folks within homeless outreach and community services. So this was definitely an all hands-on approach to addressing it and hearing directly from folks, not only from folks who were in homeless encampments, but also business members in the area who are also impacted and just regular everyday citizens who also see these issues as quality of life issues, but also that they're issues that we can absolutely overcome when we work together. Thank you.

[00:42:06] Supervisor Vega. thank you madam chair I've heard great things about that and my question is can the general public partake in that yes yes okay so it's not just police VDOT everybody else that you mentioned but if we have folks that want to partake in this they can reach out to our office you guys and then they could be a part of this yes great and the reason why I bring that up is one folks have asked but two it kind of goes into my next question with the Sudley corridor business assistance we continue to have some challenges but I'm very thankful for all of the work that we've been doing there's been a lot of collaboration with our police department with various offices and there is a sense of pride

[00:42:45] that folks in the community feel when you come in and clean it up or you put forth a beautification plan it makes people feel good about their community it makes you know people be a little more proactive as to what's going on and reporting certain things but I want you to talk a little bit about the progress that we've made because I know that we continue to have challenges with folks in the business community in this area and I know that some folks were going to be tuning into the meeting because they want to hear specifically about this issue so can you just talk a little bit about what we've been doing where we're are and what future plans are sure so within the Sutley corridor we have heard

[00:43:23] directly from business owners around homelessness as well as substance misuse and also just regular everyday quality of life issues and what we've been able to do there similarly to easy street is pull together a really rapid core team of individuals across the the county to identify what issues are actually happening on the ground not just utilizing data but also using utilizing the qualitative information that we're hearing directly from folks impacted business owners and making sure that we're hearing directly

[00:43:59] from residents as well what we've been able to do there at the suddenly corridor and by no means have we just eradicated everything because this doesn't happen overnight. So we appreciate folks giving us routine feedback. But what we are able to do is hear directly from folks around what types of services are needed, not just the law enforcement response, which law enforcement does. And I'm sure the chief will come and talk about law enforcement. Chief LaBelle will come and talk about some of the other items that they do on the fire rescue side. But what can we do with our agencies that

[00:44:34] also respond that aren't the 9-1-1 call to make sure that the business owners are receiving the same level of response as well as residents. When we respond, it's not just kind of fodder and we're saying, well, we want to do this, we're going to do this. We want to make sure that we're putting together a really core team of folks to make sure that the actual questions are being answered and And that we're seeing progress and not stalling.

[00:45:03] Even if we do find that there are some challenges, we have the right team to address them. All right. Is there anyone else who wants to speak on this? All right. Supervisor? Sure. Okay.

[00:45:19] All right. Bodie, then Bailey. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Dawson, for the presentation and all the work you've been doing thus far. Ten months, you said, on the job now? Yeah. It seems about right. Yes, sir. I wanted to thank you again. that I threw you right to the frying pan last year when you came to that that meeting but I wanted to appreciate you Dan and everyone else who was part of that there's still folks that in my district who are talking about that we'll probably have you out again sooner rather than later now that we have had some progress on the initiative so a few questions one can you talk a little bit more about the open house that's coming up just this this weekend and like you know this is the first one obviously I would imagine there'd be more what kind

[00:45:58] can folks expect from that open house? Sure. Thank you for that question. The open house, what we saw in the last several months was we were working with a number of partners, some of which didn't know that other agencies were addressing some of the same concerns.

[00:46:17] So we wanted to bring everyone to the table and say, hey, what are we doing as a county and how can we make sure that those initiatives are aligned and be able to work somewhat more efficiently so that that's how the idea the brainchild came for the open house the goal there is honestly for us to one take some inventory of what services are available and showcase them because there's a lot of great work happening in the county and sometimes folks just don't know about it so we have opportunity to showcase what agencies are doing and not only just agencies but also community partners as well we have to elevate them because oftentimes our government

[00:46:56] partners are doing so much that there are also some folks right in the community who are also doing some great work. So we absolutely want to elevate that profile. Some of the other things that folks can look out for is we want to, like I said, hear from folks. So this is not your poll show up and we're just going to ask you a thousand questions. We want you to actually engage with folks at their different tables, get that information. And we're also going to be asking some questions we actually have a very exciting opportunity to do an art project where you know folks may not want to speak directly about what they experience but they may be able to actually

[00:47:35] draw out and express themselves differently so that is just one piece of qualitative data but we intend on doing some additional outreach events and events just like this we hope to do across the county in more ways. Appreciate that. And I wanted to highlight something you said there, which it looks like this initiative hopes to help de-silo agencies. And I think that that's an important thing. And I also commend the county executive for looking at this quadrant organizational structure because I think it helps de-silo agencies that would other normally just sort of do their own work in their separate corners and didn't really realize that each

[00:48:12] other is sort of overlapping and can have synergies there. So I wanted to say and highlight that. To that end, my second question goes into traffic safety because I know this board has talked a lot about traffic safety over the last couple years. I know that we had initial discussions about the community safety initiative.

[00:48:29] We knew that that was going to be part of the equation because we know that we've had worse and more frequent accidents around traffic safety, whether they be pedestrians, fellow motorists, what have you, and that's one piece of the puzzle. Can you talk a little bit about traffic safety and how that fits in the bigger picture here?

[00:48:47] Absolutely. So with traffic safety, I love talking about traffic safety because I have a background in transportation, and I might have mentioned that before at another meeting. But with that, I think as a county, looking at different ways that we can utilize case management and how we can get direct feedback from residents around what are some of the pain points.

[00:49:10] Now, there are going to be some areas where we know historically, you know, this has been a high crash area. This has been a high-volume area, and working with transportation to address some of those challenges. And also what I've learned as well is some of the jurisdictional challenges that residents don't always know.

[00:49:29] So there's a level of civic engagement that has to happen. There's some education on both ends. But absolutely, traffic safety is one of those things that we want to make sure that we're hearing from folks. The county is also looking into 311 and unified communications so that we can absolutely receive in real time areas of concern so that we can actually utilize that data to pull in the appropriate agencies or at least be able to track progress.

[00:49:58] So I think one of the bigger concerns is trying to understand where are we in the process. So we want to create that space as we move forward and understand where our office fits in that spot. And I think it is primarily in that interagency coordination, that follow-up, follow-back, that residents absolutely look to see and have.

[00:50:20] I appreciate that because I sort of see your agency working alongside transportation, you said, and partnership. As we continue to have these conversations about transitioning our community from being more auto-centric to more pedestrian, bike-ped friendly, looked at what that nexus is and how that really drives community safety as well, because we have folks that have to traverse very dangerous corridors every single day.

[00:50:40] I know a lot of folks that would love to bike, for example, throughout my district, but they can't right now. So all talking about those synergies there, I appreciate you talking about that. My second and last question, Madam Chair, if you don't mind, is you mentioned at the outset seeing community safety as a public health risk, and I appreciate that.

[00:50:57] That being said, I know that we haven't had too much interactivity with the Prince William Health District over the past couple years because you know we don't have a director for that agency or as of right now on the state level but you did mention state level partnerships so get peel back that onion a little bit and talk about what that looks like absolutely uh thank you for that question and I'm really excited to say that our office has been working with the Virginia Health District that was one of the priority areas that I saw was an opportunity because they're doing so much in the county uh that we wanted to make sure that there was some direct alignment um we were

[00:51:32] actually partnering with them for the art project that i mentioned um as they're working on the community health assessment they're asking some questions for the state that we're also going to be utilizing uh for for data assessment within the county as well and want to make sure the statewide assessment is also in line with what we're doing right here in the county they have been tremendous partners in a very short amount of time but they have some very exciting and beautiful ideas that we would love to be able to leverage that partnership to expand and you know that relationship has been laying lying somewhat dormant in the in

[00:52:12] between and transition but we've been able to pick that right up and they're excited to work with us just as much as we're excited to work with them appreciate them the last one madam sure is a last comment to leave you with an important stakeholder group that I see that all too often gets sort of left out is our mobile home communities I have a couple in my dress I know what a few of us have them throughout the county but it's there at the intersection of everything you've been talking about they get touched in various ways through everything we've discussed more so than most other communities you know I have one in my

[00:52:48] district again off of medieval road where we worked with delegate Sewell's office on a water issue they were having the health district came in and helped us with that so there's a lot of sort of underground sort of issues with these communities especially if they have challenges with their management of the mobile home park so as much as you can please please please reach out those communities have them as part of the conversation because frankly they don't have the same level of engagement or even rights as many other communities that we have throughout the county, and they get left out.

[00:53:19] And to me, if we're talking about community safety holistically, they have to be part of the conversation. Absolutely. And if I could, just a quick response there. As far as engaging with populations in certain pockets, it's going to be super incumbent on our team to be able to do that narrative storytelling, to make sure that folks feel included and inclusive in a way that's equitable for folks to be able to feel that they can participate and it's not just for a particular sector in the community or a particular area but that everyone has the opportunity to bring

[00:53:54] their thoughts and that they hold value in that conversation. Thank you Mr. Dawson. Thank you Madam Chair. All right next we're going to go on to Supervisor Bailey. Thank you Madam Chair and thank you for that question Supervisor Bodie in terms of the trailer parks that folds into the question that I have in reference to our wonderful opportunity in our town in the town of Dumfries with the roads coming before us and the roads will offer a grand economic opportunity for the county and for the township but it's something new to us and so with that if you don't have an answer

[00:54:31] today that's fine I'd like to delve into that a little bit more in terms of community safety and the transition thereof, what proactively do you have in place to support that? And how does that look? And if not today, I'd like for you to come back and talk a little bit more to us about that.

[00:54:50] Sure. I appreciate that question, and it is absolutely something that we are navigating and how we are able to play a role, particularly within the towns and the cities that encompass Prince William County. Dan is our deputy county executive, holds that liaison relationship and has been great in the partnership and having some of those conversations.

[00:55:14] I don't have a great answer for you right now, Supervisor, but it is absolutely something that we are looking into and how do we leverage our relationships in those jurisdictions that also may need some additional support.

[00:55:30] Yeah, and to that, Madam Chair, and I'll close out really quickly, not trying to put you on the spot at all, but just to say that is an area of opportunity in terms of being proactive that we really need to look at because it's something new to the community. And so, however I can help in terms of that support and partnering with the mayor, I think it's essential that we look at that.

[00:55:52] Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you. So I don't know if we have anyone else. So we are having, still having to- Madam Chair. All right. Supervisor Cordy, it's like voice of God. But you ain't God, but all right, go on. No, thank you.

[00:56:08] Wesley, thanks for your presentation. And I really did appreciate our conversation when you and DCXO Alexander came to my office. And going back to something Supervisor Vega mentioned, you know, we think about the Sudley four-door, you know, this is an area that we're looking at.

[00:56:32] You know, we're not just trying to address, you know, some of the safety and security issues along the corridor, but we're also looking at redevelopment. And in that, you know, we're looking, you know, here in the next week or so or within the next couple of meetings and hope to be able to put in a directive to look at a corridor study.

[00:56:56] But it needs to be something a little bit more than just simply planning as we normally do. it we really need to take a whole government approach um to how we deal with a multitude of issues not merely just um you know housing and and roads and schools but we also need to look at um you know we we have a growing immigrant population and and we understand in that we have significant language barriers uh not just simply between just speaking but uh folks who are unable to um there there's some literacy challenges so um you know as we began to look at

[00:57:34] how do we begin to address some of the challenges in that corridor um it it really is more than just a criminal you know law enforcement solution um and it's sort of as we talked about uh going back to my uh days of working with uh the counter ied program uh at the department of defense we talked about everything left of boom how do we how do we get ahead of to the point that we have to call the police right how do we get ahead of that so that we don't have to and so i really appreciate the work that you guys are doing and uh and look forward to continue to partner with you to

[00:58:11] identify those opportunities uh ways that we can make improvement um with our um with it with our businesses with our residents with our churches with with whoever is willing to come to the table and help us provide real solutions.

[00:58:27] So again, really appreciate your leadership and look forward to working with you more as we go forward. Thank you. - Thank you, Supervisor. - All right, if there's not anything else, thank you so very much. We appreciate you. - Appreciate it.

[00:58:44] - All right, next we'll have Criminal Justice Services and Steve Austin. - Good afternoon. - All right, good afternoon, Chair Jefferson, members of the board, I'm Steve Austin, Director of Criminal Justice Services.

[00:59:05] And I'm here today to talk to you about the services programs in my agency. And so we'll start off a little bit with, well, actually, Mr. Alexander talked about how some agencies are a little less known than others. I'm probably one of the less known agencies. But nonetheless, the services that we provide are very important. And our services involve working with individuals that are in the court system generally. So generally after people have been arrested is mostly when my agency gets involved. So our vision of our agency is really around transforming lives, which actually came over when we were part of human services, but it's

[00:59:43] still very relevant because we do work with individuals that are in the community and to help them make positive changes in their lives and reduce victimization. Our mission is around promoting public safety and reducing recidivism. And as I said, we do provide our services to the courts, and we provide a variety of supervision programs and assessment programs to help people make positive changes in their lives.

[01:00:08] And again, these are through evidence-based practice services, and we serve the 31st Judicial District, which includes the courts in the General District, the JDR courts, and the circuit court in providing those services in all three jurisdictions in Prince William, Manassas and Manassas Park.

[01:00:28] So just to clarify, we are a mandated service. We're mandated by the state to provide pretrial detention alternatives and the post-trial disposition alternatives. And that is because our community chose to take matching funds when we developed the adult detention center and there's been some expansions.

[01:00:48] And so our services are mandated. We do receive a small amount of funding from the state and from the cities as well. We also have a Community Criminal Justice Board, which is also mandated by the Code of Virginia. This is an advisory board, and it serves as a liaison to the advisory board, and they also is involved in criminal justice planning for the community.

[01:01:13] So just want to touch on some of our programs and services. Pretrial services is one of our core services. Actually, we have generally here four programs that we provide: Pretrial services, local offender probation. We have an intensive program as well for higher risk of individuals. And we also have a domestic violence program. Pretrial services involves supervising individuals while they're pending trial. They can be placed on pretrial supervision by the magistrate or by the courts in any level of court, all three levels of court we serve. This is some of our data points we

[01:01:48] just wanted to point out. This is from our FY23 annual report that's on our website. Our goals of pretrial are to ensure court appearance and that people do not commit new offenses while they're pending trial. So those two measurements there, successful court appearance at 86%, that's our numbers for 2023, and our public safety rate is of 94% of those who were not arrested while they were pending trial. And there's a direct cost savings in that we're diversion to the adult detention center, and that's the number of jail days that we

[01:02:27] saved in FY 2023. Our intensive community supervision program is mostly comprised of higher risk pretrial defendants. We do sometimes have probation individuals on there as well, but it's mostly pretrial. We served about 175 last year, saving the jail almost 18,000 jail bid days. And those are direct savings because those individuals would without a doubt be incarcerated at the adult detention center would it not be for that program. As far as local offender probation. That's post-trial. We measure, we have a couple measurements here that I wanted

[01:03:05] to highlight. The probation closure rate of 65% and a public safety rate of 89%. So that means that people successfully completed the program and did not get rearrested at the 89% rate. We also do a three-year recidivism study on cases that are closed. That measure is not here, but for FY 2022, It was 87.5% individuals did not commit new offenses, which is pretty high and a bit higher than national standards.

[01:03:36] We also have a fourth program that is not a criminal program. It's a civil program. It's a protective order program, and we fund that program through a grant. We monitor permanent protective orders that are issued in intimate partner violent situations, and I have a case manager that manages those cases.

[01:03:57] When the judge orders them to be supervised while they're pending, well, actually while the permanent protector is active, I should say, and that can be active for up to two years, oftentimes the court might order them to complete services or treatment or something like that.

[01:04:13] We would monitor that and advise the court of violations. And then we also provide resources to victims of domestic violence situation, which is part of a continuum of domestic violence services. There are certainly other domestic violence services provided in the county through the police department, through the lethality assessment protocol, and then, of course, through victim witness as well.

[01:04:36] And so this is just a little summarization of some of the services that individuals receive when they are under supervision at criminal justice services. We are, you heard me say earlier, evidence-based. So we do a lot of evidence-based risk assessments to determine what people's risk levels are, what their needs are, so that we can target those areas.

[01:04:57] The research is very strong on giving the right dose of services and treatment services, not to over-supervise, but not to under-supervise as well. We do substance abuse testing and screening and various treatment referrals. It could be mental health, substance abuse.

[01:05:12] We work on thinking, cognitive programs. We have several cognitive programs. Our pretrial program has a court reminder system. Research is very strong in that when people get reminded that they need to come to court, they're more likely to come to court. Generally, a lot of the failures on pretrial for court appearance is not often that it's willful.

[01:05:32] It's often that people forget or have barriers. So we serve as to provide those reminders. We also provide behavioral interventions. And in those higher risk cases that are intensive that I mentioned earlier, We provide GPS monitoring, which means they're monitored 24-7, and we know their whereabouts.

[01:05:52] So moving into a couple of recent things that we've done that's new, we have a pretrial risk assessment that we had been using for about 20 years. Prince William, along with two other jurisdictions in Virginia, was recently chosen to pilot a new program in Virginia, not new nationally, but this is new in Virginia, the public safety assessment risk assessment was implemented on March 27th.

[01:06:16] This is a new instrument that involves not having to interview the defendant. It's based on static risk factors, which is different than our other risk assessment where we couldn't always interview everyone for various reasons. This is an actual tool, which means it's statistical and database.

[01:06:34] It's based on several research factors, actually nine research factors that are most predictive of pretrial success, which would include the likelihood of appearance in court and the likelihood of committing new offenses while trial is pending. It assists the judges after they make a decision to release.

[01:06:53] The actual assessment does not actually tell them whether or not to let them go. That's up to the judge based on the code. This assessment tool would actually tell them what types of conditions based on the research would most likely allow success while under pretrial supervision.

[01:07:10] So that could relate to the frequency of contacts with the pre-trial officer or the various types of services that they might need while they're pending trial. We also manage things like staying away from victim, those kind of orders that the court might order during the pre-trial stage.

[01:07:27] And again, this particular assessment is very strong research-driven. It looks at three different risk factors and provides three different scores for the judge in helping to make the determination, again, for those release conditions. failure to appear while on release, there's a score for obtaining new offenses, the recidivism that I mentioned, and then also the risk of obtaining a new violent offense are the three factors that are looked at.

[01:07:53] So we've been implementing now about six weeks. So far, the implementations have been going well. It's been well received. We're able to assess many more people than we were before because sometimes people would refuse to interview with us, which is, of course, their right, but we couldn't provide the judge with good information to help make that decision.

[01:08:12] So now we're able to do that for everyone. So I wanted to move into just real quickly, this is kind of dovetails what Mr. Dawson was talking about in the work of the Office of Community Safety. Prior to the Office of Community Safety, we've been working on an initiative here called Evidence-Based Decision-Making.

[01:08:30] That started back in 20, I'm sorry, yeah, 2015. 2015, and it was a technical assistance program that we received from the National Institute of Corrections, and it involved alignment of the criminal justice system. It involved working with stakeholders and to develop a framework for better criminal justice decision-making.

[01:08:49] So it was looking at research, looking at data, and through this possibility, we were able to develop programs and services that were data-driven. And so it was very specific. We mostly worked on things from the pretrial stage. It wasn't as much prevention, but it was a lot of things working in pretrial.

[01:09:07] We looked on re-entry initiatives, and we also worked on the drug court and the veteran's docket, which I'm going to talk about in a minute. But it was all about making data-driven decision-making based on the premise of reducing harm, providing consistency in outcomes for victims and offenders in society by engaging in a way to manage the jail population better and realigning and optimizing resources better.

[01:09:32] It actually was initiated when we were having issues with the jail population and what was really kind of high, and it was looking at better ways of managing that population. It started out that way. Now, the issue at the jail is not like what it was before, but it's still a great framework to make better criminal justice decision-making, and it's, like I said, fixed well with what the Office of Community Safety is doing now.

[01:09:55] We're actually working collaboratively to figure out what entities is doing what in this evidence-based world, And we've been working with Wesley's office on the data dashboard as an example that he mentioned as well. And it's just great collaboration because we're very data-minded in what we do with EBDM, as is my agency as well.

[01:10:18] And so lastly, we'll talk about something you saw earlier when we did the proclamation for Treatment Court Month. Two new initiatives to the community, and I say this to the community. My office is intricately involved, but there are lots of agencies involved in this initiative.

[01:10:34] Commonwealth attorney, public defender, court clerk, police, the ADC, community services. The list goes on. I probably shouldn't have started listing them because I know I'm leaving out a lot of them, but is a very collaborative. Many of the people in this room have been very instrumental in getting the drug court together.

[01:10:52] The judges, obviously, are a very integral part of it. So since 2019, we've been very happy and proud to have a veterans treatment docket to serve those who served our community who have been impacted by their service and have found their way in the criminal justice system.

[01:11:09] And so far in that program, you can see we've had almost 30 people served. We've just had our 12th graduate, and so we're very proud of that. And we're very happy to have had Supervisor Vega and Supervisor Angry come last week and see that graduation. It is moving and powerful to see what people are capable of doing when they have the right support and services and when the community collaborates to make a difference.

[01:11:37] And so we've translated that now also to a drug treatment court. And for that, I also want to include we have our state partners that help us with that. State probation does the supervision. My agency does the supervision on the veterans docket. And that program is newer. It's starting and getting our feet grounded phase, but we're getting there because we've had our first graduate last week and she finished last week and we've had 22 people in the program so far.

[01:12:08] So we're really excited and I just want to say very much thank you for the support that the board has provided to those two programs because as of July 1st, both programs will have full-time coordinators. Right now I have acting coordinators uh people who have kind of other jobs so so we're really happy for that and so we do appreciate your support so uh that is a quick overview of what we do in criminal justice services and i'm happy to take any questions that you might have all right thank you hold on i'm not sure if our systems are working right now i see a couple people nope all right i saw you um vega did you have something too

[01:12:45] franklin supervisor did you want to all right supervisor vega then i'll go to the side then i'll Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Steve, for all of the work that you do. I think everybody that works closely with you knows how passionate you are and how committed you are to ensuring that folks get everything that they need to succeed. So thank you very much for that.

[01:13:06] Just kind of want to talk a little bit about slide nine under the local offender probation portion. Why are we at 65% in terms of the case closures? well it's that's pretty close to national standards about about 60 to 70 percent and so a lot of times when people fail on probation because we keep people on probation longer term than pre-trial pre-trial is very short term and we're only trying to get them to court successfully and not commit new offenses probation we're trying to change people's thinking and lives so there's lots of requirements that's not required at the pre-trial stage substance abuse treatment mental health

[01:13:43] treatment, things that sometimes people aren't ready to do. And honestly, most of the people who do fail on probation fail technically, meaning not necessarily getting new offenses, but having technical violations, meaning not complying with appointments with probation officers, not adhering to substance abuse treatment and things like that. So that's why that number tends to run a little bit lower than what you see on the pretrial side. Is there anything we can do to help increase that percent? I think we need to keep working on our evidence-based strategies and we need to keep pushing our cognitive-based treatment to help people change their thinking.

[01:14:20] But we recognize that that's a number we would like to improve. Okay. And then the last question I have in regards to the PSA tool, do you think it's less accurate, more accurate? Do you like it? I think it's more accurate because it's static factors only. And those are things related to their history their age and things like that in the other risk assessment there was some more subjective factors that are included that are based on assessment and interview and conversation you know so as long as we have their information accurate then we can do a good assessment

[01:14:55] and that's helping the the courts to make the best release conditioning that they can thank you thank you all right supervisor angry thank you madam chair and thanks again with the presentation So I don't have a question about the presentation, but this is great data. So for me, because I know your entire office has a personal escort service in the sheriff's office, so I just think as we were talking even last week about budgets in the sheriff's office, for whoever puts this presentation together, we should have some data in there about the numbers and the volumes and what the sheriff's office does with a lot of escorting these folks around.

[01:15:35] And, you know, everything you do here, I'm pretty sure has a law enforcement officer attached to much of it. So just curious, as we talk about the role, that's not for you, so Steve, just as we talk about the role of a sheriff's office, I think that'd be great to implement that in here to show the relevancy of what's going on in our court system.

[01:16:00] All right, I see you ready. Supervisor Bode. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Steve, for the presentation. I appreciate you guys coming by my office a few months back to talk through everything. Can you talk to me a little bit more about the veteran's docket and the drug court docket? I see that we currently have 22 folks in the drug program, 29 folks in the veteran's docket.

[01:16:23] We have two folks who have been on each one that have been terminated in noncompliance. We have 12 graduates from the treatment docket, the veteran's docket, which is great, and then one from the drug docket. Can you talk a little bit more about how long those programs last and talk about the life cycle of that so we can see what those numbers even mean?

[01:16:40] Sure, yeah. The programs are about 12 to 15 months is what the policy says. But folks sometimes take a bit more time than that. We're seeing it being a little closer to 18 to 20 months for people to actually successfully complete.

[01:16:56] So that's why the numbers are much lower for the drug court because it's so new. We didn't take our first person. It was like July by the time we had someone actually in the program. And the veterans docket was a little slow, honestly, to get started as well, because we started in late 2019, and we all know what 2020 was like and what that did to everyone, including the court system.

[01:17:17] So, yeah, it was a little slower. Appreciate that. And just one last thing. Thank you for that, Steve. To go back to de-siloing agencies, can you talk a little bit more about the work you do with CS, with social services, through all the other agents that you touch as part of both these dockets?

[01:17:38] Yeah, I mean, well, fortunately, we have a fantastic relationship with community services and Department of Social Services, not just because I did work in human services at one point, but those are integral parts of the criminal justice system, and they should be because folks need services.

[01:17:56] We collaborate heavily through all of these programs, particularly like the drug court, the veterans docket, all have collaborative teams. Each one has a multidisciplinary team, includes judge, Commonwealth attorney, the public defender, court clerks, police, sheriff is on those as well.

[01:18:17] So it's very, very collaborative. So we learn a lot about how we impact each other. And then that kind of dovetails well with the work of evidence-based decision-making and now the work that Mr. Dawson's office is doing. I think we're very well positioned to have good collaboration.

[01:18:34] And really, the research shows that the outcomes are better in the criminal justice system when there is good, robust collaboration. And I do feel that we have that here. Last thing I'll just say is I definitely appreciate the mission, the spirit, and what you've been doing with those specialty dockets. Again, I know that they've been slower to ramp up because one was only established about a year and a half ago.

[01:18:54] The other one, COVID happened. Like you said, the world shut down. So, but I definitely appreciate the mission of those. And, you know, for my 1 8th, however, we continue to support those dockets. I'm all for it. Thank you. Thank you. All right, Supervisor Bailey, then Gordy. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. And I concur with Supervisor Bode that just the amount of work.

[01:19:13] First, I want to congratulate you not only on the great presentation, but on your patients. Not INT, but INCE, because I know there's a lot of patients required in that collaboration with all of the departments and the agencies.

[01:19:29] My question is about mental health, and Steve, that's something we've been talking about since I've certainly been in this seat. What are the additional needs as it relates to mental health? And I appreciate your level of support and your presence when we've had those presentations regarding the CRC.

[01:19:47] So can you kind of elaborate a little bit on that piece of the partnership? Well, I'm not the mental health expert. I know you're not. First, but that is an area that we are working for more collaboration on. Judge Rollins, who is our chief general district court judge, has had a collaborative stakeholder group meeting for the last year or so, trying to work on more diversion opportunities.

[01:20:12] We have tried some things through EBDM. We did try a behavioral health docket for a brief period. That was maybe 2015, 16. It didn't work out well because there was some transition at the Supreme Court and how that was done. I think that may at some point be revisited, but that's part of the conversation that's going on now with Judge Rollins' work group. But we also do interact well with our partners, and a lot of the people we do touch have some degrees of mental illness, and we do try to recognize that and to provide that service and adjust how we work with people with mental illness at that area. But it

[01:20:50] is truly a work in progress. The ADC has done a lot of work, I know, in providing some specialized programming for individuals with mental illness when they do get in the jail. I mean, the goal is that they don't go in jail, and we're working on, I know we're working on the possibility in the near future of the Stepping Up Initiative, which is a commitment to having fewer people in your adult detention center with mental illness, and I know we've been working hard for that, and some of that is pointed out by the reduction in the ADC, but it is an area, I think, that's just ripe

[01:21:25] for more work. Supervisor Bailey. Madam Chair, if I may, just one last question. In terms of age groups, are you seeing younger folk? Are you more in the system? Or are you seeing, what are you seeing in terms of generationally? Well, we, you know, we, we, we supervise a lot of people in my office. I mean, we supervise over 1,500 individuals who are in the criminal justice system. If I looked at the data, and I think I have, it's in the, actually the low 30s,

[01:21:59] our average age of people that we serve, believe it or not, but we do see a lot of 18 to 24-year-olds for sure. Thank you. Thank you. All right, Chief Rizigordi. Thank you, Madam Chair. Steve, I just had one question. At least based on media reports, some of the most violent crimes that we've had of late were committed by individuals who were awaiting trial for another crime. Are you guys tracking this issue in terms of those who are awaiting trial who then commit other crimes while

[01:22:38] they're awaiting the trial? And if so, are you trying to collect some data to help you better predetermine who would present great risk to the community in order to find ways to try to limit that type of violence within our community? It's just something that I've seen in a couple of news articles, when it was talking about the individuals who were arrested, that, you know, they were already awaiting trial, but just trying to see if there's any way we can have better indicators

[01:23:10] related to that. That's a good question, Supervisor Gordy. So we track, obviously, ones that we're supervised, too. You know, if we're supervised and they commit a new offense, we know it, and we do track that, although there are people committing new offenses that we're not supervising as well because sometimes people are not referred to us we only we only get probably 15 to 20 percent of everyone pre-trial so a lot of them are in the community so we we only kind of do the data on the ones we supervise but

[01:23:45] we have been talking to Wesley Mr. Dawson and his his office about some of the issues out in the East End because we've definitely or Eastern District because we've heard issues of people being rearrested for offenses so we're having some pointed conversations about that. We're working on sharing better information, like having their officers share with us more offense information that might be available to us when we're making pre-trial release and providing pre-trial release information to the court. So we are working in that vein, and it is an area of concern, and it is something that we

[01:24:21] need to spend some time focusing on, and we are with the Office of Community Safety. And just sort of a little bit of a follow-up to that, you know, sometimes these offenders, they weren't necessarily arrested in Prince William County, and they're sort of outside of our system, but they may have been from D.C., they might have been from Fairfax or some other locality.

[01:24:46] You know, what is the relationship from a regional perspective and how we try to understand the risk and the threat of those that maybe that they've allowed to, you know, put out on bond that could have an impact on us?

[01:25:12] I mean, I know that sounds like, to me, it sounds like a hard thing to try to solve, but, you know, I'm, you know, just wanted to see what your thoughts are in terms of, you know, if this is something of consideration and some, you know, and just kind of looking at this more on a regional basis as well.

[01:25:30] Yes, sir. That's a good thought, and we actually do a lot of collaboration with other pretrial and community corrections agencies in Virginia. Obviously, if someone has a record in another jurisdiction, we know that. We have access to that information, and we let the court know that before a release decision is made about what their criminal record is.

[01:25:52] As far as outside of Virginia, probably not so much other than we know about the offense. But definitely internally, like we're talking to our partners in Fairfax and Loudoun with a great degree, and we share services and have conversations with them all the time because they do the same work we do, so we know them well.

[01:26:18] Thank you, Madam Chair. That's all the questions I have. All right. Thank you. If there's no one else, appreciate you greatly. Thank you so very much for your presentation, sir. Thank you. Fire and Rescue System, Chief LeBell. Good afternoon, Chair Jefferson, members of the board.

[01:26:47] thank you very much for your time today um most of you are pretty familiar with the fire rescue system i've been lucky enough to be the the chief now of both the system and the department uh for a year on may one uh it may seem longer for some of you but it's been an absolute uh outstanding experience for me i've greatly enjoyed it as you're all aware we're made up of both the dfr as well as the volunteer agencies within within our system um and go ahead and hit the next slide i I really just wanted to review sort of the activity within the system within the last several years.

[01:27:21] The slide you see before you is one representation of the relationship between population increase and call volume. It's not shocking that as our population increases, so there's our call volume. And as you can see, it's a trend that was starting to occur, but really in 2020 took off.

[01:27:40] If you go to the next slide, it's just a different representation, but with an actual number connected to it. From 2019 to the current year, we've seen a 22% increase in calls. It's substantive. We're thrilled to see Wesley and his team here.

[01:27:58] I often say that when the fire department is rolling out the door, some other system in our community has failed. It could be a social network, it could be a building code, it could be traffic safety, but it's a system that we all rely upon to get us through our day-to-day lives.

[01:28:17] And when we're going, something didn't work quite right. And so really interested, have already been working closely with Wesley and his team to see what we can do to stop you all from needing us. Go ahead, next slide. So I really just wanted to run through some highlights of the last year and what we're looking at for the current year.

[01:28:36] Obviously, a fair amount of work went into the collective bargaining agreement. Just getting that set up, it's obviously our first one, Figuring out, huge shout out to the county attorney's office, county HR, and both the negotiating team from the county and the local, who really kept an eye on a prize.

[01:28:56] We constantly asked, every time we said no, we said, but what are you trying to achieve, to see if we could figure out a better way to achieve what we were trying to do for the system. And then I would also point out system-wide communications. On my arrival, one of the things I recognized is there was quite a bit of siloing in communication between the volunteer organizations, the DFR, and the chief's office.

[01:29:20] One I would point to in particular was the creation of a president's committee. So as you all may know, Section 9.2 of the ordinance provides operational authority to the fire chief, but not administrative authority. And what that means is we have presidents of the various fire corporations who are trying to figure out how to manage sort of the day-to-day non-operational piece, but they didn't have a seat at the table.

[01:29:43] They now have a monthly meeting. They now come to the FRS meeting and were able to have a better understanding and support their work. Within the operations section, right-sizing EMS. As you saw before, we have close to 53,000 calls.

[01:30:02] On many of those calls, we had multiple units going, and it didn't necessarily need multiple units to go so we're starting the process of taking a hard look at the numbers well actually i'll talk about in a minute but really making sure we're sending the right type of resource and the individuals with the right training to the need of that community and really try to take some of the pressure off the system we've got a lot of units moving very quickly as some of you know from our budget discussions it's taking about five years now to get a fire engine and so having them move a little bit less and lasting a little bit longer makes a great deal of sense we also were

[01:30:41] able to move our paramedic school from an in-house program to a program with vcu to ensure consistency over over time and it's been a great opportunity for our folks to to learn from other partners in the region and then we also had our first annual picnic of dfr and volunteer members out in the Noakesville area in 2023. And then we've really working closely with Wesley's shop, taking a look at determinants of social vulnerability within our community, started to focus in on some of our

[01:31:15] public education efforts, and then had emergency management, had one of the largest exercises in the Commonwealth, certainly in Northern Virginia's history, with Marine Corps base Quantico taking a look at the impact on both the town the base given a certain rail disaster incredibly successful effort as we head into the next slide 2024 we'll be working on a strategic plan development in the past the county strategic plan for fire rescue system has really been driven by the fire

[01:31:50] rescue system we intend to reach back into the community our measurements what we do how we do should be community focused where the community's fire department and obviously we also want to follow the strategic plan that you all are developing and so once we have a good understanding what that looks like we'll be able to move forward we're going to continue with our right sizing another example that will be happening shortly we took a look at three years of a particular type of call what's called an inside gas leak so someone smells gas natural gas within

[01:32:22] in their home. Of approximately 1,700 calls over that three-year time period, we had six transports, which meant we were sending an ambulance on all 1,700 calls, but we were only transporting a total of six times. Of those six, four were at one call. So we really only needed an ambulance on three of 1,700 calls. We're not going to be sending the ambulance anymore. And so it's really slowly going through and making sure that we're sending the right resources. We're also working with our volunteer peers to take a look at our

[01:32:57] command staff, what roles they play, our safety officers, our battalion chiefs, and then obviously our recruiting efforts coming up with a strong strategic plan. I actually have a meeting tomorrow with the Recruitment and Retention Committee to create a well-defined volunteer recruitment plan, and then as some of you saw last week we had our first cadets graduate in our program with the school we're able to hire two individuals straight out of that program we do know we have more coming they just didn't turn 18 in time for the current process so so we know we've got more putting in i'm sure they'll be

[01:33:35] successful and then from a community safety standpoint again taking a hard look at our data sets. Traditionally, we would do large efforts. We took a look in particular at access to vehicles and language barriers and are doing a series of pop-up public education events to get closer to the community and making sure that we have folks that are able to communicate effectively with the community while they're there. So that's really where we're at and where we're heading.

[01:34:05] All right, that was short. I do that. Here, man, a few words. So let's see if we're still down. I'm down. All right, so I'm going to look to my right. All right, Supervisor Vega.

[01:34:23] Thanks. I'll be quick. I just want to give you phrases for your pop-up informational sessions that have been going up all throughout the county. I think it's great, and it's a great way to also educate and bring the community in. So thank you for that. Thank you. Look to my left.

[01:34:39] Thank you, Chief. Thank you. This is the first, so I love it, I do. I just have a few kind of, I think, recommendations that I think would add well to this presentation. That's kind of the way I took it. Now, a part of this, Chief Newsham hasn't given his presentation yet, but there's a slide that, one of the detailed slides that he has from police that I think would work well for fire, and that is really a breakdown of call volume.

[01:35:08] And what I mean is, when you look at pedestrian safety, and we know we've had a few pedestrian deaths, I mean, more than a few. And it's really because folks are out of the crosswalks, they're in dark clothes. I just think that data, because I think it would be better reported on fire, because you show up, even though a police shows up as well, and inside of the entire presentation, I would love to capture that.

[01:35:31] Really, data of pedestrians struck, you know, auto accidents. You mentioned gas leaks, and thank you for that, because that number is significant. we know we get a lot of gas leak calls, and many of them aren't. And so that really ties to my next piece, which is in our EMS.

[01:35:48] So as I look at call volume, ALS versus BLS, I would really like to see what that looks like, the data of the call volume of our medical status. And then, because to me, and we're talking efficiencies here, it'll show us between fire and gas and actual fire calls.

[01:36:07] And then the last thing I just want to add to that is our public safety, because you mentioned that. And I know Chris Brothers does a great job with public safety. You know, you say inspect what you expect, right? So I think if you show our public safety and really what that office is doing, we can get that data and really put together a tighter program.

[01:36:33] And I say that because, you know, I know we can do better in our public education, even with our volunteer companies. And Chris is doing a great job because he's merged in all the companies now. and he kind of oversees really what's going on throughout the county, which I think is the key to a lot of us having a safe and secure community, right?

[01:36:50] Folks can actually understand how best to protect their homes, how to clean the chimneys out, what an old space heater looks like, that cheap extension cord that you should never use on space heaters, all those things that make us better as citizens. So just want to tighten this up with those areas.

[01:37:08] And I'm going to come back to some more, but I'll stop there because I'll get a question in there. If I can, very quickly. So one of the things that I've discovered in my last year is the key performance indicators for the fire department are quite lacking. And that's really what you're talking about at the end of the day.

[01:37:26] And so it's difficult to put KPIs in the presentation when we don't really have them. And so part of the strategic plan is, and we've already started to work with the TMO office, to take a hard look at what constitutes KPIs so that we can give you all a better understanding of the actual workload, both inputs and outcomes, because both are incredibly important.

[01:37:48] So I appreciate the fact that you recognize that. Thank you. And then just that last one. I know I've been monitoring when we have no ambulance or transport in service, and I think that will alert this board that we need more of them on the street.

[01:38:05] So that's some critical data I think that will be good for us to see so we can understand what are the needs from our fire and rescue on the streets? Absolutely. So part of the EMS right-sizing is to make sure we're sending BLS units to BLS calls, ALS units to ALS calls. To be frank, until we made that change, I'm not comfortable coming forward.

[01:38:24] But once we've made that change and are effectively and efficiently using our resources, I'm more than happy to show you what those numbers look like. Let me just end by saying I'm very satisfied. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right.

[01:38:40] Vody, you got anything for us? no you do no no all right come on bailey take us home because gordy has nothing okay so first i want to say uh chief thanks for the presentation it's it's awesome i'm loving this community safety presentation it's great um i want to say also publicly thank you for uh you've got uh marine corps based chronicle on your slide it is critical that we have that uh communication and that relationship and I want to thank you we had recently an incident on the base that you you're you and your team were integrally involved in thank you for the

[01:39:19] meeting that you have with myself and the county exec and Colonel Brooks as relates to that incident that we did not expect and we had a major problem on the base and you and your team just helped by working through it and the meeting just shows that there's opportunity for improvement also not just on the base but you were also inclusive with q town quantico town and that's important you know just continually working with the mayor in terms of that we also had an emergency on the same day we had the fire in quantico towns and emt got in there and got out of there and it was a beautiful

[01:39:57] thing lives were saved everything was great so i'm saying all that to say thank you for putting this on your strategic plan because as we move forward it's critical it's absolutely critical that we improve those systems that we have already, that we work with, what do you call it, the, not the, what am I trying to say? Drones, yes. The drones. I was amazed by what we're doing with the drones. I won't tell anybody, but it's good. But it's good. And so, yeah, our system is working very strategically with that, and so that's critical. And then the other thing is, when you

[01:40:33] said about bringing everybody to the table, I'm like, Supervisor Angry, that's a great thing, because it helps with the collected bargaining piece. So thank you for that because we want that to be successful. We want all minds to be included in that strategically.

[01:40:49] So I think it's a great thing. And then the pop-ups also, kudos for that. So that's all I have, Madam Chair. Thank you. All right, thank you. You didn't have anything else because I know you said you might have a question later. Good. All right, well, thank you so very much. Madam Chair, sorry. All right, all right, I'm sorry. Since you asked, I was thinking.

[01:41:06] Sorry about that, Chief. Thank you for the presentation. Just very quickly, I know that next week, the county we're going to be looking at adopting or at least starting the process of looking at our sustainability and resiliency. To me, you have a huge role to play in looking at heat maps and things like that as we continue those conversations because on one side of the fence is the obvious, you know, higher heat maps, we have dry weather, we have asphalt pavement, higher chances of fires, things like that, issues there. On the other side of it, though, is flooding. I know that you all on the emergency management side also deal a lot with when floods happened, what have you. So I just want to make sure and give you a plug in there that as we start

[01:41:45] to have those conversations inside the house in terms of, you know, especially heat zones and flooding, that you all continue your public relations and your public education and see how those can synergize as well. Yeah, I appreciate it. I was short on the front end so I could talk a little longer on this end. I would be remiss if I didn't point out the work that the emergency Management Office has done really over the last year and a half in identifying flood areas, getting grant funding. There's a lot that's going on this year. They also received a statewide award

[01:42:21] for the public education and outreach in that particular area. I'd also quickly point out that one of the biggest problems we have when we look at temperature in this community is not necessarily fires, it's respiratory health and its impact on our communities, particularly in heat zones. And so it's one of the things we plan on looking at it the next year. All right, yeah. Police Department, Chief Newsham. Good afternoon again, Chair Jefferson, members of the board. I'm Pete Newsham, the chief of police here in

[01:43:00] Prince William County. Draw your attention to this first slide and I'll point out what we have responsibility for at the Prince William County Police Department is providing a police service, the best police service we possibly can to everybody who works, lives, and visits Prince William County to effectively and impartially enforce the law while serving and protecting our community. We are a nationally accredited agency. We have an authorized strength of 707 sworn and approximately 200 non-sworn, including our crossing guards. And I have to mention them, they're not in the

[01:43:39] presentation, and that was my mistake because we couldn't do what we do on the sworn side without our professional staff, our crossing guards, and our folks that work at the Animal Services Center. We have four divisions, 13 bureaus, including our criminal investigations, operations or patrol, our specialty units, and our support services. This next slide I'm going to show you is one that I often share with the community because this really provides context for crime in Prince William County over the last 15 years.

[01:44:15] The top line of the slide is the population. It shows the population increase. The bottom line is reported crime in Prince William County. A couple of outlier years in 2020 and 2021, and I think we all know that was during the COVID.

[01:44:31] The line in the middle is the average reported crime in Prince William County over those 15 years. I'd like to obviously see us a little bit below the average over those 15 years, but I do think it says a lot about when our staffing dipped.

[01:44:46] It says a lot about the folks at the agency that were able to maintain the crime situation here in Prince William County in spite of the fact that we had a reduced number of people doing the work. So hats off to them. And what I will say, and this is to anybody who's listening publicly, We do a very detailed annual report that really carves into crime in every way, shape, or form.

[01:45:11] And if somebody is interested in that information, please go to our website, take a look at that annual report. A lot of information about the police department, a lot of information about our response to resistance. But if you're really interested in crime and the state of affairs in Prince William County, I urge folks to take a look at that report.

[01:45:29] This next slide is the slide that folks, you know, this is something they want to know about. How did we compare to last year with regards to crime? If you look at these numbers, I'm not going to talk about the homicides right now because I have a slide later on in the deck where I'll be talking about the homicides.

[01:45:48] But if you compare us to 2022 to 2023, we really had about a close to 2% increase in overall crime. One of the things that's driving that is the stolen autos that we had. We had a significant problem with stolen autos.

[01:46:06] One of the things I will say on the stolen autos is they're around 35 percent. It's hard for us to gather this information, but around 35 percent of our stolen autos occur when the vehicle is running or when the keys are left in the vehicle. So one of the things that we're doing to try and combat stolen autos in Prince William County is to urge our folks that live out here in the community, please don't leave your car running.

[01:46:32] The circumstances under which they do that, our delivery drivers oftentimes will do that, and that kind of makes sense. The other time that we will see it is people that will be stopping at a gas station or a convenience store. They'll leave the car running. Another time is when it gets cold out.

[01:46:48] People want to get the car warm before they get in it. they leave it running, and that just provides an opportunity, particularly now when we're having a stolen auto problem, when that really important investment for your family can be taken and create all those problems. The other thing I will say about the stolen auto numbers, one of the state requirements that we have and we follow in Prince William County is included in that number is attempts to steal cars. So we had 724 of those 892 cases were actual cases where the car was

[01:47:23] taken, and the remainder of those are attempts. When you go down to theft from motor vehicles, I'll say two things about our theft from motor vehicles. Around 60% of our theft from autos occur when the vehicle is left open. And so, you know, the good news on that is people feel very safe in their community to the fact where they will leave their car open. The bad news about that is we do have some folks out there that when they see a vehicle that is open, they will take the opportunity to take property from that vehicle. And that's the other things we remind people to do is please don't leave items open in your vehicle. Laptops, sunglasses, those types of things

[01:48:03] will get taken. We had 80 firearms that were stolen from cars in 2023. That's actually a reduction from 2022. We had almost 120, I want to say, in 2022. So that's good that we have a reduction. But responsible gun ownership means not leaving it in a vehicle. You cannot leave a gun in a vehicle because those are the guns. As soon as they are taken, that becomes an illegal firearm.

[01:48:34] And those are the guns that we are going to see used in our communities, and we don't want to add to those numbers. The next slide that I have shows the numbers for the first quarter of this year, so the first three months of this year. Numbers look pretty good for the first quarter.

[01:48:52] The number that you can see, though, there down there with the vehicle theft, we still have a challenge with our stolen autos. The next slide I'm going to talk about, and I think this is really important for the county, is we have a REACT initiative, and what that essentially is is response to emerging criminal trends.

[01:49:13] And so we have noticed throughout the county, on both ends and in the middle of the county, a lot of our business owners are concerned with the order maintenance types of crimes. So what the REACT initiative is is for our police officers to go out into these areas and to touch these folks.

[01:49:31] And it's really not about arresting everybody, although we have had some arrests, but really what the idea is to work with Wesley and his folks and the other social services agencies and to direct folks who have substance use disorder, direct folks who have mental health issue into services.

[01:49:48] Most of the arrests, if you look down at the bottom of that slide, the 58 arrests, most of those arrests are people that are already wanted on a warrant. So when we make contact with them, we learn that they're wanted. They need to be taken back to the criminal justice system.

[01:50:04] But this has been very effective for us. In my estimation, we talk about the community satisfaction survey that we do every two years. One of the things that came out of that survey, and I think it's important for us all to note, is that people feel very, very safe in their homes in Prince William County, but they feel less safe when they go out to our businesses.

[01:50:28] And really what we're trying to do is we're trying to address that feeling of safety. And the way that I think that we do that is to address those order maintenance issues. But also I think that our presence as officers in those areas helps people feel safer. And I also think as we improve our sworn staffing, that's going to improve our visibility in those areas.

[01:50:50] The next slide I talked a little bit about this is the motor vehicle theft. We're going to continue to focus on this until we get to the bottom of it. One of the issues that we ran across in 2023 was the fact that the Kia and the Hyundais had become a target.

[01:51:07] In fact, somebody posted on social media how to easily steal those vehicles. And we are seeing that not just here in Prince William County, but we're seeing it across the country. Some of the things that we've done to do to address this is the social media campaign that I talked about.

[01:51:22] We've had our property crimes detectives actually involved in a number of giveaways of the steering wheel locks. Open communication with our auto dealers. And what that's really all about is the auto dealers who have a large amount of autos on their properties to ensure that they're taking steps to ensure that their property is secured.

[01:51:44] And that means fencing, security cameras, and those types of things. Talking with our regional partners and then the acquisition of investigative tools we have been working with the state police and their heat program and we anticipate the LPRs is one thing license plate readers that we've been able to improve but also we have a couple of other technical resources that we're going to be getting in the very near future to ensure that we get to the bottom of this issue because again I will say that there's nothing probably more frustrating and discouraging to have to get to the bottom of this issue.

[01:52:18] up and go to work in the morning and have your car not be there. And we are very, very sympathetic to that. The next slide, I will talk about the homicides. And whenever I talk about homicides, each one of these homicides represents a family that has unnecessarily lost somebody to violence, and that is heartbreaking.

[01:52:41] And I have seen far too many of these in my career. What I will say here in Prince William County is that you have a criminal investigations division that is outstanding in their ability to find the people that are responsible for these crimes and to ensure that they are held accountable. In 2022, we had 20 homicide victims and we only have one of those 20 cases that remains active. In 2023, we had 24 and all of those cases have been cleared by arrest. So every one of those has been closed or the person is currently in

[01:53:20] custody. And so far in 2024, we have had eight homicides. Troublingly, six of those victims were women. Three of those women were the victims of domestic violence. One of those cases is still open. And then we had two other cases that occurred inside of a home, and it was around some drug activity. The case that we have that remains active this year, we have actually made some pretty significant progress in that case, and we anticipate we're going to be

[01:54:00] able to get to the bottom of it. The other case I would be remiss if I didn't talk about was the one that we had at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and I know you're all familiar with that. And the reason that I bring up that case, a horribly tragic case, but the response by the Prince William County Police Department and our partners in getting that scene under control very, very quickly, including Michelle and her folks over public safety communications. I have seen all of the information in that case. I've seen all the

[01:54:34] video in that case, and it was absolutely heroic the way that law enforcement responded to that scene, stopped the threat, and was actually able to render critical first aid and probably saved one of those young men's life. The other young man, unfortunately, an expecting father, we lost him.

[01:54:55] Troubling case, but I will say that I could not have been more proud of the county resources, public safety folks that responded to that scene. Last thing that I'm going to talk about is our traffic. Traffic is obviously a huge issue.

[01:55:14] We have done at the department, we are paying very close attention to the number of citations that we write. Every year for the last three years, we have increased the number of citations that we write. And I can tell you, when we increase the number of citations, when we talk to our people, this is not about quotas.

[01:55:33] This is not about a gotcha program. We explain to our officers what's going on. in Prince William County and the lives that are being lost on the streets of Prince William County. And we urge them to go out and to conduct traffic enforcement. And to their credit, they have responded. And they have been increasing the number of citations that they're writing. Fatal crashes were down. That's between 22 and 23. So far, we're running about the same this year as we were to last year at this time.

[01:56:07] Another troubling statistic is our pedestrians are getting struck at a greater rate than they had in the past. I do want to thank the Board of County Supervisors for taking the initiative on giving the pilot project on automated traffic enforcement.

[01:56:26] I am firmly a firm believer that that is going to be extremely helpful in getting people to slow down particularly in our school zones and then at our traffic intersections that are controlled by traffic lights we don't want anyone speeding through our school zones when our kids are going to and from school and we certainly don't want people not stopping at red lights because those are the most serious crashes that we see in policing so I have gone over very briefly I don't think I was as short as the fire chief but what some of the things that we're doing at the Prince William County police and I would be happy to answer any

[01:57:05] questions that you all have for me. So I'm actually going to go to the first one because I want to dive into the pilot program a little bit more. It says that it began this year. School zone citations are already up. I mean that's a pretty high number so you know. Yes people are speeding through our school zones and that's what the pilot project is showing us. They're continuing to speed and you everyone has seen the cameras out there and you know at the intersection or the areas where we have them uh you see the cameras you see the flashing lights and we still have folks that are speeding through there so because i'm new i just want to understand are we going

[01:57:41] to be expanding that to other zones because that unfortunately isn't a problem you know i do drive by fitzgerald actually on a regular basis but there are some schools in my own neighborhood where i see people just you know it's flashing you see kids says 25 and people look like they're going 50 yeah departments should be told Department of Transportation is the lead on this but we are there is a plan to expand this to at least four other school zones and then we have eight intersections identified for red light cameras and then what the plan is is to bring that information back to the board and you all can decide whether or not this is something that we want to

[01:58:20] expand or not gotcha thank you now I appreciate this because that's a huge safety issue and so going to our monitors which are now working I believe supervisor angry you're the only one in the queue thank you thank you manager i'm going to go back to the uh the vehicles and the weapons and the vehicles and then i want to get on the um speed cameras but just uh in the statement um the fact that um you know folks are breaking into vehicles and then i think you said i don't know what that percentage was of weapons being taken and that you shouldn't leave a weapon in the vehicle so here's here's i don't know if you have data with this

[01:58:55] malls or churches or places where you know a law abiding I'm going to use that term because folks with a concealed carry permit and it says don't bring a weapon into this facility and so they're in this situation now so generally folks leave the weapon in their vehicle while they're into these locations and so I think that's one of the areas where we're seeing some of these vehicles broken into is that that that accounts for some I don't have the data on that but I can tell you Because I look at the reports of every time a gun gets taken out of our car, we get a daily report on that.

[01:59:31] And I've got to tell you, frequently the vehicle is being left at home, and actually the gun is being left visible from the outside of the car. So you'll see guns that are in the center console of the car, and this is happening on a fairly regular basis.

[01:59:47] I do think, though, that we had some impact, because we talked about this a lot last year publicly, and I do think people are responsible gun owners are paying attention to that. Yeah, because that's my concern, and I don't even know if that's something. You know, law-abiding folks and concealed carry folks aren't really the threat.

[02:00:04] I mean, anybody can be a threat at any time based on whatever happened in their life, but I just feel like there's that unbalance of the fact that you are law-abiding, you have a concealed carry permit, you're carrying, you go to a mall, you know it says don't bring in there, and you leave it in your car.

[02:00:20] It's almost like I don't know what, you know, there's some legislation that lets folks who go through the process of becoming concealed carry permit folks through all of that, you know, are allowed, but something in there, because I don't know what that number is, if those break-ins are, like, in malls or churches, then, you know, something should be looking.

[02:00:40] I think I know what you're saying on that, is that you have a responsible gun owner who's trying to abide by all the rules, and they can't go in the mall, so they leave the gun in the car, and then the car. Yeah, then, you know, so now, to the, and this is probably Mr. Wyoming, I know he's not here, but I'm just curious because we started this program about the schools on cameras.

[02:01:00] You know, it's almost been about a year now, and so those are the only locations where they are. And I know there was some legal stuff at some of the different school zones that they had to work out. I'm just curious, how long before, and I'll be very specific, Saunders Middle School on Dell Boulevard is one of the locations.

[02:01:17] As you know, all of our jurisdictions have speeding on these major roads, and Del Boulevard is the major road for the outskirts. And that school is like literally everything you're saying. Folks are doing 60, 65 with kids walking on the sidewalk. So it's just curious.

[02:01:33] Thank you for the question, Supervisor Angry, board members. So I literally just sent the memo to the board with an update on both the speed camera and the red light camera programs. That said, because of delays associated with the start of the pilots, we're gonna come back in June for boards consideration of extending the ordinance so we'll be able to have a discussion about the program the extension of the program and if there's a need to expand to different schools we'll have that discussion as well and I know I won't be able to vote on that

[02:02:10] but I vote yes and 27% already up so it's clearly showing what we already knew that this is working, but now we've got to figure out how to slow folks down, and that is the major problem here.

[02:02:25] So I love all this presentation because it's an informational brief for us, and so I'm just going to kind of throw out a, first of all, question for you and Chief. You showed your police numbers, your officers. How are you doing in that?

[02:02:40] How's recruiting? Are you up? And same for you, Chief. How's recruiting? I meant to ask you that while you were up here, so don't worry about coming back. He can probably answer for both. Significant progress at the police department. We're down to a little over 50 vacancies. We're going to be bringing in a class in July between 25 and 30.

[02:02:58] We hope to actually be able to eliminate all of our vacancies, including the 20 additional positions, sworn positions, thank you very much, in fiscal 25. That's how we anticipate being able to do that. Okay, supervisor for fire rescue, about 702 count by vacancies.

[02:03:18] Oh, okay. so we're moving in the right direction and then so this was the um this slide is really good for both of our systems of police and fire because the data you both collect like you both like you are tracking the accidents as they occur out of those accidents are deaths or you know what what is the the the medical you know data that goes with these calls at these intersections and then And the last one I'll just simply talk about is our red lights and those T-bones.

[02:03:49] T-bones are the most horrific accident, which is why this data and this program will be important for us because sometimes it's not worth it to put a red light at an intersection because if we can't get people to slow down and not run these red lights, literally right now there's no one in this room who can't say, today you sat at a light that turned green for you and watched at least three cars.

[02:04:14] Okay, maybe one. I'll go one. run through that light like you literally have to count to five now before you take off from a green light which shouldn't be the process if your light is yellow it means slow down and stop because it's turning red not speed up to get through it but the issue becomes that's what's happening so t-bones are significant at those processes where we find ourselves today so this is important that i just i want you know the two uh departments because there's some tracking of information that we can use that will tell this board and tell our transportation office you know do we really want to put a rail like there?

[02:04:47] Do we really want to do some of these improvements? I appreciate what you have here and I know we can just tighten it up some more. But thank you. And that was really for you, Mr. Alexander, and the whole presentation itself and you, Westwood, as well. I'll see you over that.

[02:05:04] So thank you. All right, thank you. Hold on. I just had to step away from me. I feel like I missed a really long conversation. I believe I have Bailey, Franklin, Bodie, right? So, wait, I left and you were still talking?

[02:05:20] Okay. Did you take the five minutes or did you take ten? Okay. 25. All right. Supervisor Bailey. Oh, it really is me. Thanks, Vic. No, Chief, you're not out of here.

[02:05:36] We need you. A couple things. Well, not a couple things. Thank you for the enforced efforts, no pun intended, enforced efforts that you've made with the fatal crashes, because that's really important. To be down 21% is really a big improvement from where we were.

[02:05:58] And, you know, we really appreciate that. And I think that's something. What is that attributed to? You mentioned it, but could you just kind of repeat that really quickly? I mean, you'd like to attribute it to the increased enforcement. I do think that when the board announced that we were going to automated traffic enforcement, that messaging alone, I think, can have an impact.

[02:06:18] is people don't know where the cameras are. I know we post it publicly, but they don't necessarily know where they are. I do think as the program expands and it becomes more prevalent, then I think people are going to start to stop at our red lights, and I think more people, not everybody, more people are going to stop at our red lights and more people are going to go slower through our school zones.

[02:06:38] Okay, and to that, one of the things that I know we've been talking about on the board are the sports cars that, you know, Victor's been talking about it quite a bit at the parking lots and, you know, them racing on the streets. How's that coming?

[02:06:54] So the car meets are something that we follow very, very closely. They move around the region from time to time. They come into Prince William County. What we try to do is we try to follow the intelligence as to where they're going to be, and as they begin to gather in Prince William County, we try to get resources over there to get them dispersed before it becomes unmanageable.

[02:07:15] So far this year, we've been mostly successful. Sometimes they get the better of us, and they gather up in very, very large groups. And they've become very difficult to deal with, too. When they get very large, some of the folks that are in those groups will try to harass the police, provoke the police, and then they're doing all kinds of the lighting fires and spinning out and those kinds of things.

[02:07:40] So there's a couple of things that we're doing in response. of all is following the intelligence seeing where they're going to be making sure that we get there before the group gets too big so we can disperse them and then lastly if they do come up there and they're they're doing things that they shouldn't be doing illegal behavior to get images of the cars and the drivers so we can share those images with the public we can follow up and ensure that there is some accountability yeah and you know because they they really do a lot of racing on 234 coming from Victor's District down to mine and going to Supervisor Franklin.

[02:08:15] So the intelligence, I understand that. And then the other thing that I wanted to just commend you for to continue doing is having the police cars just parked in the neighborhood. So that's worked tremendously.

[02:08:32] I've noticed cars slowing down, just having them present in certain spots. That continuously helps us. So thank you for that. You're welcome. Yeah. okay so i got all right franklin bodice and gordy sure yes thank you for uh the presentation i just want to point out that we talk about um the enforcement side a lot because that's obviously what you you all do mostly but again just talking about that route one corridor and how we've been able to reduce incidents there you all have really done a good job in working with social services

[02:09:06] and working with other agencies including even our school system to really get get the route one corridor uh you know into shape i want you to also talk about because we don't talk about this enough but i found it to be pretty effective in my district and i think you would agree working with the apartment management companies working with the businesses we've been pretty pretty active in both addressing some of their concerns but also giving them tips on how to be on preventative measures simple things like security additional lighting and we've worked with a number of what i

[02:09:45] will call formerly hot spots for some of these apartments and we've seen a reduction in service calls as a result of you all going in and giving some advice on what they can do on the prevention side so i do want you to talk a little bit about that now just mention since cleaning up Route 1, I've started hosting quarterly meetings with the businesses because once we moved people from that 7-Eleven, they started going to some of the other surrounding businesses, and so we kind of got them in a room together.

[02:10:17] And I can tell you, and you know this, the last meeting we had, the businesses were like, we don't have any incidents. I mean, they've completely moved to wherever they've moved to, and I believe it was Captain Smith that said, yeah, we've sent a message that if you want to commit crimes somewhere else, whatever, but you can't do it on this corridor.

[02:10:34] So we've been very effective in working together on both the enforcement and the social services side and getting people services, particularly those who are homeless, but also those who are committing crimes on the enforcement side. I do want to point out our Commonwealth attorney.

[02:10:50] I believe there's been some dialogue also about what they think they can actually prosecute for some of these individuals that are doing, whether it be obviously on drugs or loitering or things of that nature. How can we make sure that we send a strong message that it won't be tolerated?

[02:11:07] So if you can just talk a little bit about that and how we've all kind of worked interagency to kind of solve this issue, at least on the Route 1 corridor, and I think this can be replicated in other areas. Absolutely, and I think you hit the nail on the head when you talked about the relationship between the police department and the landlords, particularly in the multifamily units, because we can talk to them about improving security, but also there's some things that they can do with tenants that we frankly can't do in a way of holding tenants accountable.

[02:11:38] And after we had some of those meetings, you could see there was a lot of, I think, a lot of failure to communicate on both sides. And so they expected the police could come in and do certain things, and we really couldn't. But then they improved lighting. Some of them improved security systems, and that had a huge change.

[02:11:56] The other thing that we have no tolerance for is the alcohol establishments not being responsible owners of their properties. And we've actually made some progress. The one thing that we can do is pull their live entertainment license.

[02:12:14] And if they're not, if they don't have proper security at their establishments, then we will do that very quickly to ensure that, hey, if you're going to have a function, we're all for it. let people come and have a good time, but you also gotta make sure people come to your facility, they're safe when they're there and they're safe when they leave.

[02:12:33] So those relationships that you talked about have been, and I'll say this, the transformation that we have seen on the Route 1 corridor, it's hard to reflect back a couple of years, has been dramatic. We have seen significant improvement in that area with order maintenance crimes.

[02:12:50] You know, we still got work to do, no doubt about it, but we're gonna keep it up, so. Yeah, and I'll just say lastly, I really think we should be promoting the efforts that you all have with some of these apartments and the businesses, because I really think that that went a long way, and it takes some of the pressure off of you all and people thinking that it has to be the police department's responsibility only.

[02:13:12] And I'll just give a quick example. In one of our apartments, they were having issues with people coming in very easily who did not live there, and you all went in, did an assessment, and found that the doors were installed improperly. uh and so that was something very easy that they went and fixed and they haven't had that issue since so i think we should just continue to promote um the relationship or that should be between our police department and our apartment management companies and our small businesses thank you all right supervisor bode thank you madam chair and chief thank you for the uh for the presentation a couple of questions one to go off of that bead that supervisor franklin was

[02:13:51] going off of um can we talk a little bit about especially so we're talking about left of bang things like that as we continue to build out the county and have new developments are there ways we can proactively reach out to these business owners as these businesses are being established as these new strip malls are becoming about or frankly when there's a vacancy when one business owner leaves another one takes up the space can we look at maybe doing that do we do that already uh we do not do that already i'm i'm a big proponent of that if you know if they if they're not being responsible business owners that we we show repercussions and then word gets out that you know in Prince William County you can't come down here and just

[02:14:28] have a melee of an event with no security and those kinds of things but that's a great suggestion so that's something we should as businesses are being established just have a conversation with the people who are going to be working those properties and say hey listen this is how we this is how we behave in Prince William County we're going to rely on you to have a certain degree of responsibility on on the public safety side appreciate that and conversely on the residential side you know that we have developments that come up and they have a management company or developer who transfer transitions over to property manager their first board of directors on the hoa you know a lot of these situations folks have a vested interest saying hey we're a new community

[02:15:06] bless you by the way um they have a new community we would like to this to be as safe as possible we want to get off on the right foot can we have those those initial like yeah i think that's a a good idea and i do think that i mean i have seen the homeowners associations are very active in coming to us and sharing ideas about how they can make the community safe so appreciate that and secondly to go on sooner as i'm angry was talking about in terms of traffic safety and these numbers um knowing that i have one of the the school zones in my district um you talked a little bit about the fact is as you see this expand you should see behaviors improve hopefully

[02:15:44] over time um do we have any idea yet uh you know the the response level to these citations i know with the automated enforcement people get things in the mail now i frankly thankfully i've not gotten one so i don't know what it looks like or whatever right now but do we see people complying or there are there people that aren't paying the bills can you talk about that i don't have that level of detail but i will say that when this comes up in june you will probably hear all of those things. And you can correct me if I'm wrong, county executive, I would think that we would be talking about, because when the vendors come in that run these cameras, they give you that

[02:16:21] information. They also give you the information on, you know, that 27.3%, how much that will be much less the next time. And that's exactly what we're trying to achieve. We're not trying to write a bunch of tickets. We're trying to get people to slow down. And my last question goes up in a much different direction. You talked a little bit about the social media campaigns. Right now, you talked about as it pertains to auto thefts and these challenges and things that are on social media, TikTok, Facebook, what have you, and some of the countermeasures you put into place.

[02:16:55] I know you can't talk too much about that, but can you also talk about as it pertains to drugs and some of the other things that are happening in the schools? Because I know, unfortunately, a lot of these challenges, whether it's vandalism, drugs, substance misuse, what have you, people are targeting children, frankly.

[02:17:10] And that causes, as we all know in this conversation, outlying problems to society as a whole, but also, frankly, starts conditioning folks to do certain things that they shouldn't be doing because their peers are, because they see a video and their friends are talking about it. It's this whole cycle. So can you talk about what you're doing in that regard?

[02:17:26] Yeah, so that's a very strong point. I do think that whoever put out this information on TikTok, they were targeting young, impressionable people. And it does have a tendency to gain momentum if you see a couple of your friends are doing well, I'm going to do it too.

[02:17:43] And I think we're in that, to be quite honest, I think we're in that period right now. I do think that a large amount of the increase that we've seen in our stolen autos is by very young high school and a little bit older aged folks. And then on the drug issue, I work very closely with the superintendent, who I think has been a great hire for the county.

[02:18:07] And she is really focused on security at the schools. She's invested an incredible amount of money in ensuring that our schools are safe when the kids come there. And I'm getting to the point of the drugs. When they installed the Evolve system, the weapons detection system, that also had an impact on young people bringing drugs into the school as well.

[02:18:31] So I think we have to keep at it. We don't want to see our kids. I think we've had a much safer school year, too, than we've had as a result of these things. We didn't even talk about the fentanyl issue that we're facing and, you know, the way that that we have drug dealers that are purposely putting fentanyl, which is a more addictive drug, into, you know, other drugs, fake Percocet pills to get people addicted so they can increase the volume of their sales.

[02:19:03] So the Prince William County Special Investigations Bureau has done a tremendous job. I want to say last time I checked somewhere in the neighborhood of 80,000 fake Percocet or fentanyl-laced pills have been recovered this year.

[02:19:19] And on the social media message, we're talking about those things. We talk about how if you see somebody and they have the signs of addiction, opioid addiction, that they are potentially involved in a fatal behavior. And so if you have a family member, a friend, a student who you see involved in this behavior, you've got to get them help.

[02:19:43] You could lose that kid. You could lose that person, and that's real. I want to say in three years we've lost 177 people in Prince William County to fentanyl overdoses, the ones that we know of because they're still doing some testing. That's a lot.

[02:19:59] That's dramatic. And I appreciate that point, Chief, because I think, unfortunately, we're in a place where, especially when we're talking about kids and school age, especially high schoolers, there's a stigma around saying something. They don't want to get their friends in trouble, or they're afraid that they'll be called a snitch, or there'll be social outlying issues if they bring stuff up.

[02:20:21] But frankly, what you just said is the key. It's not to get anyone in trouble. It's frankly, lives are at stake. Kids' health is at stake. And again, back to something that Wesley's at the outset, seeing these issues as public health versus criminalization, I think really needs to be honed in on as we talk through these issues.

[02:20:38] Because frankly, a lot of these kids don't really realize when they're engaged in behavior, they're in danger. Their lives are at stake. Their health is at stake because they're kids. They just don't think that way. And frankly, again, when they have their peers doing something, again, to the point, they see their peers doing something. They have other peers maybe afraid to do something.

[02:20:55] it puts them in a tough spot when, frankly, a lot of these issues are perfectly preventable. Yeah, the way we try to tap into that information that's going around in the schools amongst our kids is through our SROs who develop relationships with these kids. They have these trusted relationships, and then a kid will come up to the SRO and say, hey, listen, this is going on.

[02:21:13] And we're able to interdict a lot of really bad behavior because of that. The other thing that the school system has is they have an anonymous tip line, and that is used very very frequently by our kids in the school when they see something a weapon in the school or drugs in the school and it gives us the ability to go in there and interdict it so thank you all right and supervisor Cory thank you madam chair thank you chief Newsham for addressing the fentanyl issue that was going to be my first question so you've already taken care of that so thank you I wanted to just offer you know just kind of go

[02:21:52] listening to your presentation you know each every every one of us supervisors has an email newsletter that we send out on a pretty regular basis and and I think you know some of the things that you highlighted these are things particularly to guns and vehicles and you know making sure you're locking your vehicles and car tests you know these are sort of best practices that you know if you sense that there's something that we can be communicating to the constituents of our districts to better bring these make them aware of what's happening what the trends are and steps

[02:22:28] that they can take to mitigate those trends I think it'd be I think we can help sort of be part of the solution in terms of that communication so just offer that to you and the only the last thing I have is you know we've we've talked a little bit in the previous couple of board meetings about the issues of dump trucks and 18 wheelers you know the the from the 18 wheelers it's you know they're just basically parking anywhere they can find

[02:23:00] a place to park and I've spoken to a few of your officers and and they've said you know it's very frustrating because the fines are like $35 and it's cheaper for them to be fine than to actually pay for a place for them to park their vehicles. Could you speak a little bit to that and any other aspects of what you're seeing as it relates to that? Yeah, you're absolutely right on that. I don't think the fines that we have right now for commercially owned vehicles are a deterrent to that type of behavior. I know that Deputy County

[02:23:39] Executive Alexander is actually putting together a task force right now. I don't want to call it a Task Force, but a group to discuss this issue and maybe make some legislative recommendations. I think that what might be more of a deterrent is to tow the vehicle, particularly a chronic offender who's continually parking in an area of Dale Boulevard or somewhere out west where they're creating visibility issues. They're actually creating a danger issue for other drivers out there. So I agree with you that the $35 issue that the officers that you've spoken to

[02:24:16] are exactly right is not a deterrent. And I think collectively that's an issue that we're going to work on to see if we can't have a better solution to address that. Okay. Thank you for that. And, you know, I appreciate Mr. Alexander and the work that he's doing to help us find a pathway forward to address that the other issue is just and i don't know this one's a a big challenge for us um and that's just the rampant um uh dump trucks uh speeding through parts of uh our communities

[02:24:52] uh we were receiving emails from folks over off coverstone i'm constantly getting emails and concerns from people in Nokesville with the dump trucks going through some of the more rural roads at very high speeds. The challenge is when your officers are out there, you know, they have radios. They say, hey, do not go down this road. And then, you know, say my catch one or two, but then they just, they are able to circumvent the enforcement. Have you looked at other ways of

[02:25:28] trying to bring some level of enforcement against some of this improper behavior? So we do have some unmarked vehicles that we could add to that solution. And you have, through your office, we have definitely got the areas that are the areas where we need to focus.

[02:25:47] So when I go back and I talk to my special operations division, we'll talk about the fact and the issue that you bring up, which is a good one, that they're communicating. Because that has been the case a couple of times when we've gone out there. We've had only a couple of citations that we've been able to issue.

[02:26:05] But if you listen to the feedback from the community, it's happening pretty frequently. So we'll talk about that internally, about maybe using some unmarked assets. Thank you, Chief. That's all I have. All right. Thank you, sir. All right. Supervisor Bode?

[02:26:22] Yeah. Thank you, Chief. I just forgot one question. Supervisor Gordy's questions reminded me. are commuter lots i know that over the past couple years folks have sort of raised issues about commuter lots i know we talked about the the the racing groups and the car groups but you know because of legislation that was passed in richmond a couple years ago now we have food trucks and some other things that are now allowable under the law in these uh in these commuter lots can you talk a little bit more about the ecosystem there what we're seeing and what we can do to make sure people feel safe in the commuter lots yeah so you know what the there those are state controlled lots so those are Virginia State jurisdiction technically but that

[02:27:01] doesn't mean that we won't go out there and assist one of the things that one of the district commanders did which was pretty effective was to get those those barriers that kind of the plastic barriers and put them up at at certain times to prevent people from entering the lot it's a challenge for us we have we haven't had a lot of reports of folks being robbed and that kind of thing at our commuter lots so we haven't seen the violent crime in our commuter lots but we have seen a couple of stolen autos and a couple of break-ins at our commuter lots. I appreciate that because I

[02:27:36] know that while they're all state lots I know we we own as a county some portion of lots unfortunately we're in a situation at Tackett's Mill just across street where the county owns like the first third of it that's closest to Old Bridge and then the second third is owned by the state so there's a lot of sort of i know jurisdictional issues there but but you know with that being said if something's going on there particularly if somebody's feeling unsafe we're going to handle that so thank you all right thank you and supervisor bailey thank you madam chair that just reminded me chief do you is it under your authority or who handles the big tractor trailer trucks that park because we're

[02:28:15] having calls from the hoas that they're parking in illegal zones and how is that handled is that your responsibility or is that we we can ticket those trucks in those circumstances so that's a shared jurisdiction the state can do it as well but it's more likely going to be us particularly on the less traveled roads not yet the interstates yeah this is like residential areas where they're parking so that would be yes okay thank you all right and I believe that's it thank you so very much for your time and an informative presentation thank you for public safety communications we're

[02:28:53] going to finish strong with Director Michelle Surdam. Good afternoon, Chair Jefferson and Florida Supervisors. I am Director Michelle Surdam with the Department of Public Safety Communications, and as both Chief Newsham and Chief LaBelle were speaking, it occurred to me that there were some items that I wanted to bring up during my presentation that are not here, but I do want to talk about the fact that Public Safety Communications is the cornerstone of all the public safety agencies within the county, and coming so

[02:29:30] soon off of the national telecommunicator week that we had in April just kind of reinforces that and I want to say thank you to those of you who were able to stop by and celebrate with us during that week. It was very much appreciated by our staff. The Department of Public Safety Communications is the cornerstone of the county's comprehensive public safety system and in addition to handling all 911 and non-emergency calls for service we also dispatch for our public safety agencies the department or excuse me the Prince William County Police

[02:30:05] Department the County Fire and Rescue and the four incorporated towns as well as fire and rescue services for the cities of Manassas and Manassas Park one of the things that is not on the slide that occurred to me as Chief LaBelle was speaking about right sizing their units and and what's going to go out to the the calls for service in addition to handling the calls for service as call takers and dispatchers my staff are also responsible for assisting both the fire

[02:30:41] department and to a lesser extent the police department in making sure that the computer-aided dispatch system that we utilize is doing what it should to make sure that the right units are being dispatched so we've been spending a lot of time working collaboratively with the fire department in discussing what changes need to be made in unit recommendation and changing our incident call types so that we are better identifying when an ambulance should go out, a BLS ambulance versus an ALS ambulance.

[02:31:17] This has also meant large changes to how we process calls and our staff having to make changes in reference to that. Mutual aid is something that we do on a daily basis. We have a system called CAD2CAD, which is an automatic mutual aid system with a couple of our surrounding jurisdictions.

[02:31:41] but we also do a more manual process with Stafford and Fauquier. We do dispatch to the Marine Corps base, and they also work with us for calls for service. We have a 33-seat PSAP, and basically that means we have 33 positions.

[02:32:01] It's a combination of call-taking, dispatching, and our teletype and warrants unit. We are authorized full-time positions of 123, but we currently have 12 vacancies, and I will say, unfortunately, at the end of the month, that's going to rise to 13 as we lose one of our dispatchers.

[02:32:22] Next slide. We have three divisions, operation systems and administration. Each of those is overseen by an assistant director. In operations, we are answering and processing all 911 and non-emergency calls, dispatching, we're a 24/7 service.

[02:32:40] We have four squads, two of them rotate. All of the squads work four days on, four days off, so we have two that work two days and two nights, one full days and one full nights. We have an incident dispatch team, we have a very active peer support team, and we have fire and police details.

[02:32:59] And by that I mean when the fire department or the police department are engaged in activities such as at the academy, our dispatchers are assisting and offering services for those events. Under our systems area, we have the care and maintenance of our computer-aided dispatch system, our call handling system, our audio recording systems, technical support for our staff, asset allocation.

[02:33:27] We also handle our own FOIA processing now that we are a department. Administratively, we have a teletype and warrant unit. We conduct training in-house for our basic telecommunicator class, as well as in-service training, recertifications.

[02:33:42] We have a very active community outreach and recruitment program. The picture here is two of our court, as it's called. And we are engaged in a lot of the activities with the police department and fire and rescue, including the pop-up events that the fire department spoke of earlier.

[02:34:01] We do have our own social media. We have a make the right call program. And for those of you who are not familiar with that, that is a recognition that we do for children who have called in to 911 and have had successful calls for service related to family members or other reasons that they may have had to call in.

[02:34:22] Under administration, we have hiring, onboarding, finance, payroll, budget, and uniforms. We are accredited in various agency accreditations and recognitions. We are the first nationally accredited public safety center in Virginia through the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement and CALEA.

[02:34:44] We recently just received our reaccreditation and went out to Washington State for that in November of last year. We are an Association of Public Safety Communications Officials International Accredited Training Program, which is our P-33 project, accredited emergency medical dispatch medical program certified by the Commonwealth of Virginia, which is also an APCO EMD program.

[02:35:10] We have an accredited peer support team, and we are collaborative with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and Missing Kids Readiness Program.

[02:35:26] Some of the technologies that we are currently using or are looking to use, we are utilizing a Viper call handling equipment. We're currently in the process of an RFP development and submission out to the public for a new call handling equipment. We have a Motorola P1 computer-aided dispatch system, as well as a Motorola P25 800 megahertz system. Our audio recording technology is with nice we have text to 9-1-1 compatibility we were one of the first

[02:36:04] agencies in the area that was not using a platform that you had to go on to a cloud service to do that it does come directly into our 9-1-1 system we're next-generation 9-1-1 with the izi net infrastructure we have a remodeled state-of-the-art facility that was completed in 2020 which is depicted here on the screen and we have a hot backup communication center at western district police station which was put in service in 2019 and utilized for about nine months

[02:36:35] during covid while our current system or current center was being complete completed regarding our metrics about 89 of all of our 911 calls are wireless at this time we took about just under 160,000 wireless calls last year landline calls for service continues to decline just under 20,000 non-emergency calls for service is always greater at

[02:37:07] 248 546 excuse me 248,546 we note our outbound calls here because we do a lot of calling out if somebody calls 911 and we don't have voice contact we will attempt to reengage with the person to make sure that there's no emergency but we're also calling out for other things like calling for toes calling for other services that the citizen may need assistance with foreign language calls for service we have about just under 10,000 language line calls for service

[02:37:45] we do have some folks in the center that are foreign language proficient and have gotten their stipend in order to be able to communicate without having to utilize the language line police calls for service that are dispatched we have 111,562 but I would like to point out that that is just for calls that are actually dispatched that is not including all the calls that we take that are either referred to online reporting or our informational in

[02:38:21] response and then fire and rescue dispatch calls is just a little over 58,000 text 9-1-1 dispatch calls for service that is a little bit on the rise people are still typically calling 9-1-1 rather than using text to 9-1-1 but we do still have occasions when people are utilizing that as their main communication with us some of the new initiatives and technologies that we are looking to implement we are researching artificial intelligence capabilities to reduce call volume on staff and better assist with the public that's an AWS

[02:38:58] service some of the other jurisdictions are utilizing that and it's just essentially an effort to better direct callers to providing us with information and it may at some point be correlated with 311 as that's as that is rolled out training software platform to better track training progress of staff right we're doing a lot of either handwritten daily observation reports or doing things on a shared computer and then having to manually print it out and provide

[02:39:37] information to our training department so we're looking to try and streamline that through the use of new software with that. Survey software to gather feedback from 911 callers and relay data to staff. We currently send out questionnaire cards every month to citizens and we get a very low percentage of responses back and this survey software would allow us to immediately following certain calls for service to send a text asking if they would like to rate how their call with us went and one of the things that we're looking

[02:40:14] forward to with that is it gives immediate response back to the call takers and provides data to us but for positive responses we're also able to display that information on a screen which really kind of gives that kudos to the the call taker for a job well done some of the upgraded technologies being deployed a lot of them are really around location accuracy and two-way communication. Generally, when somebody calls 9-1-1 or texts 9-1-1, we don't have the capability

[02:40:50] through our call handling system to text them as an initiated call, us initiating to them. But some of these over-the-top solutions, we are able to do that. Also, the ability to start accepting multimedia, which up to this point we have not been doing. So that is a new initiative that we are doing, and I've zipped right through that, so if anybody asks any questions.

[02:41:15] All right, Supervisor Ingrid. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Michelle. Great to see you here on this other end. Just one question, and it may not be for you, but it may be just more information that I think we would need.

[02:41:32] So the mutual aid. While mutual aid is important because it shows our partnership, I know mutual aid also comes at a cost, right? And so do you have the data? It may not be an answer for you, but it may be something to write down to get the data that shows over the last, I'd say, 10 years of mutual aid and really a cost associated with how much has outside agencies come into the county, and then what have we spent on that, right?

[02:42:04] And for me, that'll give us a kind of breakdown, again, the staffing question I asked before about our numbers, which looks good that we're coming now, so I think that'll be good. show whether we need to grow or what that looks like so just a comment may not something to answer now just to add to the slide deck so thank you I'll come back later this is the end isn't it it is I was gonna say ask your questions now because you're the only one in queue so I don't even have a question I want to make anyway I'll wait for everybody else to go because I just want to recap kind of the presentation as a whole so I'll bring it back to mr. Alexander at that point so I just wait and see if anybody has questions for you supervisor Bode

[02:42:43] rescued you. I did. Thank you, Michelle, for the presentation. Just one question. Can you talk a little bit about Marcus Alert and how that feeds into this whole system and the sort of, then that ecosystem with the crisis, the co-responder teams, the crisis management teams, all those folks, especially as it pertains to mental health and those issues. Sure. So the Marcus Alert initiative has allowed us to more granularly define calls for service that involve people in crisis. We are reporting out to the state on a quarterly basis and we

[02:43:23] have regular meetings with CSB and the folks at the Regional Crisis Center to discuss how that's going. It is an ongoing training initiative with our folks to be able to identify when something should be routed to the call center versus sending response from either the police department or the fire department but in order to better track what we're doing we have created a system that allows the call taker to enter an incident that if it is

[02:43:58] dispatched to units to respond to also allows them to identify how we handled it from the communication side and by saying that there's an incident type that generates call for service to the field units and there's an incident type that says this is what we did with that call we sent a co-responder unit on this particular incident or we sent a crisis a CIT unit and those types of things 988 is not

[02:44:33] something that we are actively as an agency advertising because at this moment calling 988 will get you to a crisis center that is located in the jurisdiction of your area code so if you live here and you came from another state with a different area code and you call 980 you're going to get the the crisis center for that location and it's more difficult to traverse where does this person need to be so we do have a

[02:45:05] 10-digit number that we have advertised we have different publications that our court staff takes with them when they're out in the public to kind of emphasize that and we really try to advertise the use of smart 9-1-1 through rave which is a company that allows you to identify certain information that you want public safety to be aware of so you're maintaining that information on a on their platform i appreciate them the only thing

[02:45:41] i'll say to that is thank you for sharing that michelle and also thank you for highlighting that challenge right now with 9-8 because frankly we're in a we're a community a lot a lot of transplants I'm one of them we have a lot of folks that travel all around the country we have a lot of DOD folks folks that frankly have area codes or that that aren't uh you know they're not for northern Virginia or even Prince William County you know so to have a situation where someone thinks that they're going to be called 9-1-8 9-8 like for example I saw my my uh my Florida area code. So if I were to call, it would go somewhere else.

[02:46:15] So that's something we have to work through, but I appreciate you guys looking at the fact that knowing that's a thing and knowing that we have that challenge since we have so many transplants, so many folks that have out-of-state area codes working through that and connecting that to the ecosystem that we have. We've already got a supervisor here, right? I just had a couple questions.

[02:46:37] You know, AI researching guess what, my vision's pretty bad, slide 35, researching artificial intelligence capabilities to reduce call volume on staff and better assist the public. You know, can you expand on that a little bit more?

[02:46:53] Sure. So what some of the other agencies in the Northern Virginia area have done and that we are also looking into doing is utilizing the Amazon service where you're creating kind of first evaluating the types of calls that you may utilize that for.

[02:47:11] other jurisdictions maybe have done calls for barking dog complaints, as an example, and then giving them kind of a tree to follow to make that report rather than a call taker being tied up on handling it, which means if they're on that type of phone call and it's that low emergency or non-emergency type situation, it frees them up to be available for 911 calls.

[02:47:38] So just identifying the types of calls that potentially would be kind of a phone tree situation and working through that particular process. Thank you. Then, Supervisor Angry?

[02:47:56] Mine is just a wrap-up, but I will ask one, just a comment. The non-emergency calls, that's a very high volume. Do you see a future, and maybe that's a question for Dan, for the team, because that's a large part of what you do.

[02:48:13] So is there a plan for any of that, like to move it anywhere or contract it out or do anything different to allow you to get to the bulk of what your agency does? So I think that one of the things that we're doing, and especially because the question was raised to me with 311, is will 311 be the new non-emergency?

[02:48:33] And I don't see that being the case. There are certain non-emergency situations that the specific training that we have are still going to be required for. We are looking at other potential solutions. Like one of the big volumes, areas that we have a lot of call volume is private tows.

[02:48:53] It is a requirement in the state of Virginia that when a tow company takes a vehicle, they have to call us within a certain amount of time to report that so that we can then enter it into the V-CIN system so that if somebody calls and says, my car was stolen, we can look it up and say, no, it was actually towed, and then direct them to where they can get it.

[02:49:13] That is a long process to talk to a tow company, get all the pertinent information, run the information, enter it into the system. So we are looking and actively speaking with some companies that may be able to alleviate those types of calls for us.

[02:49:30] Some of the other agencies in the area are also just starting to do that as well. So those types of incidents, I think if we can collaborate with a vendor who does that, reduce some of those incoming non-emergency situations all right well well thank you I'm not I'm gonna leave it at that thank you very much thank you supervisor Bailey thank you madam chair thank you for the presentation Michelle it's wonderful I will I just have one quick question and that's in reference to what you said about 988 yes ma'am do you is the is the plan or the intent once the CRC is established and up and running that that kind of

[02:50:09] compatibility will be made. That's my first question. Then the second question is if that is the plan or not, will you have logistically an installation at the CRC, like a second little installation there to be compatible with what's across the street? I'm just trying to understand logistically what that looks like. So I am not aware of us doing anything specifically with the CRC in terms of, you know, sending a call for service to them. Right now, what we do is there's

[02:50:45] a regional crisis center that we transfer our callers to if they don't need a response from a field unit, whether it's a co-responder or fire and rescue or whatever the case may be. If it's something that, you know, as an example, someone who has suicidal ideation, but they don't have a means, they're not planning on it, they just want to talk to someone, we send them to the regional crisis center. If through conversation where maybe the person has called the crisis center directly, they find that, hey, we really do think somebody should be dispatched out there,

[02:51:21] they will transfer the call to us and it'll kind of be a reverse process and then we'll enter a call for service. But as far as the CRC, there really hasn't been any discussions as to any changes that we would make not to say they won't be coming but there's there hasn't been any discussions at this point as to any changes we would make with how we process calls for service okay and then we should not be regionally the 988 number as you know has been advertised and talked about and like that since that's not something you're using what should we you know what what is it that we're

[02:51:59] using? It's not 988, but it's... So we still, you know, people can still call 9-1-1. We will, we will, you know, transfer a caller to the regional crisis center if they don't require, and through a line of questioning, our call takers will ask, are you specifically looking to have somebody come out? Do you just need to speak with someone? I can't tell you off the top of my head what the 10-digit phone number is that we have advertised, but there is a 10-digit phone number for the public to utilize if they do want to just speak with someone but now you just answered my question okay thank you thank you madam chair well there's no more questions from the day yes thank you so very much this was a

[02:52:39] really great presentation thank you mr. Alexander I mean for getting everyone here today this is really informative I'm sure that everyone agrees with me so thank you all right and we are going to move on to supervisors time supervisor Mr. Gordy had a drop off, so we're going to start with Bailey, Bodie, Angry, then Franklin, Vega, and myself to close out.

[02:53:06] Ms. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for all that's leaving. Thank you. Just wanted to say a belated happy birthday to my 89th-year-old mama. Her birthday was April 24th, so mama, happy birthday.

[02:53:23] Thanks to my staff for attending the SPARC 2024 Business partnership of the year award. It was absolutely wonderful. On the 25th, thanks to Colonel Brooks for coming to meet with Chair Jefferson, County Exec, and myself to discuss the transportation and emergency management concerns on the base.

[02:53:42] And we also talked about the REPI grant. So I think that's an opportunity for myself and Supervisor Gordy to talk about in the future. So Madam Chair, thank you for that. On the 27th, thanks to my staff for participating and providing words of encouragement at the scholarship recipients at the Soroptimus Live Live For Your Dream Scholarship Awards Luncheon.

[02:54:05] And congratulations on the great work that the Soroptimus organization does in our community. On the 29th, I just wanna say congratulations again to Cosmo Nail. We had a ribbon cutting in our district. It's new and improved and exciting.

[02:54:21] And Madam Chair, thank you for your support and participating. On the 30th, I wanna just, Thanks to the executive director, Dr. Franco, Chrissy Falls, and the staff at the Northern Virginia Food Rescue, where they provided an intense tour of their organization.

[02:54:39] And it was absolutely wonderful and eye-opening. I look forward to how we can support better for food insecurity in our community. And thanks to my staff for supporting that endeavor. I also attended the PWC Outstanding Education Ceremony, and congratulations to all of the extraordinary educators and support staff for Prince William County Schools.

[02:55:03] You do a wonderful job, and the recognition was absolutely impeccable and necessary. And Dr. McDade, you always do everything with a sense of excellence, so thanks for your great work as well. On the first, congratulations to our 18 officers and admin specialists that were promoted for their excellence in serving the Prince William County Police Department, and to my chief of staff for attending the Norman Hill Scholarship Dinner.

[02:55:29] And the Norman Hill Scholarship Dinner is just in recognition of the great work that our unions are doing in our community and for the collaboration that they're doing as it relates to collective bargaining and their staff, so congratulations in terms of that.

[02:55:45] On the third and the fourth, we participated from my office with Colonel Brooks and Senator Cain's and Warner's office as it relates to transportation on and off Quantico base, and we had an in-depth discussion about how we can support the Quantico town even better to make sure that those provisions are made for Q town, and so that's heavily on both the base and my mind.

[02:56:10] I attended the Virginia County's 2024 Springboard meeting in Charlottesville, talking about regional opportunities here in the county as well as in our region. On May 6th, thanks to my staff for attending the tribute to law enforcement officers who live in Prince William County who have given their lives for our community in the line of duty.

[02:56:35] We really appreciate you. April, excuse me, upcoming events, May 8th, we'll be hosting a strategic town hall from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. at Potomac Shores Middle School in the cafeteria. I invite all of our residents to attend. It is very important that we get your strategic ideas.

[02:56:52] And then on the 10th, we're gonna celebrate Dumfries, 275 years here in our community. The charter celebration honoring our legacy in Dumfries, the first township in our state.

[02:57:08] Lastly, for all of those Star Wars fans, May 4th is Star Wars Day, and a belated celebration for Cinco de Mayo on May the 5th. Thanks to all of you who have registered for our annual Mental Health Awareness 5K Walk, and that will be May the 18th.

[02:57:28] We have registered 225 participants already. Come all and enjoy our mental health walk. Thank you, Madam Chair. - Supervisor Bodie. - Thank you, Madam Chair. May the 4th also be with you, Supervisor Bodie. On April 24th, I was able to attend and participate in the Lake Ridge Rotary Celebrity Waiter Luncheon alongside Sors Are Angry.

[02:57:50] I know the CXO was there and quite a few of our other county staff. It's always a great time participating in that. It's a really great cause. The Rotary does a lot of great work in the community and it was a great opportunity to talk to folks, do some waiting of tables, mingle with folks, and I think it was a little unfair that some of our public safety officers had their challenge coins there, which ginned up some of their support, so we might have to get some challenge coins next year so guys are angry to help level the playing field.

[02:58:20] On the 27th, I was able to attend the office opening of Casa Brumar, which is a non-profit run by my Cuban rights commissioner, Evelyn Brumar. They do a lot of great work around LGBTQ youth in the community, so it was great to celebrate their office opening there.

[02:58:37] In May, last week, I was able to attend and participate in the police department promotion ceremony. Thank you so much to all the folks that joined us for that great event, celebrating folks who have already dedicated a lot to our community for getting to that next rung of service to Prince William County, so congratulations to all the folks who got promoted as of that ceremony.

[02:59:01] I was also able to participate in an elected officials briefing on the I-95-123 intersection and ramp improvement program. That's going to be a really great project that will really help folks who go on and off of 95 onto 123 every day, whether they're coming up to my neck of the woods or they're going down the Woodbridge District.

[02:59:24] I know that's a key part that joins our two districts. There will be a public hearing on that improvement program on the 8th of May at 6 to 8 p.m. at Occoquan Elementary. So please, please, please, if you have any input you want to give VDOT and the other folks who are responsible for this project, please come out on the public hearing on the 8th of May.

[02:59:46] On the 2nd, I was able to participate in our kickoff session of the Metropolitan Washington Air Quality Committee through COG, our Environmental Justice Subcommittee. It's a new committee that has been established by COG to look at environmental justice issues in the region as it pertains to air quality and air issues, really help in the long run with some of the environmental justice issues we have in the region.

[03:00:15] We're really proud to be part of that group. We also had our PRTC meeting, which I know had a lot of good discussions around the future of transit in our region. I know we had to make some tough decisions in our budget this year that didn't obviously flowed out to tough decisions being made at PRTC.

[03:00:31] I will continue to advocate for more transit funding in our community, but also understanding that we have a lot of competing needs that we need to take care of. And finally, on the 6th, I also, which was yesterday, was able to attend the Fallen Officers Tribute that is done every year over at Grace Chapel Community Church.

[03:00:51] a solemn event to celebrate and uplift the community and the families of our officers who continue to sacrifice each and every day and really look at and reflect on the things that, you know, folks do in each and every day to keep our community safe.

[03:01:09] Last but not least, early voting has started. For the primaries on the congressional level, we have early voting started on Friday. For folks that live in the Occoquan District, your closest early voting locations are either at the Furlazo Building or at the Lee Avenue office in Manassas.

[03:01:27] Please get out to vote. These primaries are very important. Folks aren't able to decide who they want to be their nominees, and it's always important for folks to exercise their franchise, so please get out and vote. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. Thank you, Madam Chair. First off, congratulations to Bishop Thomas from the Dale City Christian Church and First Lady.

[03:01:49] on 45 years of service and 21 years of pastoral service for him. So congratulations to you all for that. And I want to thank the Chamber of Commerce and our economic development, small business. They had a Calibrate the Small Business Conference held over at the GMU, at the Mason Small Business Development Center.

[03:02:12] It was a one-day free conference. It went very well. I came in for the opening comments, had to leave. But I understand the event went very well, so congratulations on that success. And we just heard a little bit about our dockets here. So last Wednesday we had a graduation for the veterans docket, great success.

[03:02:31] Congratulations to the folks that stayed the course and made it through that. And then the very next day we had a drug docket graduation, and you saw the stat of the first graduate from that program. So congratulations to her. Well deserved.

[03:02:47] Keep up the good work. and uh congrats okay and then we're gonna move over here oh northern virginia family services congratulations on 100 years of service to the community to the northern virginia to all that you do so congratulations for that now saturday i had my dumpster day but of course it rained so we didn't really do so well on that dumpster day but i'm here to report that the prince william county employee credit union is having a shred day uh and that's going to be may 11th from 9 to 12 at the credit union there off of Holy Road in the parkway.

[03:03:23] So if you've got anything to shred, those things are always successful. I will be over there because I have stuff to shred. And so I want to thank our little crew because those guys are amazing who sat out there and waited for folks. We had some folks come through, but what we did that was even better was we cleaned up the commuter lot where the farmer's market is.

[03:03:44] So we went around and got all that trash and everything up. So I want to thank them for all they do because, you know, they are a huge part of how this county functions. And then lastly, I want to say, so I attended the Fallen Law Enforcement Officers Tributes over at Grace Life Church.

[03:04:04] I just want to thank Grace Life Church for all they do because they do everything with all of our public safety, and it's just amazing. and that ceremony was once again uh it was fantastic it went very well and uh just for all those officers that we've lost over the years they are not forgotten you know they said if you say anyone's name that day you hold them in your spirit so we ran off i believe 20 names that that day and so another solemn event so just want to thank everybody that put that together and especially uh grace life church for hosting that again for us this year thank you madam chair

[03:04:39] Supervisor Franklin. Last night, I participated in a public information meeting sponsored by the Public Service Authority at the HL Mooney facility in Woodbridge. The community had the opportunity to hear from Public Service Authority representatives about the $200 million investment that they are making at the HL Mooney facility operated by our service authority. As some of you may know, this facility is integral to fulfilling our environmental obligations for Woodbridge in Prince William County, as well as the Chesapeake Bay region.

[03:05:10] The Mooney Advanced Water Reclamation Facility treats our municipal wastewater and cleanly discharges the treated water into the Neabsco Creek. This facility has consistently met regulatory compliance with the Chesapeake Bay watershed pollutant discharge requirements for 14 years and is an award-winning facility.

[03:05:30] I want to thank Mr. Farr and his team for hosting this meeting and offering a tour of the facility. In the past, I've toured this facility several times and graduated three years from the Water Academy. And so if you have not taken advantage of these opportunities, I highly recommend everyone to do so.

[03:05:46] Also attended the Life with Cancer event hosted by the Peterson Company to raise money for cancer treatment and research. So I just wanna thank everyone who attended that. Incredible team that they have. There are both survivors as well as the families, care teams, and it's really an inspirational event to attend.

[03:06:10] Also, I attended the Norman Hill Scholarship Dinner, honoring Mr. Norman Hill and the work that he's done, not only in the labor movement, but also in the civil rights movement. And so I just want to thank those who organized that event for such a great discussion.

[03:06:27] 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. We also have our Strategic Plan Town Hall on May 22nd at the Frollozzo Building at 7 p.m. And, of course, everyone can visit our website to find out more information as well as our social media.

[03:06:47] And with that, I yield. Thank you, Madam Chair. On 416, I visited the Public Safety Communication Center. I know that Michelle has left, but certainly want to give her and her team a special shout-out for the tremendous work that they do. Without them, really police and fire would have to stumble upon calls in order to help people out.

[03:07:07] But they do a tremendous work and just want to thank them for everything that they do. On 4-17, I participated during the police graduation academy, actually, and I was honored to give remarks. I want to thank Madam Chair for the opportunity. I know that you had another commitment, but certainly we represented the board along with our county executive and other supervisors that attended.

[03:07:28] 4:23, I had actually my first meeting with the Community Criminal Justice Board, Steve and everybody else is also gone, but just want to highlight the tremendous work that they do and report back to my colleagues on the dais and to Mr. Alexander that the whole data-driven component of our community safety initiative is so important and I was briefed and got to see some of the data that has been coming down the pipe, if you will, and just really excited about being able to utilize that.

[03:07:57] As we all know, having data better helps us see what's working, what's not working, and where we can allocate additional resources. On 4:28, I was able to celebrate Vaisakhi Day with members of the Sikh community and bumped into several elected officials. Just want to thank my good friend Devinder and folks at the Sikh Temple for their generosity and for being great members in our community.

[03:08:20] On 4:30, I met with Supervisor Gordy and Brandy Schafer, who's the new AWS representative. I know that there has been a bit of a shift, if you will, in terms of who's gonna be sitting in on some of these calls and just want to reassure members of the Great Oak community that nothing changes.

[03:08:36] We remain vigilant and continue to have open lines of communications to ensure that all of their concerns are being addressed. On 5-1, I attended the Veterans Docket graduation with Supervisor Victor Angry and it was, I would say, quite the emotional roller coasters.

[03:08:54] You experience a variety of emotions, if you will, just to see what folks have gone through and the opportunity that they have to make things right and to continue to be great, successful members of our society. So really looking forward to more of those. And again, wanna thank everybody that takes a part in ensuring that these folks get the treatment and the help that they need.

[03:09:15] I really am excited about how we're looking at things here in this county. We're looking at things holistically. It isn't always just, you know, lock people up and throw the key away. There are folks that have a great need and I am really looking forward to having more of those conversations to ensure that people get all of the help and the resources that they need.

[03:09:33] This week is the initiation of teacher appreciation week. I look forward to going to all of the district, all of the Kohl's district schools, all of the schools in the Kohl's district this week and just wanna give a special shout out to all of the teachers as a mother of two children who are a part of the school system here in this county.

[03:09:53] just want to thank them for all of their hard work as they shape the future lastly I too I don't know how this happened supervisor Franklin but I have my town hall on May 22nd at 7 p.m. at Coles Elementary School and I'm pretty sure Mr. Schroeder that we're going to have to divide and conquer somehow and if that's not possible well let's hop on a call I don't know but the town hall is going to be at 7 p.m. at Coles Elementary School.

[03:10:24] And for those wondering what this is all about, this is where we have an opportunity to hear from you members of the community in regards to the strategic plan. Lastly, I would like to give my notice of intent to appoint the following individuals. Laura and Andrea, I will give you these names because I know I speak fast.

[03:10:40] Ashley McWilliams to the Strategic Plan Committee. Matt Van Echo to the Strategic Plan Committee. Paige Paige is a reappointment to the Prince William County Housing Board, and all resumes should be on file. That's all, Madam Chair. Thank you. Supervisor Angry.

[03:10:58] All right, come here. Give me your thing. All right, so I am now Supervisor Angry. He has a town hall at the Neavsco. I'm sorry, where? Woodbridge Arts and Sciences Building Room 114 and 2635 College Drive, Woodbridge.

[03:11:17] It's a strategic town hall. It is on Thursday from 7 to 9 o'clock. So it's Nova Campus. All right. So I had my first town hall, my strategic town hall meeting was on the 27th here at the McCourt building. It was a great event. Got to hear from people across the county. Please pay attention to my Facebook page because we are going to sign up for the newsletter because we are going to be doing another one, hopefully in the next month, a virtual town hall. And I'm actually going to quickly do my notices of intent. First, I want to start my notice to reappoint the following

[03:11:55] individuals to boards, committees, and commissions. Matt Villareal and John Blavins to serve on the Joint Recreation Center Advisory Board. James A. Dowell and Donnie Ward to serve as a towing industry representative on the Towing Ordinance Advisory Board. Lori Wilson to the Housing Board as a representative of the Social Services Advisory Board. And notice of intent to point edward feely to serve on the prince william county housing board as a representative for the commission on aging so that's all i'm keeping it short today next week we are going to have a

[03:12:35] much longer meeting we have a lot to get through and so the meeting for next time is going to be on tuesday may 14th and with that can i get to adjourn i was hoping that one of the people that were missing you know we wouldn't be in such a rush but all right um i don't think there's any discussion i don't know if anyone wants to say anything but all right non-debatable all right let's go kenny said it's non-debatable so it's not unanimous oh i missed somebody who didn't gordy's gone okay we're good then thank you

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