Coraggio Consulting
Prince William Board of County Supervisors Meeting — Work Session, Tuesday, November 26, 2024

Date: Tuesday, November 26, 2024
Place: Prince William County Board of County Supervisors, Virginia
Length: 6h 53m (video)
Official meeting video (Prince William County, Granicus): https://pwcgov.granicus.com/player/clip/3578
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 2026-10-31. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:27:56] Hello, Supervisor Angry. I just want to confirm you hear me. Hello, Supervisor Angry. Can you hear me?

[00:28:22] Yes, we hear you now. You hear us? Yes. Perfect. Thank you so much. You're welcome.

[00:36:40] Let's start with a moment of silence. If you are able for Pledge of Allegiance.

[00:42:24] To the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, and justice for all. All right, before we go any further, Supervisor Angry, unfortunately, is not feeling great today, But he would like to participate remotely.

[00:42:49] So I would, this request is not listed on the agenda, but it does require a vote. Can I get a motion to approve? Madam Chair, I would like to waive the rules of procedure to consider and approve a request to participate remotely through electronic communication means. Second.

[00:43:06] All right. Let's take a vote. Maybe he started Thanksgiving early. I don't know. We'll go by his house and find out. You don't look too sick, Vic.

[00:43:31] So, but this is the problem. So now we're actually going to be moving on to agenda item three. I want to give, even though he is not his usual jolly self, I am going to give Supervisor Angry the honor of introducing our guests because...

[00:43:51] I'm sorry, is there a problem, Supervisor Franklin? Okay, I heard something. Supervisor Angry is the first vice president of VACO. So that's a real honor for our county. So I'm going to let him tee up item number 3A.

[00:44:09] Well, thank you, Madam Chair. And yeah, I guess this will be my moment to talk here. So first, I want to say how proud I am of our departments being recognized today. I really want to shout out our staff that continues to find innovative ways to serve our community.

[00:44:27] I also want to take a moment to recognize Dean Lynch, who is the Executive Director for Virginia Association of Counties. And Dean has been with Baco in many different roles. He's a lobbyist, legislative director, director of local government affairs, and deputy executive director.

[00:44:45] He served as deputy secretary of human health and human resources from 2004 to 2006 and has served in various positions in local government. He has extensive experience in government affairs, and he currently serves on the Commonwealth Fair Housing Board, the Chesterfield County Community Services Board, and Board's Social Services.

[00:45:08] He's recognized as the 2013 Executive of the Year by the Virginia Association of Association Executives. We appreciate Dean's leadership with BACO and his participation with Prince William County and the other jurisdictions in the Commonwealth. BACO works hard to support and advocate for local jurisdictions and provides a valuable resource network for the county.

[00:45:30] Thank you, Dean, for taking the time to join us today and for all that you do. We appreciate Baker hosting the Annual Achievements Award to showcase all the great work that is being done throughout the state. Thank you, Madam Chair.

[00:45:47] Thank you, Victor, Madam Chair, members of the board, Mr. Shorter. It's great to be here in Prince William County this afternoon. I'm Dean Lynch, again, Executive Director of your state association, the Virginia Association of Counties. And for the benefit of your constituents, allow me to introduce a little bit about VACO.

[00:46:08] Since 1934, VACO has been dedicated to serving and supporting county officials across Virginia. We advocate for counties at the state and federal levels. We provide education programs, offer member services, and share communications that strengthen county governance.

[00:46:24] In 2003, we launched the Achievement Awards program to recognize counties that adopt innovative approaches to public service. These programs serve as models for other localities, showcasing the creativity and dedication of county officials like you.

[00:46:40] Today, I'm proud to present Prince William County with two VACO Achievement Awards. A little bit about the awards program, though, before I introduce the two winners. This is the 22nd annual VACO Achievement Award program. This year, we received a record-breaking 145 entries for the awards.

[00:47:00] This is truly a very competitive program. We have judges who look at criteria to award winners. And a little bit about Prince William, though. Prince William has won an award every year for the last 12 years. In 2020, Prince William received the Best Achievement Award. And then in 22, the county was honored with the Best Large County Achievement Award. So I mentioned about the judges. What the judges are looking at with these awards is we look at programs that provide

[00:47:35] an innovative solution to a problem situation or a service delivery model and we ask also does the program promote intergovernmental collaboration and cooperation and can the program serve as a model for other local governments? In other words can the program be emulated by other counties across the state? So your award-winning programs that we have found this year that are in Prince William County. Number one is the Firefighter Cadet Program. Can I tell you a little bit about the program? In 2019, Prince William County's Department of Fire and Rescue partnered with

[00:48:12] Prince William County Schools to launch the Firefighter Cadet Program for high school juniors and seniors. Fully funded by the County Board of Supervisors and FY20 budget, the program offers certifications in Firefighter 1, CPR, and hazardous materials operations. The program faced challenges during its initial launch due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted in-person instruction.

[00:48:36] However, in 23, DFR made key staffing changes revitalizing the program. The class of 2024 recently graduated 16 cadets, with three joining the DFR as full-time employees.

[00:48:52] The program is expanding and will include Firefighter II certification for the class of 25, And plans are underway to add emergency medical technician in 2026, transforming it into a two-year program. So congratulations on winning that award, and it's a great program.

[00:49:12] And if you've got somebody, I've got a... Right behind you. I've already talked to them about getting a photo sometime after the meeting.

[00:49:36] The next winner is the Historic Therafare Exhibit. The Department of Parks and Recreation Office of Historic Preservation created an online exhibit called Historic Thoroughfare to educate the public about a historic African-American community established after the Civil War.

[00:49:57] In response to development pressures, the county created a new historic park in 21 and allocated funding for research and interpretation. In 2023, the Office of Historic Preservation launched the ArcGIS Story Map, combining archaeology, archival research, and oral histories to create an immersive digital experience.

[00:50:21] The exhibit, developed in collaboration with the local thoroughfare community and county GIS staff, highlights the area's rich history. While the future of Thoroughfare Historic Park will serve as a physical destination, the online exhibit provides immediate access, increasing public awareness of this significant site.

[00:50:42] So congratulations on this program.

[00:50:53] We have a very brief slide presentation, if you would indulge us. Lauren, our archaeologist. Hello, everybody, Madam Chair and members of the board.

[00:51:10] I have a very brief presentation about Historic Thoroughfare, which is an online exhibit, which the Office of Historic Preservation developed with the help of a consultant and community partners. This, again, as he stated, was a multidisciplinary research project. The exhibit came out of this.

[00:51:26] The research project included, as he said, archaeology, archival research, and oral histories as well. And this exhibit came out of that. Just briefly, again, we wanted to show you some parts of this exhibit. We do encourage you to go online and check it out.

[00:51:42] We did use historic overlay maps. And just to situate you as to where Thoroughfare is, on the right-hand side of your screen you'll see the town of Haymarket. Around in the middle of the screen is where Thoroughfare is located. This is very close to the border with Lockyer County as well.

[00:51:57] You'll also see Interstate 66 coming through the middle there. But this is a historic overlay map, so we put a historic map. This is an 1871 survey of the Cloverland Tract, which is a very large tract of land in the area that had meant significance to the development of the community of Thoroughfare.

[00:52:15] And again, park staff placed those historic maps on the present landscape to situate people as to the history and the development of the landscape. However, the main feature of the exhibit itself is actually an interactive map. Visitors can view points of interest, both buildings and sites, that are located in thoroughfare.

[00:52:33] This in particular is the James and Emily Mount House. It is the oldest house in historic thoroughfare, and you can read a little bit about this. Of note as well is that most of these, or many of these, are actually private property. noted as such as you can see in the description here so it's a way that people can actually access these without visiting the site and that they would not otherwise be able to visit. Lastly this exhibit did utilize the aforementioned oral histories and so when you click on some of the locations on the map this is Okram Baptist Church this is the focal point of the thoroughfare community a

[00:53:08] very historic church established in 1909 but you can also listen to sound clips of people, residents, describing their memories of the church. So we were able to utilize those oral histories. Instead of just reading the transcripts, you can actually hear how people remember this site as they're experiencing this exhibit.

[00:53:30] So all of this can actually be found on the Office of Historic Preservation's Historic Communities page, along with all sorts of other research about other small communities in Prince Wayne County, including the settlement, Bates Town, as well as Buck Hall. So lots of research here on the Historic Communities page.

[00:53:46] And if you go into the exhibit itself, you will also see that there is more research here linked, including archaeology and oral history reports. So we encourage everybody interested in the history of thoroughfare and small communities in Prince William County to look at this exhibit and the Historic Communities page. Thank you for your time.

[00:54:02] Thank you. Supervisor Franklin, I guess you had a couple things you wanted to say? I just wanted to say, Madam Chair, board members, you can see why this is an award-winning program, along with the other program. And I do know that this program is currently trying to be emulated in a small town in southwest Virginia.

[00:54:23] So, interesting. But thank you for allowing me to be here to present the VACO Awards. I just want to congratulate the awardees, but also just want to put the spotlight on Dean for just two seconds. You know, we're obviously part of VACO. Several of us on this board are part of the board of directors.

[00:54:41] And Dean has a tough job in that he has a lot of different types of counties that he has to navigate in terms of important issues from the rural areas to those of the more urban and suburban areas. And Dean does a fantastic job of making sure that each region of the Commonwealth has the opportunity to shine.

[00:55:00] And so, Dean, just wanted to say thank you for the work that you do at VACO. Thank you. Thank you very much. You can tell my accent. My accent goes from Southwest to Northern Virginia to Central Virginia. It just depends. Depending on who I'm talking to. Sometimes.

[00:55:18] And Supervisor Bailey? And we tease him about that all the time. So just thank you. Thank you for being. I was excited about you coming today. This is the reason why we do have an opportunity to sit on these regional boards, to make sure that the work that we do is collective.

[00:55:34] It's not only just regional, but it helps our communities. And so we applaud you and your staff for how you support us and recognize the hard work that our staff does. Thank you. Thank you so very much, and we are very honored to have you join us today, and thank you for these awards.

[00:55:50] I mean, Prince William County, what can I say? We're the best of the best, but, you know, don't tell anyone else that. Thank you. Tell everyone. Thank you. And I think if you're out in the atrium, they can get photos of everyone.

[00:56:06] So it's always nice to be recognized, and it's also really nice when our staff is recognized for all the work that they do and their wonderful accomplishments. So we are going to move on now to item four, public comment time. I'm going to start with in-person public comment time.

[00:56:25] You have three minutes unless you're representing an organization, and right now we only have one person signed up, and that is Mr. Martin Jeter. If you can go to the microphone, state your name, and where you generally reside. Can I have the projector, please?

[00:56:54] Okay. Is that good? Can you hear me? Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Jefferson and board members, and Chair Jefferson, it's great to have you back again after your illness.

[00:57:14] I'm Martin Jeter, and I live in the Occoquan District. I'm here today to ask, or you could call it beg, for money. And the money is for a Hoadley historical marker. So what the heck is Hoadley? Well, it was a village that existed for many years, and it was right here where you're sitting right now.

[00:57:30] It was an important crossroads connection to Fairfax and Occoquan and Manassas and Independent Hill. On the screen here, you see a picture of the third and last Hoadley post office and general store that was demolished in 1987 when Davis Ford Road was widened. And that was a number of years before the Prince William Parkway was constructed.

[00:57:49] And this basically was pretty much in front of the building here, out by where the parkway is now. The village was named after the post office, which due to research of the late Don Wilson, we think was named after a presidential candidate of the time, George Hoadley, who was also the 36th governor of Ohio.

[00:58:05] But like Independent Hill, Agnewville, Buckhall, Canova, and other places in Prince William, we don't really know for sure where the name came from. We do know that Hoadley had a dance pavilion, various stores, churches, and a baseball field where the Hoadley Hellcats played other teams from around the area. The post offices back then were a community hub, and they usually also had a general store where folks could sit and swap gossip stories while they munched on a hunk of cheese and the crackers from the Cracker Barrel.

[00:58:31] People looked forward to coming in on Saturday to get their mail and to visit for a while. This is a picture of the post office after about 1940 when they had expanded it in certain areas. So the nearby Oak Grove Church at the intersection of Bacon Race Road and Davis Ford Road, also known as Aquan Baptist Church, originated in the 1700s and is one of the first Baptist churches in Virginia.

[00:58:56] This church was also a leader in the effort for religious freedom in the former colonies. There's a lot more to tell about all this, but I don't have time. And there's more detail in my Prince William Times articles, and one of them I sent you yesterday. The request for the historical marker has been in process for over four years.

[00:59:14] Research has been done. The marker's been approved by the Historical Commission. The location of the court has been determined by staff. Everything is in place except for the funding for about $3,000 to purchase the marker, and that's what I'm here for. I know you're constantly being asked for funding for everything under the sun, but this really is a minuscule amount for a good cause.

[00:59:32] My friend Bill Olson had graciously offered to pay for the marker, but unfortunately he passed away while the case was still in process. Now, I just got some information after I came here today that there may be a proffer that's going to provide this $3,000. So hopefully that's the case.

[00:59:49] But please find in your heart this holiday season to rescue this important historical marker from the bowels of the Development Service Building and bring it out into the light of day. Honoring our history builds community spirit. Remembering our past helps us to better plan the future. Thank you and have a great meeting. Thank you so very much, sir.

[01:00:07] And let's move on to remote public comment time. Do we have anyone? Yes, we have one speaker, and that is Alan Gloss. Give him one second, he's still joining the call.

[01:00:31] Yes, we have one speaker, and that is Alan Gloss. Give him one second, he's still joining the call.

[01:00:53] Once we get the feedback out of the way. Thank you. Mr. Gloss, can you turn your session down because we can hear the echo? Yep. And now you are welcome to speak. Okay, can you hear me?

[01:01:08] We can. Please proceed, sir. Okay. Yeah, thank you. Hey, so I wanted to speak with you for just a moment about the upcoming hand-handling presentation that you're going to get from the county staff. I want to talk specifically about the $60,000 that we're about to spend to do an education campaign for people that are, you know, for the masses.

[01:01:41] What this presentation that I looked at earlier does not show us is that we're doing anything to identify the people that are doing the panhandling and make any steps forward to prevent them from panhandling.

[01:02:02] I don't understand why Prince William County has not utilized 46.2-931, which allows localities to prohibit or regulate distribution of handbills, et cetera, or solicitation of contributions on highways within their boundaries.

[01:02:20] It seems like a very easy option in order to be able to address the panhandling concerns. There are other counties that have passed similar resolutions, specifically Loudoun County has a resolution that has seemed to work very well for them to prevent people from standing on the road.

[01:02:44] You know, at some point, someone is going to get killed. I do know that just a few weeks ago at the intersection of 66 and Sudley Road, there was a panhandler that was struck on a bicycle. Now, whether he was panhandling right there at that time or not, he was going to or coming from his panhandling location.

[01:03:06] It's dangerous. People are out in the middle of the road. And the idea that we're going to spend $60,000 to educate the masses to not hand out cash does not make sense.

[01:03:21] All we're literally doing is throwing $60,000 away. And I think that you need to look at regulating the people that are causing the action or correction, regulate the people that are out there soliciting the donations to prevent the action from taking place.

[01:03:46] So I encourage you to look at utilizing a local ordinance to be able to prevent these folks from being on the road. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Gloss. Ms. Vann, just to confirm that was our one and only remote speaker?

[01:04:03] That is correct. Thank you, Ms. Vann. Good to have you back. Back to you, Madam Chair. All right. Thank you so very much. This now, I don't think we have anyone. This concludes public comment time. So we are going to move on to agenda item number five, county executive time. Mr. Shorter, floor is now yours.

[01:04:20] Thank you very much, Madam Chair, members of the board. I want to go over a few things, and then I'll ask Nikki to come up for the presentation related to communications around panhandling. First, I want to go over, as usual, the directives that were issued last week.

[01:04:35] There were two directives issued, one related to advertising a public hearing for December 17th for the board to consider a lease for county-owned property for the purpose of customer parking at Farm Brew Live. That was assigned to the clerk of the board.

[01:04:53] Staff was also directed to look at real estate tax relief for the elderly and disabled, and this was assigned to the county attorney and finance. We will certainly follow up on both directives, and I believe the public hearing has been advertised or will be as appropriate.

[01:05:13] Vehicle valuations. We had a conversation during last week's board meeting around vehicle valuations. the board asked that I resend the memo related to valuations. I did so. You'll find in that memo an outline really of all of your options related to vehicle valuations, including J.D. Power, our recommendation, and how often it's used in jurisdictions. I want to give a big shout out to

[01:05:44] development services they held their annual chili cook-off and 15 contestants this is important because they raised a thousand dollars that thousand dollars was matched with the building code association with 400 additional dollars I believe all of that will go to sponsoring a family for the holiday this really is a big deal I want to encourage certainly celebrate the staff that that that participated thank development services but just recognize that staff are in addition to

[01:06:22] meeting their day-to-day obligations to our county really working to to to do more and so i just want to appreciate appreciate them and then finally madam chair i wanted to just lift up the holiday walk of lights we will we will kick off on december 6th what is now the third annual Holiday Walk of Lights. It will go from December 6th through December 22nd. So I just want to encourage residents and those who have gone in the past and who have not to please do come out

[01:07:02] and check out the Holiday Walk of Lights in Neabsco Regional Park. With that, Madam Chair, I want to... Wait, before you call up, I think Supervisor Bodie has something. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Mr. Shorter, for the updates. We had Mr. Jeter speak during public comment timeout at the Holy Marker.

[01:07:19] Could we get an update on where we stand on that, please? Sure. I did get a note from staff about this one. So my understanding is that the board adopted the historical marker into the Historical Commission's Historical Marker Program in April of 2023.

[01:07:38] I also understand from staff that in November of 2020, the board adopted an SUP related to the Ridgefield Village Center Retail Project. A condition of that SUP was that prior to occupancy permit, that they would contribute to the funds needed to provide for this marker.

[01:08:01] I understand that the staff is reaching out to make sure that the proffer conditions are met. So we will certainly follow up. I'll follow up with a note to the board about this since I'm speaking to it, and I'm sure the staff will work with Mr. Jeter to make sure that he's aware as well.

[01:08:18] So more to come there. Supervisor Gordy. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Shorter, I just want to appreciate you and Mr. Hugh for the engagements that you're having with surrounding counties regarding the dumping of dirt and coming up with a regional approach to that, The concern being that developers in other counties would just send their dump trucks to Prince William County and dump here and vice versa, but taking a more regional approach to try to take care of each other and make sure that if someone is designated a dump site in another county from Prince William

[01:08:56] that they're aware of it and vice versa. So I just want to commend you guys for taking that initiative and working through that and looking forward to that regional approach to this issue. Thank you. thank you supervisor gordy really do want to give the credit to wade he's been phenomenal in those conversations with our with our neighbors so thank you and then i have supervisor franklin sure yeah just wanted to um go back to the discussion around um the proposal for holdley and you know we've issued directives in the past about um history in this county and making sure

[01:09:32] that we document it and i really do think we have a gold mine of history in this county and perhaps you know this is another directive that i i know county staff love but you know we really should have some type of oral history or video history of a lot of these projects not so just residents can go and see it that's great but we should have this on record somewhere i mean we've talked about this thoroughfare um baitstown um and the chin family i mean we can go on and on and we really

[01:10:06] should um document this somewhere where people can feel touch and in here so again maybe that's a directive in the future but i appreciate you you sharing that with us mr jeter and let's figure out a creative way to kind of bring our history into the fold very good i'll certainly be prepared once the directive comes or maybe um let's first you know how are we documenting things i think that might be the first step because obviously we have different projects i think this thoroughfare history it's great i think the first step is seeing how we have been collecting this history

[01:10:42] and how we've been yeah sorry happy to happy to to to follow up on that madam chair i believe we sent a memo out um just a few months ago about this as a follow-up from a directive that was previously issued but we will we'll we'll follow up and um if we have not then i'll i'll be sure to do the research and we'll we'll uh we'll send a memo around to the board great i know we this board love its directive so I want to make sure that we have everything before we issue another one so all right and with that I'll let you continue very good well madam chair want to

[01:11:20] want to invite Nikki Brown up to to really continue the conversation we we had just a few board meetings ago around panhandling as you may recall one of the follow-ups from that discussion was for us to come back with a communications and public engagement plan around how we would encourage motorists and others to donate and so i want to turn the mic over to nikki brown who's just done a phenomenal job working with staff and pulling this together so nikki i'll turn it over to you thank you so much madam chair members of the board nikki brown with communications and

[01:11:58] engagement as a county executive mentioned i'm here to talk about the panhandling reduction campaign specifically the communications and engagement campaign based on the feedback that we got from the board the last time we were here so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this slide you've seen it I think a couple of times now really just wanted to point out that we are planning on using a lot of different resources to help get the word out everything from websites to community partners to paid advertising so this is a sample sign I will say we are still working with VDOT for our median sign so not to say that this is what it will look like could look like

[01:12:38] this but this is also a sign that could go in commercial areas or go in other places we heard you about the messaging so we've we've tweaked the messaging to say give where it counts and that handouts don't help things to Supervisor Gorey sending some information about what other jurisdictions are doing the important thing to note here is that we know that one of the ways that we can address panhandling is for people to not give them money and if people stop giving them money, then they will stop going to that area to panhandle. So that's really what

[01:13:11] we're trying to encourage here. So this is a sample sign. These are sample posters. Again, with both of those messages, we want to say handouts don't help. Instead of giving money directly to panhandlers, give your money where it counts, which are to the organizations that help serve panhandlers. Social media examples, same theme, really kind of highlighting that give local pwc that was something we heard from the community and the chamber when we originally presented to them is instead of sending and donating to organizations outside of the county

[01:13:46] if we could donate to organizations who serve local that would go a long way so highlighting the give local pwc it's really what we are looking for is funding for a campaign with 60 000 we can split the campaign into two different parts one now really hoping that if the board agrees we'll move forward on december 2nd which is giving tuesday so really hitting that kind of giving season so starting on tuesday for part of the the giving season through the end of december and then when it gets warmer out really focusing in on like the spring summer time so looking at

[01:14:25] theaters looking at being in potomac mills where we know there's going to be a lot of people uh this this month or this coming month, streaming ads in both English and Spanish, doing social media, very targeted ads, and using Nextdoor in particular because it's pretty powerful for us, looking at Jiffy Lube Live in June and being able to really get in front of people that way.

[01:14:45] And then there are some options that we have that are no cost to limited cost that I just wanted to point out to you. Again, if the board agrees, we can do something on Tuesday to our community newsletter list, which would be, again, Giving Tuesday and encouraging people to give where it counts and handouts don't help.

[01:15:04] Looking at OmniRide buses. OmniRide's been a great partner with us, so they've agreed that we can put information inside their buses with this information. Looking at variable message boards at intersections while we try to figure out and work with VDOT on our more permanent signage. Looking at Stonebridge, they have a big screen there.

[01:15:22] It's currently, I think, not working, so we're hoping by the spring and summer it is. But since actually we have posted this, we have been working with them on some other options that they have that we're really excited about. And then, of course, using our community partners to help push this out.

[01:15:38] We will have on the website a toolkit with all of the posters and the signage and the social media posts that people can use. Because we're hoping that if you're a business, you want to print out a poster or sign, you can put it on your window, your door. If you want to share the social media posts, we'd love for it to be shared far and wide.

[01:15:56] We know that's how we'll get the most bang for our buck. So we'll have all of that available on the website as well. And I know you've seen this, but just kind of our vision of success is really obviously a reduction in panhandling. That's our number one goal. By doing so and kind of getting people to give where it counts, increasing resources for community partners, in turn will then improve public perception of the county and improve concerns of safety.

[01:16:23] And with that, I will take any questions. All right. - Thank you so very much for your presentation. First, I have Supervisor Bodie. - Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Nikki, and thank you to the County Exec for turning this around so fast. I know that we sort of gave you the direct, I know Madam Chair did back in October, so the fast turnaround time, so I wanted to commend you for that.

[01:16:45] I do believe that this is a key part of this. I said that back in October. I think Supervisor Gordon even said the same thing, that we have to attack the supply side of this because folks would not be standing on corners, going to shopping centers, all these things, unless it was lucrative in some way. And supply side, the givers are a huge part of that.

[01:17:00] So I wanted to highlight that and commend you for it. I like the new messaging. It's terse. It's the point. Would love to see some kind of sticker or magnet campaign so we can give businesses. They can put it up in their doorways, their shopping center.

[01:17:16] We can also have all the folks that we partner with put it up. We give them out at community events. I know that we do a really good job now about having different agents see show up at different community events, having those stickers, those magnets out so people can put them in the doorway. So no matter where people are going, it's reinforced on more than just the medians should be.agree to allow us to do that.

[01:17:38] I appreciate sort of the all hands on deck approach to this. So we're talking about nonprofits, faith-based groups, HOA civic groups, business owners, what have you. But I would love for us to reach out to the school system, frankly, because the PTOs and the PTAs have a very extensive network of folks.

[01:17:55] And frankly, we know that this is an issue that permeates so much in the community that I'm sure a lot of folks, even when those groups, when they're not traditionally thought of as groups that we would target for this, would want to know and want to hear about this kind of thing. Even things like scout troops. I know the scout troops do a lot of community-based work. I had the Girl Scouts in my office just last week.

[01:18:16] So all of those folks, I think, would be good to sort of outreach for that. I think that movie theaters and the streaming is a really, really great idea, again, to reach those places where people are just consuming media, and they may not see a lot of the signage necessarily on the street, but they see the ads pop up, and it just sort of reinforces the messaging we're putting out there.

[01:18:37] My question, though, is are we going to look at the print media, or at least the publications we have? inside nova print stream times and frankly the observers the bull red observer the occoquan uh old bridge observer all of those two are we looking at those uh thank you supervisor buddy first those are all really great suggestions i appreciate that and we'll definitely take a look at all of those uh we didn't focus in on print media i just don't feel like that's as much of an roi as as we would get from like movie theater streaming uh those types of things happy to look at that certainly can you know we have great relationships with all those publications so

[01:19:15] happy to do that but really felt to your point like if we could get in front of people kind of where they're at and how they're consuming media we know social media you guys may have heard of a little movie called wicked and some other things that are happening in the theaters right now so really trying to capitalize on people going to the theaters and we know right December is a huge time when people are home so theaters streaming those type of things that's really why we focused and on those areas, but certainly happy to take a look at print publications as well.

[01:19:44] Appreciate that. And my good madam chair, just to close out. Thank you for that, Nikki. I get it. Priorities, right? And you're like, most people are going to go to the movie theaters, especially, like you said, this time of year. I just know, especially for my district, I have a certain population that they sometimes go to movies, they sometimes look at stream, but they frankly still like the newspaper.

[01:20:01] And I've seen that, especially the Old Bridge Observer still has a good number of consumership. So those folks that may not go on stream, may not be going to the movie theaters as much, they still get that paper, and I know it's consumed a lot. So a phase two or something in the future would love for you.

[01:20:17] We can definitely take a look at that. Yeah, not a problem. Thank you, Supervisor Bode. Supervisor Bailey. Thank you, Madam Chair. I really like the Stonebridge idea. Go, Margaret. I love it. I love it. But I wanted to, first of all, I wanted to thank Elijah and your team for every time I called with the panhandling issue.

[01:20:39] You've helped me to resolve it, and it's going. I know it's not finished, but thank you so much for your immediate attention to that. And then secondly, I too applaud. I see it. I saw it in all the presentations that we're going to have today that we are partnering with nonprofits, and I think that's very key that we do that in addition to the churches.

[01:21:02] Faith-based, you know, they're our foundation, so please just, you know, phase one or phase to however that rolls, make sure that they're included as well because they do provide food and clothing and all that. So I think that would help us get the message out as well.

[01:21:19] And then in terms of how are you going to measure, Nikki, the vision of success with this? Because that's real important. I mean, we're starting from square one. I know we've been doing it already, but it's growing. So what's the vision of success?

[01:21:35] How is that going to be measured? That is a great question. So ultimately, obviously, a reduction in panhandling. If we can see that, that success, that is our ultimate goal. That's what we're aiming for. I think the other piece is really how much we can get in front of people.

[01:21:52] So really looking at the data, we'll look at the social media ads. We know what the impressions are for movies. We know what the impressions are for streaming. But really, are we able to get in front of people? And by getting in front of people, does it make a difference? And so we'll look at what the data shows us.

[01:22:07] If we're doing all that and we have great impressions and it's not, you know, we're not seeing a reduction in panhaling or the other piece is an increased giving to the members. You talked about the religious institutions, which is great. We are on the website.

[01:22:24] We're having people give to members of the COC. So they are heavily involved, which is great. So I think if we're not seeing an increase in donations to those groups and we're not seeing a reduction in panhandling, we'll need to kind of take another look at it and tweak what we're doing.

[01:22:43] Yeah, and I do support the financial piece. We've got to invest in it in order to do something about it. And then lastly, when you talk, I mean, I know it's going to be phased, but when you talk district-specific, one thing in my district is the casino.

[01:23:02] Please don't leave that out, because that's an opportunity for us as well, and Quantico as well. Thank you. Thank you so much. That's actually a very good piece, Supervisor Bailey, the casino. That's a very good piece. We're going to go to Supervisor Vega Weir and Greek Gordy.

[01:23:20] Supervisor Vega. Thank you, Madam Chair. Supervisor Bailey, thank you for that question, because that's what I had here. You guys have it as the number one bullet point, if you will, reduction in panhandling. and while I hear your response to Supervisor Bailey I want to be a little more specific just wishing that we see a reduction in panhandling doesn't give us the certainty or at least not for me that I'm looking for how are we measuring that have we identified problematic areas in the county already that are prone to panhandling and I say that because I forward every complaint that I've gotten from my constituents to our county executive and I know in my district which areas are very

[01:23:56] heavy you know when it comes to panhandling have we identified those areas yeah um okay are we going to monitor those areas because you mentioned data is this data just referencing our efforts when it comes to promoting this on the various platforms that you mentioned or is this actual data from these identified locations so our goal is again kind of to your point a total reduction in panhandling so from a communication standpoint obviously we're interested and you know kind of impressions and how many people we get in front of and making sure that we're getting our message across.

[01:24:28] But ultimately, we're looking to change behavior. So we're going to be looking at, I know Elijah and team and the police department have identified areas that have seen more panhandling. Hopefully, this means less calls to you all, less complaints.

[01:24:43] So we'll start looking at that data to say, like, are we seeing less panhandlers at these locations? We also know, though, and I'm probably getting out of my lane a little bit, but that panhandlers can move you know clearly so uh so less complaints about panhandling less instances of it less complaints to you all so really can we see a reduction in panhandling in our community and what's the time frame three months six months what what are we looking at here i would give it some i mean obviously we're going to hit pretty hard in december just because of the month and the month of giving and we know that people are you know usually pretty generous this month um but

[01:25:21] also understand that there will be a lag as it gets colder there won't be as many panhandlers out um so really looking at kind of the spring and summer so i would like to get through kind of those seasons um and see what the difference is after that so i would say you know maybe not quite a year but getting through like the summer months before you know we make changes yeah and thank you for that because that makes sense i know then the colder days i've driven um you know around the district and i've already seen a reduction but again i do know that those uh

[01:25:54] conditions play a significant um role in why people aren't out there um really also uh like the idea of reaching out i've always said i take a lot of pride wherever it is that i go in talking about the services that prince william county already has on the books um and i will continue to say it i do think that we can always do a better job at connecting people with those services right because what good is it to have services is people don't know about them or don't know how to access those services. So I'm really happy to see that. Also just want to let my colleagues know that we also can play a role in releasing this information. I believe that for the most part all of us have district newsletters. We can share this information also in our newsletters via our

[01:26:33] email distribution list and of course social media so we can help kind of offset cost and also promote this for free if you will. And lastly I will say it because I've always said that we can have it all that we do have to look at this holistically and that while I'm happy that we're taking this approach I will be supporting it I will you know not make an issue about $60,000 being used for this because again we need it I'll remind my colleagues that VA code section 46.2-931 allows the county to implement an ordinance that prohibits the distribution of handbills solicitation of contributions and sale of merchandise or services on highways within

[01:27:11] their boundaries or on public roadways and medians I know that I discussed this extensively when I issued the directive, and that was kind of like in the air, whether it was a directive or it was not, I still maintain my position that I was very clear with my intention with the directive that I issued, and if the county, or rather this board, wanted to take action, we could actually do so right now, because we have the authority to do so under this code. With that, Madam Chair, I believe that that's all I have.

[01:27:35] Thank you, Nikki. All right, thank you so much. Supervisor Weir. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to dovetail on Supervisor Vega and take it a step further. You know, my recollection of how we got to this point was based on a traffic safety issue.

[01:27:53] And, yes, this addresses panhandling in some respect, whether it's going to be effective or not is yet to be seen. But we haven't done anything to address the actual issue yet. I mean, we're hung up on the signs. I get that. But to Supervisor Vega's point, there are a variety of tools we can put in the PD's toolbox to start really addressing this from the traffic safety standpoint, from the pedestrian safety, from the vehicular safety standpoint, even from the panhandlers themselves' safety standpoint.

[01:28:25] And I've got a draft resolution and draft ordinance I've passed on to the chair that I'm hoping will be brought forward in December or January. reluctantly go ahead with this but i don't want us to lose sight of what the actual goal was and what the impetus for this was this is a lot of window dressing in some respects without getting to the underlying problem and if we don't get to the underlying problem um that we were trying to address in the first place which yes had something to do with panhandling but also has something more particularly has something to do with traffic safety road safety and that sort of thing

[01:29:04] I think we need to get to that point and not just kind of let that slip into the backwash. All right, Supervisor Angry. Thank you, Madam Chair. Hey, Nikki. Hey, the 60K, does that, I see it's got some video on here, but is that mainstream video, like news network outlets in particular?

[01:29:27] And let me just say why I asked that. So we're focusing on Prince William County, and Prince William County borders a lot of other localities, right? So much of what comes through here has traveled through. And so I think as we put this message out, I would like to see the news networks get involved, Channel 5, 7, whatever, come through and actually start airing this.

[01:29:50] Because, you know, one of those biggest markets is the news outlet. And so if the $60,000 doesn't include that, I would want to increase that if you had a number of what that would look like. So I don't want to hold this up because I want to prove this today I'm all on board. But if I had to make that number higher, I'd even be willing to make a motion to increase that to include our media news outlets.

[01:30:13] Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Supervisor Angry. So I don't have a number. I mean, as I think you all know, we'll use whatever you are willing to give us for sure. we do plan on putting out information I was about to follow up on that one that's a lot of money I was gonna say I feel like that in itself I know when we looked at doing stuff simply even just on NBC that was that was a fairly large amount however happy to look into it and bring back a cost estimate for that part of it we do plan on doing some organic reach so we'll send

[01:30:53] something out again if the board approves we'll send something out on tuesday with the video and with the information and hopes that they will pick it up we'll send out a release and an article to our media partners and so i'm hopeful there is some organic there's been a lot of interest as you all know and kind of what the county is doing around panhandling reduction and so i hope they'll pick it up that way but happy to look at what it would cost to do more mainstream advertising if that's helpful. And Madam Chair, if I just could real quick, because this is more than a

[01:31:28] Princeton County problem, as we all know. This is regional, national. I mean, this is just a problem everywhere. Anywhere you go, you see this panhandling issue. So I just think as we look at this, we should be looking regional and really trying to bring a broader area on board, even if those funds are divvied up between the regions to make for a better, powerful package to go forward and really try to put an end to this, or to Supervisor Ware's point, find out the root cause and see if we can't, you know, address it that way.

[01:31:59] Thanks, Madam Chair. Thank you. I'm going to go to Supervisor Gordy because he's, I guess, having screen issues. Franklin. Thank you, Madam Chair. So, Nikki, thanks again for coming back. You know, when you came in, what, last month we were looking at about a $16,000 program, which wasn't going to get us very far, in my view.

[01:32:23] And now we're looking at a more robust program to really get this message out, and it needs to saturate our community. A couple of things, you know, and a little bit to Supervisor Angry, but, you know, in terms of the streaming ads, does that include streaming radio or is that simply streaming video?

[01:32:44] It's streaming video. Video, okay. Yes. So is there any, I mean, while we've got people in their cars and they're sitting at intersections and they see some guy, is there any potential that they're potentially hearing an ad that would discourage them to? Yeah, so we did look at that.

[01:33:01] The impressions for streaming radio are not as great as the impressions for streaming video. So certainly happy to take another look at that for sure. We looked at T.O.P. That's expensive, honestly. It is for short, you know, very short clips.

[01:33:19] It's very expensive and not knowing for sure if we'd hit our community per se. But there are streaming options. We've looked at doing different, like Spotify and iHeart and some other stuff. So happy to take a closer look at that. We actually just had a meeting with Odyssey to look into could we do something with them.

[01:33:38] The impressions just aren't as high, but it's certainly something that we can look into. And then the only other thing I, you know, that I thought about were banner ads, you know, on websites. I have followed the program all the way through to the website to see, you know, because I don't want people to get click fatigue, right?

[01:34:00] And I think you guys did a good job, particularly because there's 25, 26 listed organizations that are there that people can contribute to. and then you do provide a description. I didn't see the description at first.

[01:34:16] I was like, man, I've got to go clicking on each one. And there's, oh, wait a minute, go a little further down. You see the description, you know, who you're giving to and kind of what their focus is. So, again, just want to commend you. Again, I do believe, as Supervisor Bodie said, that this is a supply and demand issue.

[01:34:32] And if we can tackle the supply side, that's, you know, hopefully will get us more than halfway to the solution. I do still think we've got to address what happens at the intersections. But we do have to address the supply side of this as well.

[01:34:50] So thank you for the good work that you've done on this. Thank you. And Supervisor Franklin? Sure, yeah. Just want to, going back to Supervisor Angry's question, I wonder if, you know, we could get some earned media in some of this and wondering if we should target, instead of buying ads for some of the local media that may be expensive, if we should do some interviews with those news, with the local news stations, have them come down here, talk about why we're doing that,

[01:35:26] and then we can use footage from that to essentially create our own media campaign, even our own commercial and so that may be a more affordable and efficient way to go about that getting them down here to talk about the work that we're doing to address this issue i appreciate that yes we will like i said we'll send stuff out but can definitely invite folks down and make ourselves and make their folks available to have the conversation i do just to address supervisor

[01:36:01] Ingrid's comment about regionalism as well. Some of the things we picked were things that we know people visit from surrounding jurisdictions, so Potomac Mills, Stonebridge, Jiffy Lube. We know we're bringing people in from other areas as well to hit this, but I'm happy to also send it to my counterparts and surrounding jurisdictions to see if they would be willing to share as well.

[01:36:26] No, thank you for all this, and I want to say a few things before I go to Supervisor Bailey. I I think you mentioned earlier about sending out press releases to get earned media, and that's something we need to do. I mean, I just want to say, mostly to my colleagues and people listening, it's going to take a lot of time to change behavior. It takes a lot of time.

[01:36:43] And when we're doing a media campaign or any communications campaign designed to change behavior, it's going to take time. So I just want to caution people to be patient. We may not see massive results when we look at this in the summer, spring or summer.

[01:36:59] And $60,000 is, you know, quite honestly, it's very low. So I see this more as a pilot because $60,000 is not a lot. And I would like to commend you and your team for how thoughtful you've been about how you are going to invest this money in trying to get the most eyeballs.

[01:37:17] But as we know, it's going to take repetition, lots of repetition for people to start to understand that there are other ways to do things, there are other ways to give. I also do want to reply to Supervisors Vega and Weir. You know, we're definitely going to look at some kind of, I think, ordinance.

[01:37:34] You know, as we've talked about, it's nice to give this a little bit of time, a little bit of breathing room to see what results this gets. But certainly I'm open to continuing those conversations and to working with you, Supervisor Weir, on the ordinance that you've drafted. But I do want to say that I am very pleased with what I've seen thus far.

[01:37:54] You know, I know that you guys have put a lot of work into this, and thank you. So, Supervisor Bailey. Thank you, Madam Chair, for allowing me to go behind you. I just wanted to also say I really appreciate all of you thinking outside the box, because that's important.

[01:38:13] And I agree with Madam Chair in that vein. The last piece, I wanted to segue back to what Supervisor Vega had said about our newsletters. Is there a one-sheeter with data points or with pictures or whatever that we can be in unison with you and getting the word out as we put it on our newsletter so we're not saying different things?

[01:38:31] That would be fantastic. So we'll share with you the information, the release that we'll send out that will also be on the website that you can share with your constituents. That website will also have the toolkit that has all the material on it. So just letting folks know that that's there, encouraging them to use that information would be super helpful.

[01:38:52] So we'll share with your, similar to what we did with the community survey where we put together kind of a toolkit, we'll do the same for this initiative as well. Thank you. Thank you. I don't see any other speakers in queue, so I'd like to get a motion so that we can move this forward.

[01:39:09] So move, Madam Chair. All right. Any further discussion? Looks like we have Supervisor Bodie. Thank you, Madam Chair. And again, thank you, Nikki. And thank you to the team for getting this done so fast. Just last comment. I appreciate Senator Franklin mentioning earned media as well.

[01:39:26] I think, frankly, we should be doing both. I know that even just two months ago, I was interviewed by a local media news outlet about this issue. So I know they're still paying attention to it. And again, as we get into the winter months, I think it will still stay on people's minds. So I think it's a great idea to put out a press release and get them to come to us and sort of make us look like we're leaders, which we are.

[01:39:46] Last thing, I know I mentioned stickers and magnets earlier. Would love to see those on all our county vehicles as well. I remember back during the pandemic, we had the spread out mask up stickers. Would love to see the same thing because, frankly, we have a lot of county vehicles. I saw the very first electric fleet and facilities vehicle out next door.

[01:40:07] Would love to see those around as well. So as people see them, they're not only seeing the big OmniRide buses. They're also seeing our county vehicles promoting the same thing. We're going to need to give Nikki more money, y'all. I just want to let you know, budget's coming up. We just, we got a lot of competing things.

[01:40:24] This might be one of them. I don't see anyone else for discussion, so let's go ahead and vote. Is your angry? Aye. Vote unanimous.

[01:40:43] Thank you. Thank you so very much, Nikki. And so now we're going to move on to item number six, county attorney time. Ms. Roble, the floor is now yours. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. This afternoon in closed session, we will have consultation with legal counsel and briefings by staff members pertaining to the discussion or consideration of the acquisition of real property for public purposes, to include for public safety and other public uses where discussion in an open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining position, litigating posture, or negotiating strategy of the public body.

[01:41:14] And we will have personnel discussions relating to the annual performance evaluation of the county executive and the county attorney, where consultation, briefing, or discussion in an open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining position, litigating posture, or a negotiating strategy of the public body. These items are appropriate for closed session pursuant to 2.2-3711A1 and 3 of the Code of Virginia.

[01:41:34] Motion to authorize, Madam Chair. Second. All right, let's take a vote. Aye. Thank you. Vote unanimous. All right, thank you so very much.

[01:41:50] We now have some work sessions. I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Shorter to lead us through agenda item number seven. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I want to invite our Deputy CXO Wade Hugh up to the podium to introduce the quadrant.

[01:42:06] I will say before we get started, I'm just really appreciative of the work that has happened in these work sessions. As you know, Madam Chair, this was really born out of the board's desire to hear directly from our county leaders and have just been really appreciative of the fact that we've gotten through now all of our quadrants.

[01:42:28] and I believe this is the last quadrant, so mobility, economic growth, and resiliency. I know they have not going to. This is a very exciting quadrant and one that I'm looking forward to the presentation and certainly the questions that come.

[01:42:47] They do phenomenal work for the county, all of them. And so with that, Wade, I will turn it over to you. Thank you. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the board. Wade Hugh, Deputy County Executive for Mobility, Economic Growth, and Resiliency. And I'm pleased to be able to kick off the work session today.

[01:43:03] I will provide some general remarks about the quadrant, and then we'll ask each agency director to come up and present more detail about their agency. So to begin, we have five agencies in our quadrant. We serve as the liaison for Quantico Marine Corps Base and Prince William Water.

[01:43:22] When you look at the list of agencies here, you can quickly see how we are aligned, whether we're working on land use cases, economic development projects. We collaborate very closely together with one another. Our operating budget, just over $110 million.

[01:43:39] I will stress operating because if you look at transportation, you know the robust road building program that we have, close to a billion dollars. Those expenses are housed elsewhere in the budget. This is just strictly looking at the operating budget. One thing we're very pleased with is the level of services we're able to provide based on the resources you, the county, provide to us.

[01:44:00] We have close to 500 full-time employees, 482 to be exact. What I would like to highlight, especially for those at home that may be watching, is a couple of agencies, economic development and tourism. You hear when Christina comes forward and talks about the amount of investment in the county and new jobs.

[01:44:21] Keep in mind that's a staff of 30 that's helping to bring that in. The planning office, you're well aware of the workload, land use cases, work on zoning text amendments, small area plans, staff of 34. And finally, transportation, again, I mentioned the road building program, almost a billion dollars.

[01:44:40] They also review land use cases. They conduct inspections, staff of 54, something we're very proud of. A lot of work is being done in the quadrant. Some common themes that you're going to hear today, we talk strategic plan. We try to link to as many of the goals, objectives, and strategies that we can.

[01:44:57] Some just nature of work we do rise to the top, mobility, sustainable growth, resilient economy, some challenges and opportunities. I won't go through them all, but when we talk about funding, our quadrant has a number of different revenue sources. We talk fees, development fees, solid waste fees, stormwater fees.

[01:45:17] We have internal services fund, lots of grants. So you hear that talked about. We talked permitting process improvements. And one thing we're very excited about this year is our partnership with Prince William Chamber and the County Commercial Development Committee. We look forward to a lot of improvements coming out of that group.

[01:45:35] And finally, I want to highlight Transformation Management Office. Since the county executive stood up that office, we've reaped the benefits countywide with the program. But specifically in our quadrant, you'll hear every agency is leaning on the TMO for help with finding efficiencies, process improvements.

[01:45:52] Just been a huge help to us. So with that, I'm going to invite Ms. Tanya Washington, our planning director, to come up, and we will start the work session. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the board, Tanya Washington, planning director.

[01:46:12] Very happy to be here today to talk about the work and services of the planning office. I was also just reflecting that next month will be my 10th month with the county in this role. So just in terms of an overview of the planning office, in our FY25 approved budget, it's just over $6.9 million, and as just noted, we have 34 FTEs.

[01:46:39] We're very appreciative of the board approving six additional FTEs in our FY25 budget, and wanted to note that three of those positions are already filled, and the other three we are currently in the recruiting process. This slide also shows you the different divisions of the planning office.

[01:46:57] In addition to the planning director and the deputy planning director, we have our business services division, which manages all of our operational services. And then we have three more sort of programmatic divisions. Our long-range planning division, that's really the team that focuses on more countywide level planning.

[01:47:16] So they are responsible for the comprehensive plan and updates to the comprehensive plan for zoning tax amendments, public facilities reviews. That team also includes our cultural resources team as well. And then we have our current planning division.

[01:47:31] That is the division that manages our review of land use applications such as rezoning, special use permits. And then our community development division. This is one where we've made some internal changes so that we can strengthen that division as the team to focus on our more geographically focused planning.

[01:47:50] So this is the team that will be doing small area plans, new small area plans, as well as working on implementing adopted small area plans. So this slide gives an overview of the universe of our work program. You know, oftentimes there's a lot of familiarity with the fact that we are responsible for leading staff review of land use applications.

[01:48:13] But this slide is really intended to show you that we do a lot more. So just as an example, I mentioned earlier, comprehensive plan updates and amendments. Our long-range planning division also does capital improvement plan review, implementation of small area plans and comprehensive plan, redevelopment corridors as well as the development of new small area plans, land use applications such as rezoning, special use permits, et cetera.

[01:48:38] I talked about our cultural resources team. They work very closely with the Parks and Recreation's Office of Historic Preservation, but there are certain responsibilities that do fall within that team, such as supporting federal Section 106 and NEPA reviews and a cemetery preservation program.

[01:48:57] We also work on zoning ordinance updates and zoning text amendments and map amendments. And then we also, as noted earlier, we receive a number of board directives, And so there are other initiatives that we work on under that. And the planning office provides technical support to several boards and commissions.

[01:49:16] In addition to you, the board of county supervisors, we support the planning commission, the historical commission, the architectural review board, the innovation architectural review board, the agricultural and forestal districts advisory committee, and the trails and blue ways council.

[01:49:35] In FY25, we have several major initiatives underway. Our biggest one is one that we are in the early stages of, which is a comprehensive zoning ordinance update. We're currently in the scoping phase, so we'll be coming back to the board early next year to request initiation for that.

[01:49:54] We are also working, as you all know, on the Affordable Dwelling Unit Ordinance related to the comprehensive plan. The board initiated the Sustainability and Resilience Comprehensive Plan Amendment, and we're currently partnering with the Office of Sustainability on the scoping for that effort.

[01:50:11] Our GIS team is working on the update to the build-out analysis. We're also very involved in a number of data center-related efforts. We're working on a board directive right now, which will be coming back to the board next month to provide an update on the Data Center Opportunity Overlay District Boundary Study.

[01:50:30] We're also participating in the Data Center Overlay District Advisory Group and supporting the consultant work with that group. And then in terms of our cultural resources team, it's really very happy that the county received an award with our Parks and Rec colleagues on their thoroughfare, the GIS story map.

[01:50:51] We are also working on a thoroughfare historic overlay district initiative. Currently, the first sort of big piece of that is we're working on a national registered nomination as well as the Virginia Landmarks nomination. And then the next stage, we'll be working on a zoning tax amendment to create the historic overlay district as well as design guidelines.

[01:51:14] And the cultural resources team is also working on a county-registered historic site, which is Blackburns Ford. So I want to shift gears in and provide some data of what we're seeing in terms of caseload trends. This first slide really just tells a story that our overall caseload has been increasing.

[01:51:33] It shows data going back over a year between October 2023 and October of this year. And as you can see, generally speaking, the numbers are going up. As of October of this year, we had a total caseload across all types of 258 cases.

[01:51:51] So this includes comprehensive plan amendments, cultural resources projects, development policy amendments, which can include zoning text amendments, minor modifications, public facility reviews, rezonings, and special use permits. So this slide really focuses on what's coming in and what the volume that we've seen also over that previous year. And again, just looking at the numbers, the overall planning cases accepted and reviewed by planning office, again, has been

[01:52:23] increasing. There were nine in October of last year, and we had 18 in October of 2024. So now we're going to provide some data on what we're seeing in terms of caseload completion. For the planning commission over FY24, the PC reviewed 96 land use cases, and 55 of those, or 57%, were expedited, which means that we were able to go through and get the planning commission's vote

[01:52:54] to recommend approval or denial without having to do full staff presentations. Similarly, with regards to the board over this past fiscal year this board reviewed 80 land use cases 51 of those were on a consolidated agenda that's 64 percent so we are we've been able to work with the supervisors with the planning commissioners with county staff and applicants to get the the applications to a point where we can move forward with a vote without having to do a full-blown staff presentations and discussions and obviously those are of value but this means that we're able to get through more

[01:53:34] cases per meeting, which shows up in this slide, which is a comparison of the board cases completed looking over four fiscal years going back to FY20. And just to walk you through this, the orange bar are the number of cases that were completed in that fiscal year. The blue bar is the number of board meetings that took place that fiscal year. And then the green bar are the average number of cases per meeting. And again, this shows the story that more cases are coming to the board relative to previous years. I did want to note that in December 2022, the comprehensive plan

[01:54:13] update was approved, so that had a factor on some of the volume that we are seeing. But the thing in particular to look at is that in FY20, the board completed 48 cases over 27 meetings and average of 1.8 cases per meeting but in FY24 you completed 71 cases over 17 meetings so fewer meetings but you were able to complete 4.2 average cases per meeting so even though the board relatively speaking has been meeting less frequently you're actually getting through more cases per meeting so I want to shift gears to talk about the

[01:54:52] planning office's key priorities first want to start out with something that was mentioned a little earlier right-sizing the planning office to efficiently support the county's growing development activity and to provide ongoing community planning another major priority is to efficiently manage the high land use case volume this really is the new normal it's not really so much about a backlog of cases as we've you know shown in some of the slides the data slides that I just showed you we really are seeing just a greater amount of development cases you all are seeing this obviously in your districts so how

[01:55:29] How do we pivot and how do we position ourselves to manage this new normal? Related to this, we are working on an effort to enhance the land use application review process and systems to reduce workload and review times and to modernize procedures.

[01:55:46] We're also regularly conducting, we also want to regularly conduct small area plans. This is something, and this will come up a bit later, we've completed, the board has adopted small area plans, several for the county. The last one was adopted in 2021. We already have four small area plan directives in the queue, and we are really focusing on building our capacity to do new small area plans.

[01:56:11] This is a really, really critical function. A comprehensive plan is a wonderful tool. I'm a planner. I love comprehensive plans. I've worked on them, but you really need tailored planning guidance at the more smaller geographic level to speak to the particular conditions, and so that's what we can do with small area plans.

[01:56:30] also have as a key priority updating the zoning ordinance and other tools to implement the 2040 comprehensive plan. We also want to promote design excellence for development coming to the county. You know I like to say very informally Prince William County deserves nice things and so we're really looking at how we can raise the bar on our expectations for what applicants want to propose for the county. We want to support housing production and affordable housing and then we also want to integrate equity into land use planning to support the comprehensive plan's vision of the county as an equitable, sustainable, and vibrant place. So related to those key

[01:57:08] priorities, we have several strategic opportunities under kind of three categories, operations, process, and work program. Staff retention and recruitment is obviously key for this work. Something else that we've also worked on over the last few months is we've done a comprehensive review of all of our performance metrics and updated them and made changes to them.

[01:57:32] And we've started to do ongoing caseload data tracking. So the data that I showed you just shortly is a result of that. The team are producing monthly reports so that we can keep a closer eye on our data. We also, again, want to build our smart area planning capacity.

[01:57:49] In terms of process, we've already started a comprehensive review of the land use application process. Wade mentioned, or Deputy County Executive Hugh mentioned, the Transformation Management Office. We have been working closely with them. We've actually completed two process mapping exercises with our leadership team and with the planning office staff, and we will continue to work on that effort to help identify what improvements can be made to the review process.

[01:58:17] There are certain changes that we've already put in place. There are certain things that we know of, but we want to do this in a more systematic fashion because there may be other improvements that we may be overlooking. We're also working on updating policy and procedure guidance for applicants. A long-term goal for the planning office, and something that I'm particularly focused on and interested in seeing, is a shift from a paper, email, and online hybrid land use case system to fully online.

[01:58:43] This is where basically we have these e-case review systems that we have in place, inter-Gov, that we use for certain county functions, but we don't actually use that as the sole platform for our land use case reviews.

[01:59:01] And this is actually a practice where Prince William County is behind. Our peers are already doing this. So we want to look at how we can move in that direction in the future. We've also been working on enhancing our relationship with industry to implement improvements. And then just really quickly under our work program, strategic opportunities, I mentioned a zoning ordinance update. We also want to look at other zoning changes to support the comp plan's affordable housing goals, as well as updating the comprehensive plan's guidance for sustainable and resilient development. We are working, I just noted earlier about updating guidance or requirements for data centers and again we have four directives

[01:59:40] for smart area plans that we really would like to make some progress on. Related to these strategic opportunities are several challenges. Deputy County Executive Hugh mentioned funding. The planning office has multiple unfunded board directives. We also with regards to staffing, staffing retention has been an issue. We've been seeing some improvements with this but we are concerned about a heavy workload, which can cause a risk of burnout and turnover. The planning office also has a higher caseload compared to our peer planning departments, and a priority that I've heard from planning

[02:00:17] office staff is a desire for more professional development opportunities, so that's something that we've been working very intentionally on. Managing growth, that's a critical function of the planning office, and there are opportunities and challenges related to this. Ensuring high quality development in a rapidly growing county, that is an opportunity, but it is a challenge at the same time. I noted earlier a large volume of an increasingly complex land use applications as well as a backlog of small area plans. To go back to one of the key priorities in terms of staffing, we do need to grow our staff levels in order to both manage the large caseload volume,

[02:00:55] which is a new normal, and to conduct other key planning office services. And then, you know, permitting process improvements, not just in terms of what the planning office is doing, but also partnering with development services and other agencies, we want to look at how we can update and or deploy new systems and procedures used by multiple agencies and industry for land use case review.

[02:01:22] So just to conclude, I want to end on a positive note, which is collaborations. The planning office collaborates with multiple county agencies as well as other important stakeholders in this county and in this area. I want to highlight three specific examples with some of our partner agencies, with transportation, the Yorkshire Multimodal Study and Green Infrastructure Study.

[02:01:47] With economic development, we are currently working on the Fettler Park Market Study, and we are gearing up next spring for the Sudley Road Urban Land Institute Technical Advisory Panel. And with our sustainability office, I mentioned that we're going to be partnering with, we are partnering with them on the sustainability and resilience integration into the comprehensive plan, as well as implementation of the community energy and sustainability master plan.

[02:02:15] And just in terms of some of our other partners that we collaborate, that includes agencies such as Parks and Recreation, Development Services, the County Attorney's Office, Public Works, Housing, and others. We also collaborate with NVBIA and NAOP as industry representatives with state entities like FIDOT, with our utilities, Prince William Water, NOVAC and Dominion, and also the City of Manassas and Manassas Park.

[02:02:44] So that concludes my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you so very much. Supervisor Gordy, then Vega. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Ms. Washington, for this presentation.

[02:03:02] On page nine, you know, the question I often get about from developers is, you know, they're always coming in and says, we need to speed this up. I just want the development community to look at these charts and realize that our staff has a lot of cases that they're dealing with.

[02:03:25] You need to be patient. We've got to get them right. This is not about hurry up and get this done. This is about getting it done correctly, getting it done right. and with the current caseload that we have um and as you and as we've seen with the some of the other charts um that um and and you know and you've had some staff turnover you've had some staff challenges and now you've created some stability there which is which is uh great news but i think part of the challenges is from the development community is trying to manage their

[02:04:03] expectations that you know you guys are getting the job done and you're trying to work a numerous number of cases um but there's only so much time that each one of you you and your staff has then there's only so many opportunities for the planning commission and so many opportunities for this board to take up cases so um again this is not about speed this is about getting it make sure our community gets things right. And if you also alluded to that, the cases are becoming more complex. So therein lies some additional challenges. So I am not encouraging the speeding

[02:04:42] up of anything, but thank you for what you're doing there. But it does make me have to ask the question, what is our capacity? What is the point? We say we can't really take on any new cases right now because our folks are already working X number of weeks. We only have so many opportunities to take cases to the board so many opportunities with the planning commission but there's not a week that goes by I don't have one or up to three developers coming in saying I've got this new project for your district so it's so I mean there there's no shortage of new

[02:05:20] cases coming and and so and while you guys are doing everything that you can to keep on top of this. Um, again, it's about quality, not quantity. It's not about volume. It's about ensuring that we meet, um, that, that we're building good communities and good developments for this county. Um, the only other comment I'd have is on the partnership, the collaborations, and that there's one for me that is a big missing piece and that is schools. And this has got to

[02:05:54] change. And because we are looking at a lot of development throughout the county, and we need schools to support it. And so that means they will not only need, it's not just about the physical infrastructure, it's about the talent, it's about the people. So they need to be part of this so they can help us work towards meaningful solutions to ensure that as we grow, the school system is able to meet those needs um and so i would just point that out i know we're going to have a meeting

[02:06:29] on the 17th with our school system uh with our school board members rather and look forward to further discussing how we can better collaborate on the planning process uh with prince william county schools uh really no questions just some comments but thank you i was wondering what the question was but thank you all right supervisor vega to be fair it's a work session um Congratulations on your 10-month anniversary.

[02:07:00] Hey, it's a prophecy because we've had some challenges. So I think you've made it further than anyway. Congratulations. Thank you. With that being said, we're working on something very big, which is the Affordable Housing Dwelling Ordinance.

[02:07:21] And so my question to you is we talk so much about retention. And, you know, I'm glad to see that we're filling these positions. And do you anticipate, I would assume, more of a workload? If so, what is that going to mean in terms of your staffing, current staffing and or projections?

[02:07:39] Just to make sure that I'm clear about the question, are you asking in terms of the Affordable Dwelling Unit ordinance? Once we adopt it. Once it's adopted. So one thing to note is that while the planning office has been bringing this item to the board along with other agencies, The implementation actually will not lie within the planning office.

[02:07:58] Development services through the zoning administrator. The zoning administrator is the entity identified in the ordinance to approve bonus density applications in exchange for affordable units. And so development services is already working on a game plan for handling that administration.

[02:08:15] And then the housing department will be responsible for administering the housing trust fund and running the competitive process for dispersing those funds. So the planning office, we will be involved, you know, if the ordinance is adopted, including future rezonings as being eligible, we will be involved in that stage because they will still be going through the rezoning process, but in terms of actually administering the ordinance, that will lie with other agencies.

[02:08:42] - Perfect, thank you. That was pretty easy. - Supervisor Franklin. - Yes, thank you. this presentation. I know on the last page you have collaborations and the partnerships and I know that internally there have been some recommendations from your office to the development community in terms of process procedure, making sure that they're chatting with members of the board and things of that nature. I just want to talk a little bit about

[02:09:19] has this been rolled out actually with the industry or is this the proposal before going to the industry? If you're referring to what's now a requirement to conduct public engagement before the Planning Commission public hearing, so that has been in place since March.

[02:09:35] We issued a memo back in March with that requirement, so that has been going on. We are currently working on a policy document that provides further guidance in terms of the expectations or to help advise and answer questions that we've been hearing from industry.

[02:09:52] So they are aware of the fact, they should be aware of the fact, and our staff have been telling applicants that they have to conduct this community engagement. But, again, we're working on providing some additional guidance on that. Now, that's with regards to community engagement. But I guess with regards to kind of the overall planning process, which obviously belongs to you.

[02:10:10] Yes. But have we gotten feedback from kind of these entities that you mentioned here already? Yes. Or do you plan to? Okay. Yes. So I have given probably at least three presentations, three or four presentations at MVBIA and NAOP gatherings, some breakfasts, some lunch meetings.

[02:10:33] More recently, with NAOP, there's a monthly Prince William chapter lunch that takes place that I attend regularly with a staff person. And we use the last meeting, the majority of the last meeting, to have a facilitated stakeholder scoping discussion.

[02:10:50] about the zoning ordinance update we are currently we've currently been doing quite a number of stakeholder scoping discussions with industry with with our staff we also want to have these discussions with the board these are really more informal discussions just to get ideas about what to include in the zoning ordinance update so we have done that with the CDC with Dorak and with NAOP. We've also had a conversation with a gathering of NBBA members. We also, and I participate

[02:11:25] in other gatherings with industry as well, and so we definitely, since I've started, have been, you know, communicating some of these larger initiatives that we've been working on, you know, and hearing, you know, feedback, ideas, things that we should take into consideration as part of that. Yeah, and then the last thing I'll just say, you know, I agree with with Mr. Gordy here in terms of capacity.

[02:11:56] But I will say in districts like mine that's going through a heavy revitalization era, we want projects done as quickly as possible because, A, we need it, and obviously the community has been yearning for it.

[02:12:13] So I think at least with the Woodbridge District, we've been doing a good job of balancing. But I think that continuing to move with the necessary speed, at least on revitalization efforts, I think is still important, at least to me. So thank you.

[02:12:28] Thank you. Thank you. And now, Supervisor Weir. Thank you, Madam Chair. I don't have a question, but I have a couple of observations, and I'll keep them very brief. You know, I said this at budget time last year when the new FTEs were provided for community development and long-range planning, and I thought that we underserved current planning and our active caseload.

[02:12:54] Our active planners are, quite frankly, overworked to the extent that I can't find an exemplar or anything close in the rest of the Commonwealth, and we need to give them some relief. I would have suggested at one point in time that we, at least on a temporary basis, shift those new FTEs and community development and long-range planning to give them some assistance.

[02:13:16] However, given the necessity of updating the zoning ordinance, I think we have to put all of our eggs in that basket or as much manpower as we can in that so that we can square away our zoning ordinance with our comp plan.

[02:13:33] It's troublesome that we're in a position where we have to pick between the two, and maybe we'll address that at budget season, maybe we won't. I have a greater issue, however. Maybe this is just symptomatic as a result of living in the Gainesville District and the cynicism, sarcasm, and distrust that my residents have for a lot of things.

[02:14:02] But when I see a printed line on a slide presentation that says enhanced relationship with industry to implement improvements, and then you list NVBIA and NAOP and that, that's not going to go over well with my residents. Quite frankly, they believe that they have been too closely involved for years, that they have been catered to either individually or through the CDC or DORAC.

[02:14:28] We've seen many things shifted from the zoning ordinance to the DCSM over the years, which removes the authority from the board and places it in the hand of development services to issues things like waivers. We've seen far too many changes in zoning ordinances, interpretations, and that sort of thing catered to the industry that don't necessarily help the existing residents or engender any sort of trust in them.

[02:14:56] I think we need to be careful when we start talking about that, and particularly with how many bites at the apple we give them on something like these zoning ordinance updates. If we're giving them multiple shots to steer it, craft it, edit it, more so than anybody else, I'm a little bit fearful about some backlash that we're going to get.

[02:15:20] And then last but not least, and I'll leave it at this, there's really no such thing as an unfunded directive. When you get a directive, you guys should put together a plan for it, address it at least at a superficial level bring us something back and ask for funding not just leave it sit on a desk because we've seen some directives sit on somebody's desk for three or seven years or statutory mandates sit on somebody's desk for three or seven years I'm hoping that in your 10 month tenure and coming in the future you're going to correct that situation because that's been a long standing issue in the county where we're just allowing stuff to sit and that's how we get a comp

[02:15:58] plan that doesn't match the zoning ordinance or how we end up with a zoning ordinance that doesn't implement changes in state code or implement changes to the comp plan. I am curious where my comp plan amendments stand. I know I got a – or my suggested comp plan amendments.

[02:16:14] I know I got a revised report on those, and I know that one of the recommendations is likely to change due to transportation's position next month on the Route 28 bypass, but I'd like to know when I could possibly see that coming back for board action or board consideration.

[02:16:35] Thank you. Just in response to your question related to your proposed CPA, the staff provided the memo, and so I think perhaps we can have a conversation with you, Supervisor Weir, on the status so we can get some direction about how to proceed.

[02:16:53] Supervisor Bailey. I'm sorry, Bailey. Bailey. I like it. Thank you, Madam Chair. Tanya, welcome to ten years. I mean, ten months. I just wanted to highlight a couple things. One is, with the six new positions that we approved, do you still find that there's a lot of competitiveness regionally to hire?

[02:17:26] yes very much so um and in fact um last week i so i i'm a participant of cod's planning directors technical advisory committee this is a monthly meeting of planning directors from around the entire region i've actually been participating in those meetings since i worked at the dc office of planning as deputy director and uh that was actually one of the topics of discussion was um hiring of planners and we got a question you know what are you seeing and i that was the that's what I brought up, which is that there is a lot of competition for planners just within this region, because it isn't just, you know, Prince William County or even just Virginia. We've

[02:18:06] got counties in Maryland. We've got D.C., and that's just if you're looking at the local pool of planners. So, like I said, just in this region, we have multiple planning departments, so we are competing. We are all competing for great talent, both locally and nationally.

[02:18:21] Okay. I would venture to say that's been a discussion on a lot of the regional boards, as well. And kudos to you and your staff, the small staff that you have, the ones that have hung in there, you know, to get us through with the 71 cases and the 4.2. I think that tells a story as well. So thank you all for doing that. I wanted to also say, you put on slide seven about the boards that you also support, the commissions and the boards. I mean, other than us, I know, How is that playing into what you really need to do?

[02:18:59] Is that skill set? Is that a separate skill set, or how is that playing out in terms of us getting work done? You know what I'm asking? I believe so. I guess the first thing I would say is that each board of commission has its own particular scope and needs and sort of related workload, so to speak.

[02:19:24] So obviously the Planning Commission, you know, in addition to the board, the Planning Commission has the most in terms of workload because they review applications that ultimately come to the board as well as other matters. The Historical Commission, you know, I think I don't have sort of one standard answer for each of these commissions.

[02:19:45] We do have staff who are tasked with providing administrative support for each of these commissions as well as technical support as needed, particularly, again, a planning commission, historical commission, or just, like, two examples where we'll definitely see that.

[02:20:03] So I think in terms of are we having an issue with staff support for those boards and commissions? No, I wouldn't say that we are. But really, we're just highlighting this just to show that the planning office supports more than the board, more than a planning commission. Those are the two entities that obviously have the greatest profile.

[02:20:22] But just to also show just the variety and the type of organizations that we also support. Okay. All right. And then the other question that I have, one of the things I noticed when I first came on board was the GIS data and mapping.

[02:20:39] And that didn't really come to surface until we did redistricting. Am I on point with that? So where are we in terms of making sure that that data information is synced?

[02:20:56] You understand what I'm saying? Like, it was old information, and we needed to make sure that it was up to par. So is it sinking? Is it where we need to be now in terms of districts and land and all that?

[02:21:13] Yes, it is. That's the short answer, and I'm asking Deputy Planning Director David McGeddonkin to provide further information. Okay. So the heart of our GIS is in the Department of Information Technology, and they're maintaining all of our parcel layers and addresses and all those things that we need to keep our GIS up and running.

[02:21:35] And the planning office is focused on the zoning layer, the comprehensive plan layers, and providing information like the build-out analysis to development community and you all who need that information.

[02:21:51] And we did add an additional GIS person in the planning office, and that's helped out a lot with their workload of the two people that we did have because there's a lot of new things like tracking affordable housing, like...

[02:22:10] Renaming of streets, things like that. Yes, lots of other things that the planning office does that behind the scenes to make sure our GIS information is accurate, up-to-date, and helps us in our planning.

[02:22:26] efforts. Okay. I'll come back later, Madam Chair. My time is up. Okay. Supervisor Bodie. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Ms. Washington, for the presentation, and thank you, as always, for everything that you, your office continues to do. I'm going to dovetail a little bit off of some of the Supervisor Ware's comments, but in another direction. One, we also know that a big context of what's happened to your office and predates you is the comp plan. That was a huge undertaking. We know the digital gateway, a huge undertaking. We know that affordable dwelling ordinance, huge undertaking we have a lot of these big ticket high stakes items that your office has been handling for years now in some cases half of a decade so that's not lost at least on me

[02:23:05] so i appreciate your your your influence in the last 10 months not 10 years 10 months that you've had um and sort of stabilizing that bring your staff understanding acknowledging that they've had some very high stakes very in some cases controversial uh policy issues they've had to get off their desks finally some of them are still there right so wanted to highlight that and uplift that um number two um definitely uh gonna gonna 100% agree with the other half of boardy so as a gordy in that would love to see us collaborate more close with the school division um i know that earlier this year you know they had projections that they're going to start seeing

[02:23:44] shrinking uh class sizes or shrinking cohorts of students well frankly i don't think that's as pronounced as they they're currently projecting especially based on the number of planning cases to your point earlier we have coming to some of our districts i know sir gordy is the most prolific with that but we have a lot of housing coming to my district too and i know that in the very next presentation after you all are done this quadrant we have another opportunity very large opportunity in my district for a small area plan so understanding and making sure that as we continue to have these long-range but also short-range planning activities we include and huddle with

[02:24:20] the school division as much as possible so we're not having to chase housing with school infrastructure especially out of the back end so i wanted to leave that with you um my last uh comment which sort of goes in my question is um again dovetails off super as aware is obviously there's a lot going on and i know this board will never cease to give you all especially more directives because frankly land use is a huge part of our our job um it's going to be a little bit of a forward question, but do you have sort of a staffing plan you're working on over the next few years? Because frankly, service aware is absolutely right. You're a short staffed office

[02:24:59] right now, especially knowing that growth is going to continue to increase. We have revitalization projects coming in some districts. We have other new planning initiatives, things that are constantly happening. Frankly, directives that I've been holding back from giving for my district, knowing the level of manpower you have so my forward question is is a staffing plan coming that we can support yes we have identified a three-year staffing plan for additional positions for FY 26 that is included the details are included in what we've presented to the county executive

[02:25:35] for consideration in his budget proposal so we look forward to sharing those details at that time appreciate that thank you madam chair all right thank you so very much I don't know Supervisor Bailey, did you have anything else? If not, we're going to go on to the next.

[02:25:52] Just one more question. Thank you, Madam Chair. Real quick. I wanted to go to the collaboration piece. I think it's your last slide, 17. What's the plan for newer collaboration, additional collaboration?

[02:26:13] Additional entities, organizations? Entities, yes. Director Washington, the reason why I ask you that is because we are sitting on boards regionally that we integrate with and engage with, and what does that look like for you? Sure. So I think just more broadly related to collaborations, something that's really important to me is collaborations within local government and outside of local government with relevant partners across multiple sectors. That's been very, very important to me in my career. I've seen the fruits of that and how valuable it is because at the end of the day as a

[02:26:52] you know a government agency we have our sort of the lane that we work within and we have a certain level of influence by other departments provide other services have other types of expertise other organizations outside of local government and so it's really really important to accomplish the larger objectives that our community is looking for to have those collaborations so I I wanted to say that because that helps to answer your question, which is I'm very open to continuing to build relationships with other organizations, with other entities.

[02:27:26] I've talked with my team. I haven't had a sit-down, like a detailed sit-down with the Chamber of Commerce, for example. I've met the head of the Chamber of Commerce, but that's something where that's going to be really important. Who else should we be meeting with? Who else should we start to build or expand those relationships?

[02:27:45] So very happy, you know, to get ideas from supervisors of entities or organizations. You know, as you noted, board members are on specific organizations. Is there any way the planning office can help to support that? You know, certainly let us know.

[02:28:02] Madam Chair, thank you very much. I just, my last comment is, the reason why I ask that is because we have a wealth of knowledge with NBIA and NAOP. That is our foundation. We have a wealth of knowledge there, but as we grow, the requirements are different, and that's why I asked that question.

[02:28:19] Thank you, Madam Chair. And Supervisor Weir. Just briefly, based on the most recent conversation, I mentioned earlier that, you know, particularly in the Gainesville District, and I suspect in the Brentsville District, they are suspicious of certain entities, and I wasn't going to mention it, but now that it's come up, the Chamber of Commerce has come up,

[02:28:38] And given that the head of the chamber wrote an editorial to the paper that has my resonance in an absolute furor, I would just be careful about how closely you can collaborate and what the impression you give people, particularly in the western end of the county, with respect to catering to the chamber's needs, given the position that they have taken rather publicly and in print.

[02:29:07] Noted. Thank you. Supervisor Bode. Very quickly, it just reminded me, I also wanted to commend you, especially Alex and David, for going to the civic groups and community groups for their proposed or ideas on the zoning ordinance changes.

[02:29:23] I know there hasn't been a lot of substantive feedback given to them yet, but to the point that I just don't want to dovetail that, you know, you are making efforts to go to the community, talk to folks about what they want to see. so i know that sometimes and that perception is real that there is a catering to at least acknowledgement deference to the industry i know that you all are making efforts to talk to the community as well so i wanted to make sure that was known too and wanted to thank you for having your folks to go do that thank you thank you all right that's all for questions thank you so very much miss washington for your presentation and for your time thank you and so i will now hand

[02:29:59] it over to rick canazales with the department of transportation thanks so much um madam chair members of the board rick canazales uh your director of transportation i'd like to thank you for your time for to give the best quadrant some time to talk to you today you uh you can't you can't have mobility economic growth and resiliency without mobility so that's what i'm here to talk to you about today uh you know so uh mobility is is very important to the county obviously and what we do all over we have a very like like Wade talked about earlier today

[02:30:37] we have a small group of 54 individuals I like to call ourselves the lean mean project building machine for this county as we build over a billion dollars worth of projects on those 54 people and only 7.2 million dollars a year budget and just to make sure you're aware about that 7.2 three million dollars of that budget goes directly to paying the electricity for the street lights and giving you new street lights in this county so the reality is our operating budget's about four million dollars. With that, we operate three different divisions. One's headed by Paulo Bolida, our own here, under the planning, and he looks at plan review, he looks at traffic and safety engineering, as well as inspections. We also have our capital divisions, which

[02:31:16] builds these projects for you that we talk about, and they do all the engineering, right away construction, and when we have to do a design, build some alternative delivery. And finally, the folks that keep all the lights on for us over in the financial and administrative side, making sure that we're paying things the right way. Our fiscal side is led by Brittany Martin. With that said, I took a little different approach to what we do. We're looking at transportation by the numbers. Some are very impressive. You look at the number of construction inspections our six inspectors did was 10,000 in the fiscal year. We got 10 grants awarded for

[02:31:53] over $200 million. We took a look at 894 plans. This is a staff of four. Traffic safety requirements, This is also what staff was for, took 708 requests, reviewed them, and responded to them. County-funded streetlights and LED upgrades, you see those updated, but this is a very impressive number.

[02:32:11] We spend $1 to $200 million a year. We have a billion-dollar program. We have about 10 different funding sources. Zero audit findings. Zero. Thank you, Brittany. Shout out. We complete our studies that we say we do. We do some major traffic improvements.

[02:32:27] We do smaller ones, but we do some major ones, and we did nine major ones last year. We completed six major projects, which included the Balsford Road Interchange, Balsford Road Widening, Fuller Heights Roads, Fuller Fuller Heights, Neabsco, Route 1, a big one, and Brentsville Interchange.

[02:32:44] That was a total of $440 million in projects we opened up last year in FY24. It's a very impressive number, and we continue that fourth. We don't stop when we stop. We continue. We have 21 projects in the hopper right now. There are major design projects, and those are moving forward to the next stages of right-of-way construction.

[02:33:01] for you. We do have some issues that we face. We continually face funding issues. We have to make sure that we continually get with our funding partners, make sure we get what they need and what they want. It gets a little bit more complex, a little bit more costly every year, but we continue to get those grants. As I mentioned, the 10 grants for over $200 million last year. Dealing with safety-related issues. That is the biggest thing I will talk to you about today. In this county, we are dealing with major safety issues. We're dealing pedestrian issues, speeding issues, red light issues, school zone issues. I mean, this affects

[02:33:36] every single district in this county, and it's continuing to grow. As we're getting back to these new after-pandemic era numbers, and those car trips are rising, and those times where those cars are out there are varying, and they're not set at peak anymore. They're there all the time.

[02:33:54] We're starting to see that we're dealing with these issues on a consistent basis. There's very little money to deal with these issues statewide. The state is still backlogged in dealing with congestion issues, so they base their funding on congestion. We need to make them rethink this. We need to make the state understand that we have safety issues that are dealing with neighborhoods, smaller streets, major streets, all the streets in our system that are dealing with these issues, and we need to make sure that we get funding allocated to these things from a state, federal, as well as regional level. We also look at positive visibility, and what do I mean by this?

[02:34:28] Every time you have someone come talk to you about transportation, it seems like it's an impact. It's someone we're impacting, something we're doing to them, something we're removing their access. We are taking some property. We are going in through utilities with them. It seems like there's an impact. We want to change that. So we got together with the TMO and came up with a community outreach plan.

[02:34:47] One of the first products of this community outreach plan is an annual report, a transportation annual report that tells us the good things that transportation does. With that said, you are the preview and privy to get our first draft of our first annual report that Paula will be handing out here to you while I continue to talk here to you.

[02:35:09] All right, so that you get a first look. We will be after this meeting posting this and making sure that the community knows it's out there. The community knows the great impacts that transportation is not only doing for the community and for the commuting public and for getting around and for safety, but for economic development, which is what we talk about here today in economic growth, for resiliency and what we do countywide in getting multimodal solutions.

[02:35:34] So it's something that we do, and we want to make sure that we get in front of it. We make sure that we get more and get more people coming to talk to us about the positive aspects of transportation, not only the negative impacts that we create. As you know, in the strategic plan, there is a mobility strategic goal, just specifically to mobility.

[02:35:53] So we're very proud of that, and we take it very seriously. We know that these are the proposed aspects of it and what came out for the key goals for transportation. And you can see the stuff we are already doing to fulfill some of these goals that are four years out, that we're already working just this year, next year, already working on stuff that we're doing to make sure that we fulfill our mission and the goals of the strategic plan.

[02:36:16] Strategic opportunities that we have to take with the current strategic plan in a resilient economy. We have to work with our partners and make sure that we're creating this resilient economy with transportation and get results out of what we do, right? So we build strategically where we foster economic development, but we also build strategically where we can foster redevelopment.

[02:36:37] We build this structure at where we planned and breadbasketed the county at innovation. We support targeted industries that come to this county and assist in acquiring parcels, not only for transportation, but once we're done with those parcels, we assist economic development in making sure that we can, you know, put these parcels together, create from the residual properties that you see in the next target there, create something bigger and make sure that economic development's involved so it can follow the county's visions and what we're looking to put there. We also look at sustainable growth. We try to fit into sustainable growth and how we plan for that. And what we do is we do look at these plans to

[02:37:13] mitigate the development's impact and what's happening with transportation. We construct these multimodal facilities that you see. You were just at a garage opening, a garage opening in Prince William County that had a transit center embedded in it and slug lines for people to carpool. This is the new Prince William County and what we're trying to do to get multimodal and make sure that we have a sustainable as well as improved transportation system. We collaborate with internal and external staff to make sure that we're doing this at the right places, that we're developing at activity centers, that we're developing at the targeted areas that the

[02:37:51] board has told us to go to in these small area plans. We collaborate with a sustainability office to make sure we move some of their emerging mobility technologies, and we collaborate with our transit agencies to do the same with them. We also incorporate green infrastructure into what we can do in our projects in appropriate circumstances, like I just mentioned, in that parking garage. What's in that parking garage? 70 EV stations. So we're working these things, and we're making sure that they're interconnected. We're making sure that we have an intermodal, an interconnected system that's efficient, that gives a resilient economy that is sustainable

[02:38:27] and that we know is good for the public and our businesses. We also have challenges. We talked about funding. We talked about the funding effort. We talked about the additional requirements that our external agencies are creating and our regulatory agencies are creating for us. But we get past that and we continue to move forward in what we do. But meeting project deadlines because of some of those external agencies, it's becoming a little harder, a little more costly, and it's also getting a little harder to staff some engineers.

[02:38:55] Anybody here an engineer? I'm hiring. Please raise your hand. I need one. I already had that guy. I like to end on a nice note as well, and I think all of it was nice.

[02:39:11] I think we're doing a great job in transportation. We're not only in the best quadrant, we are the best department, in my belief, in what we do. not to be modest, but we collaborate with everybody. We collaborate with our federal partners, our regional and state partners, our community, and our development community, as well as the county departments and you, our most important partners, because we have to work together to make things great. So we work together on a lot of things. With the police, we work on traffic enforcement and traffic safety. Fire and rescue, we talk to them about the

[02:39:48] preemption signals about how to do the things that we need to review to make sure that they have appropriate facilities. With the county attorney's office, we work on so many right-of-way cases. We inundate them. I'm sorry, Michelle. I still think your guys are angels for helping us in what you do there. Clerk's office, CAO, and all of you in helping us put these board items here in front of you. We have the most board items. Planning and us are always fighting for first and second, but we have the most board items to get a lot of business done. We do a lot of business.

[02:40:17] We're building a lot of roads. We're doing it through a lot of contracts, a lot of stuff. So we also work with finance and procurement and them getting us our stuff together. And they're angels as well because we have a couple procurement officers that have to deal with 50 active projects. So it's a major job. And then finally, sustainability. We talked a little bit about that and how we communicate with them.

[02:40:34] But we also have all our regional, local, and federal partners that we have. And you have some of them listed there, including all our neighbor jurisdictions that we have to talk through as we go through our program. With that said, I'm here to answer any questions. I know that you know our department well. We've talked to many of you. We've come and presented many times.

[02:40:49] But I did want to give a quick overview and let you know of the highlights and the numbers and the things that we're doing for you in the community. Thank you. Before I call the first supervisor, I'm so sorry. I just have to say this, Christina Wynn. I keep watching you. The look on your face is, like, priceless. I'm sorry to call you out like this, but I don't know, man.

[02:41:06] I think Christina Wynn is, I think she has some thoughts on you being number one. And I can't wait to hear. All right. So, first, we're going to start with Supervisor Angry. Thank you, Madam Chair. Hey, Rick. Hey, just one question.

[02:41:22] You were talking about how, basically, public safety on the roadway is kind of an urgent matter, which it is. So, my question is really on the traffic lights. Who controls the timing of those lights? Because I got to say, I feel like most every light in Prince William County, I will specifically speak for Neabsco District, needs to be re-timed.

[02:41:47] And I'm going to say specifically Benita Fitzgerald at Dell Boulevard. That one lane that lasts about all of five seconds for about 20 cars to try to get through there. What's happening is people are frustrated now, so they're just starting to run that light just because they're tired of sitting there for like five or six cycles.

[02:42:07] Sir, just so you're aware, VDOT does all the light timing. They do it out of their traffic center that's out off of Ballsford Road. Whatever timing issues you have, and anybody here on the board, if you ever see a timing issue or your staff does, please give us a call. We have a direct line to them. We can get in touch with them quickly and make sure that something is looked at, examined, and done on that signal if necessary.

[02:42:27] Okay, and that seems to be during rush hours, you know, during the morning commute and the evening commute. And most of that timing is programmed for the rush hour. They don't let the loops work, which the loops work otherwise to tell who's there. But in those times, it is a programmed rush hour, so we can take a look at that for you and make sure that we get that examined.

[02:42:46] And thanks, because I just feel like someone should really do a re-look into those lines. I think you'll find that's a problem in a lot of intersections. Thanks, Madam Chair. Supervisor Bode. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just very quickly, one, I don't think anyone will ever accuse you, Rick, of being modest or soft-scope.

[02:43:08] So I think we're safe there. Two, thank you for the presentation. Also, to piggyback off of Supervisor Angry, I wanted to highlight and thank you for uplifting the traffic safety. I know that that's been a constant conversation this port has had for at least a few years now.

[02:43:25] I know it's important. My question is, can you give us an update on the comprehensive safety action plan, sort of what the timeline looks like for that? Yes, sir. Actually, we are starting to work with that. Our first move here that we're doing with that action plan is creating a multi, and this is great because we're talking about collaboration today, but creating a multi-agency group that is part of the grant and is actually a requirement of the grant to look into a more comprehensive look at what we're doing and not just examine you know traffic safety and an exact intersection but that's kind of where we're on the process we're

[02:44:01] creating this this multi-agency group right now and we're getting the volunteers in place I'm actually going to serve in for our department as well as our safety engineer but this is something that we're going to be involving the police in, communications in, community safety in, the fire and rescue planning.

[02:44:18] It's a multi-agency affair that we're going to be looking at as we look at this, like I said. It's going to be a comprehensive plan of safety, and we're looking to have it to you, hopefully a draft in the next 12 months or so. I appreciate that. And I know a component of that is going to be community engagement, which I appreciate. Yes, sir. A lot of folks wanted to again also thank you and your team for being at my traffic safety town hall a couple weeks ago.

[02:44:40] Yes, sir. It was very well attended, and I think a lot of folks, to your point earlier, it's on their minds. Because as everyone will well know, one of our first responsibilities is the safety and security of our residents. And frankly, with all the tragedies that you mentioned earlier, a lot of folks are concerned, so I appreciate that.

[02:44:56] My second and final sort of comment slash question is you talked about how we're in a phase now where we're becoming a lot more multimodal. And I know that you have a great chart that you've shown us before where we're doing a lot more multimodal projects. Yes, sir.

[02:45:12] And you're shifting that paradigm away from just road building, getting cars everywhere to more multimodal. Do you see any sort of shift in how, especially after, like you said, post-COVID world and how those traffic patterns are changing, a shift in how we're seeing multimodalism?

[02:45:29] Do we see more people shifting how they jump in on bikes, on buses, those types of things? especially after the pandemic, where frankly, like you said, there's no peak hour anymore. It seems like it's all day. So what are the trends you see in the transportation world? The trends we see, obviously, you know, the county here is divided into certain areas, and some of those areas are more urban than other areas.

[02:45:52] But in the more urban areas, we do see those transitions. We see the growth in the local transit usage. We're starting to see the growth now back in the commuter transit. I know Christina doesn't like to hear that, but there is a growth in that transit in the commuter world as well.

[02:46:09] So PRTC and OmniRide is growing on both sides of that scale this year and showing that we're getting to that post-COVID era again in those things. But again, what we have to do is we have to foster those things through facilities like we have with the garage, like we are doing over at Horner Road parking lot right now, creating more spaces there, over like we're doing in connecting that parking rides to neighborhoods like we're doing on the parkway sidewalk, that kind of stuff to create that multimodal connection.

[02:46:37] But again, you see that multimodal need and that transit usage higher in those urban areas than you do in the classically more rural or suburban areas. Appreciate it. And in terms of speakers, we have Weir, Bailey, Vega.

[02:46:54] Thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. By lean and mean, I'm assuming you mean Palo and not yourself. Oh, no, I don't mean any of us. The lean and mean are the people under Paulo and I, but that's a good point, sir. I'll take it.

[02:47:10] On a more serious note, I mean, we're rapidly approaching budget season, and I think we need to sort of get this out there. Given what's happened in the last couple of years, particularly last year, and the discussions both behind this dais and a regional transportation dais, What impacts or limitations do you see being created, if there are any, by the ever-increasing subsidies that are being demanded by entities like PRTC?

[02:47:43] And when will that or will it create significant issues or difficulties for you to handle specifically surface transportation projects or improvements in Prince William County? Are we nearing a point where it's going to become problematic or is it simply a matter of throwing just even more money at it?

[02:48:07] Again, what I'm seeing is the need for an efficient transit system, sir. We need to make sure that that transit system continues to grow in the areas that it is growing and it will continue to expand, and it continues to expand in the areas where there is a need. What I like to see is more efficiency out of the areas where it's not needed and you're seeing some empty buses going through those areas and making sure that are those routes really needed?

[02:48:29] And maybe that's an internal look into OmniRide to see are we being the most efficient we can in what we do both internally and externally for it. With that said, I would suggest to you that we've already gotten to that point where it's affecting what we can do in the capital world.

[02:48:49] It's already eating in, as you know, last year, starting eating into the money we receive from MVTA on a yearly basis as our share of the 30% money, and it started already eating and eroding into that. So any additional erosion or any additional need that that transit system has, we either have to come up with a sustainable way to fund it or a sustainable way to maintain that system and other funding needs, or we're going to continue to shrink or have that competition between the transit system and the capital needs.

[02:49:23] And there's no way to transfer that? cost that we transfer to them to, we can't offset a portion of the required match to NVTA. We can't use that as part of our... We have been using that as part of our...

[02:49:38] Monies we're sending to PRTC or monies we're not? Money that we are sending to PRTCs currently, as it's starting last year, starting this fiscal year, have started to go to PRTC from our NVTA accounts. But does that... Is that money...

[02:49:56] Let me... Let me... Well, I'll deal with it offline. it's way too complicated for we had a certain amount of pot of money that we had mvta we used to get it all for capital improvements or county needs part of that pot is now going to transit that was not going to before supervisor bailey thank you uh mr vice chair um rick thank you for your excitement i did see christina's face she's like what the heck is going on but uh i i really appreciate um uh how you also make sure when you when you are working with staff and different

[02:50:33] agencies there's a balanced approach across the county there's no west there's no east it's a balanced approach and i think that helps us as well as we build this county um and and as we serve people in the county in terms of mobility thank you ma'am so that balanced approach please don't stop that because you know we'll be in the newspaper son of a thank you ma'am anyway so uh The other thing that I wanted to compliment you on is I see that you have Dumfries down here.

[02:51:01] I didn't see Quantico, but I think that's an opportunity for us as we go forward. And I would invite any recommendations that you have in terms of that and support. Maybe I just don't know the flag or whatever. We represented them through the U.S. Navy, ma'am, since they're part of the U.S. Navy.

[02:51:17] But they are in there, and we do work with them. As you know, we opened up a project for them at Fuller Heights. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So let's just keep doing that. Yes, ma'am. And then the other thing, too, is I appreciate how you moved through with the casino opportunity as well.

[02:51:35] You know, that's going to be a continual growth opportunity in the district, and so I really appreciate how you've been working with them. Thank you, ma'am. Yeah, that. And then the question that I have, the last question is, you have COG down here as a partner, and I appreciate that.

[02:51:52] But the question is, has there been any discussion on DMV Moves in relationship to that project with your department? DMV Moves, ma'am, is more of an effort that's been happening to ensure that the transit agencies are talking with each other, making sure that their systems may be able to work together and finding efficiencies within those systems.

[02:52:12] It also talks about some funding needs that may be needing more to the people inside the Beltway than us. but a lot of the discussion is how do we implement maybe some shared uses, some shared procurement contracts, those kinds of things that we can do together to save some money as transit systems work together in unity throughout their entire region.

[02:52:33] Yeah, and understanding that, I just want to make sure that you are part of those conversations because we're not listed as a stakeholder in that project. Mr. Shorter has been part of those conversations for a long time, and I myself have been part of those conversations as well, ma'am. Thank you. All right, thank you. That's all I got. All right. Supervisor Vega. Thank you, Madam Chair. Rick, we had a conversation, I think it was yesterday, and I highlighted the importance of having your office be a little more involved, and I would even go out and say aggressive when it comes to your involvement on land use matters.

[02:53:05] You raised the issue that we have a lot of safety concerns in this county. Yes, ma'am. We are a growing county. Nobody is denying that we're a growing county, but we also have very serious infrastructure challenges that, one, are outdated, are lagging, we've got to get up to speed. And so when we talk about these safety concerns that you mentioned and that everybody on this dais is very aware of, we cannot ignore the fact that land use decisions are going to impact that, whether for the better or for the worse. I think that it's an opportunity for us to look at the latter and say, for the better. If we're having these issues, how do we work

[02:53:41] together to improve those issues with the focus of ensuring that we don't lose another life because of these traffic challenges that we're having and so uh you know density means more people coming to the county um i'm just madam chair not really asking a question but more so making a statement uh that i will also encourage our planning director miss washington to work closely with rick and your team because it's important we we can't afford to continue to have these tragedies. And I think that in order for us to put forth the best possible project, land use project on the table for our districts and our constituents is to ensure that both of these

[02:54:21] departments are working together so that we can address the infrastructure challenges, but also to ensure that whatever project is coming online or is being proposed mitigates the existing concerns, especially when they're going to make those concerns worse. Does that make sense?

[02:54:36] Understood, ma'am. Yes. Thank you. All right, I don't have any other speakers on the queue, so... I just wanted to remind Supervisor Weir, the Apollo just reminded me that he's the lean and I'm the mean. With that said, I would like to introduce...

[02:54:55] Don't take my mean title away from me. With that, I would like to introduce one of my favorite and one of the coolest directors we have here in the county, one of the most influential also, Christina Wynn. Just a reminder, Christina's department makes us money.

[02:55:14] They don't spend as much money, so I'm just saying. Just a reminder, I spend everybody else's money. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Rick, for that warm introduction. Members of the board, Chair Jefferson, I'm so excited to talk to you today about economic development and tourism.

[02:55:36] First and foremost, if you already just pointed out, Chair Jefferson, our mission is very simple. I like to consider us your chief revenue generator. And really all of the commercial taxes, your meals tax, your property tax, your business digital tax, your occupancy license tax, your TOT tax, we really work towards generating more taxes and bringing more businesses and visitors in to create that tax revenue to fund the rest of schools, libraries, parks, and the quality of life.

[02:56:13] Another important part is creating jobs and economic diversification. We generally were a unique department in that we operate more closely to the private sector because we work so closely with the private sector.

[02:56:29] So we kind of always have one foot in the private sector and one foot in the government, trying to really meet that speed to market and respond to the private sector, but within the constructs of the government protocols and policies and so forth.

[02:56:46] We are always outwardly facing. Sometimes you won't see a lot of our marketing and our promotion because we're doing it in other places. We're doing it in our target markets, whether that's in Boston or Chicago or California.

[02:57:03] You don't see it because you're not there to see it. And then business investment is all across all different aspects. So small business to redevelopment, to workforce, to existing business.

[02:57:19] We're constantly out there in the market trying to generate new leads. And then as well as with tourism being moved in last year, generating more tourism visitor destinations, lots of more group tours.

[02:57:35] And now with the Magnolia opening up soon, hopefully to get more meetings, as well as the casino hotel. This is our organizational structure. Basically, when you, our department is 30 people, 22 of them were really associated with the economic development and eight are on that tourism side.

[02:57:59] Although now a handful of kind of the economic development positions, including myself, really support both aspects of the function of the department. One of the things that I wanted to point out is that the pink highlighted sections, those are things that we were doing five years ago.

[02:58:19] everything that's white is brand new. And so these are not areas, these are areas that have been added and that we continue to grow and add as the county is growing and diversifying and there's more needs that we're trying to address all of that.

[02:58:37] When you look at us, we are a very small but mighty shop as well. Three billion dollars in capital investment projects last year 2.2 2.75 million square feet of new construction and one of the things that I'm most proud of is 1,500 new and retained jobs and that to me is one of the most important numbers because I think creating more employment opportunities for our residents is the best thing that we can do for quality of life because where our residents can actually work where they

[02:59:16] live and it improves their their overall time and quality of life small businesses last year over a thousand one-on-one counseling with small businesses including startups as well as existing small businesses and 446 workshop attendees we also have 47 active performance grants that we have to manage and maintain transparency make sure that the companies are reporting and doing what they said because if you all remember are all of our grants are pay per performance so they don't get the money unless they do

[02:59:53] what they're supposed to do we are doing more events more convenient of people so this year we've five years ago we did zero events now these are events that we actually host and put on ourselves including two governor's announcements this year as well as the new small calibrate small business conference and And then the premier event, which you should all mark your calendars for, your make your mark business appreciation events.

[03:00:25] And then visitor revenue, $48 million in local tax receipts. Again, going back to that chief revenue generator. And then $753 million in visitor spending last year. So when we look at our priorities, my top three core priorities are always going to be the same, and we always have to make sure, if we're going to keep with economic resiliency, that diversifying the economy, creating high-paying jobs, and increasing the commercial tax base,

[03:00:59] that's how we prioritize our work, is that if something can contribute directly to that, that is what we prioritize. And those are across, again, all sectors. So that small business, that's all industry sectors, all targeted industries, redevelopment, and so forth.

[03:01:17] It's all rolled up into that. Looking kind of going forward, we're looking at, it's that time where we need to look at our targeted industries, looking at the emerging industry sectors, looking to see how the market is changing, to see what we can, what maybe are other opportunities for economic growth that we can continue to diversify.

[03:01:39] And then there's several directives and studies regarding agritourism, agribusiness, and maritime. Super excited about these opportunities and exploring what those studies are going to bring to us in terms of, again, just adding to that overall economic base, improving the quality of life, and creating more job opportunities.

[03:02:03] Strategic opportunities, so I take a much bigger perspective when I think about strategic opportunities. So one of the big pieces is establishing a redevelopment fund to help us consolidate land and stimulate new investment.

[03:02:21] There's lots of areas in the county that are targeted. We have targeted redevelopment areas. And so instead of waiting for the private sector to actually step in, can the government come in and actually stimulate by taking a proactive approach? Creating an opportunity, when you look at the land use map and the zoning maps, a lot of our industrial land is on the west side of the county, but there's not really that opportunity on the east side.

[03:02:49] So is there a future, and this is something Ford always looking in the future, that there could become an opportunity that we could actually establish an industrial office park on the east side of the county, very much like Innovation Park, because that has been very successful.

[03:03:07] So can we use that model and do it on the east side, preferably somewhere close to Quantico, so we can capture that defense and government contracting? And then tourism product, many of you may know that lots of our tourism is really based in folks that are passing through or they're just staying one night.

[03:03:30] And so in order to grow that revenue base, we have to increase the number of attractions and really tourism product development so that the visitors have more to do while they're here. And so a lot of our tourism assets tend to be our parks and our rural economy, but are there some private sector where we can encourage private sector product development that helps to extend those stay and helps us to generate more revenue with them spending the night?

[03:04:06] Having the conference spaces, all of those opportunities, whatever we're going to do in the rural economy, making sure that there's more tourist attractions, the maritime, how do we use all of that to really expand our tourism base? We're right now, I believe, ninth in the state for tourism revenue.

[03:04:23] How can we get to be top five, right? Like, that would be a major goal. And then I already talked about the agribusiness and maritime. And then the last, many of you have heard me say this, I still think that we could be a really cool market and create a boutique office building market for really most of the businesses that don't want to go downtown anymore.

[03:04:53] And they want to be here, but they want to have an office that's like downtown, that has all those urban amenities. And so is there an opportunity? I'm always looking for the opportunity to connect with a public-private partnership that maybe we could do some sort of prototypical office building and set the example for the market.

[03:05:14] Some of our challenges, my challenges are always often outward. They're external. They're the market. I'm not going to talk about all of these. I'm only going to hit on a couple of them. Obviously, we all know about the limited affordable land. It is very challenging.

[03:05:30] We're trying to continue to work with developers and even the data centers themselves when they come in. Can they carve off pieces of land for industrial flex product? You know, do they have to really use all of that land? Is there an opportunity for us to constantly being able to support our small businesses?

[03:05:52] The economic conditions and the financial markets, they keep fluctuating. some of our projects our town center projects they're you know they kind of keep going slow start slow start and so that's always a challenge is we're kind of navigating that to keep those projects on track um finding the needle in the haystack prince william county is a very unique location because we are the lower cost alternative in northern virginia but we are not as low cost

[03:06:25] as the rest of Virginia, and our land and our product tends to be more aligned with the rest of Virginia in places like Stafford or Henrico or so forth, so we find ourselves competing with those communities, but they're cheaper. So finding the needle in the haystack is finding that company that needs to be in northern Virginia because they want to be close to the capital and they have some sort of reason but they want the type of product that we have which is that industrial market because anything else is going towards the office and is going

[03:07:02] to be inside the beltway so it's always we're doing a lot more with lead generation and trying to be more strategic instead of the you know why casting a wide net and putting out capturing a whole bunch of fish is that we're you know doing more sharpshooting or spearfishing or something like that and then collaborations lastly we work with everybody we look for opportunities everywhere where we can build we look at opportunities to to help our other departments just recently we seized the opportunity move chamber put on their

[03:07:41] very first move conference we seized that opportunity to be one of the premier sponsors and we're actually being able to bring in the office of procurement in with us at the table so that they could be without any cost to them to interact with the attendees like the move chamber most of the membership is actually Prince William County residents and so now we're kind of at that foundational spot so we work with all of the chambers we obviously work

[03:08:15] with all of the county agencies I'll be honest I cannot do my team cannot do what we do without these people and especially this team and I'm gonna get choked up because I really am sorry because they really I can't do it without them and we're all really growing the same way trying to make economic development happen we work a lot with our the school system we work with the public schools especially the CTE programs the career technical ed on all our workforce and then of course we work with a higher ed and then we work with

[03:08:54] our state agencies generally the Virginia Department of Community Development Virginia Economic Development Partnership Virginia Tourism Corporation and then we support two boards the tourism advisory board and the Industrial Authority of Prince William County and I believe that's it yes eight so ten okay all right thank you so very much i actually just want to ask a quick question on um slide 37 it's a small thing but misperception and reputation is listed i just want to hear a

[03:09:30] little bit more about that because it's always good for us to be aware of how we're perceived in the market so that we could take steps to correct that yeah i think um so if we can look back and if we had did like more of like a regional survey you know going back 20 15 10 five years and it would be interesting if we would have kind of done this to see what that perception was you know 10 years ago five years ago um prince william county was really considered

[03:10:00] way out there um and not really um how do i put it not it's it bedroom community sleepy right not you know, nothing happening out there. The pandemic had happened. We have gotten a lot of activity. So people are noticing us. Our department, we're also like your outwardly marketing department. So we're constantly doing the earned media and trying to get more positive

[03:10:34] news stories across all the different industry sectors. And so that's helping. And so I would say in terms of misperceptions i think inside the beltway the folks that are kind of inside that beltway they have a they definitely have a perception of of communities that are outside and in those suburban areas it's not always a positive perception and so a lot of what we do and being really regional being more active in the regional groups and the this board has your efforts with actually being more active in these regional groups are hugely changing those

[03:11:13] perceptions and so everything that everybody collectively is doing is making it more and more positive but it you know it's always a challenge because until people come here and they see the development they just they don't really realize and they have assumptions and they only read stuff in the news. Thank you so much. I'll go to Supervisor Franklin. Hey, thank you for the presentation. And of course, I've always said that we have the best economic development director in

[03:11:49] the Commonwealth. And I think that those numbers prove that. I do want to talk about our waterfront property and activating the waterfront. I think most of it, if not all, is owned by private or corporate I think we got what 14 miles of waterfront on the eastern end and I know we've been having some conversations with some developers about how can they activate some of the waterfront and you know there are various challenges that could go along with that and we've talked about

[03:12:23] having the recreational ferry system before that can create some revenue but and I think Supervisor Bodie issued a directive to this very point I know I've been talking to some marina owners who who want us to get more involved in economic development for their properties can you just talk a little bit about how we can be better on the waterfront discussion only because it's something that not many other counties in northern virginia have yeah and so we really have i've used goldmine a couple of times today but we really do have a gym particularly on the eastern end with

[03:13:01] regards to the waterfront but we obviously need to be smart about it i know i think dominion owns some of it going down to possum point but how do we have that conversation and really activate and make this a marina community so um thank you supervisor franklin um in this budget cycle there was an additional 125 000 that was put in for a maritime industry study um and so in august you may recall we i kind of did a listening tour with all the board members to

[03:13:35] talk both about the agritourism as well as the maritime industry to understand what everybody was looking at. So we're in the process right now of bringing on a consultant to look at that. I will say it's going to be challenging, right, because, you know, there are only little areas.

[03:13:55] But I think what we need to kind of change our mindset, because all you really, I mean, think of the wharf, right? the wharf is really not that big or wide you don't need that much to create destinations so working with that consultant to find where those little maybe spots are along our waterfronts that we can activate and do like we don't need all 14 miles of waterfront but we just got to figure out kind of that that needle in the haystack and I'll just say and long before I got here I

[03:14:30] know that there was a restaurant off of Neabsco Road kind of going or right off of that stretch of land going towards Lee Sylvania you know it may be good to talk to and those guys are still around they just don't own the restaurant but it may be good to talk to some people that have owned some of these restaurants that were on the waterfront that aren't here anymore see what their challenges were and see how we can you know kind of work with some new owners yeah and it may come from Edoff and using Edoff in a way to help with the marina economy and so I know that you're

[03:15:07] looking into that but it's just a gem that we have and I hope that we can really activate that at some point. Yep thank you. Supervisor Bode. Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you Christina for the presentation and all your efforts. Piggyback Officer Franklin again 100% agree you know we have a unique asset in our waterfront. I know I share the Potomac with Woodbridge and Potomac

[03:15:32] So whatever we can do to continue having those conversations, and I think one thing I hope comes out, and we talked about this when you met with my office, is similar to the barrier study you were already doing around swam business, things like that, is a barrier study to these maritime businesses, things like that.

[03:15:47] because we know where they exist. We know in other parts of the Commonwealth, they're thriving. And like you just said, I really appreciate you saying that. You don't really need a lot of waterfront land to really activate and bring these a very robust ecosystem of waterfront businesses. You really only need a little bit to have that destination.

[03:16:04] So I appreciate that. A couple of questions. You had a great chart earlier that sort of had the numbers about, you know, the retained and traded businesses over the last fiscal year. Do you, in somewhere in your documents, have sort of a trend over time of the businesses that have grown in the county year over year?

[03:16:27] Of existing businesses? Existing businesses and new businesses. So, I mean, we have in terms of, you know, because remember, these are projects that we've directly worked on. So if you're looking at our trends in terms of what, yes, we have that.

[03:16:43] not to be Rick but the last five years have been amazing right incidentally I've been here five years so just want to say but yeah so you can see because like prior to 2019 for example you know we were definitely under a billion a year if not a half a billion year of capital investment and maybe three or four hundred um new jobs and retained jobs so we've we're consistently

[03:17:22] have um quadrupled quadrupled the jobs number and then uh pretty much either doubled or tripled the capital investment number and i appreciate it because i think that story needs to be told too that we do have this sort of year-over-year job growth business growth because again to your point there's a huge i would call a misconception now that we're just where people sleep and they live and they go and they work somewhere else.

[03:17:46] I think that there's a story to tell that, no, we are starting to bring jobs or people are now starting to at least work where they live and they don't have to just go somewhere else to find gainful employment. On that same sort of vein, are you tracking at all average salary data?

[03:18:03] Do we see any sort of trends in terms of the average salaries? Are they going up? Are they stagnant? What does that look like? No, they are definitely going up. So in the terms of the projects that we work on, because we work on such diversity of business, so we may work with a small business, a distribution business, or life science engineering, those salaries widely vary.

[03:18:28] But if you were to look at the average salary data as a whole, it is continuing to track upwards. Appreciate that. so two things are I think again I think there's a story to be told there that again people are able to find employment in Princeton County to be able to live yes but I think in terms of going back to affordable housing I think there's a synergy there where we're starting to track those salaries we can start working with the housing department and frankly planning to start to talk to developers about how can we make sure we're creating housing that matches the salary levels of the jobs at creating, right? You know, back two years ago, I had a project in my district, Lake Point, which is

[03:19:07] now off of Caton Hill and Telegraph Road, where it's a stone's throw away from the new Kaiser building. Well, when we were working with a developer, we said, hey, can you make sure as you're doing your market analysis of your rents that you'll be able to match a starting nurse's salary, a doctor who's two or three years, so they can literally walk to their job at that Kaiser facility. So having more of the connections, as you said yourself, you can't do your work without these folks, but I think there is even more partnerships, especially if you talk about the intersection between economic development and housing. I think there's a lot there that can be done. And if I could, Madam Chair, last two questions.

[03:19:45] You talked about commercial women. I'm probably going to be borrowing a page out of Supervisor Gordy's book, but how have you been able to, alongside sort of trying to get the data center developers to carve off pieces of land, have you been able to look at strategies around bringing some of those saving some of that land for other types of businesses so uh to be honest i have not been successful um but i keep asking right um so every time that um a developer comes and comes to our office and wants to talk with us i mean the first thing um that we ask for is all right well can you

[03:20:22] carve can you reorganize can you you know re lay out the plan and carve off a piece um to you know to sell to St. John's or Pruitt's or Becknell so they can do, you know, small business development. And a lot of times by the time they get to our office, they almost already have a site plan, they already have it designed, and so we're too late. And so if we can get there sooner and carrying that message out more and more, I think we could be more successful because we've got to do it before they're putting pencil to paper. I know I'm out of time, so I'll go my second round.

[03:20:59] Yeah, there was just one last question. I know that I had a directive in earlier in the year about looking at the targeted industry list. So you mentioned emerging trends. Sparks was emerging. And where are you on that? And what kind of emerging industries are we looking at?

[03:21:22] So I will have some – working on some correspondence, but in terms of laying out all the status of the directives. But with that one specifically, there's technically two parts to it. And so I'm teaming up with finance.

[03:21:38] Michelle Attree is going to need to take the part about pulling the data center out. And specifically, we made the assumption that – because data centers are part of information communications technology target industry, is that you're only pulling out target industry or data centers and not the whole sector.

[03:21:59] And so Michelle has a plan to look internally and what would those impacts be. On the other part, looking at the emergent sectors, we have to update the target industry study and really pull in a consultant to do all of that work again.

[03:22:21] So the last time we did it was six years ago. At that time, the study cost about $125,000. And so I think with, you know, inflation and everything like that, it's going to be that and more. And I think finance might need some money for the data center analysis.

[03:22:38] And so the next step is to actually come and ask for money from EDOF. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much. Supervisor Gordy. Thank you, Madam Chair. A couple of points and questions.

[03:22:54] So lately, I've had a few conversations with folks who are wanting to expand their business here in Prince William Brayner, but the only thing they fit into is M1, according to our current zoning. And M2 seems to be pretty restrictive.

[03:23:15] From your perspective, how much does that hurt us? Because if you go into M1, you're now competing with data. and right now data according to one developer is pushing for five million an acre yeah that's the selling point now um which you know when you think about okay if that then becomes the valuation for all land and then you know not only you pay more in the front now you're paying more in taxes so what do you see as the need for us to create a much more friendly environment for those

[03:23:50] other types of businesses that we're trying to reach from a zoning perspective i am an economic developer um so i will defer in terms of like what what needs to be done but i will answer the first part it is problematic and we lose businesses to stafford and these other and call pepper and fuck here and so forth because we don't have that and they that we don't have the land or we don't have the right zoning in place they don't want to go through a process it costs they're a small business they don't want to go through an entitlement process it costs too much they

[03:24:26] need to be able to come in and have you know buy right uses and move in so we we do we lose a lot of businesses that way i i don't ask me i do not have it documented how many businesses we've lost okay well and i did have this conversation with uh with uh miss washington last week because this is repeatedly coming up literally in the last two weeks I've had three businesses come to me and one is a fast-growing business that's in four different locations and just needs

[03:25:04] five acres yeah now I am working with a data center to try to get them some land and so we'll see how that works out on the 10th but so that'll be our first attempt at trying to take some land from a data and say give us some land for another type of business so i'm hopeful um the um but that's something i think we need to prioritize and and and and i don't know to where we are in that process and whether beginning where but we literally we are losing business because we don't

[03:25:41] have the right zoning the ability for these businesses to fit in an m2 non-industrial this more light industrial, but right now that only fits in M1 and competes with people who have a heck of a lot deeper pockets than they do. All right, shifting. The center of gravity for Northern Virginia has always been D.C. I think that center of gravity is crumbling. We are aligned on two

[03:26:17] major access routes into Northern, because all roads point to D.C., right? So as we're starting to look at and there was an article just yesterday about how much of the federal workforce has moved into rural virginia and that fairfax county interior you know from prince william county dc tens of thousands of federal employees have shifted to other parts of the commonwealth to as far away as louisa county franklin county near roanoke um because of the remote work um so

[03:26:55] So now we have an administration that's talking about further pushing out, getting rid of federal entities within the D.C., within D.C. itself. So what do you see as sort of the opportunities for us to capitalize on this changing dynamic, given the fact, as you said, we were always viewed as the excerpt.

[03:27:21] Well, now people, the excerpts are now all the way to Richmond. They're all the way to West Virginia. So how do we now create that opportunity to connect people back to their federal workforce, their federal job, without having to go all the way into D.C.?

[03:27:37] Yeah. So I would, you know, kind of going back to a little bit of kind of the second and the fifth one, right, is one of the challenges that we have.

[03:27:53] So three challenges with federal government, right, is first the GSA prospectus. generally eliminate Prince William County from any of their procurements because we don't have access to Metro.

[03:28:09] So we get eliminated for any of these agencies when they're looking to be here. So one of the things that has to happen is that the federal OMB, that needs to change, and that's not something that I can do.

[03:28:25] It's not. The second is that, again, our development community builds the same kind of product, office product.

[03:28:45] It's a very vanilla product. It tends to more focus on medical office and doesn't really cater to tech or government contracting, what folks are looking for. And so that is why, like, I would love this opportunity if we could find, like, the right partner to do a prototype building.

[03:29:05] And if it's successful, then the developers will hopefully catch on and they'll start to build it, right, because they'll see that we were successful at it. But I think it's the 95 corridor is really where what you're talking about.

[03:29:21] That is our biggest opportunity. I mean, it's the defense corridor from Fort Belvoir to Quantico. All of those federal employees are coming up 95, more than they're coming out 66. Most of them, I think, are coming up 95. And if we have that opportunity to create, like, regional, working with the federal government and GSA, like, almost co-working hubs for multiple agencies to actually co-locate in a really cool, dynamic office building, along the 95 corridor, I mean, that could be a great opportunity and it would be a win-win for

[03:29:59] the federal government because we would help solve their issue of federal workers not wanting to come back to the office. So. Yeah. And, and Madam Chair, I know my time is up and I just will close by saying, yeah, I think, you know, trying to understand what next looks like and, and as it relates to all of these opportunities um um ask about luring gsa oh bring getting gsa here we'll get them here uh so maybe that's what we need to do so we um a couple years ago we did um host a tour for the gsa national capital region which incidentally it's funny a lot of the staffers

[03:30:39] actually live in prince william county right and so we gave them a tour of potomac shores and the landing and all of that area and showed them this opportunity like you could you know we can do it here we have a secure site two million square feet potentially at potomac shores right on the water it's beautiful well and and the point i was going to make um was the challenge is and and i've said this and i'll continue to say this we've allowed the developers to create our vision instead

[03:31:14] of us leading the developers to our vision i have sat down with a couple of developers and i said i need something other than data i need something other than distribution because we have all these other opportunities you have the resources to help us get there but i need you to think broader get away from the data get away from distribution and give us an opportunity to go after those bigger things that helped put prince william county on the map and so i think that's part of you know is having a little bit of discipline with these developers and forcing and pushing them into uh giving us helping them understand what our vision is and helping us get there so

[03:31:53] thank you for that madam chair thank you all right thank you supervisor bailey thank you madam chair actually it's been five and a half years okay but um the um i'm glad you're doing the study for the industry changes i think that's going to help us a lot and according to your marketing view, we are Northern Virginia. Correct. We are Northern Virginia. So, you know, that's a part that we need to keep saying. But I want to go back to something you said about the boutique office spaces. Is there a potentiality for us to use some of these vacant buildings to create

[03:32:32] that opportunity in the world that we live in? I'm not sure because I would have to look in that because generally the vacant properties we have just probably need to be torn down.

[03:32:52] Really? Yeah. Let's do it. Oh, okay. Really? Okay. Yeah, so we would have to look at that. And we really, we have a, overall, we have a very low vacancy across all of our product sectors. So we really don't have, you know, we're not, we are so lucky to be in Prince William County because our counterparts in D.C., Arlington, and Alexandria, and Tyson's, And, you know, they're all, Fairfax are developing such high, experiencing such high occupancy, office vacancy rates.

[03:33:27] We don't have that. Okay, that's great. So the other question I had, and you may have said this when I went out, what is Endeavor 234? Oh, I'm sorry. So that is the programmatic name for the science accelerator, the county science accelerator, sorry. So it's a program name.

[03:33:45] Because Endeavor is the road that it's on, and 234 is Prince William Parkway. So it's really cool and science-y for, you know. I'm getting excited. Yeah. All right. All right. That's all I got, Madam Chair. Thank you. Supervisor Weir. Thank you, Madam Chair.

[03:34:02] I'll come back to the federal aspect in your next presentation. Okay. I wanted to point a couple of things out. You know, early on, you were talking about, you know, developing a new industrial market. And my sense is this, you know, for years we have put our eggs in one basket.

[03:34:20] We are still getting applications for new data centers. We are still getting applications for increased height, more space, and Supervisor Gordy is right, and I'll continue to beat this horse. It's pricing everybody else out of the market. My greatest fear is that we are repeating the mistake that Fairfax made years ago.

[03:34:40] Their mistake wasn't with data centers. Their mistake was with office parks. And they've got office parks over in Westover that were built that never had a single tenant. They've been standing there vacant for a decade or more. And I have a fear that we're going to have that.

[03:34:55] We may have buildings approved or buildings constructed for a variety of reasons that may never be actually utilized. And in the interim, we are reducing the available property for other types of development.

[03:35:12] I think we need to steer away from that. And what I would ask you is this. If we're removing data centers from a targeted industry, are you working with planning, providing any input interplay on both the zoning ordinance updates so that you can put in newer or put in definitions and change or accommodate those new definitions within particular zoning categories for things that we didn't plan for or didn't exist at the point in time that the zoning ordinance was last updated.

[03:35:49] Are you also going to or have you been asked to interplay at all with respect to the overlays, you know, where you would potentially carve areas out, leave it open to other types of development, reserve it for something else? Just food for thought.

[03:36:06] I think the other problem we've got, I don't know how you're going to address that, is that typically in Prince William County, we have a set number of developers, builders, take your pick. They do all the work in the county. And I'll be honest with you, they're stuck in their small world of cookie-cutter models.

[03:36:25] It doesn't matter if it's commercial or residential. There's no originality. There's no willingness to think out of the box. They won't do anything beyond their current comfort zone because that's what we've always done. Ergo, 10 million townhouses.

[03:36:42] Ergo, the same type of commercial development over and over again, strip malls and otherwise. Quite frankly, I think the only way we're going to address that problem is to put them on the spot by reaching out to somebody from outside of this county. And that goes to both commercial and residential.

[03:37:01] You know, there are a variety of other, you know, I'll stick to the residential market because it's a little easier for me to describe. There are a variety of housing types, both denser, less dense, that you see in other jurisdictions, particularly those much like us.

[03:37:20] Enrico County, for example, you've got a short pump. Short pump has a much wider diversity of unit types than this area has ever seen. I mean, I can count about a dozen of them off the top of my head, half of which were never built in this county and never proposed.

[03:37:37] And the blank stare I get from the developer is, well, we've never done that before. We don't know if we can make it work. Well, if they can make it work in Short Puff, they can make it work here. And let me tell you, some of those units are selling for more than the townhouses, so I think they'd be pleasantly surprised. But in order to force the issue, I think your office is going to have to reach outside of this county to try and secure a different outlook, a different path forward, some other options rather than the stale sort of development pattern that we have here.

[03:38:15] And it's going to irritate some developers in this county, and quite frankly, I don't give a damn. We need to think out of the box. They need to think out of the box, and if they can't do it on their own, then I think your office is going to need to encourage them by bringing in somebody from the outside to sort of push them a little bit for what it's worth.

[03:38:35] Absolutely agree. Keisha Hall, my extraordinaire business development manager, she does a lot, especially within our redevelopment, of outreaching to a lot of developers and trying to pitch them to come in this area. So we have been doing that, but again, it's hard.

[03:38:55] But you've got to get out there and you've got to develop those relationships. The other thing that I would mention is, you know, when you think about a home developer, when they buy the land, they're doing the pro forma on a number of units that they think they can get.

[03:39:13] If you're changing the unit type or the unit style, that changes the pro forma. So you've got to get them and make sure that you're telling them before they ever buy that land that you want more diversity. So they're using the right model to model the number of homes.

[03:39:29] And I completely agree to you. The problem is our development community is beyond the capability, in my view, of thinking that way. Well, it's either a townhouse or a two-over-two or something similar that we've always built before. We're not going to consider anything new because we don't know whether we'll make money or not.

[03:39:49] Or, you know, we'll have to actually do the calculations on the density and the ROI. And, you know, that's too much work and it's too risky. Well, it works everywhere else in the Commonwealth, so I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for them. All right. Thank you. And then we have Supervisor Angry.

[03:40:09] Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, I'm still out here. Hey, listen, thank you, first of all, for that presentation. Look, I want to say, you know, this county has changed, okay? And so if you want to take a model that's different for this county, You can take the courts district, and you can follow what that Whole Foods Grocery is doing in there, and you can follow what those anchor restaurants are going to do in there.

[03:40:33] Christina, you'll play a big role in that. You can follow what we've done with that intersection and the change in that intersection because these are the things that we're doing to really make this next Prince William. And the ESCO is your district, too, board members. So when you want to ride around through there and look at that and see what's going on, please do so.

[03:40:50] Because if you want to take that model, move it into the districts that you represent, that's the model that you do. that we need now i will say yeah i need to see more developers i actually need to see minority developers in this county i haven't seen a minority developer build anything in this county as of yet so it's something that we should be investing in as well i'm not going to sit here and pick on our developers that are here because they've given a lot to this county and what we have now is it time to change that model or modify that model possibly so i think that's a bigger discussion that this board needs to have but what this county has done is gotten to the place where we are thus far. I am very satisfied with it. Do I want to see some more improvements? Yes, I do.

[03:41:30] Do I think this board can do that in a discussion that we need to have? Yes, we can. So let's have that discussion. Madam Chair, thank you for the time. All right. Thank you so much. We're going to wrap this up. Certainly. I just wanted to point out something, a conversation quickly that I had with Supervisor Ingrid and I did a town hall last night in the Abso District. And someone asked me about overdevelopment and overdevelopment means different things to different people i've really come to that conclusion because we do have like let's just say a housing shortage and for some people you know you build a house oh my god you know like you know that's too much density we have

[03:42:05] to be really smart strategic and think as a board of how we grow not obviously just residential but commercial and people are right you know we have always had the same things but at the same time we also don't have some of the same amenities as our neighboring counties and that's something that we've got to strive towards. So, I mean, economic development, I know that you guys have done a lot and we're asking a lot more of you, you know, moving forward about, you know, again, how do we continue to grow? What do we have, you know, have to offer? And I think we have to be more aggressive in what it is that we're asking from developers. And let's be honest, what we accept, okay? And that's partly on this board. We can't just accept anything that someone comes to us with. We need

[03:42:43] to ask questions and poke holes in it, which is why I'm very excited about our conversation around the landing later because that was born out of, you know, desire to move away from the indoor sports complex and see what else that we can do. It was born out of desire of willingness to say no to something and seeing what else we can do better. So that's also a challenge for the board. It's what else can we do? We need to poke holes in things. We need to ask questions. We need to see what else is out there and what better we can do. I see someone else in the queue. I'm just going to say you already had your twice, so we're going to move on. One quick, okay, Tom.

[03:43:20] I do want to commend you guys on what you do to help our businesses get grants. All right. And you guys do incredible work on that. So I just wanted to say kudos and thank you for supporting our local businesses that way. Thank you.

[03:43:36] Thank you very much, everyone. Thank you. So I just want all you guys to know that we're going to take votes at the end of the night. And whoever, what department has the most votes, y'all actually get funding for next show. This is the Hunger Games. Did I mention that I have swag for everyone?

[03:43:54] You don't have swag, Rick. I don't need 10,000 more water bottles, thank you. I can use about 50 more. All right, so thank you so very much. And our next. And then I have the pleasure of introducing our Director of Development Services.

[03:44:13] I'm a huge fan of hers. I've watched her take over and blossom in her role, Mandy Sfina. Thank you. Thank you. And just quickly for supervisors, a time check. It's about five. We have two more agency presentations, and then we are going to go into the landing.

[03:44:30] We have our supervisor's time in closed meetings. So I just wanted to give everyone kind of a little time check. All right, thank you. Madam Chair, members of the board, Mandy Spina, Director of Development Services. I will say that this month marks my one year as the director. I'm also what I call the middle child of our group.

[03:44:46] I have Rick and Christina as our older children. I have Katab and Tanya, and then I'm right in the middle, but not overlooked. So I think we have no lack of personality in our group, but really excited to present really what Development Services does and some of the key highlights moving into next year.

[03:45:04] So just a quick overview. Development Services focuses on the compliance with the Virginia Uniform Statewide Billing Code, as well as conformance with the county's DCSM, the zoning ordinance, and the subdivision ordinance. But one particular thing to note is we do serve as the lead agency for development.

[03:45:21] So if you think about development, the number of agencies and processes and touch points, sometimes our industry members, our customers, don't know where to go. We do serve as that lead agency. If there's a question or there's a multi-agency issue, we do serve as the collaboration point. We can find the answer and get it to you, or we can find you the person who can get you that answer.

[03:45:43] So moving into our organizational structure with 156 budgeted FTEs, I believe most of you have met my new deputy director, Ricky O'Connor. He is a gem. He is so customer-focused and has been such a benefit to the department. He has 20-plus years in and just is very customer-focused.

[03:46:03] So he has been a huge wealth of knowledge for the department. But one thing I want to point out in our organizational structure in blue, the customer liaison function. So that serves, if you come into the development services building, we have the early assistance desk that's in the atrium as well as the record center.

[03:46:19] Both of those serve any customer that comes into the building, but they are housed within development services. So in terms of our regulatory functions, if I work from the bottom up in terms of process, the zoning administrator handling zoning administration, proper administration, and the board of zoning appeals.

[03:46:35] Joyce Fadley is the assistant director of land development. her group manages the site plan process, as well as bonds and escrows. Eric Mays, serving as the county's building official, manages everything related to construction, and also handles the building code appeals board.

[03:46:53] Looking at development services by the numbers, so just in totality, in fiscal year 2024, over 105,000 customer deliverables. Many opportunities for customer touch points. That's not all encompassing of what the department does.

[03:47:09] you think about we also have building code enforcement there are touch points there various walk-in customers that we may have that are not all inclusive of this number but really highlighting just at the top on the left 388 small business cases opened just looking year to date from january to september of 2024 we're at 283 small businesses opened in the county through this program we also had 62,820 building inspections performed and 99% of those are on the day requested.

[03:47:44] So just a lot of customer interaction, a lot of customer touch points. Moving through to our key priorities, I like to think that on the left top with our customer, that is what we keep in mind with anything we do. Regardless of our partnership or the efficiencies or performance, it's with our customer in mind because they are the beneficiary of our services.

[03:48:04] But really wanted to point out in terms of our customers, We are looking at doing some enhanced small business education and outreach efforts. We realize that not all of our small business customers fall into our project management program, but how do we educate and outreach to a larger portion of that community?

[03:48:21] Continued collaboration with our industry partners and stakeholders, and also moving that out to residents. What is their experience? So not just our industry developers, contractors, what are our residents experiencing as well? When we talk about efficiency, a key priority is really streamlining the permitting process.

[03:48:38] I've had multiple conversations with your agencies around what that looks like. We are excited about the upcoming collaboration with the Chamber of Commerce and the Commercial Development Committee. And then when we look at performance, one thing I wanted to highlight is residential solar permitting. We've had a long two and a half year plus journey with residential solar permitting.

[03:48:57] On October 31st, we implemented Solar App Plus, which is the automated permitting system that allows same day instantaneous permitting for residential solar projects. We're the third and largest jurisdiction within the Commonwealth and fifth on the East Coast to implement.

[03:49:12] But out of this is also bearing conversations that our building official is having with industry on how can we model other processes like SolarAPP into other parts of our workflow? Is there a way for us to look at other versions of automated permitting? So we're having that discussion now specifically with our commercial development committee on how we can expand those services.

[03:49:34] And when we look at strategic opportunities, again on the top left, everything we do is to look at being open for business. So any item underneath of this, whether it's the permitting process improvement initiative, industry partner collaboration, development flow, process mapping, development agency collaboration or innovation and technology is all geared towards the main strategic opportunity of being open for business.

[03:49:56] One thing I wanna point out that we are rolling out in 2025 is an education and outreach effort to understand that people may not know in the process where they are in development. So we're largely gonna focus on ePortal, which is our customer application center, to give different flow charts showing the entire process and making it a required field that you look at that document so that you understand where you are in the process.

[03:50:22] But then also what I'm gonna call our development kickoff series. We're gonna start with monthly hot topic sessions. They'll be virtual. Arlington runs a similar program where it's focused on a code change or maybe it's we bring in the zoning administrator or we bring in planning or transportation to talk about a specific issue.

[03:50:41] Then we're gonna roll into quarterly sessions. We'll call those Development 101. It will feature all of our development agencies from entitlement through to occupancy. And it's really focused on our new to Prince William developers and contractors so they can understand some of the nuances of our systems and get an understanding of who we are as development agencies.

[03:51:00] And then mapping out with an annual conference. So we're working with our transformation management office on what that looks like and how we roll that out, but very excited for some of the strategic opportunities as we work through that. When we look at our challenges, we are a regulatory agency and that has its challenges.

[03:51:18] We are dealing with codes and ordinances that we have to uphold, while also providing a very high level of customer service. But it does have the challenges as you're working through some of those codes and ordinances. filling vacancies with qualified staff. I think you've heard that throughout.

[03:51:33] One thing that we are going to be working on as the schools continue to build up their trade programs is to work with them on how we can integrate that into our workforce. It is, the trades are not something that are as popular as they used to be in the past decade, and we are struggling to fill some of those positions.

[03:51:49] We tend to see a cyclical movement within the department where you may come in in our development technician series or as an inspector, and when that vacancy, if you get promoted, it's a vacancy within. But we are gonna be partnering with the schools to work through what that could look like.

[03:52:04] Online submission challenges. Post-COVID, going from face-to-face interaction, changing on the fly to what our virtual world looks like now has been a challenge. And as we continue to work with our collaboration partners to identify ways to make that better and more streamlined.

[03:52:20] But that is a challenge that we currently face. We're looking at ways to bring more people into the building and how we manage that hybrid workflow. And then overcoming the perceptions of permitting. I don't sugar coat it. I don't think when we talk about pulling a permit, people pull out their pom poms and they cheer.

[03:52:36] I'm going through it myself on projects in my own home. I'm not in Prince William County right now, but it is a challenge and that perception is there and that's real for a lot of people. And so understanding that people are where they at in that point in their journey, and it's the most important project that they're dealing with in that moment in time.

[03:52:52] Whether it's the small business opening or it's the resident that's doing something in their home, That is the most important thing going on in their life. And so we understand that perception. I would like to say that my main goal is to switch that perception and make permitting fun.

[03:53:07] I know that that may never be reality, but that would be my main goal. But really looking at, when we talk about staff, as I look at the online submission challenges, for our staff it's been a hurdle too. The learning curve and the collaboration piece that is missing from having that partnership a plan reviewer come up when someone's submitting an application in that dialogue that happens that doesn't exist in the online world so how do we get to reigniting our purpose and that's been a really big focus for our staff is when we look out our purpose is the projects that are happening the residents that were that were helping and i had a really heartwarming example of

[03:53:47] a resident who had a car go into her home and she was displaced from her home and the amount of care that our staff took to walk her through that process and she came in and wanted to meet every single one of the staff who helped her and just to say I'm back in my home and and I think us realizing that is our purpose that is our end goal and just pushing that message through is a continual approach I'll take and then our collaborations as you've heard throughout the rest of our quadrant the development agencies the Chamber of Commerce the commercial development committee and enhanced collaboration with economic development on small

[03:54:23] business. I really focus on our neighboring jurisdictions. Oftentimes we'll hear that Prince William is slower in this or we don't have this process. I do use that jurisdictional group to say, how do you operate this process? How are you doing this? Is there a way we could do this better? And we collaborate a lot on those. And then our focus groups with internal and external partners, specifically MVBIA and NAOP. And with that, I'll take any questions.

[03:54:52] All right. Thank you so very much. Does it look like we have? Oh, all right. Supervisor Bailey. I'm the only one. Mandy, Mandy. Hello. You rock. Thank you. You rock. Because you've had a lot of challenges to overcome, and you've been given by the older children and the younger children to overcome those. But you really do rock because you've, I think it's because of your positive approach to it, and I really do appreciate that. So the The question I have is, do you find that you are dealing with a lot of old challenges is the reason why you can't get over the hump?

[03:55:32] Is that it, or have you worked through those things? I think they're just challenges that, in general, relate to development. It's the realization that, in terms of a project, time is money and nothing is fast enough. And so we've realized that, and we realize the external hurdles.

[03:55:49] So I don't think it's old challenges and new challenges. I think it's continual challenges, and those will always be there. But meeting the customer where they're at is a changing point in time. And where they're at is different five years ago, it's different today, and it'll be different in two years. So that continual focus and how we adapt is key.

[03:56:08] But it is development is development, and sometimes it has to stop, and sometimes it proceeds, and that's their back and forth. I appreciate that, and I also appreciate the fact that you're working regionally. You know, Prince William County in the past has not worked regionally, and I think that you're thinking out of the box, so we appreciate that.

[03:56:29] And then the last thing I have is perception is reality. The key word that you used was purpose, understanding what our purpose is. And are you feeling in your department now that you've made some significant changes? One of the hidden jewels, you have a lot of hidden jewels, but Rick is a hidden jewel.

[03:56:45] Yes. Yeah, because he works through with the customer. like everybody, but he's a hidden jewel. The purpose. Talk to us a little bit about purpose and understanding the departmental purpose and where we are in our growth. So one thing that I've implemented becoming the director is any new employee that comes into our department, whether they're transferred into a new position, whether they are new to the county, I meet with them one-on-one for about an hour. And we talk about everything outside of what their job duties are because understanding that and then and then tying it to what we do is is a part of that

[03:57:22] conversation and it's it's had a really big impact on people understanding what my vision is for the department which is collaboration is key bringing people to the table there are so many points in time during a project where it's an owner and it's an applicant it's a developer it's a contractor it's an inspector where sometimes the message gets mixed and if we can bring everybody to the table that's half the battle and and just at a very high level collaboration teamwork and finding a path forward and doing what we say and saying what we do so it that is key is the purpose to what we do and and keep safety as our biggest focus but always collaborating to find that path

[03:58:01] forward but I find that one-on-one and now in 2025 starting it with staff that are already internal to us okay lastly what's the what's the key thing that we can do as a board to help change that perception as it relates to the permitting because we get a lot of those questions what can what's the single thing we can help to change that perception and support you it's early communication the earlier on in the process that you be made you're made aware of a potential hurdle or issue that someone is facing to bring it to us we know there's always two different sides to a story and then what lies in between but that early and often communication we're also

[03:58:39] starting a more proactive approach with the board to we've in my past year been more reactive to projects being more proactive and meeting with you all on a quarterly basis to say what are you seeing what are the trends that way we can get ahead of some of this but also provide you with that information in the contacts that if someone comes to you here you are and I think as we've been meeting with you all the scan me cards that we've introduced about development contacts we're going to expand that to a larger part of the department will help so that people know who to go to to get that answer but the early and frequent communication with us is the best and

[03:59:12] we need that that scamming car thank you madam chair supervisor weir thank you madam chair i mean perception is the good word um and the perceptions hasn't been a good one for for quite some period of time and is some of it warranted is some of it not it goes both ways you're right there's there's two sides of the coin however speaking personally i've seen numerous instances of inconsistency, no continuity, and lack of communication.

[03:59:52] And I think that last part is really, really the key. That being said, I've seen some significant improvements recently, particularly with respect to dirt hauling, Tom and mine's favorite topic, but even with the residential permitting.

[04:00:09] And I think we have to acknowledge that, and I think we have to continue down that path. And you're right, it is about being proactive up front and getting ahead of them before they even get their application in the door sort of setting the sort of setting the table for what their expectations can be and then living up to the expectations particularly on timing because we've seen a lot of issues with respect to who gets priority treatment who gets who gets an inspection earlier than others and I think we also need to go back and revisit you know continuity within the inspection process itself if you're changing the inspector that sees

[04:00:46] somebody's project, or, you know, one inspector comes in, dings them for one thing, says, I'm done, we'll look at the rest of it when you fix this thing, you know, that's not a problem just here. It exists across the Commonwealth, but I think, you know, that's something that we need to always be aware of and try to stop.

[04:01:07] But looking into the future, there are some statutory and ordinance changes heading down the pike, which are going to fundamentally change the role of some personnel with a Department, specifically in the Enforcement Division and even in the Zoning Administrator's Office, and there are going to be some significant challenges and some very weighty interpretations that are going to be required, and I'm assuming that with these increased responsibilities,

[04:01:41] take AFDU for example, that you're going to have to lay on a different level of FTE with a different level of skill set that is particularly focused on that area?

[04:02:00] Because I don't think you're going to be able to do it in-house with staff you've got just because of the nature of what's coming on. And I guess that's where, you know, again, we come back to communication. Given the binding nature, the legal implications of those determinations, the timing, the limited appeal period, the limited period of time that you've got to sort of address anything that you find wrong or, you know, on both sides of the ledger, whether it's the applicant or somebody

[04:02:33] who's impacted. I think one of the issues we've got is in the past, and I don't know that that is currently the case, there just does not seem to be enough communication between either departments within your organization or, more specifically, departments with other departments outside of the organization in terms of seeking help, information, and that.

[04:02:56] And if we can get everybody closer together and talking a little bit more, I think a lot of the issues that we've seen over the past couple of years, a lot of the high-profile sort of public discussions that don't paint the county in a very good light would diminish and not going to go away, but they would diminish.

[04:03:19] And I would just hope that you're pointing, trying to point in that direction or at least considering what's coming down the road at you because it's going to be significantly different. Yes, absolutely. Thank you for those comments. All right, and thank you so very much for your presentation.

[04:03:34] That is it. The middle child is released. And the anchor to our team and our newest director, the director of public works, Katab Shmuth. Madam Chair, members of the board, good afternoon.

[04:03:52] I am the anchor, so I need to be fast, they told me. Well, thank you very much. It's a privilege to come before you to really talk about the cool and the impactful work that Public Works produces and work on daily. You know, our mandate is pretty simple.

[04:04:10] You know, we are to basically manage and oversee the environment in the county to make sure that our resources, whether it's land, air, or water, are protected and controlled for our residents in the county.

[04:04:26] So how do we do this? We do this very easily through our 208 staff members in the department that are in four major divisions in public works, that are motivated and really very dedicated to making sure that that goal is really achieved.

[04:04:53] Our divisions are managed usually by our assistant directors for the different divisions, starting with environmental management. It's managed by Madan Mohan, our Assistant Director for Environmental Services and Management. And I'm highlighting just the main activities that is performed under that division, which includes plan review.

[04:05:16] So we're part of the development review process and the development services process to make sure that plans are looked at and approved from our division before it moves forward to approval. Stormwater management inspection inventory. So we have a lot of facilities within the county that is managed and controlled by public works, which includes over 1,000 stormwater management ponds within the county that we inspect and maintain.

[04:05:43] And we have miles of draided easements that we also oversee and protect. And the last one is the site inspection. So we, in collaboration with transportation, we oversee all of the construction that goes on to the county, whether it's residential or commercial type of construction.

[04:06:03] Our second division, and that is led by currently the assistant director for construction and operation, and he's also, as my acting deputy director for public works, and Luke Heisman, and he's doing a great job assisting me in this position.

[04:06:20] They do a vast array of different services within the department, serving both the department itself and as well as other departments in the county. mosquito and forest pest management, it's done under that division. The sign shop, providing signs for all the roads in the county, as well as signs for the police and other departments.

[04:06:42] And then we have two different type of crews, crews that oversees projects, and some of that project is in collaboration with transportation and some of their smaller type of projects. And also like the base, Marine Corps base, we do a lot of their road work and a lot of their parking facilities out there.

[04:07:01] And also we have a drainage crew that actually oversee what I just mentioned, all of that stormwater management and the drainage easement within the county, and they make sure that if there's something to be corrected, they're the one that actually takes care of that. And our next division, which is led by Assistant Director Paul Lynch, our neighborhood services.

[04:07:21] And in our neighborhood services, they collaborate with communities, HOA educating by providing transportation safety and other education to the community as well as they make sure that property code enforcement is up kept in the county and there's another I think bulletin here that wasn't included which is landscaping and that's I think important to a lot of our board members they they they plant and they maintain all the landscaping pockets that we have within Prince William County and our last division is solid waste management and this is Our larger division, I think, is staff close to 75 employees.

[04:07:59] In that division, they oversee the landfill, the campus facility. They have a recycling program throughout the county, as well as all the litter control that we are currently making sure that we are doing a better job at it with having more staff and having more crews.

[04:08:16] Currently, we have two full crews, and we are in the process of finalizing the hiring of our third crew. And then the director's office, which includes me and the deputy and the support that serves all of the divisions within public courts.

[04:08:33] And we operate under $63.3 million, and a lot of that, I would say 90% of that is fee-based budget. This slide shows some of the metrics of some of the accomplishments over the year, and I think some of those numbers could have been increased a little bit more since, I guess, I gave you the slide.

[04:08:56] But I don't want to go through all of them. However, I'll highlight a few, we've taken in over 334,000 tons of waste material into the landfill. We mentioned landscaping, we are managing over 250 acres of median and other pockets within the county of landscape.

[04:09:18] We have taken out over 14,500 signs from roads in illegal places, whether it's in a right or other you know public properties and we have inspected more than 550 or close to 550 miles of drainage easement in the county and there's another block that I did not include in here which managing the dirt hauling activities within the county and that was definitely in collaboration with our legal office and our county attorney office that helped us a lot in providing that that that system in place the key priorities and again with public works

[04:09:58] we provide a lot of services. So my focus is on projects, my focus on services that we provide to the public. Again, one of the services that we provide is really reviewing plans, making sure that the development process is moving forward. So streamlining the plan review permitting process is always a key item that we always look at. We always look at what is the cutting-edge information that's out there, how can we improve this, whether it's through electronics, whether through listening to some of those developers and they come to us and they talk to us and you know other localities does this and and the Fairfax does that and what so we take that in and we look at it and does that

[04:10:35] work for us we are trying to streamline we're trying to improve the process both trying to have quality control over the process as we do that and that's very important evaluation and assessment of HHW you know we had a request when I first came into the position to provide another location within the county more on the western side of the county to be able to help the residents of Gainesville and Brinsville to find a location other than the the landfill to go for something like that and we've worked with with OmniRide and thank you very much OmniRide and that's a shout out for them to help us out

[04:11:11] with their parking lot and we were able to create this pilot program that we've held three events now and we have one more in December and then we will look at the the data that comes out of that that and make a decision how to move forward when we get that.

[04:11:27] And the upkeep and maintenance of landscaping in road medians and surrounding railways. One thing to plant, another to maintain. You know, when you plant looks great, my wife tells me that, that looks great, but then in two years she said take it out. So it's important that we actually upkeep our planting and making sure that it looks as good or close to as good as it was when it first was planted, and that's very important.

[04:11:50] Managing the disposal of dredge material. You know, I said we manage over a thousand stormwater managements. Now, managing stormwater management, those are catch basins. That's where a lot of the sediments and a lot of the erosion that goes from the channels into those stormwater managements, and they have a certain capacity for the water.

[04:12:07] That's how they were designed. And as they fill up with that sediment and get to a point where now it's no longer, it really is providing the design, you know, original standards and specifications, that we have to go in and excavate that material and take it somewhere. Now, so one of the options is to maybe take it to another location, haul it, cut it, take it out.

[04:12:28] Now, that's one option, and it will always be there. However, that is not the only option that we need to look at. We need to look at other options, more innovative ways of maybe recycling some of that material to use it for construction, whether it's concrete remix or with a concrete product, something like that.

[04:12:45] And we're working with a company out in the western side of the county that currently are actually coordinating or communicating with to see how that, because they have something similar to this, and to see how their operation is, and maybe we will try to mimic that somewhere.

[04:13:02] Scheduling of landfill expansion north of the Powell's Run. Again, landfill property is about 1,000 acres. 500 of it is south of the run, and 500 of it is north of the run. The piece south of the run is almost to capacity. I think we have another cell to go, and so closer to the end of the decade, that piece will be done.

[04:13:24] So we are looking at the north piece of the creek, trying to permit that, because you have to go through the DQ process to have that available so we can break ground maybe on our first cell, sometimes in 29, 30, you know, so within five, six years, hopefully. And investigating the Sunday opening of the landfill, that's another request that came to me when I first got appointed.

[04:13:46] Sunday opening, what can we do with this? We are definitely looking at this and we're looking at what the impact from that would be on staff as well as costs and equipments. And we will come back to our executive management and really discuss our findings as we move forward.

[04:14:03] And definitely we'll end up with the board to go through that process. Continuing the collaboration of industry partners and external stakeholders, and that's very important. I mean, we deal with partners, whether it's in the landfill, whether it's in construction, whether it's any one of our services.

[04:14:22] So we continue to deal with them, but we continue to listen. But at the end of the day, we have to find a process that is going to be providing quality to the product that we end up finishing. Funding and competition of Bristol Manor Sanitary Connection.

[04:14:38] That's another project that we're working, and it's in the Brinsville District, and we're looking at it. It's a community that we have to connect to sewer, and it has some challenges, and we're working through that. We did receive an ARPA funding of $3 million, and we continue to work on that, and we will hopefully have a solution and an alternative to move forward in the near future.

[04:15:02] And completing project retrofit restoration. So as we have DEQ permits, we continue to build sills. We continue to cap sills as per the requirements, and we also continue to do MS4-type projects to reduce phosphorus, nitrogen, and sediments from our community.

[04:15:22] So strategic opportunities. We drive and we align under resilience economy and sustainable growth. With the resilience economy, maximize the collaboration within the quadrant. That's very important to continue that collaboration and that work because collaboration foster innovation and drive efficiency.

[04:15:41] So we'll continue to do this. Same thing with the technology, improve technology. Without technology, I don't know if we can do anything anymore these days. And to provide the services faster, more effectively, more efficiently, we're always looking at it, you know, in the scale house, in the landfill.

[04:15:57] You know, we're looking at different softwares that will help the customer as they go through the line to go faster, to get things moving a little quicker. Explore the use of public-private partnership. P3-type projects are very important. It's another contract that we have available to us.

[04:16:14] It brings the best out of the private side and the public side to work together towards solutions that can be more efficient and more innovative to the customer. Encourage recycling of waste into economic opportunities.

[04:16:30] Again, recycling of waste is not just providing another source for construction or another item for construction, but it also provides jobs. It also competes with new resources. Sometimes there's a scarce in resources, so that provides that.

[04:16:45] Strategic plan goals, sustainable growth, you know, planting no matter how small it is, it does provide a nice aesthetic, a nice focal point to the eye, to the community. So as we grow and we add more roads and we add more buildings, those facilities really are really comfort zone and pleasing to the eye and pleasing to the public.

[04:17:07] I'm not done yet. Go all the way. Thank you very much. we've talked about that a little bit okay complete and expand major infrastructure project again the infrastructure for the landfill I mentioned that as we grow as the the number of population gets

[04:17:42] higher and higher we need definitely a facility that can handle that and that's why we're looking at the landfill to see how we can improve this as we move forward the landfill by the way was was initiated back in 1969 so it really lasted us close to 50 years and we're hoping that other 500 acres north of the creek will take us that long. I know the population is increasing. However, the recycling programs and other ways of reducing some of that material going into the landfill will help us maybe achieve that. I mean, I don't know if I'm me or Wade going to be here in 50 years, but that's the goal.

[04:18:23] Maximize the use of electrical vehicles. And again, you know, we need another source of fuel, right? I mean, you know, the oil price going up the the air quality in the county and stuff like so as the technology improve and we're not just looking at drivable vehicles we're looking at equipment you know most of our smaller type landscaping equipments are right now on electrical but as as the technology advances and and the facilities become more and more available to us we will be looking at construction equipment that can that can sustain you know a whole day worth of

[04:18:58] work on a charge. And we will definitely be considering those in the future. And exploring the use of some selected Board of Candidates properties. Now we have a lot of, we have over 700 parcels as we've done the evaluation of properties owned by the Board of Candidates supervisor throughout the county. So right now we're working with the TMO really to come up with that list of all of these parcels, who controls them. Because right now they fall on public works to maintain mainly, most of them do, to maintain them when they're undeveloped piece of property.

[04:19:34] You know, so if the tree fell down or somebody is complaining about something within public works is the one with their small budget that takes care of that. So we're working with the TEMO trying to find really a process, trying to find a program that can help both economic development and as well as transportation really move some of that, consolidate some of these parcels to make them available to the public and also some of them can be used for maybe dredge material if needed. Challenges. I don't know if I'm much different than most of the quadrant.

[04:20:10] You know, in real estate, they say location, location, location. In project management, in service providing, it's communication, communication, communication. We have to improve in our communication, both internally and externally. A lot of our projects are always involving a lot of stakeholders, both internally and externally, whether it's DEQ, whether it's the city somewhere or the town, or transportation or development services, we have to deal with that.

[04:20:36] We have to be able to bring everybody in and try to find solutions to some of these issues that we deal with. Regulatory process, again, we deal with a lot of regulations, whether it's federal regulations or state regulations that we have to adjust and morph and deal with as we move forward, adjusting our processes as staffing, more education to make sure that we are on top of this. You know, we're doing projects. So you do projects, you need funding. So funding is always an issue. And we always try to work around that, try to schedule our projects to meet the needs

[04:21:13] of the MS4 for certain reductions while making sure that we have enough funding to cover that. And the vacancies, you know. Anybody knows any engineer or something? It's always an issue. However, we have been successful in this past year. When I came on, we had about 45 vacancies. We're down to 15, so we're doing great so far. We're not zero, but we're 15, and that's manageable right now. But it is still going to be an issue because it's not just in Prince William County. It's throughout the area.

[04:21:45] And as far as collaboration, like I said, we collaborate with everybody, both internally and externally, and internally on issues dealing with safety, property code enforcement. You know, when there's a code enforcement out there, we have to deal with zoning, we have to deal with development services, we have to deal with fire and rescue, we have to deal with everybody before we can actually come up with a solution.

[04:22:09] And development plan review, again, there's a lot of agency that gets involved in that, so all of us will have to talk. Sometimes the issue may impact several departments, and we have to resolve that through that discussion. And the permitting and the funding and the construction of the county capital projects involves almost everybody within the county.

[04:22:30] And outside the county, we deal with the world. We deal with everybody that's around us, whether it's towns, whether it's the Marine Corps base, Quantico, whether it's all of these organizations, OPAL for the gas on the landfill, we deal with everybody. E.G.Q., whenever the project needs, we will definitely have somebody to work with and deal with, and that's a picture showing Rick Denazal is here, therefore, a ribbon cutting.

[04:22:56] Any questions? Supervisor Ware. Thank you, Madam Chair. I mean, given the very nature of the Gainesville District and its issues over the past couple of years, I'm simply going to reprise my comments to Mandy about my concerns and my constituents' concerns, which, again, revolve around continuity, consistency, and enforcement, particularly of DEQ requirements, DEQ permitting, RPAs, RPA encroachments, Chesapeake Bay Act requirements, and even buffers.

[04:23:33] And that's something that my office is going to continue to focus on. And, you know, I think it comes down to this, the viewpoint of many or some, a lot, is that there's two different types of approaches to dealing with enforcement or holding somebody responsible for their actions.

[04:24:00] You know, it almost seems like those that do it the right way and go through the application process and the permitting process, you know, essentially have their feet held to the fire, yet those who don't, who opt for the forgiveness is better than permission option, at the end of the day, get off without having to comply with everything.

[04:24:25] Or, you know, the damage is already done, so, you know, how can we remediate? A lot of people in the Gainesville area are watching very closely, a lot of specific issues, a lot of particular issues.

[04:24:41] I mean, you're aware of the dirt hauling variety of, you know, dirt farming, agricultural and air quotes uses. And I think it's going to be a focus for a lot of people. So I just think that you guys need to put a focus on being a little more consistent to the extent that that's possible.

[04:25:04] And just be aware that people are watching you for what it's worth. And I'll just leave it at that. No, thanks. Sounded kind of ominous. Supervisor Vega.

[04:25:21] Thank you, Madam Chair. Hi, Katab. How are you? I am great. Good. Um, infrastructure projects, you know, are designed and set to accommodate the expected growth. And, you know, there is a level of, or rather an expectation that people have in this county in regards to county services.

[04:25:42] I'm going to keep asking every opportunity that I get, when are we going to open the landfill on Sundays? We're seriously working on that, and we will hopefully have a solution in the very near future to come and present to both the county exec as well as the board.

[04:25:59] In the near future as of next month or in the near future as of next year? In the future in the next couple of months. And hopefully to have that wrapped into the budget. Thank you. Supervisor Bailey. You're going to open Sunday what time?

[04:26:16] No, I'm just kidding. Thank you, Katab. There's been seamless transition between you and Tom, so I really appreciate that in helping us to understand this world of public works. Thank you. But the question that I have is with the IGSA.

[04:26:32] That continues to be a golden opportunity for us as it relates to your department, others too, but specifically your department. So what's the next future for the IGSA as we go forward?

[04:26:49] With the Marine Corps base? Yes. We are working with them diligently. And, you know, the opportunity to find that piece of property on the Marine Corps base for the dredging of the Montclair is just one of those opportunities is that we've really kind of worked through that agreement and and really is listening to sit and listening to the to the other to the base on with other community where i think the first uh county that actually implement that if i remember correctly yeah yeah but i want to know that's great we we we continue to work with them on the roads we'll continue to work with them there's a couple

[04:27:25] contracts right now that luke is currently working on for a couple of the buildings that they have But is that an opportunity for us to use, not just in Quantico, but across the county, as we partner with Quantico?

[04:27:42] The IGS is mainly for the Quantico property, right? And I was thinking of the dirt and all that, but okay. Yeah, the dirt hauling and stuff. Yeah, and the silt. Hopefully we're not going to have a lot of that, but we will definitely manage it through the CGP process.

[04:28:02] And through the process that we've worked with the county attorney on to make sure that it is managed well out there. But knowing that there will always be construction, whether it's roads, whether it's this, so dirt will move. But just how to manage the movement of dirt in a legal way, that is really what, and I'm not the attorney, but in the proper way, in the code way, is what we're going to have to manage that out there.

[04:28:28] And I think we've been managing, and that one-off that comes up, we go and inspect it and make sure that we stop it immediately when we don't think it is per the language that we put in that letter. Okay. Thank you.

[04:28:45] All right. We don't have any other questions. Thank you so very much. Thank you, Mr. Hugh. Thank you very much. I don't know if you have any favorites among your children, but, you know. Better answer that right, Dad. I'm going to turn it back over to you, Mr. Shorter, to keep us going.

[04:29:05] Okay, very good. Just want to appreciate, again, the Merck team and Deputy CXO Wade-Hugh for his leadership in pulling the team together in this way. So I want to invite Christina Wynn up now to do the presentation regarding Item 7B.

[04:29:26] Now, as you know, board members, this is really a, this is born out of the conversation that we started with the board back in July. And I will tell you that I just really want to appreciate Christina, Seth, and really the entire team for getting us to this point.

[04:29:46] I'm very excited about what Christina is about to present, and certainly excited to hear the board's feedback. And with that, Christina, I will turn it over to you. Wonderful. Thank you. hello again christina winn economic development and tourism i am joined by our core team members who also are going to have a quick speaking role michelle atrid with the department of finance and shana terry with the office of procurement and then keisha hall who is working with me on that

[04:30:18] in this project so what we're here to really talk about today is to create a bold new vision for prince william county for 70 acres of underutilized land that is owned by the county and vdot to transform it into a mixed-use town center to really achieve our goal the main objective is to partner with an innovative real estate developer partner that is capable of bringing a vision that we all want and the community wants to fruition that will generate

[04:30:57] revenue and tax jobs the site itself is it's it really made this has become possible with the board's recent purchase of the 22 acres for the the proposed indoor sports so that combined with the other land that the county and VDOT own is about 60 to 70 acres this is a strategic location along 95 corridor north of Potomac Mills Mall and right now there are commuter spot

[04:31:36] parking spaces on this land except for the the recently acquired land and those would actually have to be replaced as part of this and then the property is all right now zoned M1 and PMD that's existing and so one of the things that I i wanted to note is the team the core team as we were researching what we could do and really how we could approach this opportunity we had looked at other cities and what something like richmond

[04:32:11] and falls church and what they were doing and the model we actually have modeled this after is the city of falls church and their west end development and they interestingly proactively rezone their property ahead of actually soliciting a RFP and so that's something that this board could consider if you wanted to move forward with this project this is the land that I'm talking about so as I said that there's the 22 acres that we just recently purchased the county owns the blue

[04:32:50] parcel and then VDOT owns the other two red parcels. The concept is that, and we've had conversations with VDOT in the past with other projects that we're looking in this area, is that those parking spaces, which is about 2,500 to 3,000, would have to be replaced in a structured parking elsewhere. And so the whole concept would be to remove those parking and then put them in that telegraph road lot or some sort of development. That frees up all of that land

[04:33:26] to actually do a mixed-use development that has a lot of critical mass and concentration. This would be the only parcels that we would actually be going out with in an RFP. But when you take a step back, there's privately owned parcels adjacent to this. And so when you actually add all these privately owned vacant parcels you're getting closer to about 130 acres and that's a critical mass that could be a real opportunity so the idea of the objective of

[04:34:02] having a real estate development partner is that they would also see that there's vacant land next to it and they might work out a partnership with those private owners to actually submit a proposal that would conclude all of that development.

[04:34:18] That would be really the master goal. The great news is that this area has already had a lot of work done to it. The landing small area plan was adopted, so we have a pretty good vision. We understand the densities that we're looking for, the road networks, the infrastructure, and so forth.

[04:34:37] And so that puts us ahead of the game. Also, during the indoor sports kind of effort, Parks Department had put out a sports complex citizen survey specifically around this area.

[04:34:54] 67% of those respondents really identified those top four things on the right hand of the screen. Youth sports, economic growth, and community hub and improved sports facilities as still a major indicator of what they would like to see happen and what they see they need in the community.

[04:35:16] And so the goal is really, as I mentioned, is to partner and do a solicited PPEA to attract a real estate development partner to help us develop this property in line with the vision that we would like to see.

[04:35:38] Part of the model in the city of West Falls Church is they had a problem that they were trying to solve because they needed to redevelop their high school. And so the property next door to them they owned was 10 acres.

[04:35:54] And so they went through this process of offering that 10 acres for mixed-use development as a way to generate revenue to offset the cost of redeveloping their high school. And so if there's an opportunity in this area that we have for a community facility or some sort of county development facility or if you wanted to revisit the indoor sports again or something, generating this real estate transaction could help to generate and offset those development costs to bringing that to fruition.

[04:36:28] And then in any of our goals, obviously my goal is always to generate more revenue for the county, so that's a no-brainer. so one thing so I just want to pause real quick I think one of the big keys to making this be very successful is that we go out to the market with a really strong vision there is a vision in the small area plan but I think we really need to articulate it a little bit more and almost have a theme when you think of your favorite destinations whether it's the San Antonio River

[04:37:03] rock or river walk yes or the wharf or you know mosaic district that there's always some sort of you know connection or theme that makes those successful most of your generic town centers are not successful and so we just need to be careful that we really want a good theme and so for illustration purposes only just to give you a sense of what we are talking about is like one vision could be that we create a, we look for a developer that wants to create a wellness and

[04:37:39] lifestyle development. So this would be a vibrant wellness and lifestyle mixed-use development that prioritizes sustainability, promotes walkability and bikeability in an engaging, active environment. This center could serve as a hub for economic opportunities and a destination for sports tourism it could include an indoor sports or reimagine indoor sports facility and events facility but it would could it would also be complemented by amenities such as health clinics medical offices organic markets and wellness focused retail with lush landscaping abundant trails and inviting outdoor

[04:38:18] gathering spaces the development will create a welcoming atmosphere buildings will showcase innovative architecture and amenities tailored for workers while housing options will offer diverse products and various price points to attract active residents who work from home occasionally so that would be one vision that could go out or alternatively in a completely kind of different direction is more creating a global cultural destination and so to establish a global cultural destination that enhances economic opportunities and highlights

[04:38:55] Prince William as the 10th most diverse county in the nation. This vibrant hub would serve as the epicenter of Northern Virginia, offering a rich culinary landscape with restaurants, cafes, food halls, farmers markets, celebrating both local and international flavors. As a eat-ertainment destination, it will feature live music, venues, theaters, cultural festivals, and community spaces. Public art installations, pop-up venues, and welcoming gathering spots will foster a dynamic arts environment that reflects the area's rich diversity. Additionally, it will include

[04:39:33] innovation housing options that attract a skilled, diverse workforce, accommodating a range of price levels and designed to embrace new community style for a hybrid work from home so two distinct kind of themes visions and and i think if we were to move forward obviously neither one of these are the right one but working together with the community and the board we would like to refine a vision and that would be a key factor in being successful overall so when we're talking about

[04:40:08] doing a solicited PPE a process to bring on a partner a real estate development partner we're talking about eight really distinct phases that span at least three years and so that takes you from today or actually a few weeks ago when we started to circulate this to a point where we would actually have a partner on board and we would be having a real estate transaction to to settle the land or have some sort of settlement that whole process will take at least three years we are over here in phase one which is buy-in so I'm here

[04:40:47] to get your buy-in if that wasn't obvious so again I'm not going to go over this but we have been circulating having conversations getting together with the county agencies circulating this idea getting feedback and so if the board wants to go in this direction, then we would recommend, staff would recommend that we close out the existing indoor sports PPEA, which would allow us to move forward and ensure a clean initiation of this whole new approach.

[04:41:25] And then, I want to hand it over to my buddy. - I only have one slide. Michelle Atreid, so securing advisors would be critical to this process. As you know, we have PFM, who's our financial advisors, They would be involved in helping us structure whatever, you know, we own the land.

[04:41:46] Will we lease the land? Will we sell the land? Depending on the asks of the proposals that come in, would there be a financing need for us to build a garage? How would we structure that and fit that into our kind of debt model and debt capacity? So we would be utilizing PFM. They also would likely be using some subcontractors, much like when we were working with other projects, going all the way back to the PNATs.

[04:42:07] They brought in independent consultants that specialize in the task at hand, and there are real estate advisory firms that would specialize and help us write this vision and scope of work that would go into this solicited PPEA so that we are asking for the right things that the market can bear.

[04:42:24] That would include market research, et cetera. And so we would be coming back at some point, and Christina would be coming back at some point, to ask for a budget appropriation from the EDOF. About 250,000, we believe, could get this kicked off, get some work underway to get a scope of work together.

[04:42:40] And so that would be an ask of the board if you have the buy-in. And I'm going to turn it over back to you. Thank you. All right. And so phase three assumes that we have moved in this direction and we have now the consultants on board.

[04:42:59] This is probably the longest part of the phase, but also the most critical because it's really about doing our due diligence. understanding kind of all this is a new direction for us and we have a lot of questions and we need to kind of identify what those are so one of those is the market study is to determine really what the market could bear in this area we have a lot of we have Stonebridge we have courts district coming online we have Potomac Mills and we want to make sure that this project is additive and not taking away right so how do we how do we make sure that that

[04:43:35] happens a lot of policy alignment there's a land bank policies there may be some existing proffers or encumbrances so we need to do our research in our due diligence and make sure that we kind of know where all the hidden hidden stuff is so that we are going in eyes wide open of what the challenges and the issues are we have to work with transportation and VDOT and formalize some sort of process and structure for redeveloping or including their property in this solicitive PPA and outlining what that how we would be replacing those

[04:44:14] parking places and then as I mentioned before it's really developing that minute vision and including a minimum set of desired uses so for example we would want 500 housing units and this percentage of them would be affordable or we want, you know, 200,000 square feet of office or 100,000 square feet of retail, and it includes this.

[04:44:38] So that we're being kind of very specific when we're asking for a developer that we're getting what we want at a minimum, which is going to be challenging. And then we move to procurement takes over. Good evening, Shana Terry, Chief Procurement Officer.

[04:44:57] So I'm going to talk a little bit about the procurement process. So the procurement process will take place in two phases. The first phase, we will issue a request for conceptual proposals in accordance with the PPEA requirements. So that request for conceptual proposals would include the vision that the county has outlined along with desired uses that would then allow development teams to come forward and submit conceptual proposals.

[04:45:26] We would then review those conceptual proposals and shortlist them down. Once we've shortlisted, then it'll go into Phase 2, where we will issue a Request for Detail proposal. The Request for Detail proposal will be more defined when we get to that point. We will ask for firm commitments on financing, timelines, and things of that nature.

[04:45:48] And ultimately, we would move forward with evaluating proposals that were received from the Request for Detail proposals and selecting a development partner that would ultimately design, build, finance, operate, and maintain, depending on what we determine that we want to negotiate for that agreement.

[04:46:09] Any questions on procurement? All right. Phase 6 and 7 is really about the agreements and entitlement. So if the board had chosen to proactively rezone this property, then hopefully around this time frame is when that process would be coming to completion.

[04:46:36] But the first part is really once we've identified that development partner that we want to really get into developing an agreement with, we would have an exclusive rights agreement. This is probably best to say like we would be getting engaged to the developer, right?

[04:46:53] We're committing that we're going to only be with you and they're only going to want to be with us. And we get like a year to kind of work out the wedding plans and the prenuptial agreement, right? Okay. Don't, no, no, no.

[04:47:13] And so that's basically what that is. And then that moves into the comprehensive agreement, which is the marriage, which really outlines all the roles, the responsibilities, the timing, the costs, who's doing what, et cetera. And that takes a really long time to work through because it's a complicated process.

[04:47:32] And so that's why that exclusive rights agreement kind of gets put in place as that interim piece. And then last is really phase eight, which is the site conveyance. Oh, by the way, I would be remiss. Sorry, all of these agreements go to the board.

[04:47:48] I believe they're public hearings or something like that. Okay. But they would all come to the board for your consideration. And then phase eight would be the site conveyance. And so depending on what that real estate transaction looks like, whether it's a lease, a long-term lease, or a sale, and then how we've actually negotiated, whether it's at entitlement site plan or building approval or building permit approval, that's all dependent.

[04:48:18] Obviously, we want to make sure that the developer that we're choosing is on the hook. We don't want to sell our land too quickly because we want to make sure that they have skin in the game and they've moved forward enough on the project that they're going to bring it towards completion. And then, you know, you can pay the site, which does require a public hearing.

[04:48:38] And then, obviously, we would get revenue, not only from the real estate transaction itself, but then as that developer moves forward, we would be generating tax revenue. And so that revenue can go towards the real estate transaction revenue can go towards offsetting any costs if we wanted to have some sort of anchor of a county facility in this development.

[04:49:03] And so the conclusion of Next Steps is we are suggesting that we take control of our destiny, that we don't allow for the market to just come in and really do what they think, and that we go and seek out a partner that's really there to help us achieve our vision, the one that we would like to see happen.

[04:49:28] And then, but knowing that, you know, it is a long term, you know, you're talking three years for at least to get that partner on board. And then, you know, you probably have a 10 year build out. Right. So maybe even longer. You know, so it is a long process and it takes a lot of due diligence.

[04:49:47] But I think it's an opportunity for really everyone to kind of engage in and work together to achieve. And if we were to go forward with this, while the core team was here today of finance and procurement, this team would get expanded to include planning and transportation and public works and, well, of course, county attorneys are always there.

[04:50:11] So it would be a very big project that would include a lot of departments and coordination and parks. And that's it. Thank you so very much for this presentation, and I'm going to ask supervisors, even if you're not in key, I'm going to have to ask you where you are on this, because we need to give them guidance about whether or not we're going to move forward.

[04:50:33] So, Supervisor Bode, if you can, in your comments, mention if this is something you're interested in moving forward with, and if so, which option? Absolutely. To everything. Thank you, Christina, for this presentation. Thank you for meeting with my office, and I'm sure everyone else's office leading up to this point.

[04:50:49] just a few quick things um would love for us to you had that slide of the the not only the publicly owned parcels but the ones adjacent um there's a couple of i don't want to call them donut holes per se but they're gaps that i think are important for us to if we move forward with this to try to at least see interest in there's the corner piece down near the very bottom uh on the corner of kate and hill and telegraph um definitely you know we like to have corner pieces right so that would be important and then of course across the street from the bdot law and

[04:51:22] the bocs owned lot across telegraph that one and also just north that one would love for us to start looking at all those too because i think that there's an assemblage opportunity here um that i think helps sweeten the pot even more so that's one um two to go back to your your visioning both your vision statements goes back to i think something that super has a gordy said earlier in an earlier conversation was this is an opportunity like you said to create our own destiny to put forward a vision of instead of piecemeal you know project by project coming in we say yes or no we

[04:51:59] try to work with them we put forward a very comprehensive very clear vision what we want and force the market to respond because when you start having critical mass of this much land we will start to attract folks that frankly maybe have never even done work in princeton county or even the region before as saying hey this is a moment for us so i think that's important and frankly as smart of the part of the context of small area plan right now i have three completed projects or three approved projects in the small area plan this is an opportunity to really have a much more robust way of doing as opposed to piecemeal which is frankly what this county has

[04:52:36] been for far too long just sort of piecemeal frankenstein monster here and there so that's two But in terms of your visioning, I like the international sort of cultural diversity. That's where I'm leaning more right now.

[04:52:52] I know we had a conversation about that. But I think there's still an opportunity to bring in a little bit of the sports back in because let's face it, there's a national, international celebration of sports. You know, you have Central and South American countries being really beginning soccer, European countries being into soccer.

[04:53:07] there are definitely an opportunity for us to marry those two in one way shape or form where we have a an emphasis on the international diversity but we also bring in the sports aspect of that because frankly that's a big part of international culture as well no matter where you go so I just wanted to give that to you um I appreciate you mentioning the variety of housing options and income levels I think especially since we own and publicly own a good part of this land definitely an opportunity to do something we haven't really done before ground leasing that kind of stuff. We know there are affordable developers in that space that you bring. Once

[04:53:42] you take away that cost of land, that definitely opens up avenues for more affordable housing options. Definitely something that was said earlier, but I think especially as we're aware is let's look beyond the same old, same old. Let's look beyond the ecosystem that we have, even in the region, to bring folks in who can bring us more housing stock types, because we know that's what we sorely need. Last thing, and something that you mentioned in one of your previous presentations is we have a critical mass that's an opportunity for us to have that boutique unique office space that we're and it's right on 95 it checks all the boxes we're talking to back then which is why i'm glad we're having the discussion now as it was a first because you

[04:54:19] talk about having especially given some of the changes in the the culture around dc and that decentralization of offices an opportunity for us to say hey yeah you're not in the beltway anymore but you're not too far away yes we may not have metro right now but we're right on the 95 quarter we have transit options we have bre coming to just down princeton parkway from here what have you there's an opportunity to have a unique boutique style office concept that we can create and again because we have all this other land and all these residential and other retail opportunities it can

[04:54:55] help support that level of office that we know is struggling in other markets so I'm all on board absolutely I know that some folks will be disappointed about the direction that the indoor sports compact has gone but I think that there's some way we can keep that sports concept alive in the greater context of an international sports as opposed to just sort of a regional thing thank you thank you all right um supervisor angry uh thank you madam chair um Christine Christina thank you for that presentation again another good presentation And thank you for bringing it by the office.

[04:55:29] So I'm going to start with the, I guess it was the PPP, the research that we put in that, you know, MEB did, the whole study with the indoor center. When we throw that out, you're still going to keep that data and you can use that data going forward.

[04:55:46] Is that correct? Hi, Menelette. Hi, Supervisor Angry. As I mentioned when we spoke earlier, so the work product from that we will own, And that team may decide to partner with another team if the indoor sports center is a part of the vision and the possible uses.

[04:56:03] And I'll just go ahead and start right there because that is definitely, and for me, I want to pursue an indoor sports center. Don't know where the rest of the board is, but that's my piece to add to this full package of the landing. But the second piece is all those stakeholders that were involved in that because those are the folks that we need to continue communicating with.

[04:56:23] And I know those groups and organizations were kind of rolling that. We've seen them before when we brought this. And by the way, ladies, I'm sorry, I'm talking to the board now, so I know you're looking. I got a question for you, but this is a conversation for the board, so I want to make sure we're having it.

[04:56:41] So the stakeholders are very important in that, and I want to make sure we pull all of them back in to see what they want to see this landing look like. And if the anchor is going to be an indoor complex, whatever that may look like and become, but I want to make sure they're a part of that.

[04:56:57] And now, just for you all, back to you all, ladies, this plan right here that you're proposing right now is a four-year kind of paper drill process. We won't be seeing anything come before this board for a development approval probably until like 2027, 2028.

[04:57:16] Am I correct in that? Correct. Okay, so I want to make this board aware. We started this process in 2019. That was five years ago. So whatever we do, and I'm committed to this 100%, we need to be locking something down now because this is going to be a long ride to get to a product, a finish line that's going to be beneficial for the citizens of Prince William County.

[04:57:41] A couple more. I'm going to keep going my thing. Well, actually, that was the last name because I asked the question, when would it come before the board? So really, you all will be coming back again sometime in 2027, 2028 to really talk about everything we've learned and then putting that to the board or to whoever this developer is going to be that does all this with the housing option and everything, nightlife, basically a one loud and I'll call it that.

[04:58:07] So we won't be seeing or hearing anything about that. You need approval tonight to go forth and get all this together so that you can bring something back to us three years from now or whatever for us to make a real decision going forward.

[04:58:23] Yes? We definitely need to know if you're all interested in moving forward so we can move forward with closing the PPEA and then coming back, preparing the item to get the eat-off money, and then getting those consultants on board. Okay, so my one is I'm moving forward.

[04:58:41] I'm with you and whatever we're going to do there. So I just want to make sure it involves some form of an indoor sports center or indoor facility for sporting and other events that can go with it. Thank you.

[04:58:57] And quickly, I'm sorry, concept one or two. Do you have a preference? Well, what is concept one or two? I'm sorry. Wellness and Lifestyle Center. Oh, say that first one again. Wellness and Lifestyle Center.

[04:59:12] So is Wellness 1 and Lifestyle Center 2? No, so wellness, so sports and health is Concept 1, and Concept 2 is more of a global destination. Concept 1. So sports includes an indoor center.

[04:59:31] Whichever one includes some form of an indoor center, and I think we'll learn more about this from the people when they come out and see what they want to see there. I want to go with that option because I don't want to set them up for failure. We don't put that on the table and they come out and we've already pretty much killed it from birth.

[04:59:48] Excuse me, that was a very bad term. I don't want to use that term. But we basically killed the project of an indoor sports center. Great. Thank you. I don't know if you have anything to add. Supervisor Franklin? Sure, thank you.

[05:00:04] And, yes, supportive of the idea of this, and, Christine, I believe you have my option. I think I chose two, but I can't remember. And wanted to thank Supervisor Angry for his comments, because I definitely also support this with the option for an indoor sports facility.

[05:00:21] And Supervisor Gordie and I were just talking about also including a cricket field somewhere. I don't know if he's responsible for that. But I do want to highlight a few challenges. And, Christina, you proactively mentioned some of these in your presentation. But I do think that these are important enough to make sure that this is at top of mind.

[05:00:41] I support the concept of this, but, you know, let's remember how we got here. As Supervisor Angry always says, you know, when the commanders were looking at that particular area, obviously that became kind of a moot discussion. And so we were looking at what else can we do there, thinking about putting that into a small area plan.

[05:01:00] And now here we have an actual concept that I think we can ride with. But there are some challenges that come along with this type of plan, right? Number one, we've talked about in your presentation the other town centers that we have around town.

[05:01:17] We've got Quartz coming up. That's going to be big with the Whole Foods. We have Stonebridge that's already there that's doing well but could always do even better. We have the Northwood Bridge Town Center that we just approved. That's going to be coming up in the next six years or so.

[05:01:36] And what else do we have? I could be forgetting, you know, one or two. I know we were doing some development, Potomac Shores, obviously. So we have a lot of these similar concepts either already happening or in progress. And then, as I mentioned to you in our meeting, the biggest thing that I actually want to make sure that we protect is Potomac Mills.

[05:01:58] It is still an important destination in this region. They've had some challenges, particularly since COVID. I know that there's been some redevelopment ideas around Potomac Mills, but I certainly wouldn't want something like this so close to Potomac Mills to essentially devour it because it becomes more popular.

[05:02:22] And certainly this is just right off the way from Stonebridge as well. I wouldn't want that to happen also. So when we go down this road, I do want to make sure that we're providing some type of opportunity where if you're going here it's because uh it's it's specific to a certain theme or idea um and it doesn't take away from what you can do at stonebridge and it doesn't take away from the needs of what you can get um at potomac mills and i'm very very serious about that because we have a lot of development coming up that's very good development and i want to make sure that we're not

[05:02:59] um we're not creating a market where we have too many of the same elements um in the market and I think there's a term for that but I'm very concerned about that number two and I'll let you let you address all of these number two you mentioned about the commuter lots um and I think you told me there has to be a one-for-one um a one-for-one um replacement replacement for parking and so that sounds good because I do want to make sure that we understand I think that corner lot is the largest um commuter lot in northern Virginia so if we're taking that away

[05:03:35] we better have a good plan even if it's through a garage you know is that going to serve the need of replacing I think I can't remember how many parking spots but I just want to make sure that we have a real plan for that because I think the plan is to take that away plus the telegraph lot and so we need to make sure that we're thinking about that even as COVID has seen a change and a shift in the workforce and who's getting on 95 going to dc to work i drive past and sometimes drive through the horner lot and people are still parking there and i'm seeing it fill up more and

[05:04:10] more so i am also concerned about the parking aspect and then we talked about the the indoor sports facility you know i think that this could be a welcomed opportunity for the indoor sports facility and want to make sure that that is a real and serious discussion as well i think there are some challenges with doing it through a PPEA versus the way we were going about it at first and we got to understand it's going to be expensive regardless and and I think the question is more so which process do we get more bang for our buck there's always going to be more challenges when you enter into a public and private partnership so I think we do need to also manage expectations

[05:04:50] there too whereas we're ceding some of our authority to a private entity as opposed to um managing it all ourselves so um just wanted to register those thoughts and we'll love your feedback okay no um yeah i think um your your point about all of the different um town centers and destinations and so forth and and i think that's that it doesn't take away from any of the

[05:05:24] what's existing or coming online, that it's additive to our placemaking, is super important, right? And that's where I think going for a distinct vision that you are, there's a purpose that you're going there versus going to Potomac Shores or the Courts District or something.

[05:05:45] I would use the example of, you know, Tyson's Corner or even D.C., right? You have a lot of different neighborhoods in dc and and none of them necessarily take away it's like oh i'm going to go to you know dupont circle this time or i'm going to go to georgetown or i'm going to go over here i'm going to go to the wharf district all a different experience all a different feel whatever you're in the mood for you know that day that night that whatever um you know same with tyson's as tyson's is building up more and you've got the the borough and the capital one i mean these are

[05:06:23] all within a very compact area these are pretty distinct areas within Tyson's Corner and they're all kind of generating you know different markets and so that's what I'm hoping that that real estate advisor will really help us figure that out and figure out how it can be additive to our market

[05:06:43] and not take away? The parking, Rick will handle. And then your third question was, yeah, and I think, so I think working when we get that real estate advisor, and I know Supervisor Angry had made the mention that we wouldn't come back to you until like three years from now. I hope that's not the case my my my approach is always to bring everybody along the journey and be you know and be

[05:07:22] at those important milestones and so i think well i we threw out some conceptual visions i think there needs to be a lot more work that needs to be done in that phase three um in the due diligence because we we have to understand what our parameters are and then we have to understand what the market can bear and then really come up with that market study and so um you know i think those things we're going to be engaging and it's hopefully going to be a lot of collaboration to get to what we truly want as a vision those are just my ideas do you want to hear from him i know

[05:07:58] you guys like him i'm not so sure about that last statement but uh we'll come up here and address the board as as mentioned uh just to let you know yes you're you're correct in everything you said every space, if this was to work with Virat, would have to be dealt with, with every space that we're taking away, including in our park and ride facility that you see in the blue as well.

[05:08:21] We would have to make up all those spaces. I think the idea that's always been had, but we'll wait till it all comes through, is to use the telegraph park and ride lot land as the basis and foundation for that structure facility in that area. So those 750 spaces that are in that lot would probably stay, and the other ones would go and would be made up most likely in that area.

[05:08:42] Thank you. I just want to speak to the process of the indoor sports center where we had the unsolicited PPEA where we didn't put out any requirements, we just got that proposal.

[05:09:02] This time we're putting out a solicited PPEA with our vision and possible uses to attract more competition and more development teams that would submit. As far as engagement, once we receive the proposals after we issue the request for detailed proposal with those concepts, there will be a public hearing where the board will have an opportunity to provide feedback as well as the community, so there will be that type of engagement as well.

[05:09:31] Yeah, and my only point there was, regardless of which direction we go in, this is going to be expensive. Some things are just expensive. It's an investment. Thank you. supervisor gordy thank you madam chair um to make it very quick and easy uh number two is my preference okay um i it's interesting i was just in glendale arizona uh uh outside of luke air force base i was doing a exercise planning conference at luke and uh right out the window

[05:10:04] was their new stadium so midweek place was dead so you know the challenge with the sports entertainment district is it's hot when there's something going on and it's not when it's not right so um the uh so but i also believe that for something like that to be successful there's got to be you don't build around an indoor sports facility the sports facility kind of becomes part of a bigger program that has already attracted people to it um and so um so that's

[05:10:39] why i believe if we start with something like the global cultural destination i think it then could facilitate something and even but even more on the private side um the one thing that i did want to ask is related to zoning okay because you know we we hear often about shovel ready locations right

[05:11:02] To what extent should we, and you did mention this on slide three related to the proactive zoning, but then there's the other adjacent parcels and vacant land that, you know, we go on everything from M1 to M2, BM1, M1, and PMD.

[05:11:24] you know or should we be looking at just creating one uh i'm a little concerned about m1 because i don't know that you want necessarily heavy industrial in this but but then again it kind of goes back to our conversation earlier about m2 about you know having broader opportunities for lighter things but um looking at this from what would be the most attractive zoning to you know in this um you know and getting ahead of that rather than just being waiting until somebody has comes along and says hey we need to rezone i think that will help speed up this process

[05:12:03] cost less money in the long term because we're taking the action as as a board on our own land um and uh so just some thoughts on that do you know tanya washington our planning director please Tanya Washington planning director supervisor Gordy what you just pointed out is very much an opportunity that the county would have that the board would have with a project like this which is why it is included in the concept so it's not just to go out and to find a development partner and then wait to see what they propose but for the county to really take the lead

[05:12:39] informed by the market study that's anticipated to really as well as a small area plan which already exists to really put the county in the driver's seat so to speak to articulate what it is we would like to see at these sites that is very typical for p3 projects when I think miss when noted for example with regards to housing you know as part of the proposal it could be or the it's not just you know the county would like housing but we can say we would like a certain percentage of affordable housing or we would like a proposal that has

[05:13:19] this types of housing mixes so the idea to to pursue at the board supports that some type of proactive rezoning is very much a part of that because it'll better position the county to be able to then solicit type of development proposals that would be more in line with what we would like to see at this site as well as to save time because then we can that piece will be done if there's any modifications that might need to be happen that could be you know addressed if needed but it's really to better position the county so that we can then

[05:13:54] say okay here are the different types of uses we are interested in having for this site we've already done the light work to already modify or to update the zoning or to rezone it so the entitlement is already in place so we just need someone who can actually help us to come in and deliver the project and quickly did you are you interested in indoor sports facility or not because some people are adding that on to number two yeah I'm I'm I've been very outspoken about my concerns about an indoor sports facility

[05:14:32] at 200 million dollars it costs our taxpayers almost a half a billion dollars because of the revenue sharing with the schools so that comes to about 490 million dollars which is a thousand dollars per resident of this county um and while i know we need to make investments that's a big investment with no guarantee that that's going to have a you know a good roi so from a financial standpoint i would rather look at something else that could serve as the magnet and then if that works later as a sustaining piece of that i would be willing to look at that but not as the driving

[05:15:11] But I also want to verify with you, Christina, so that I make sure they're on the same page. This is not the sports facility. When we're talking about sports, we're not talking about the one that we're going to pass on. We're talking about working with a developer on something else, a different concept.

[05:15:26] Am I correct? Yes. I mean, I think taking more of this holistic approach, and if some sort of indoor sports facility is a piece of this holistic approach, it's going to be potentially reimagined.

[05:15:47] So what was planned or developed or designed or whatever, yeah, that's gone, right? Because really, we want something more dense. so think about college campuses if you were to do an indoor sports facility maybe it's maybe it's three stories right and and it's really embedded or or something um but it's it's going to be it's going to be reimagined and it's going to be based in the market that can support everything so and it's not necessarily taxpayer finances this is a different concept than what we're talking about so so i mean i think this is where the real estate advisor is going to be super critical

[05:16:26] when we get this person on board right so in the way of the falls church model so think of their school as the indoor sports facility right so they were trying to redevelop their school if we were trying to get a community facility if that's ie this indoor sports reimagined built they used the real estate transaction and they did i believe a ground lease with an upfront payment offset the cost for the city to rebuild the the school so the developer did not rebuild

[05:17:05] the school the city still did that and they contracted that out as a separate thing so so depending on how we structure this if we want some sort of and it maybe it's indoor sports maybe it's a cultural center maybe it's some other sort of community facility that we've identified is needed on this area that would be meaningful to this development, the real estate transaction could help to offset those costs.

[05:17:36] It doesn't mean that part of the negotiation could be that the developer is building it for us or not, and that gets into kind of when you get to those agreements and what they're going to propose because each one of these partners are going to come in with a different package.

[05:17:54] So I can't say. I mean, I think there's a lot of options on the table, which makes it interesting because you don't know what it can really, what it will be. That's fair. Thank you for the clarification. I don't know if you have anything else, Gordy, because if not, I'm going to move on to Weir. All right, Supervisor Weir.

[05:18:11] Thank you, Madam Chair, to get it out of the way, I am cautiously in favor of moving ahead, but only because I oppose buying the property in the first place and we need to make lemonade out of the lemons. I would suggest the following, though.

[05:18:27] I am more in favor of option three. And I think we talked about this, and thank you for coming in when I picked this apart. And option three is something else. Yes. Potentially tied around federal government, potentially tied around DOD, that sort of thing.

[05:18:44] But I think what everybody needs to be aware of and understand is that we can come up with all of the potentials, all of the wants, all of the, this is a great vision thing. But I think you need to be prepared for what the market study comes back with.

[05:19:03] And I suspect that the development of that prospectus, what they believe is viable, may be vastly different than what we think. And I suspect it's going to be market-driven, what is viable, what is not viable from a financial standpoint.

[05:19:22] And I think that's why you're going to see option one go by the boards very, very quickly for two reasons. One, if you're telling it to an indoor sports complex, let's face it. The studies are out there, the comparables are out there looking at the horrible history of Virginia Beach, and now they're trying to recreate it with the wave park of all bloody things.

[05:19:42] Those facilities do not survive without seven-figure annual contributions from the local jurisdiction where you operate that at a taxpayer loss. And that's just the operational side, doesn't even cover the capital costs.

[05:20:02] So you're talking about several millions of dollars annually in both capital expenditure over the first 20, 25 years, and then at least a million dollars, if not more, $2 million in operational costs, depending on the size of the facility. The other part of it, I think, that we're doomed to fail on, and I hate to say this, is the medical office component.

[05:20:23] I mean, if you go back a decade, maybe a little bit more, not this board, but a previous board approved literally hundreds of thousands of square feet of medical office space in the Haymarket area to support the Heathcote Hospital. Not one damn square foot ever got built. And now we're back to, oh, well, we can't make that work. The market demand dried up. Nobody's building medical office. And if we don't understand that on the front end, then we're going to get stuck in the same circumstance. And now all of that property that was literally rezoned to accommodate that industry is now being rezoned yet again.

[05:21:01] and there's no analysis of what proffers we've lost, what we've gained, and it's going back to residential and your run-of-the-mill garden variety commercial pad site with a grocery store and a car wash. So I think we need to bear that in mind when we're considering reality versus aspiration.

[05:21:22] What will the market bear? What do we want? And oftentimes those two do not intersect. There's a good point on, you know, Potomac Mills and other areas, too. We've got to thread a needle here, and that's going to need to be made clear to the consultant as well, that you've got to thread this needle to where you are delivering us something new, something that is viable, something that will contribute to the economic development of the county.

[05:21:51] However, at the same time, you can't hurt our existing businesses. And that's going to be a very fine line to walk, particularly on the 95 corridor, because not only do you have to consider the implications for Prince William County businesses, but to some extent you have to consider the implications to Fairfax and surrounding neighborhoods because they're going to squawk bloody murder.

[05:22:14] Like I said, I will cautiously support moving through with the study, but I just think everybody needs to be cognizant to the fact that what the consultant comes back with or what the consultants, plural, come back with may be vastly different than what we're envisioning here today.

[05:22:38] And you just need to be prepared for that reality. And it has nothing to do with them not wanting to pursue our vision. But what in this market, what in this post-COVID market, what's going on with the feds and other opportunities, it might be vastly different, but in a way much better at the end of the day.

[05:23:02] We're not the experts they, in theory, are. I think, you know, it'll be interesting to see how different development proposals play against each other. I mean, if you look at the developer's analysis for the indoor track where they hired the analyst, you know, their figures were orders of magnitude higher than the county's own audit.

[05:23:27] You know, we saw the same thing with the digital gateway, you know, 900 million, 400 million. second so i'll stick with um i'll stick with option three and cautiously all right supervisor vega i'm sorry so she's next what i'm gonna do oh no i'm gonna get to you before we go on to because i know we have some people who want to speak a second round after vega i'm going to go to you than me because i want to get everyone for their first round thank you madam chair i guess i have mixed feelings about this and i know that you met with all of us um to brief us and whatnot um for

[05:24:05] starters, it's been quoted once, but I'm going to quote it again because I'm the queen of quoting. Supervisor Angry always says, how do we get here? Okay. I think we all recall coaches coming in here advocating for their athletes because they don't have a facility to practice. That is how we got here. It started with Seth and then it got sent to you now. And here we are. I find it highly irresponsible, in my opinion, to be talking about a sports complex that's going to attract, I guess, the international anything when we're not even taking care of our own. I think it sends the wrong message to our athletes. I think it sends the wrong message to the coaching staff who pretty

[05:24:44] much got the ball rolling. And we're being asked to buy into something that is not really clear. I know that Supervisor Angry, you know, went for one, and you referenced it, Christina, as sports and wellness and lifestyle. That's what you said. But the presentation doesn't call it that. The presentation calls it wellness and lifestyle development and I guess we can make the argument that you know yeah there's a sports component to it but I want to be very clear that I think that there seems to be you know this sense of not really being sure what we're what we're buying into exactly and I think that this idea of a sports complex is different in the minds of almost

[05:25:22] everybody up here so I want to be I want to be very clear with my colleagues in terms of you know what you're getting an option one and an option two and again how we got here. My fear also is that, you know, we said no to the indoor sports complex because of the price tag and putting the taxpayers on the hook for it. But this has morphed into something that, in my opinion, has all of the potential of costing way more than the initial proposal.

[05:25:49] And so, you know, I'm kind of on the fence here whether or not I should commit to any of the options. I have no clue what option three is. I mean, you kind of briefly mentioned it. But that's like not really a thing because it's not even a part of the presentation and I know you're eager to to respond to me so I'll stop here and let you respond and then I'll go on to the next portion of my questions um supervisor Vega so in terms of your question of like what are you agreeing to buy in today what you're agreeing to buy in today is for us to to procure the consultants and do the due diligence after phase three so when we've gone through this visioning so

[05:26:26] like these are just conceptual visions just to kind of get a sense of and to illustrate right neither one of these visions are going to what's really truly going to be put into a solicited PPEA it will it's going to be refined it's going to be reworked it's going to be based on a market study it's going to be based in reality it's going to be based on the due diligence encumbrances if there's proffers if there's cultural resources we've got to do all of that so the only thing you're doing today is we're asking your buy-in can we pursue this to get to phase three to see

[05:27:06] if this is a viable truly a viable opportunity the truth is is we might get a market study and it may not say it may say we're 10 years too early that we've got to wait and sit on this land 10 more years until the market's ready for what we truly want so but we're not gonna so really what's at risk is about 250 000 in staff time to get us to that place so that you all can make a decision if you want to move forward with a vision and if there's you know it's based in market study

[05:27:42] if it's something what if it what if it comes back and says it's going to support a strip center well none of us are going to want to do that right so you know so then the option is is a mall strip center like what a strip mall what did i say you said a strip center i just want to be clear okay a strip mall but but right but if it but if the market study comes back and it's not aligned with what we want then i mean our recommendation would be step back and wait for the market to meet us there because the market will get there. It's just the timing might not be

[05:28:21] right. Well, and thank you for that. You know, I still, you know, just want to make sure that everybody's on the same page in terms of what's being presented just to manage expectations, if you will. Now you referenced Falls Church. What was the, what has Falls Church spent on their project? Do you know? I would have to, I will go back to my notes and I will get that for you but like I don't know what they spent I think consulting money it was about a hundred thousand maybe yeah but we'll go back to her and if you could break it down because you know you talked about a different two I guess different components it was two different funding streams if you will

[05:29:00] right and then the city was responsible for one portion and the other I'd like to see those numbers for comparison so and then the timing piece I just kind of want to talk a little bit about the time no I'll be quick everybody's extended their time so i'll be quick the timing piece you know i i know that things take time but i mean 2027 seems like an eternity yes and so i'm over here you know i mean i don't know what everybody else's plans are but i probably wouldn't even be here um on the board when this you know

[05:29:35] comes back and so again you know i don't i don't know right why things take so long especially when we own the land and so i don't know i mean i think with the rfps and the it's a very structured process that shanna can talk to um so is the timing component like a legal thing that we have to stick to a certain okay that's all i needed to know and then the last thing i'm going to do is i'm going to make a plug for the west end we keep talking about these types of facilities for the east end because of the i-95 corridor have you guys been on 95 it's a parking lot it is forever

[05:30:13] a parking lot okay so to make the argument that we have to bring these types of projects because it's along 95 we are a soccer traveling family and I can tell you that every place that we go to for soccer we get on 66 and so the West End is available I know that I have plenty of space in my district that I would love for it to be considered for projects of the like so that we're not just getting stuck with data centers as supervisor Gordy stated but we need you and your ideas got it to come to the table so that we can make it happen

[05:30:43] that's all all right supervisor bailey i'm so afraid now okay so uh in a way i agree with supervisor vega but i'm gonna i digress option two um and i totally understand what you're what you're saying about potential the potentiality once we do the study it may say we need a sports

[05:31:12] Center or whatever. But the study is key. I get that. I also want you to, as you're casting visions, because we are growing, you know, we've got to, this is important right now because we've got to make a decision, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, as how we go forward. And we did ask for this. How do we go forward? But as we're casting visions, we do have to look entirely at the county and the level of service that we're giving and not taking away as

[05:31:51] supervisor Franklin said from one entity and another and so I am for option two I think it will complement what's going on now with Potomac Shores and it just entertaining that the potentiality of having some sort of sports center there I think would be would be a second another phase to this but option two definitely and I and you know I I think that when I think of when you this is excuse me when you did

[05:32:26] this presentation initially in my head I had in my head the mosaic center in Fairfax that's what I had in my head and so I think that we are ripe for that thank you thank you all right I'm gonna go and then I'm gonna let people who want to do their second rounds their official second rounds go so um as a foodie is someone who has i don't know countless cookbooks obviously i'd like number two you know i don't again but i don't know if that's what the market will support and i'm okay with that i'm okay with rolling the dice because we talk about leading on development well let's

[05:33:03] see what the markets will support let's have ideas out there let's see what is possible and what is not possible you know i agreed i i was the quote-unquote split vote i was not in favor of the publicly financed indoor sports facility but i agreed to buy the land because this is exactly i want to have this conversation you know i wanted to look at what other options we could have whether it's option one two or bob's created option number three you know we need to see what we can do what we can yes let's try something different you know and so i'm prepared for reality

[05:33:38] it may be totally different it may be spot on um but i'm willing to roll the dice i'm willing to see what they come back with. So I support moving forward. You have the votes or the interest from this board. You have a majority in interest in moving forward with doing a procuring the third party consultants and doing the research and visioning. So you have that. And I'm excited for it. I'm excited to see what comes up, good, bad, whatever. Because again, if we're going to lead

[05:34:12] development we've got to take risks we've got to make decisions there is a lot of to be there's a lot of unknown and I was saying this earlier sometimes you just got to say no sometimes you've got to say no to things in order to get what you want sometimes you've got to brainstorm sometimes you got to see what sticks but I would like to move forward with this so um you know that's all I have to say for now I have a couple people who want to go on their next rounds I have Bodie franklin and then angry why yeah i don't know so very quickly um yeah madam chair i just had a

[05:34:48] mic drop moment so i'm gonna step on it too much again thank you christina for this um all i'll say other than that is i understand that it's frustrating this might take upwards of three three and a half four years we know that when we go from junior varsity to varsity level that's how this stuff is done i mean surazer angry knows well how long surazer jenkins worked on courts long before it came to the board. We know how long it took Stonebridge to become a thing. All of these things take time, and we talk about something as transformational and as placemaking as something like this. It's going to take time. So we don't know, to the Vegas point,

[05:35:27] where we're all going to be four or five years from now. But I can tell you, if we're going to see this through to the end, I'm going to still be here if I have anything to say about it. Because again, I see this as a potentially transformative thing, not only just for this part of my district, but for this entire quarter, because as Senator Franklin rightfully pointed out, we should not be in the business of cannibalizing what already exists. But we also know, like you said, and like other folks have said, we have other examples of the region and other regions of the country where we have these different neighborhoods and centers where they can all coexist, where depending on how we can feel on a certain night, you can go to something

[05:36:05] vastly different, just two, three miles away, sometimes shorter than that. So that said, Going back to Surajit Weir's option three idea, once we have, trying to talk about hundreds of acres of land, again, that's an opportunity to have very different neighborhoods within the same cohesive area.

[05:36:23] We see that in urban centers all the time. You go three blocks away, suddenly you're in Chinatown. You go four blocks, you're suddenly in Little Armenia. I'm from L.A. I literally grew up on the nexus between Little Thai Town, Little Armenia, and Little Mexico. It's possible. We just have to have the right visioning and the right partner to do it.

[05:36:41] So again, very excited for this. You saw I'm all in for this. Would love for sports to be part of this, but we know that until that market study comes by, we don't know what's feasible or what's not. So thank you for that. Supervisor Franklin. Sure, yeah. I actually wanted to clarify that I would like for the options to come back with that for an indoor sports facility.

[05:37:08] Because I think you had language that essentially pulled the direction that we were going in for an actual indoor sports facility separately and so if we're not exploring that as part of this then we need to talk about where we stand with the indoor sports facility so so the buy-in that you would be doing today would be then moving forward with closing out the existing ppea on the indoor sports as that project exists today okay so that would create

[05:37:44] that clean slate right i want to make sure everyone's clear on that yes and then and then but then when we go through the research the market due diligence and and the market study and so forth if there is an opportunity you know and the board wants it and it makes sense market sense and financial sense and that somebody will you know come in and do it then putting that with working with that real estate advisor we're going to have them look at okay is it the way it was

[05:38:18] originally planned is there a variation is there a smaller version of it that makes more financial sense right and what is their recommendation so we would ask that real estate advisor to include the analysis of that due diligence on this indoor sports and i guess where my concern is if for whatever reason the analysis comes back saying no to an indoor sports for whatever reason for whatever reason and this board or members of this board still want indoor sports facility

[05:38:54] essentially tonight we're killing it i don't know yes we would be closing out the unsolicited ppea so we entered into an interim agreement some work was done from that that will be closed out so we will not be moving forward with entering into a comprehensive agreement with MEB but as I said earlier if the indoor sports center is included in the vision and possible uses we have that work

[05:39:29] product and then that firm can possibly partner with one of the development and that's if it comes back that we should move forward I guess I'm not comfortable with not knowing that right now in us essentially killing off the project. Ms. Terry, if you can come back up. If you could talk a bit about what happens in terms of the solicitation. So you've already made very articulately made the point that the first time around this was unsolicited and this time it will be solicited and that we have a role to play. Yes. So if you could talk a bit about that. Yes. So if we want

[05:40:07] development teams to come forward and include an indoor sports center in their um concept and vision we have to include that in the request for conceptual proposals for them to even consider yeah yes all right so then hold on um i just want to go through supervisor um bailey did you are you interested in having an indoor sports facility included as part of this okay no you said option two but you want it doesn't necessarily include indoor sports do you want

[05:40:43] that okay all right super all right sorry supervisor we're you have option three but do you want to see indoor sports facilities part of this i want to see the consultant unconstrained by us telling them what to put in there that might otherwise screw up the viability of any development plan if they come up with that as a potential use fine if they don't then it doesn't work i i will say one more thing so there will be language within the request for conceptual

[05:41:19] proposal that gives those firms that flexibility. So say we include the indoor sports center, they could come back and say, based on their studies, the market doesn't bear or they don't recommend coming forward with that type of concept. So there is some flexibility in there for these development teams to be creative in what they bring back, but realizing that you've outlaid the vision and potential uses that you want to see brought forward.

[05:41:50] Before I get to people in the second round, I just want to clarify, and I know Gordy's a no, and Vega, you're on the fence, you're not, do you have any preferences? I'm with Bob. All right, she's with Bob. All right, so before I go to people on their second round comments, I still have Angry and I have Bailey.

[05:42:08] We do, I support option two, and I will include language for indoor sports facility because it's flexible, and if they say, the consultants say no, they say no. so manager just to finish out my comment i think my challenge is if they say no we're essentially killing the project tonight we're killing the indoor sports facility your procurement person just essentially said that we are so there is a very formal action that will take place after this discussion and that pending the board's um direction or guidance and that is yes we will be

[05:42:48] terminating the PPEA. That said, we are in the driver's seat in terms of defining the scope of the solicitations, I think is what Director Terry is suggesting. In us defining that scope, developers absolutely have the ability to come back to us and say, I appreciate your scope, but based on our expertise, we are not including this element. We are going to include these elements and we believe that that is the best uh proposal that we can present so i wouldn't

[05:43:24] characterize it tonight as killing the idea of a sports complex what i would say is closing it out is so i would i would actually if i may mr shorter i would actually characterize it this way there there will be a formal process right paperwork that has to be done but this is giving an opportunity this new approach, is actually making indoor sports actually possible, okay? Because this

[05:44:02] reimagined holistic approach, we can look at it, we can rethink about what is indoor sports. We still, the whole intention and goal of that indoor sports facility was to provide something to the community, but to make it an economic driver and, you know, to create kind of a destination.

[05:44:24] you know those goals still exist but because we're in the driver's seat we might find a developer who will reimagine and deliver and execute that in a way that might be a whole heck of a lot better so i'm saying i i characterize it that i think we're making it possible and if they say no then what we don't wait hold on we don't have to go with them but let's be very clear the proposed indoor sports facility that we didn't take a vote on and we really should have i mean it would have

[05:44:59] died it would have died it didn't have the votes so that what we're closing out did not have the votes it would not have moved forward what we're talking about is an alternative let's look at other options that could that may or may not include an indoor sports facility i know that's something you really desire but you know and there is more of a possibility with this because the other proposal was not moving forward so i guess my question is if the developers or i'm sorry consultants come back and say you know can't do an indoor sports facility what is our option

[05:45:35] for doing an indoor sports facility if we are closing it out tonight and i like to hear what supervisor angry has to say because i think people are kind of missing the point that we're closing it out your procurement person just said yes chris essentially just said yes and we're just calling it something different well no we're not i don't think anyone's missing the point i think we are all mostly in agreement and supervisor angry is next to speak i think the question is people have to be comfortable with the unknown people have to be comfortable with seeing what the markets can support and what other options there are out there i mean i'm clear and i i'm being very clear

[05:46:13] the other possibility that we were looking at for a publicly financed indoor sports facility was not moving forward it i mean we're going to close it out because it was not moving forward it didn't have the votes right and we right and to your point we we never took a vote but um i just want to be clear that if we don't move forward um with this if the consultants come back and say not moving forward with an indoor sports facility as part of this project again what how do we get the indoor sports facility well the okay so but this is the problem supervisor franklin not everyone

[05:46:48] there was not a majority for an indoor sports facility but to your point we never took a vote right well we can take one right now i mean we can do that and i i regret that we did not take a vote we didn't have the votes um i regret we didn't move forward on that but if we want to do that today we can do that today just to close out to show that we do not have the votes to move forward with an indoor sports facility because right now it's the support among this board is just not there sure and like i said i would like to hear from supervisor angry but i think we probably overall should have been and this is not to necessarily colleagues or i don't know who this

[05:47:25] is for but way more clear right because then i think we would have made the effort to make sure that that voice was represented in having this discussion today um so yeah i don't think that was clear for whatever reason but yeah i mean if we want to do like a straw poll and officially voted down but again i like to hear from well we we do have other people i want to make sure we have angry i have um gordy and bailey so we're going to hear from everyone and then we can take a vote on the current proposed taxpayer funded indoor sports facility and see where that goes and then we can continue on with this discussion but i think everyone i'm pretty sure it's clear

[05:48:05] here with where we're going but supervisor angry i have you next in my queue thank you madam chair and we don't need to take a struggle at least i don't think we need to take a struggle because let me just say this here um let us keep our eyes on the main stage you know like the magic trick the magician does something to take out the stage the the stage is where the action is happening um so this has always been about an indoor sports facility for me okay so that's what my specific direct questions was to christina because the word was risk and so my risk is this if we are

[05:48:38] seriously sitting here talking about we are completely trash canning the indoor sports then this should be a public hearing and you should have the people coming you we we keep talking about the people if you want the people to come in and tell you what they want then we should have that process and not be making this decision here tonight about this step but what i believe is happening is all this is is really the new how do we get your story because now we're calling it the landing at the town center. And in my personal opinion, the anchor is an indoor facility that will anchor to this development of a town with housing and restaurants and a nightlife such as

[05:49:18] One Loudoun and their, you know, golf place they have over there. But I mean, I don't want to lose focus of the fact that this may be a modification of what we're going to do next. But if we're not talking about including this with some form of a listening to still what the people want because they wanted a sports facility to do something.

[05:49:41] Now, it might have failed this last go around, and maybe we should have taken that vote to know that, but I can tell you that there are a lot of folks lined up to come in and understand that. So if we're going to do anything with trying to take it off the table, I think the people need to be heard.

[05:49:57] Madam Chair, I'm going to call a point of order. I know we have people on the queue, but I asked the county attorney a question, and I think that it's valuable information for her to give her legal opinion on whether or not we're killing the PPE.

[05:50:13] All right. Ms. Rubble. Madam Chair, members of the board, it is my understanding in talking with the county executive that for the PPEA to be officially rejected, he has the authority to do that.

[05:50:30] It does not need a board action coming back to the board. um so right now technically you do not have the item on your agenda if you want to formalize it you can do a motion to waive the rules and add it to the agenda for a straw vote to make it clear to the county executive and staff that county staff should put an end to the unsolicited ppea and then you can give direction to staff as to whether you want to do anything further thank you for

[05:51:03] that hold on one second i'm gonna we have yes you are next supervisor bailey thank you very much Madam Chair, I agree with what Supervisor Angry is saying. We're not saying that we want to kill, and that's a really bad term, extract, let go of the vision for the people of a sports complex.

[05:51:29] I think certainly what I'm trying to do as one-eighth of this board is to assure that we can put a sports complex in the vision that we're casting because it was so skeletal in the beginning. Now we have a concrete way of getting it in there.

[05:51:47] Now, the question is, what if the developer comes back and said, I don't want it in there? Then we create another way of getting a sports complex because the people is requiring that. And so I don't want to anybody out in the community, because I have the same type of relationships as most of you on here, to think that I don't want a sports complex.

[05:52:10] That's not what I'm saying. And so I want to say that on camera, but I also want to say that this is an opportunity with a sports complex as the hub for us to have what they requested, entertainment, food, whatever that looks like, around the sports complex.

[05:52:29] And I think that is a more definite way of making sure that it happens. I think that's a clear-cut business way of making sure that it happens. So that's, you know, I just want to offer that because I don't think we're saying, there may be one of us that's saying that, but I don't think we're saying, kill it.

[05:52:52] That's not what we're saying. That's not what we're saying to our community. So I just want to be, you know, really, with Supervisor Angry not being here, I want you to understand that, Vic, that's not what we're saying. We're saying what you said to make it the hub of this.

[05:53:08] And do it in a way where we have a study where it makes sense. We're not guessing. There is a vision that's being cast. And it makes sense. And it's even more robust for the purpose of having a sports complex. I think what we're getting hung up on is that, well, first of all, a sports complex is not guaranteed, period.

[05:53:30] We are going to put it into this that we would like to see a sports, we would like to see that. so we are putting that into this PPEA the one that are solicited we are putting it in there that we would like to see a sports facility but I think where we're getting hung up it may not come to fruition and I think that that's where we're getting nervous it may not come to the fruition but even if it doesn't come to fruition into this that can still be an ongoing discussion we can have additional discussions about what it would look like to have an indoor sports facility

[05:54:07] I just didn't like the previous one that was proposed. I had a lot of issues with that. You know, I'm not against the idea of a sports, indoor sports facility, but I want to make sure that we do it the right way. I want to make sure that we have competing proposals. I want to make sure that we have robust discussion.

[05:54:25] I'd like to mitigate to the extent that we could, you know, how much taxpayers are putting in. So those are what's required to get my vote. But again, you know, even if it's not in this particular proposal, if that's a discussion this board still wants to have, we can continue to have it.

[05:54:42] We can look at the Coles District. I mean, like, whatever. You know, we can, you know, there we go. We can continue to have that discussion. I'm not saying that this is do or die. Like, and I want to be very clear.

[05:54:58] you know we are going to move away from the previous unsolicited PPEA which did not have a majority of votes we are going to move towards this where we put in the possibility of having an indoor sports facility may not it's not guaranteed but we're putting it in there to get ideas and if it comes back that this is not sustainable this isn't support we can have additional discussions of what it looks like to have an indoor sports facility but I just want to say it's not completely dead let's not put it in a coffin and bury it six feet under madam chair

[05:55:33] i actually appreciate you um being more clear about the fact that yeah there's no guarantee that this is going to get built whereas the process that we currently have um again maybe it didn't have the votes and i'm happy to take that vote um but it would have if it did have the votes it would have guaranteed it i think what people are missing i understand what you're saying I think what people are missing, well, what Supervisor Angry said was opposite of what you said, right?

[05:56:07] What Supervisor Angry said is that he wants this to be an actual project. And I think what we're missing, and actually the chair just said it, what we're missing, and she's right, is that if they come back and say that, no, not going to move forward, doesn't make sense, even if we include the language in, we don't have to use the word dead, but this thing is done.

[05:56:33] but then we also have to ask ourselves you know if they're also saying i mean and that's going to be part of the discussion if they're saying that this is not viable that's going to be part of our discussion you know we're going to be we're going to have to make a decision as a board if people still want to move forward with indoor sports complex that make that the market has already told it's not viable but i do we are breaking board rules i do have other people i have gordy and i have weir i want them to get their second round and then we're going to have to make some kind of decision we're going to need to make some kind of I see you Mr. Angry but I'm

[05:57:09] going to go because you have already you've had your two bites I'm going to go to Gordy no I'm going to Gordy and I'm going to Weir so Gordy. Madam Chair you know yeah I've seen enough done enough and been around enough government contracting to realize the way you write a contract can drive to its solution and a lot of consultants will give you will solve to your answer that you're looking for. The fact that we bought this land using taxpayer dollars, I think

[05:57:43] the taxpayers of this county deserve for us to seek the highest and best use of this land. And if that is a sports center, then the consultants will tell us that. But if we drive them towards a very specific answer, they will solve it. But that may not be the right thing. And it may not be the most beneficial thing for our community. And so the challenge then is to make sure that we leave it open for that consultant to give us the highest and best use, because we owe that to

[05:58:18] our taxpayers. In terms of a sports facility, and again, I don't believe a sports facility will build, stuff will build around an indoor sports facility. The reason why Virginia Beach has one is because Virginia Beach has a tourism district. Lots of hotels, a lot of people traveling.

[05:58:39] They already had all the infrastructure in place that could support what they were doing. Lynchburg at Liberty University, that had an entire university built around this thing already that could sustain it, support it, and was already attracting people to the area.

[05:58:56] So I think we, you know, the opportunity here is to allow the consultants to give us that highest and best use. We can make recommendations related to federal facilities as an indoor sports and entertainment district um give give them some generic ideas but not be too very specific on driving to an answer that we're looking for but rather for us to figure out what for them to figure out what the highest and best use is that's my opinion um and um and so i'm i i would like to

[05:59:32] see what the consultants come back with because and and i shared this when i had my briefing is we need something bold here because we still have 60% of our residents leaving the county every day for a job in another locality. When are we ever going to take a step to change that trend? It went from 50% 10 years ago to 60% today. So how are we going to turn that back so that we're allowing people that we may not need the commuter lot because people are going there to work, not leave

[06:00:10] the county. That's what I want to see happen. I want to see people living, working, and playing in Prince William County and not have to leave. That's what I want to see. And so I want something bold, big, and I want to see what the consultants tell us how we can achieve that. Because to me, what matters most to our families is that they get to spend time with one another and not have to spend, a parent have to spend an hour and a half each way in a car to get to a job somewhere

[06:00:46] else in northern virginia so i get pretty passionate about that sorry but that's what really drives me and this is a fantastic opportunity because it's right there on 95 fantastic opportunity let's see what the greatest opportunity that this county has to maximize that for the benefit of this community thank you supervisor weir thank you madam chair

[06:01:21] and ditto almost everything supervisor gordy said i've been sitting here listening to this and quite Frankly, I'm frustrated and a bit damn angry. What started off as a project and economic development has turned into a referendum on an indoor sports complex to a particular model on a specific site.

[06:01:40] Cost be damned, capital or operational cost. Because we're going to kowtow to a vocal minority. You can't have it both ways. You can't buy a piece of parcel.

[06:01:58] You can't buy a parcel and tell people that you're going to make its best use of it, highest and best use. Probably a parcel we shouldn't have bought in the first place. But we're stuck with it now. And we're hanging this on a PPEA, an unsolicited PPEA, one that's never gone to a public hearing, one whose numbers are so questionable that our own consultant tore them apart.

[06:02:26] We're arguing about a complex that has failed as a private venture everywhere in this country. Those places it hasn't failed, it is subsidized by the localities.

[06:02:43] And the closest anybody comes to breaking even is 50%, and that's in the city of Chicago. Why did we just go through two hours of this exercise with economic development, wasted all their time and effort, a nice slide deck, visiting all of our offices?

[06:03:03] If we're then going to dictate the terms, you're hamstringing the consultant that you're asking to give you an unbiased, market-based, financially and fiscally responsible prospectus, development plan, or development plans.

[06:03:28] Might there be an indoor facility in it? Sure. might there not be? That's what you're hiring a consultant to determine. And if we're not going to go down that road and we're just going to predetermine what we're going to put there and hire a consultant to provide us some cover or provide us a report that we're going to totally ignore, why are we even bothering going through the process? We should have eliminated the PPEA

[06:04:01] months ago, to be honest with you. This proposal was never viable and will never be viable. And now that we're going to hang this up on a procedural issue because, oh, we never took a vote on something that was never really eligible for a vote. I mean, where's my vote on which section of the state ordinance we're doing AFDU on? And we didn't have a vote on that. We had some vague guidance last week when the decision was made. I lived with it. But either we're going to go with the Economic Development Department's proposal, and I will grudgingly go with it.

[06:04:40] Option three, not options one or two, because I'm smart enough to realize that option one and option two pigeonhole us a little bit too much and don't give us the flexibility needed to truly get the most bang for the buck. But what are we talking about? What are we arguing about?

[06:04:57] We're going in circles at this point. I mean, honestly, I think at this point, we're going in circles. What I have said earlier, and we can take a vote. I mean, Chris has the authority, but we can take a vote because, first of all, we were not going to move forward with the publicly funded indoor sports facility.

[06:05:21] I think we all understand that. That was not going to move forward. The question now is we have an opportunity to put out something, and it can include, again, it can include language about an indoor sports facility. It is not binding. It is not guaranteed.

[06:05:37] I don't know what's missing on this one at this point. I don't know what's missing. Um, but I quite honestly, I guess, you know, I'm just trying to think what, what might be the best way forward. It seems like, I don't know if supervisor Franklin or angry have had a change of heart because it seems like we have enough people who on this board, we do have a majority for people to move forward with sending out, um, or, or continuing this process. So I just want to note for the record, because I would like to move forward with this process. I'd like to put

[06:06:13] a pen in this supervisor franklin do you feel comfortable moving forward with this yes or no i we we have already people have gone over there to you know we didn't waive the rules so i'm just going to ask a simple yes or no supervisor angry would you like to move forward with this proposal is this something you're comfortable with listen let me just be very clear i'm comfortable moving forward because inside of this moving forward is an option for an indoor sports facility so that was never taken off the table so this with everything that was just said in the room and the disrespect that was put in there um i will say that that was never taken off the table this is

[06:06:51] just a modification of the process and the consultants at that we spent 800k on invested in that told us this indoor sports facility was prime time it's already been confirmed i'm saying that the people will get a voice in this moving forward and we don't have to vote on or whatever we have to vote on but going forward the people will come in and give their voices on this whole process so say what you want we can do what you guys want to do here but moving forward with this project inside of it will be an analysis to look and see if this opportunity exists and if it does we need

[06:07:25] to make sure we make room for it and put it to the size that it needs to be thank you i there's going to be ample opportunity for what i understand for people to have input correct Ms. Wendt, yes, she's shaking her head. For people who can't see her, she's shaking her head and she gave us a thumbs up. So there's going to be ample opportunity for people to comment.

[06:07:44] And there's going to be ample opportunity for us to talk about this, to discuss this, to say what we like, what we don't like, to tweak it. So this isn't a done deal. We are simply here today deciding, do we want to move forward with a solicited PPEA?

[06:08:00] That's all we're doing, right? I'm looking at you, Christina, right? We're going to hire a consultant. we're going to do some visioning. We're making the decision that you want to explore this approach by hiring a consultant to do the more market research and due diligence. Before we were to go out with a solicited PPEA, you guys will have another opportunity to weigh in. And I think we're making this honestly a little overly complex right now. I think this board is making this a little overly complex we have the votes to move forward with green lighting this process kick-starting

[06:08:39] this process from what i've heard i mean we we have the five we have the five you know we have the the votes i don't know if you want to clarify anything else but we have the five to move forward yeah um and and i've always said that we should move forward with the indoor sports included the point that i just want everyone to understand that the consultants come back and say that in indoor sports is not needed for whatever reason i just want us to be clear for those of us that support an indoor sports facility that's the end of that conversation maybe or maybe not i think we

[06:09:14] all understand it i mean unfortunately supervisor bailey has stepped away we understand it we understand it so we are going to move forward thank you christina for going through this circular exercise while we think out everything and play act and do what we have to do but we are going to move forward so thank you very much for this we are now moving on to supervisor's time are y'all ready for supervisor's time because i'm going to start with you you know honestly i'm kind of with you because i've been taking bets with people about what time we're going to you know get out

[06:09:53] maybe we do need to do a straw vote on what time we think we're gonna i think nine o'clock all All right, Supervisor Gordy, put down your phone because we're going to start with you. Well, Madam Chair, I need to find an email from our great lawyer, Ms. Roble, because I need to refer to it here in just a minute. First of all, I want to thank Elijah, Dan, and Quentin for your patience today.

[06:10:15] And I know you'll be telling Wade that y'all's day never took this long. Yeah, just so. Actually, I think it did, but you know what? So anyway, all right.

[06:10:31] So just a couple of things. I want to congratulate Tin Cannon Brewery. They were the first brewery in Prince William County. They will be having their 10th anniversary on Friday. And so I want to congratulate them. A couple of meetings that I had this week.

[06:10:49] First, I met last week, did a tour with Rich Dalton, the CEO of VRE, to do a VRE tour. really appreciate um the work that he does to support this very important um uh asset for our county um also met with uh yesterday with uh leadership from prince william water to talk about water quality and water quantity particularly pfos salinity um and so really appreciate and i look forward to their briefing coming up next month um and then um uh also just want to uh wish

[06:11:28] everybody a very happy thanksgiving and lastly um on the 10th we're going to be taking up thomas farm which is a development um on 28 near noakesville um and i just want to share with you guys uh one of the concerns that i have with it and and as you're probably going to be have outreach this week over the next few weeks about it um but just kind of give you a little bit of perspective um the the land use application is going to come before the board on december 10th

[06:11:59] While I understand and appreciate professional staff's opinion with regard to connectivity of an interparcel connector from the Thomas Farm into Walter Taylor Road in New Bristow Village, I am not in support of the proffer that they have put in, proffer number 22.

[06:12:19] I do think it is necessary, and I do not think it is necessary, and I do not believe the road can accommodate the kind of traffic that would be brought about with the interparcel connector. i'll be having discussions with the applicant um about removing proper 22 and then having this board waive the requirement for the interparcel connector and i'll be happy to discuss this with any of you uh between now and then if you have any questions um walter taylor road you can barely get one car through there uh it is not it was not built to accommodate 300 and something homes and so that is the the reason why i wanted to share that with you ahead of next week's meeting

[06:12:58] or the 10th meeting and look forward for the conversation as you deem necessary. Thank you, Madam Chair. Supervisor Franklin. Yes. On Friday, November 22nd, I participated in the holiday tree lighting at Stonebridge.

[06:13:16] And so thank you for Kimco for the invitation. And thank you for all the families that came out. Right after that, I was joined by Supervisor Angry and our school board member, lori williams at freedom high school where we celebrated um kind of at a pep rally to kind of start the basketball season off and so excited about uh being able to support freedom high school once again upcoming events on friday december 6 at 5 30 please join me at the neapsco boardwalk for the opening of holiday lights at the boardwalk this has proven to be a very popular event and i

[06:13:51] look forward to hosting it in the woodbridge district again this year and then after that i will be back at freedom high school for the opening of their basketball season i will be there hopefully with some of my colleagues who help to support uniforms for the team to watch our girls basketball team and so looking forward to seeing some of my colleagues there and hope the community can come out and support freedom as well and that is it thank you supervisor vega thank you madam chair just a quick reminder that i'm collecting new unwrapped toys at my office until december 6th and of course this is for our toys for tots campaign that we do every year

[06:14:31] another reminder my annual christmas tree lighting ceremony will be held on december 7th i want to wish everyone a happy thanksgiving i am very grateful for each and every single one of you we were at vaco and i described the board as any family we're a dysfunctional family but at the very end we all know that deep inside we care for one another and that we're here for each other so i appreciate you all and i hope you have a wonderful time with your families during thanksgiving and to staff thank you also for the hard work and for dealing with us for long hours

[06:15:04] and to our amazing clerks that's all i have madam chair thank you supervisor um bailey hey madam chair thank you thank you thank you um i would like to thank uh of the first month zion baptist church and grace church for um doing a wonderful thing and having a turkey giveaway um in our in my community this past Saturday it was wonderful and so to Reverend James and Bishop Greer thank you so much for thinking about the community and I also

[06:15:38] want to thank the Knights of Israel Lodge number 001 who had our third partnering together for our annual turkey drive as well and we provided 54 turkey boxes to the oak senior center and 44 turkey boxes to the Dumfries united methodist church and 13 to grand park middle school and 22 to potomac high and so it was um it was such a wonderful saturday and then on the 23rd also um i attended the third annual great big kid event and i want to congratulate the boys and girls club on the

[06:16:16] success of their third annual great big kid event at um with amazon uh and we appreciate amazon's support in in that endeavor so thank you to the dedicated mentors for fostering growth development and fun for our kids here in the community later on that evening i attended the national coalition of black 100 black women's uh 10th annual gala and it was just a wonderful wonderful event my guests uh included abigail spanberger and our congressional elect um excuse me Eugene Vindman, thank you so much.

[06:16:56] The event celebrates the achievements of black women in our community and honoring those that have given significant contributions to our community. And so I want to say hello to Dr. Alice Howard, who was not able to be there with us, but we appreciate your leadership in our community.

[06:17:15] And then on the 30th, we'll have our Dumfries Annual Tree Lighting Event with Dumfries. And I'm excited about that. We're looking forward to attending the holiday tree lighting that we have every year with my mayor, Mayor Derek Wood.

[06:17:32] And then upcoming events on, again, on the 3rd of December. Kenny and I, he's been announcing it. It's my turn to announce, Kenny. We're going to have our upcoming Affordable Housing Town Hall. I'm looking forward to that and just inviting the community to come and talk with us and the subject matter experts to talk about affordable housing.

[06:17:53] you. Madam Chair, please join us if you can. And thank you to the county staff and to our county attorney for covering us with that event. And we had a vast announcement, so we appreciate the guidance in that. And then lastly, I want to say two things. One is to give my condolences to former Supervisor Ed King, who passed away, who was from the Potomac District. And he was also very instrumental in standing up our VRE organization, and so he will be missed for his guidance and his leadership. And then, as Supervisor Baker had said, we love each other,

[06:18:32] but happy Thanksgiving to everybody at the dais and into our community, and just take the time to reflect on the blessings and how we are united in this country, and just be grateful for family and friends. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I'll offer my happy thanksgivings everyone including supervisor vague as well um just a couple of quick things uh my office will be having its holiday open house friday december 13th from five to eight or at least that's the advertised hours my suspicion is my constituents again will stay there until close to midnight

[06:19:10] and we'll keep the doors open uh i would also note that once again this year per the request of a certain supervisor. We will be providing eggnog. I just hope that supervisor doesn't ghost us like she did last year after we went out and went to the trouble of buying the eggnog.

[06:19:32] Now the bourbon will be in it. And then one other housekeeping note. I've received a number of emails from students in a particular dual enrollment English class at Gainesville Middle school. And this message is to those students in that class, and more particularly their teacher.

[06:19:56] Your requests for detailed pros and cons, market analysis on a variety of things is appreciated, and ordinarily, if one or two of you had asked for it, I'd be more than willing to provide it. But since most of you are writing about the same topics and asking me the same questions in the same form letter i am not going to write your outline and bullet points for you however uh my office will arrange a meeting either with your entire class at your classroom or in my office

[06:20:33] and you can take your own notes and develop your own outline and your own wording so that you're not all cutting and pasting off of my email. Probably so, but I'm not going to help them cheat. I had to write my own papers in longhand. Last but not least, since we've ripped the scab off of Thomas Farm, I'll go ahead and put this out a couple of weeks early. You know, I've got some issues with the density calculation and the density bonuses that have been granted and the

[06:21:10] precedent that it sets I'm not going to be I'm not going to be in favor of that and I also believe that we as a board need to sit down and have a discussion both amongst ourselves and with the county school school board and perhaps with legal counsel on just how far we start pushing recommendations arguably proffer recommendations with respect to school boundaries and which school certain new developments go in I think we're we're heading down a road that is

[06:21:48] potentially fraught with many many issues and doesn't adequately allow the school division to plan properly for a long-term development this is turning into a sort of a case-by-case let's figure out where the kids are gonna go and then that will screw things up in the future if if a development does or doesn't get bought or doesn't get built I think that's something we need to address and we need to address it rather quickly. Thank you Madam Chair. Supervisor Bode. Thank you Madam Chair. I have

[06:22:20] some events to announce and I'll have a directive. So first events was able to attend a BCC meeting for the different heads of the BCCs for the quadrant of health well-being and environmental sustainability. I'm acting chair of the joint environmental task force so that's why I was part of it but i wanted to commend elijah johnson julia manno and the team who were part of that i think it's a great idea to huddle all of the bcc chairs to have a really good discussion it was actually very similar to what we saw today with all the quadrant with under uh dxo hue where you had that kind of collaboration those hey what are barriers that you're seeing what are barriers that

[06:22:58] i'm seeing how can we collaborate to maybe break down some of those barriers and silos so i wanted to commend elijah and the team and for again a county executive for fostering that that culture of hey let's de-silo all these agencies all these bccs um and i will say to my colleagues on the dais one of the um themes that came out of it and i don't think i'm speaking out of term when i say this is the bccs want to have a lot more sort of um direct uh communication with the board i know some of them send resolutions what have you but they they feel like they they sort of send out resolutions they sort of go into the void staff does work and eventually gets back to

[06:23:35] us so I know that Elijah and his team took really good notes on that but I think was good feedback last week I also had a Girl Scout troop in my office I mentioned earlier the troops both the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts and the Eagle Scouts all have these democracy badge requirements and that usually has them come and speak with a member of the board was happy to field their questions as always they ask really good questions I'm a little worried that one of them might run against me in a couple years um but always a great conversation and um really looking forward to their their futures whether that's in politics or otherwise i was able to attend the town of

[06:24:14] occoquan tree lighting with my mayor mr ernie porta uh back on saturday always a great time really really good turnout and uh we always say spend irresponsibly in the town of occoquan especially now that we're getting to the winter months so thank you to mayor porta and his team for always having a great time there.

[06:24:31] As Surah Bailey said, a week from today, we'll be having our Housing Matters Town Hall at Ikea. The doors open at 6 o'clock and the program itself runs from 6.30 to 8. As Surah Bailey said, we're going to be hearing from experts, but we also are going to hear from the voices and the faces of the housing challenges that we have because it gets really easy to sort of other folks that you don't really know and what have you, but if it's your favorite barista or your kid's teacher, your firefighters or police officers.

[06:25:00] We want to see and hear those folks who are actually facing housing and the challenges around housing in our community. So again, thank you, Senator Bailey, to you and your team for your collaboration on that. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone as well.

[06:25:16] I know that usually we talk about the holidays and it's a great time to give thanks for everything we're thankful for. And of course, my colleagues, I love you all as well, but also wanted to note the folks that they don't always have the best time during the holiday season. We have a lot of service members in our community, for example, that their service member family might be deployed.

[06:25:36] We also have some folks in our community who may have lost folks during the holiday season to different things. So I wanted to just give a balance message saying, you know, holidays are a great time to celebrate, but we also know that there's other folks that face a lot of challenges during the holiday season as well, and we should also highlight those folks.

[06:25:55] So with that, I have my directive. Over the past few years, we've seen a noble increase in complaints not only around panhandling but about loitering, homelessness, trespassing, substance misuse, and a whole host of other concerns with folks that even may be in crisis.

[06:26:11] Effectively, responding to these issues for our residents requires quick, seamless, and coordinated community-based responses. Right now, the county staff only has two staff members who are dedicated to this type of outreach and service coordination. Without objection, I would like to direct the county executive to include a coordinated community outreach and response program in the FY26 proposed budget for the board's consideration.

[06:26:34] At a minimum, the program should advance effective stakeholder engagement, including with the Community Safety Advisory Committee, CSAC, on-the-ground assessments, swift mobilization of individual providers or multidisciplinary teams, and linkages to and or provision of services that are tailored for each unique situation.

[06:26:52] i'm just curious why a supervisor has to make the directive and the ask is not coming from the department head during budget process time i think it's um the board anyone on the board has the ability to sort of give direction i mean i i don't ultimately i'll take this direction and bring it forward as part of the proposed uh i don't object to it and i mean i understand the authority that we have through directives but i'm just curious as to why it's it's the timing of it

[06:27:28] Why not go through the normal budget process like every department head and they make their presentation and state their case as to what their staffing needs are? I don't think that I've been on the board and had any other colleague member make a directive, issue a directive to add permanent positions to any department.

[06:27:46] And if I'm wrong, I'd be happy to entertain when it has happened before. So I'm just curious, like, why we can't wait until the budget process formally kicks off? What I would do, if there are no objections, what I would do is bring this back as an item of board interest.

[06:28:02] I would not propose it as part of my budget, but instead have it listed as an item that the board will consider, like all of the other things that board members have mentioned over the year. And I don't know that this is inconsistent with that.

[06:28:19] And if I could, I appreciate the question. What I'll tell you is, you're right. Normally, we would wait for the agencies to ask for different things. But this came essentially from me because over the last month or so, my office and I have also been out to the homeless encampments in my district.

[06:28:39] And in more conferences with the folks there, with the PD, and with different agencies that have touched that, there was a desire to see some kind of indication from at least one board member that it's something that we would like to see on that list. Because you remember how during the budget process, we have the things that the county exec has as part of his base budget.

[06:28:57] But then we have those menu of items that come up either because a board member mentioned it throughout the year or because it's mentioned during budget season. I just wanted to make sure that before we get too much farther close to the budget season, I put my directive out there because it was so fresh in my mind from when I visited those camps.

[06:29:16] And I understand that I just want to caution the board that we're opening this door. what may be a staffing priority to Supervisor Bodie may not be for me, and then my staffing priorities may not be a priority for him. So I just want to caution us that this doesn't become a practice that whoever sees fit to, you know, make a directive similar to this one, that that's just going to become a thing because it's out of place.

[06:29:39] It's not the proper process is the point that I'm trying to get to. I feel like we make a lot of directives, and there are some people who make a directive a day. Just because someone makes a directive doesn't mean we're necessarily going to get what we want, you know, and I think it opens the door for discussion.

[06:29:55] Madam Chair, and I understand that, but we're now directing county staff to spend their time and invest resources and trying to see if this is even a need or feasible, and I don't think it's appropriate. We have a formal process, and it's the budget process, and that's when the heads of these agencies, departments, understand the needs of the department, the agency, and they make their ask.

[06:30:15] it shouldn't be up to i i can issue directive after directive in terms of what i feel should be proper staffing for the police department and that's what i'm trying to get to it's not the proper place for it and so for those reasons i will be objecting all right and since i believe since this is the first time we have someone who's objected what we're just going to do make this a resolution and take a vote all right wait hold on we need to have a motion you know we second it i see a couple people supervisor weir than franklin thank you madam chair um in this instance i'm

[06:30:53] going to have to side with Supervisor Vega. I've been pretty clear over the years, both this side and that side, that I'm not a big fan of mid-year FTE additions, and this may or may not result in an FTE being added, you know, outside of the budget cycle. And this is going to be hard to believe coming from me, but in a circumstance like this, I've

[06:31:27] got many similar staffing issues whether it's what the pd is supervisor vega does or you know i've already stated i believe that um you know current planning staff is understaffed and we could probably make some make some um employment shifts to cover to cover some outstanding um deficiencies but at the end of the day you know if if i've got that need if i've got the desire if i believe that the county needs that type of service or additional program I'm going to bring it to the CXO because

[06:32:04] that's his job and it's his job to make that determination as to what is viable what is not viable um what he has the capacity for and what he doesn't have the capacity for and quite frankly it's a it's a management issue for him so I yeah I too am a little a little bit uncomfortable I'm a lot uncomfortable uh with with the precedent that was that this would establish just and it's not something that I would do. It's not personal. I'm just really uncomfortable with this process.

[06:32:36] Thank you, Madam Chair. Supervisor Bode. Yeah, actually, can you repeat the directives? Sure. Without objection, I would like to direct the county executory to include a coordinated community outreach and response program in the FY26 proposed budget for the board's consideration.

[06:32:58] At a minimum, this program should advance effective stakeholder engagement, including with the community safety advisory committee um on the ground assessment swift mobilization of individual providers or multidisciplinary teams linkages to and or provision of services that are tailored to each individual situation sure and i'm assuming you you and the county exec have spoken um is it possible um and you were reading kind of fast but is it possible for it to go under the uh the community safety initiative so i didn't want to dictate to the county executive where he wanted to put that program i wanted him his team to decide but i i hear you and that's why it indicated

[06:33:36] that part about the c-sac because i did want to get them in on the conversation because i know they felt like they've been left out well that and i guess the way i looked at that organ that program i should say to do exactly what your directive is doing so that's kind of how i look at that program to kind of see what the needs are and what the resources should be um for those different demographics that you mentioned so um and i'd be curious to hear from the county exec but i would think that that would be the appropriate place to have this discussion community safety

[06:34:09] initiative the appropriate place to have a discussion meaning these the essentials of your directive is what so i think you the agency we're talking about the agency that would be the lead agency on it right but but it's to can you just read it a little bit slower yeah so uh coordinated community outreach and response program for the FY26 proposed budget which you know it talked about in the direct well my preface talked about panhandling loitering homelessness trespassing substance misuse and general concern yeah so those are all the things that are supposed to be

[06:34:44] looked at within the community safety initiative there so let me say it this way I would want to have some room to come back during the budget cycle to express to the entire board where this would appropriately go. There are a number of programs in the organization that handles crisis response, and I'm not sure that community safety and their coordinating should be the agency that's doing the direct service, where we have a homeless services division, we have community services that does mental health response, and I would want to have a conversation with staff about that

[06:35:20] before making any permanent decisions on, especially by way of directive, on where it should go within the organization. Sure. And so I wonder then, Mr. Rajabody, are you willing for your directive, obviously have that as a directive, but then also just add in having Chris come back to see where the appropriate place would be?

[06:35:40] And maybe that will allay some of the concerns from our colleagues. I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm fine with that. It doesn't put my concerns to rest. Again, it's not procedurally correct. We have a formal process, and it should go through that process. Yeah, but I think with adding on for the county exec to come back with information on where it is appropriate for that program to go, plus maybe what the FTE should look like, maybe you can also, in that directive, include a timeline for what may be most appropriate to address the issue.

[06:36:17] So if he comes back and say, well, the budget is enough time for me to, you know, get the FTEs or I need them tomorrow because this is much of an emergency. Does that make sense, Supervisor Boney? So having him come back also with a timeline that he thinks makes sense?

[06:36:34] Yeah, it does. And to go back to something that Supervisor Weir said, I agree that I get concerns when you start adding FTEs in the middle of mid-budget. So that's why I originally said, hey, let's do this part of the budget process. So it's going to be adopted as part of the FY26 budget.

[06:36:52] So folks who have concerns about us suddenly adding FTEs mid-year, that's suddenly not an issue anymore because it's added to the budget, which takes place July 1. Sure. So why don't you just come back with information related to the directive? And I guess if we want to vote on whether to do mid-year in actual appropriation, for lack of better words, maybe we can come back with a resolution for that.

[06:37:14] so are you requesting that he withdraw his directive supervisor franklin i wasn't going to say it like that but no just amend it so then you've made several friendly amendments to it based on some of your comments so i guess supervisor buddy would have to so just to be just to be clear for everyone so one is to have the county exec come back as part of him coming back with the directive on where he where he he believes it should be housed in terms of agency right one and number two of what he feels is the most appropriate sort of timeline does does he have

[06:37:51] enough time with just the confines of the budget does he need them sooner does he would it be later that kind of okay yeah i'm good right well some of them i i don't think i'll i'm not going to speak for anyone but yeah no i'm fine with that no i'm still going to object but i i i do think that supervisor bode you need to be very clear as to what your directive now is because there's been a lot of back and forth between the two of you so i yeah but he read something and it was very clear and then you added a whole bunch of stuff to it so i would like supervisor vote if

[06:38:28] you needed a minute to kind of redraft your directive i just had a quick question if this is also come from because i know and i apologize this is also when i was out when you guys last time um you know you were talking about the panhandling initiative you had mentioned to me you know in that there was going to be funding for a coordinated response is that partially what this is in response to as well or no it's part of it but like i said before i appreciate the question madam chair so yes that's part of it but understanding that again in the conversation i've had since then it goes well beyond just panhandling because we have issues with folks

[06:39:05] you know frankly going to shopping centers folks you know dealing with i think panhandling is part is a symptom of much larger concern i think this will help address all those things not just panhandling so i and i know you had i guess you want to speak on this i mean do you need a minute to kind of redo your because we're still going to take an up and down vote because there's still an objection but i just want to make sure your directive is clear or i can also just go over to angry and we can come back no i think that i can just sort of say uh information that comes back as a response to the directive should also include uh a timeline on on the directive on on the

[06:39:43] necessary FTEs and funding necessary, as well as what the CXO believes is the appropriate agency that houses this program. We got that? Yeah, if I can.

[06:40:00] So based on the discussion, what I certainly am happy to do is just come back as part of the proposed budget, bring this forward as an item of board interest, and in that, be clear about where the program would go and what the cost would be and the board would consider it when the board considers all of the other items of board interest without a directive. Meaning that it wouldn't be baked into the base budget, correct?

[06:40:28] Correct. I would not bring this as part of the proposed budget. I would instead bring this as after as an item of interest for the board. I would support that. Wait, hold on. I had Supervisor Bode if you want to speak and then Supervisor Gordy. Yeah, I just, you know, I understand you're trying to solve a problem and you've given a very specific solution to that problem. And to me, that that's also kind of where I get a little uncomfortable is being prescriptive rather than just given that here's

[06:41:08] the problem, come back with a solution or options for a solution to help us understand it. And then from there we can then say go with option a or court you know uh and then this is what it's going to cost this is what the manpower and this is where i want to go um i just you know i get a little being too prescriptive in terms of establishing a program from the dais um without it going through the you know the reviews and trying to understand you know where the what what the right solution should be yeah madam chair yes supervisor bode i think we're we have

[06:41:46] more of a consensus based on what you just said CXO you're going to bring it as part of the board interest items as part of the budget we're not going to prescribe anything tonight but you know to bring it back and I think everyone's good with that so wait so are you withdrawing your directive are we going to start okay I think everyone understands okay all right thank you so very much and if you're done supervisor angry thank you manager okay so I'm going to spend my time just setting the record straight in 2019 uh the the previous board under the chair of cory

[06:42:21] stewart held a community event over at the hilton performing arts center and they came up with four items to add to the election uh polls that year which was uh a road improvement parks improvement a indoor sports facility and a uh a pool uh so the pool sports facility came off the only thing that stayed on there was the parks and the roadway.

[06:42:47] Both of those were passed. We had a bond set for those. And so the indoor sports center was tasked out to our parks and rec with Seth and the boss to study that and come back and bring before the board. And I'm saying this to set the record straight because there's been some misinformation in the room and I need to let the folks know how we got here, okay?

[06:43:08] At that time, we had identified four sites to put that facility on, the site that made it was Occoquan District Supervisor, Kenny Bodie. That's the site that we're currently been dealing with. We sent out and spent $800,000 and have a study that the consultant said that this is a market, this is actually needed, and you guys are in the ideal place for it, and that is the record.

[06:43:35] I would task anyone to go back and watch the tapes to get the real story of what's going on because my concern here is all of those constituents that came out from benita fitzgerald to our track coaches to our pickleball coaches to our uh uh uh uh the the guys with the drones the computer guys and all those folks and we had these visions of all this stuff so i'm simply saying this phase that we discussed that we discussed earlier about this this parks or excuse the landing town center literally is another step in the direction that should have encapsulated

[06:44:13] this facility. So when I say that that facility is near and dear to me and it's near and dear to these folks that played a role in this, their voices are going to be heard. So I just want to make sure everyone understands there's a lot that went into this. There's a lot of facts that need to be quoted and really pulled out so that we can have a real conversation about this opportunity and with that madam chair i yield the rest of my time happy thanksgiving everyone thank you so much i definitely like the what supervisor vega said about dysfunctional family i'm just wondering what my role am i the crazy yunt or um you know i i do and i can see that

[06:44:51] you're very passionate about this supervisor angry so i'm just gonna say this because i want to make sure that you know we put a pin in this we are moving forward with a visioning with hiring consultant there will be language in there about an indoor sports facility so this is not dead this is not buried in a coffin it's not going six feet under you know we are going to have discussions and we're going to see what the consultant comes back with and if that's not something that works for the site we can continue to have discussions about an indoor sports facility or you know something of the like i'm a big fan and i've said this many times of discussion and sometimes and

[06:45:31] the hard thing is here is we're really limited. I cannot talk to two supervisors about board matters. And that limits things. Sometimes we're playing telephone. I'll call Vega, then Bodie, then Bailey, then Gordie, then, you know, I mean, and this is very hard. And so it's hard because we don't have a chance to have a lot of public discussion. And I wish we really did. You know, I wish we had fewer constraints so that we can have these conversations. But I'm a big fan of public discussion and about getting input and you know so i'm not going to say characterize you know again if the consultant comes back with a different answer i'm not going to say we can

[06:46:09] continue to have conversations you know that is what i'm committing to um so i just want you good we good all right um so i also want to remind everyone december 17th we're meeting with schools talking about redistricting and their you know capital improvement process um and hopefully that will also be a very fruitful discussion because we do have a lot of development going coming and we need to understand what is what are the schools looking for you know um what triggers them to redistrict what triggers them to decide to possibly build a new elementary or

[06:46:46] new middle school so i think that'll be a very good discussion um and then i just want to say happy thanksgiving to everyone you know to all that are celebrating i'm almost done i am hosting thanksgiving at my house um i am almost i almost gathered all the things that i need and i am very much thankful um because this has been kind of a little bit of a challenging year with you know um some health concerns but i'm really also thankful for all the people who've reached out who've expressed to me you know that they'd like to see me get well soon um you know for all the

[06:47:24] friends who have you know volunteer to cook meals or donate to like uber eats or door dash and the people who you know some gift boxes it's really very touching it's really really very touching so i appreciate that all from everybody so with that we share before we proceed just out curiosity do you have an agenda or a topics list for a meeting with the school board i am going to work on that i have made suggestions i've spoken to my um counterpart uh dr you know chair um barbara latif you know some things so we are gonna you know work on that supervisor we're mileage

[06:48:01] reimbursement really you are a bad bad man okay let me just let's go on record supervisor we're is a bad bad man um with that we are gonna go into um a close session i was hoping we get out by 9 o'clock I ain't taking no bets from anyone but hopefully it won't be 10 o'clock thank you

[06:48:25] and also I want to give a 10 minute recess before we go into close thank you much we are done with

[06:49:32] closed session I'd like to get a motion to certify our closed session second all right thank you and I believe we have a couple things to report out supervisor angry thank you everybody else vote

[06:50:09] unanimous all right and we have some stuff to read out I'm going to go to supervisor Vega first

[06:50:17] or report out yes yep the first therefore thank you madam chair um i'm going to go ahead and move forward to approve resolution uh 24 now therefore be it resolved that the board of

[06:50:54] county supervisors of prince william county does hereby authorize effective and retroactive to october 1st 2024 a three percent increase of miss roble's annual salary and continued annual deferred compensation contribution in the maximum amount allowable per year second all right let's take a vote. Aye. I love that. Thank you. Vote unanimous. Thank you. We have another item.

[06:51:28] Supervisor Ware. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll move the county executive's annual performance review and compensation adjustment. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Board of County Supervisors of Prince William County does hereby authorize a 2.5% market adjustment salary increase of Mr. Shorter's annual salary retroactive to July 1, 2024, and effective and retroactive to October 1, 2024, a 3% increase of Mr. Shorter's annual salary, and in the future, Mr. Shorter shall be treated the same as other general government employees with regard to receiving cost-of-living stroke market adjustment salary increases awarded by the board to all

[06:52:06] general government employees. Second. Give it to Bailey. All right. Let's take a vote. Supervisor Angry? Aye. Thank you, sir.

[06:52:33] Vote unanimous. Move to adjourn. Second. If anyone votes against us, so help me God. No, all right, let's go. Biggest heart from three sizes. I would like to abstain. I will kill you. I said it. I said it. Aye. Thank you, Supervisor Angry.

[06:52:52] Gets feeling better, Vic. Happy Thanksgiving, Vic.

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