Coraggio Consulting
Prince William Board of County Supervisors — Organizational Meeting, Tuesday, January 14, 2025

Date: Tuesday, January 14, 2025
Place: Prince William County Board of County Supervisors, Virginia
Length: 5h 7m (video)
Official meeting video (Prince William County, Granicus): https://pwcgov.granicus.com/player/clip/3591
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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[00:23:52] feel like I haven't seen you guys in a year. Had to do it. I had to do it. I'm sorry y'all. All right let's get started. Welcome to our first meeting of the year. This is our organizational meeting. We are going to start with a moment of silence. Thank you everyone. Please rise if you are able

[00:24:20] for the Pledge of Allegiance. All right thank you everyone. We are now moving on to agenda item number three approval of the minutes. I would like to entertain a motion for 3A through 3D to approve the minutes for November 26th, December 2nd, December 10th, and December 17th.

[00:24:53] So moved, Madam Chair. Second. All right, any discussion? All right, singing on, let's go ahead and take a vote. It's still on vacation.

[00:25:09] Starting off the new year. Okay, well, how about we do a voice vote? Everybody in. Supervisor Angry? Aye. Supervisor Bailey? Aye. Supervisor Bode? Aye. Supervisor Franklin? Aye. Supervisor Vega? Supervisor Weir?

[00:25:26] Aye. Supervisor Gordy? Aye. chair jefferson vote unanimous right next we are going to move on to organizational matters as required by law i am supposed to give a state of the county every year so i shall do it from my seat hello everyone deshaundra jefferson chair at large of the prince william board of county supervisors it is an honor to reflect on the remarkable journey we've shared over this past

[00:26:03] year and the exciting future ahead last year i made a commitment to collaborate with my colleagues on the board of county supervisors so that we may better serve you. I also pledge to lead in a way that encourages dialogue while respecting each other's decisions. I am proud to say that we have a board that has truly come together, putting the needs of the greater community at the forefront of the decisions we make. This includes passing a unanimous budget that reduced the real estate tax rate to one of the lowest in the region. This rate was made possible because the board

[00:26:35] took bold action to raise the business C&P tax rate from $2.15 to $3.70, the highest rate we could adopt. The board also voted to extend the due date for the car tax by 60 days to provide temporary relief to taxpayers. We also continued our commitment to invest in education. The board increased our contribution to Prince William County schools by $105.1 million, or 13% more than the previous budget. This is the largest year-over-year dollar increase ever in our county's history, and we are equally committed to increasing safety within our community. That's why we added

[00:27:14] new funding for new police officers and medics in our most recent budget. Additionally, we took the historic step of ratifying and implementing collective bargaining agreements with our police and fire personnel, creating a supportive environment that allows us to attract new recruits and retain employees by remaining competitive in the workplace.

[00:27:33] And we were able to accomplish all this and more while maintaining the county's coveted AAA bond rating, enabling us to borrow money at lower interest rates and signaling our long-term financial health. We are one of about 53 counties across the country and 12 in Virginia that have earned the highest rating by all three agencies.

[00:27:56] Prince William County is a special place. It's truly a special place. it's a growing place. It is a desirable place. This year we will confront the challenges to affordable housing, which plays a critical role in the vitality of our community. Many of you have heard my journey as a single mom buying a home in Prince William County. We need to make that dream a reality for others in our community and create opportunities for those who want to continue the rent. That's why the board created an affordable housing office as part of our budget and allocated $5.5 million in fiscal years 25 and 26 to an affordable housing trust.

[00:28:34] We also anticipate adopting an affordable dwelling unit ordinance this year. These actions will help stimulate the development for more affordable housing units so that many of our teachers, police, firefighters, and others have an opportunity to actually live in our county.

[00:28:49] John F. Kennedy once said, change is the law of life and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future. Our future is bright in Prince William County. We have been drafting the 2025 through 2028 strategic plan over the past year. This has been the most inclusive strategic planning process the county has undertaken thus far with feedback from residents, county employees, our towns, the business community, and the appointed members of the strategic plan advisory committee. We anticipate adopting the strategic plan in February to provide a measurable plan to achieve the goals

[00:29:27] you helped create. To that end, I would like to invite each of you to the first ever State of the County Forum on Monday, January 28th, 2025 at 7 p.m. at the Hilton Performing Arts Center. Doors will open at 6 30 p.m. I hope that you can join us. As we step into 2025, I hope this year is full of joy, happiness, and peace. May each of you embrace this moment with wonder and hope, bringing forth new opportunities for growth. Thank you so very much. With that, we are going

[00:30:06] to move on to item 4B, and that is to elect our vice chair for this year. Now, this is traditionally the only time, you know, that I make motions because, you know, this is a critical, you know, this person is going to be a critical right hand as we move forward this year so i move that we elect supervisor andrea bailey of the potomac district as vice chair for the 2025 term can i get a second thank you all right is there now that's been properly moved in second is there

[00:30:38] any discussion all right doesn't look like there is any so let's go ahead and take a vote do a voice all right very good chair jefferson yes supervisor bode aye supervisor angry supervisor

[00:31:04] franklin aye supervisor vega no supervisor weir supervisor gordy supervisor bailey that motion passes six to two supervisors angry and vega voting nay all right thank you so very much the next item is to elect our 2025 chair pro tem i move that we elect gainsville supervisor bob weir

[00:31:38] supervisor bob as the 2025 chair pro tem second any discussion all right let's go ahead and take i guess the roll call because these things still ain't working ready ready super uh sorry chair jefferson aye supervisor bode aye supervisor angry aye supervisor bailey supervisor franklin

[00:32:04] aye supervisor vega supervisor gordy supervisor weir vote unanimous i expected nothing i actually thought you would maybe vote against yourself but okay you know what this entails i voted for myself you know so all right we're going to move on to agenda item 4d and that's to adopt the prince william border county supervisors 2025 schedule there is an amendment on there i would like

[00:32:44] everyone to be aware that the um 7 p.m evening session on evening session on february 4th 2025 has been removed from the schedule so again the evening session for february 4th 2025 has been moved from the schedule so um can i get a motion so moved madam chair second any discussion madam chair well it's hard because we don't have the speakers working okay so franklin then bode um madam chair i am do not have the schedule up in front of me but i do want to make sure that we don't have any meetings or that we can reduce the time for our meetings uh the week

[00:33:24] of thanksgiving um and i think that's the only one that i was concerned about yeah it's a work session it's a it's a so the week of thanksgiving that is november 20 um 25th um we have a work session at two o'clock yeah and so i mean it would be my goal to not have a meeting period because that's a week that a lot of people travel and i know that that was a concern

[00:34:02] from this from 2024 so supervisor franklin i guess you um would like to amend the schedule to remove november 25th the work session okay does anyone second that all right seconded by supervisor Bailey I know I'm sorry we have I.T. Vega I ain't ready to be back from the break y'all and then we had the snow days so did you need a no worries all right so it has been moved and properly seconded we are going to before we vote on the calendar is it full are we moving and voting on the change

[00:34:42] we're going to move the vote on the change and then we're going to move the vote on the calendar we're going to vote on the amendment first I think supervisor Gordy oh Gordy I'm sorry and Bodie also had a question I'm sorry let me go to Bodie and then gordy and then me and then you so i i just wanted a clarifying question because i know that um traditionally april gets sort of just filled up with uh mostly budget and we don't do a lot of land use and then we only have two meetings in may i just want to make sure that those two meetings in may even the one that we only have a work session that we'll actually be looking at land use on the 20th of may that one i don't know mr short if you have something it's hard for us to say this far out because we don't know what's going to be coming down

[00:35:20] and we don't know what the planning commission is going to have so that i don't know if you have an answer for that mr shorter but no so making sure that we have land use i know that we have an evening session the 13th of may but i know we don't have one on the 20th of may but that there still may be land use that may come before us on the 20th may during the afternoon session consent agenda items i'd say we could always add and if if we come to the that meeting and there aren't any evening items then we could take we could take it off okay i just wanted to make sure that you know we don't get slammed on the 13th and then we won't see land use again until june

[00:35:57] that just i was concerned for the workload there and appreciate that gotcha and then i have um gordy next and we're thank you madam chair i just want to make note that um due to a civilian work requirement um uh that was scheduled over a year ago i will be unable to participate in the march 18th meeting and i would certainly ask that any land use cases related to the brinsville district not be scheduled for the 18th of March very good thank you supervisor we are thank you madam chair I know I mentioned it this year and it's sort of

[00:36:32] one of my pet peeves I would suggest that we amend the calendar for July by either adding the 29th and going four weeks in a row we're swapping out the 22nd for the 29th because I don't believe it's in the best interest of the county to go six full weeks before meetings if you remember how jammed up the first September meeting was this year there's some housekeeping stuff that needs to get done and while five weeks isn't preferred it's much better than six all right so what my um and i understand that we had a conversation of this we can always add meetings

[00:37:09] i know no one wants to hear that but if things get jammed up and we feel as a board as a body there is sufficient need to add another meeting that's an option we can do putting it on the calendar for right now um i'm simply suggesting swapping out the 22nd for the 29th 22nd for the 29th yeah and i we already have one amendment on the floor if you want to make amendment we can discuss that later um but we have one amendment on the floor so would that be considered a friendly amendment to the amendment well no because they're two different things so all right anyone else

[00:37:45] because i want to go ahead we can get to yours but i would like to do supervisor um franklin's amendment which was to cancel did you want to cancel or did you just want to swap out november 25th I kind of what I want a definitive you know we gonna kill it or are we gonna put it at another time so just for practical purposes November is difficult because we have the election so there really isn't another November

[00:38:22] date to move it to so unless you want to move it to December or something all right so you're looking to cancel the work session on November 25th so the amendment we're going to take a um it's been probably moved and seconded I don't know if anyone has any other further discussion on that particular if not let's go ahead and take a vote anyone else all right let's go ahead and take a vote can you vote now working nope not working okay we're gonna go ahead and do this old school okay uh supervisor franklin aye supervisor vega

[00:38:54] yes supervisor angry aye supervisor bailey aye supervisor bode aye supervisor weir aye Supervisor Gordy, Chair Jefferson. I'm going to be the lone no.

[00:39:10] Good, the lone no. All right, motion passes seven to one. Chair Jefferson voting nay. All right, do we have, let's go back to Supervisor Weir. I'm going to now amend it, Madam Chair. It's actually two parts, given that last motion.

[00:39:27] I would like to swap out the 22nd for the 29th of July, and because of what we just did with the 25th of November, so that we don't have an extended period of time without meetings to handle county business and land use and other things, I would swap out the 21st for the 28th of October as well.

[00:39:50] So you're saying October, okay, we're going to take those separately, because someone may agree with one point but not the other. So for July, instead of the 22nd, you would like to do the 29th? Correct. And give me the October again? 28th instead of 21st.

[00:40:06] All right, so we're going to do these individually. Okay. Oh, wait, first of all, so you move. All right. Do we have a second? Second. And I'm actually going to break those out. I apologize. I want to do the 20, the July, and then I want to do the October separately in case people.

[00:40:25] All right. Thank you. All right. Any discussion on that point? No one's jumping all over this. All right, then. Let's go ahead and take our vote. Okay. Supervisor Weir. Aye. Supervisor Bailey. Aye. Supervisor Ingrid.

[00:40:41] Supervisor Bodie. Aye. Supervisor Franklin. Aye. Supervisor Gordy. Aye. Supervisor Vega. Yes. Chair Jefferson. Reluctantly, aye. Very good. Vote unanimous. Beery. Was it October 21 for 28?

[00:41:12] So moved. Second. Any discussion? All right, let's go ahead and take a vote. All right, Supervisor Weir.

[00:41:29] Aye. Supervisor Bodie. Aye. Supervisor Angry. Aye. Supervisor Bailey. Aye. Supervisor Franklin. Aye. Supervisor Gordy. Aye. Supervisor Vega. Aye. Chair Jefferson. Begrudgingly, yes. All right, vote unanimous.

[00:41:50] All right, I apologize. looking at the calendar just seeing if there was another date for the 25th but it looks like none will this again be full out canceling all right um go back to so we are going to now vote on the actual 2025 meeting schedule and i just want to note we have one less work session this year okay

[00:42:17] so this was supervisor bailey bailey any are you all ready for me we are ready is there any i've taking over your meeting i'm so sorry well is there any further discussion before we vote on the 2025 draft agenda there is none all right let's go ahead all right supervisor bailey

[00:42:51] supervisor bode aye supervisor angry aye supervisor franklin aye supervisor gordy supervisor vega yes supervisor weir aye chair jefferson aye very good vote unanimous all right Thank you, everyone.

[00:43:13] We are now moving on to 4E. That's discussion of our Board of County Supervisors' Rules of Procedure. I believe that, you know, we have a couple people who I know Supervisor Weir had sent some comments around. I believe you have some things you'd like to discuss.

[00:43:30] If people, are we still down, I guess? Yes, our computers are still down. So I will go to Weir, and then I will go to Vega, and then I'll look around and see who else has comments. All right, Supervisor Vega. Thank you, Madam Chair. first off happy new year to everyone um this is the meeting where we actually set um any new rules of procedures that we want to implement um for the upcoming year i do know madam chair that we had prior conversations about us giving proper notice to the county attorney and the county executive whenever we want to go ahead and issue a directive i know that uh nothing was uh really formalized and so i want to use this opportunity to actually formalize that i want to take it a

[00:44:09] little bit further and not just notify our county attorney and our county executive but I think that as a courtesy it would be appropriate to also send a copy to every member on the board because we've had instances in previous meetings where we lose a lot of time going back and forth with the supervisor that issued the directive trying to get clarification and if we have objections and so I'm just want to make it formal that if we are to issue a directive we are to share that with the county attorney ahead of the meeting the county executive and give an opportunity for every member of the board to take a look at it and ask questions prior to the meeting all right and so since this is not something that's going

[00:44:47] to be a form of resolution i'm going to you know entertain discussion and then we'll take a strong vote on whether or not we this is something we want to move forward with is there anyone who has any i guess supervisor franklin okay okay does anyone have anything else that they want to say or add on to what she wants what supervisor vigo wants to add i don't see any discussion i don't see any objection to that? Madam Chair, instead of doing a straw poll, can I just say that that's a motion, everything that I said, and we just vote on it now? If you want to do that, we can do straw poll. Second. Okay. Thank you. All right. It looks like we have, all right, no one said to

[00:45:26] speak. All right. There's no one. So let's go ahead and take a vote. If you're having problems, I'm going to go ahead and do the roll call, simply because I keep the meeting. But again, this is not like we're doing a formal resolution. So I'm going to go straight down. Vice Chair Bailey it's it is a formal even though this is just rules of procedure all

[00:46:03] right it still doesn't make a difference if we do I personally if we do a roll call versus giving Andrea sorry madam county attorney madam chair members of the board you can do a roll call for the vote but this is a motion that would be occupied in a resolution that would then amend and change the rules of procedure and I can work with the county executive and the clerk for the language to then be added into the rules of procedure if the board passes this

[00:46:30] I appreciate that. I do not want to put pressure on our clerk. So we're going to go ahead with the roll call. Vice Chair Bailey. Supervisor Weir. Supervisor Bode. Aye. Supervisor Angry. Aye. Supervisor Vega. Supervisor Franklin. Aye. Supervisor Gordon. Aye.

[00:46:47] And Chair Jefferson is all aye. So this motion passes. Did you have anything else you wanted us to address? All right. Are you ready? I am ready, and I actually have a resolution, but I'll just give you the highlights. In subsection two, under special meetings, and how special meetings are called right now, you have to deliver it in person, blah, blah, blah, and by email.

[00:47:10] I think we do almost everything by email now, so I've just swapped out or instead of and on that section. And then on the second one, on subsection three, adjourned meetings. Adjourned meetings doesn't make sense.

[00:47:25] you can't continue a meeting that's adjourned so it's simply changing it from adjourned to continued meetings continued meetings any regular or special meeting may be instead of adjourned recessed and continued to a date and time certain prior to the next regular meeting of the board so that we're not doing something we can't do so i actually reviewed all these i don't know if everyone has a chance these are minor um but before we move forward i i'm going to give that i'm going to see if that's your motion is there a second for that second all right so it's been properly moved in second is there any discussion around these changes madam chair supervisor

[00:48:00] franklin yeah i would actually like to break those up um because i support the first part but not the second all right so then we will break it up um we will make a i'll move to separate the question so then i would like to redo the motion so that we can do the first one separate them second all right so it's been properly moved in second and i'm sorry i do you have anything else you want to

[00:48:34] add all righty um so let's have a discussion madam chair just thank you so bob um the second portion so when you're talking about adjourning the meeting so technically we don't adjourn is that what you're saying we're still on the first one sorry so thank you any discussion around the first one all right i don't see anything so let's go ahead and take a vote or yeah no i keep crossing my fingers okay supervisor weir all right supervisor bailey aye supervisor angry

[00:49:09] aye supervisor Bodie aye supervisor Franklin aye supervisor Gordy aye supervisor Vega yes chair Jefferson aye vote unanimous all right thank you so very much now we are going to go on to the second part Bob would you I'm sorry supervisor Bob would you please give us a motion thank you madam chair I would move to replace the word adjourned with continued in subsection three in the heading and in the item three change adjourned to continued meetings and change may be adjourned to may be recessed and continued all right is there any discussion around this madam chair I just want to ask the county attorney if

[00:49:49] she has any concerns about these suggestions madam chair members of the board when supervisor we are shared these it was actually my suggestion to add the word recessed in and I would suggest the board it this is would be a proper motion because adjourning can't closes out the whole meeting and there isn't a meeting to then continue so you would basically be taking a recess and continue it to the next another date which must by virginia code be held prior to the next regular meeting of the board so supervisor franklin yes so i guess my question is what is

[00:50:27] the concern with adjourning the meeting as opposed to recessing madam chair supervisor where um as it's currently written adjourned meetings any regular special meeting may be adjourned to a date and time certain prior to the next regular meeting you can't as the county attorney just noted you can't continue an adjourned meeting the language is wrong once the once the meeting is adjourned it's over kaput finished finito there's no continuing it to a date once you once you hit the adjourn it's go home time

[00:51:05] we're done right so this is simply cleaning up language that was incorrect and providing the the proper language in there so that we can actually make use of that section otherwise it's meaningless yeah my concern is in the past we've had long meetings And there have been some board members whose – they wanted to have those meetings be long and continued when others wanted to actually adjourn on some of the more controversial items.

[00:51:38] And I want to make sure that that is not codified in our rules and procedure and that we can, in fact, adjourn when necessary. So, I actually, if you don't mind, we step in. We also voted on something last year about, you know, ending meetings at midnight, which we can vote to override.

[00:51:56] This is different. This is, yeah. I understand. Okay. Madam Chair, I'm not going to address the question. I think the answer is simple. If a motion is made to adjourn, this does not preclude making that motion. Anytime somebody wants to make a motion to adjourn, regardless, I mean, we could do it right now.

[00:52:14] It's an undebatable motion. It requires a vote. So if anybody wants to adjourn and doesn't want to continue it, doesn't want to do anything else, no, this does not in any way impinge on that ability to adjourn a meeting at any given point in time. Sure, yeah.

[00:52:30] I mean, so my thoughts have been stated. I think that this can be used in a more malicious way, and so I'm just not comfortable supporting it. All right. Then, Supervisor Cordy. I would just make the point that when we're talking about conducting the business, we're talking about continuing the business to another meeting, and each of us have to vote on that. And that rule is already within our rules of procedure. That's already an option for us, and what this simply does is this clarifies that the difference between a continued meeting

[00:53:06] and a meeting that is adjourned. You cannot continue an adjourned meeting. So it's just a technicality as it relates to the condition of a meeting, whether or not the business gets continue to another meeting is a vote that we all take but the rule to be able to do that already exists yep i'm aware of all of that again my concern is being able to use the change maliciously and you know i understand that i am not sure how that would happen but i think this closes

[00:53:36] our discussion so let's go ahead and take a vote second no body supervisor weir supervisor body aye supervisor angry supervisor bailey supervisor franklin no supervisor gordy supervisor vega

[00:54:15] chair jefferson aye motion passes seven to one supervisor franklin voting nay and just i want to double check we have nothing else all right guys we're gonna keep this moving it is number agenda item number five public comment time come on down now while we are getting the list of in person speakers i would like to let everyone know when you come to the microphone in the back please state your name and your magisterial district you have three minutes to speak unless

[00:54:51] you're with an organization 501c3 in which you get five minutes however you have to let us know ahead of time oh we don't all right then i'm wrong public hearings all right again i'm not ready for being back from break all right so we have one person who signed up to speak in person that is chrissy falls you have three minutes ma'am good afternoon chair members of the board i reside in the Gainesville District. Human Trafficking Awareness Month. It's January. I'm back. I want

[00:55:28] to start off by addressing the reality that human trafficking is a $150 billion, billion dollar industry, second to the drug trafficking. It thrives on exploitation and preys on vulnerabilities, often hiding in plain sight. Yet despite its scope, I find myself asking the same question I've been asking since 2017. Why are we still in the same place? Human trafficking doesn't look the way most people imagine. It's not always strangers in vans and dramatic rescues, except some of the vans that you talk about, Supervisor Gordy. Some of that's human trafficking. Drive

[00:56:04] down suddenly right now. It's subtle and often disguised as ordinary situations. Here are just a few examples of what trafficking looks like here in our community. A child waiting after school. Traffickers target children posing as a helpful adult or even someone they know. A panhandler on the side of the road. Traffickers exploit homelessness, addiction, coercing individuals into panhandling while controlling them from a distance. I've had a few cases right here myself.

[00:56:34] A young worker in a nail salon, restaurant, or construction site. Employers and others in positions of trust exploit financial or immigration vulnerabilities, forcing individuals into labor under threat or harm. Teenager with an older boyfriend. Traffickers groom youth by posing as romantic partners, isolating and manipulating them, a tattoo that someone will not talk about. We can't ignore the growing threat of gangs in our area, groups that are actively preying on vulnerable individuals and using trafficking as part of their operations. What are we doing to address this? Awareness is only one step, but awareness without action leaves us

[00:57:13] stagnant. We need prevention, education, and community-wide efforts to equip people with the tools to recognizing trafficking, how to report it, and early intervention when it's one of their own. Otherwise, we risk letting this billion-dollar industry thrive unchecked, just like we've seen with the opioid epidemic. This is Human Trafficking Awareness Month, and we have a responsibility to move beyond awareness. I urge you to take meaningful steps and protect our community and support before it's too late. Ask. Step outside the box that you have right here within your government agencies there are lots of us out there trying we've been trying for years to just give

[00:57:52] you and your community the toolbox the tools that they need in their toolbox to stop this thank you thank you so very much for coming on speaking i'm going to turn to vice chair um bailey thank you madam chair um i think we have one online is that correct okay well thank you so much have a good afternoon madam chair back to you now i have to be careful because i sometimes i'm like i want to say Bodie because I'm so used to Bodie um but you'll you'll we have two B's all right now we're

[00:58:31] going to turn over to agenda item number six our county executive thank you very much madam chair members of the board first wishing everyone a happy new year as well I wanted to go over four directives that have been closed since the last time we were together uh one the directive to arrange for Prince William Water to appear before the board uh that directive was closed out a Directive to add language to the county's legislative agenda supporting the findings in the December 2024 JLARC study on data centers.

[00:59:04] That was closed out as well in a subsequent memo sent. Directive to provide comprehensive listing, a comprehensive listing of all currently available parks and recreation monetary contributions proffers that have been collected and not already budgeted and appropriated was closed out.

[00:59:26] And then finally, a directive to provide draft resolutions for your consideration, establishing two board committees. One, a board committee on budget and finance, and the other, an ad hoc inter-jurisdictional committee with the two cities, Manassas and Manassas Park.

[00:59:42] Both resolutions were sent to the board and appreciate all the feedback received. I want to also just acknowledge and give thank you to all of the staff that was very active and participated in the response to snow last week.

[00:59:59] So all of our public safety personnel, 911 call takers, just want to acknowledge the great work. FFM, the parks and recreation teams, all that were out supporting our government buildings and ensuring that they were clear and our parks.

[01:00:16] Staff worked around the clock, and I just wanted to acknowledge the great work. With that, Madam Chair, that is all I have. Thank you. And I have a couple people who had comments or questions. Actually, the list is growing. Supervisor Vega. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Shorter, for bringing up everybody that played a vital role in ensuring that roads were taken to a certain extent.

[01:00:35] Certainly want to thank Rick in particular, because I know that a lot of the emails that I got, he and his team try to get to in a timely manner. With that being said, was there any coordination or was there any communication between you and the superintendent of our schools?

[01:00:54] Yes, the superintendent and I spoke a few times throughout the snow event. I know that she worked and sent some communications to VDOT as well. I did hear from a few board members, and I will say just generally, I know that VDOT and our schools will be having an after action.

[01:01:14] We are facilitating that after action, and we'll be looking at bus routes, OmniRide routes. I know that they will also be discussing the important sort of primary routes that VDOT is, by Virginia code, required to provide clearing for.

[01:01:34] So all that to say, we will certainly be supporting the conversation that will happen between VDOT and our schools in the coming days. Are you going to be a part of that meeting? I understand it's the schools but the reason why I bring this issue up is because I spoke to a few of my colleagues and I mean the amount of emails that we got this is my second term on the board and we've had other snowstorm in previous years I'm not sure if it's a shortage in staffing I'm not sure what happened but the response for clearing roads I'll speak for the Coles district we had quite a bit of challenges let me let me let me just

[01:02:12] leave it at that and when we have a number of constituents emailing asking why the roads haven't been touched or when they are touched you know it's just sand being thrown on top of ice and then there's no coordination or better communication with the school division on opening schools it creates a problem for us because we as supervisors are not in the know as to what is happening and what is taking place so we are not in a position to answer questions that are being asked of us and more importantly parents concerned about the safety of their children I'll give you a quick example we got an email in our district

[01:02:50] about a wheelchair-bound student who was left at his bus stop because the bus couldn't get to him because of the conditions of the road I will share with you that I did reach out to my appointee on the school board who represents our district and you know having to be a supervisor or a school board member and having to drive around to say oh these roads look good and these don't therefore we're making this decision based on that I'm in my opinion is not appropriate so what I'm asking for is for better lines of communication I do know that a last minute email was sent out on Saturday for a meeting that was taking place at 2 o'clock I didn't see it until after the fact and so I'm just in essence

[01:03:29] saying that I think that we can do better in terms of communicating and working collaborative collaboratively with the superintendent our school board so that we can ensure that everybody's looking at a situation from all angles and that's why I'm asking if you're going to be a part of those conversations because moving forward I would like for the board or somebody from the board to have a seat at the table when those conversations are taking place let me say that emergency management has they were the primary in terms of coordination between

[01:04:02] our jurisdiction and VDOT and will remain the primary. I am happy to attend the meeting but I do not want to accept responsibility for what VDOT is responsible for. So ultimately I am happy to provide whatever comes out of that after action between the schools and in VDOT to make sure that the board is aware. I'll also say that for subsequent inclement weather events where emergency management provides me with information for us to make decisions about government closure

[01:04:41] or our operating status, I will make sure that the board is aware, as I did during this particular event, make sure that the board is aware prior to us pushing it out to the public. I hope that answers your question. To an extent it does. All right. All right, next is Supervisor Franklin. Yeah, I was actually going to discuss this issue as well as, you know, I received to phone call also. I certainly think that each jurisdiction should be responsible for themselves and the county is certainly not responsible for VDOT and actually working with them over the past

[01:05:19] several weeks has been incredibly frustrating and so we had members of our general assembly get involved which is the proper direction because they actually do have jurisdiction over VDOT and I guess I will take this moment to thank Senator McPike, Delegate Henson and Delegate auditorian who made phone calls and wrote emails both to the Secretary of Transportation and to our local VDOT reps to A, see what the heck was going on, and B, to figure out, you know, why the response has been so slow. Now, some of that, it was due to things out of their control being that second

[01:05:57] kind of push uh and freezing of the the roads um but also it didn't explain why six five six days later um secondary roads still weren't clear right um but again this is vdot's responsibility this is what we've been telling uh residents we have every time we got a concern we sent it to vdot i called vdot uh several times until they stopped responding to my phone calls that's a different story that I'll be handling but this is something that they have to take full responsibility for and I'm thankful that members of our general assembly stood up and said we will handle this

[01:06:35] because it's not really fair for the county to be responsible for that we should be the ones flagging it for them but everyone needs to do their job so I appreciate the work and I know Mr. Schroeder you actually were part of those conversations with the superintendent and VDOT towards the end there so I know that you have been in those discussions so thank you for that Supervisor Bailey. Thank you, Madam Chair. I, you know, I was, again, I was going to bring it up as well. I think that we are in a situation where we were when, we are in a situation where we were

[01:07:11] with COVID in a similar situation where we're kind of left with our pants hung down. But I think that we have the kind of relationship, as Supervisor Franklin was saying, with our delegation. I want to thank my school board representative Justin Wilk as well as one of my delegates Candy King for getting involved in the discussion and making sure that is in the forefront of VDOT's mind I appreciate our regional representative Dick Burke for scheduling the meeting on Saturday like supervisor Vega was saying you know we're out with our kids we're shopping we're we're cooking

[01:07:47] whatever we're doing it was kind of an inconvenient time but I think that his intent was to get on top of things immediately to open up a collaborative effort in discussing it. And to our school superintendent, one of the things that was enlightened to me during the time, which is something that is an opportunity once the meeting is held, is not only do we want our kids to get back to school, but in the midst of that, at the end of school, we are doing, to address hunger insecurities, we're delivering foods to the families within

[01:08:22] the community and that's a piece that we were not aware of going in like we were not aware of it going in and covet so this is an opportunity i think for us to grow uh i i agree um it is not your responsibility uh to the county exec but i i would feel more secure and uh more um collaborative if you were a part of the meeting uh as as we go forward uh and then the other thing is um just understanding what the processes are i know he was collaborating with brian meisner our representative but it's important for us to understand from a supervisory standpoint when

[01:09:00] we do get the calls and the emails how we can respond with the data that we can respond with and so that's important to know as well so madam chair thank you thank you supervisor weir thank you madam chair to dovetail on the snow conversation i'm going to stay away from vdot i mean they answer my calls pretty well. But I do have an issue. I've got multiple complaints. And by multiple, I mean tens, not more, regarding sidewalks in commercial areas, Sudley Road,

[01:09:33] for example, Sudley Corridor, HOA areas, adjoining schools, and the throats of the entrances to the schools where the road is plowed, but the school hasn't bothered to clear the throat to the parking lot or the drop-off area. So if we could get a report or some feedback from your office at the next meeting or so on responsibilities or clarifying responsibilities for sidewalk clearing and commercial areas, HOA areas that are particularly those that are not in front of

[01:10:10] residential units but rather contiguous to the open space, particularly along main roads, and who's responsible for clearing out the access to the schools, particularly the elementary schools, which seems to be the biggest issue from what I'm hearing.

[01:10:30] Above and beyond that, when we met with the school, I thought I said something about this, and if I didn't then, I'd like to now. I don't know if this is a directive, but I'll leave it at this. I'd like some feedback in the near future from your office with respect to the build-out analysis.

[01:10:50] I think we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, but we haven't had a build-out analysis done in at least four years. So we don't know what's in the pipeline. And we don't know what's in the pipeline. That the school division had to create their own build-out analysis of our applications and what we have in place, but can't get it to us because of some technical issues involving GIS.

[01:11:14] We need something, and we need something that's not a snapshot in time taken once a year. We need something that's live. So if you could kind of get back to me at your leisure, either at the next board meeting or just give my office a call, I think we need to explore correcting that because we can't address a housing issue if we don't know what's approved.

[01:11:34] Thank you, Madam Chair. And then Supervisor Ingrid. Thank you, Madam Chair. So I spoke with Secretary Miller, who's the Secretary of Transportation, personally, on this issue. And, you know, he oversees VDOT. That two-day storm was a level five storm that brought out 40,000 pieces of equipment, including contractors, at $1 million an hour with an estimate of about $48 million over that two-day period.

[01:12:02] If we were to utilize, which they did come out after Saturday after the call to clean up some of the streets, that's an additional cost that I don't know that number. But the issue becomes the budget that VDOT has. So when we talk about Richmond and the delegation, VDOT has two responsibilities.

[01:12:18] One is snowstorms. The next is in the spring, they will come out and redo roads. It's all in the same budget. It's probably going to eat into the budget of redoing the roads now in April, which means they're going to need to request more money and probably need, as we discussed the frustrations of this snowstorm, how do we support getting them more funding to do what they need to do.

[01:12:38] And the problem with the snowstorms that we have is they don't happen every year. We seem to have a five-year pattern where we have this nightmare of a storm and we don't have a great after actions review or plan in place to really make sure we can get on top of this.

[01:12:54] So while it was very frustrating, and I talked to Dick numerous times, it was very frustrating, there was very little they could do at that point once their main goal was to clear the main roads and some of the arteries of communities but not necessarily do them.

[01:13:10] And it's really, the term was one pass in the communities. And at that point, I will simply say that inside of those neighborhoods that have street curbside parking with the cars, we have to do more as people. I mean, I got out and shoveled the snow out of the street so that you could drive through the street.

[01:13:26] Like, there's a part that we're going to have to play as communities and people because BDOT is not going to be the answer to come and clean out every neighborhood. If you think about this, Prince William County got the largest snowfall in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Fairfax got snow, Loudoun got snow, everybody got snow.

[01:13:43] they had to do this everywhere so we we have to find a way to if we're going to engage the legislation have them either fund VDOT more to get more vehicles and more money to do that because remember this is the same organization that's going to come back and pave our roads in the spring and that's the funding issue so just want to make us aware of that so we're going to tackle this we should tackle this from a perspective of how do we help the you know VDOT and the transportation industry with these problems going forward thank you madam chair I'm actually going speak, then it's going to be Gordian. I believe Vega wants to go again. We need to monitor their budget for what you're saying. And when the time comes, if there's a time for us to weigh in and

[01:14:21] our government affairs officials, our government affairs team actually feels important for us to weigh in, then we can have a discussion at that time. But this was, I think we can all agree on this dais that this was less than ideal response. And based on the calls and emails that we also received at my office and I do appreciate VDOT they were um quite responsive and being able to you know we were sharing information where things were not plowed this was not an ideal response I wasn't um certainly my street was I wouldn't consider it passable um for someone who didn't grow up in the midwest like me you know for an average driver no it was not passable and then

[01:15:00] on Sunday I saw two salt trucks going through my neighborhood through my street and it's like by then it was not really needed so i do appreciate mr shorter and others in our transportation department for working with vdot i'm going to go to supervisor gordy and then supervisor franklin thank you ma'am chair um i've over the weekend it's interesting i took my daughter back to college up in rochester new york um so driving from prince william county virginia 400 miles due north straight up 15 um incidentally over all that area that had received snow we

[01:15:36] had the most all the way to Lake Ontario so so we had and even coming back on Sunday it was amazing that we had the most snow even up in compared to northern Pennsylvania in the wilderness areas and and and even the lake effect areas of off Lake Ontario we did one thing I mean always look at okay the extenuating circumstances with every storm is unique and with this one it was unique in four different ways. We had one snowstorm. Roads got cleared. Main roads went into the

[01:16:12] secondary streets. We got a second snow that evening. So they had to go back out to the main roads. Then they started working back into the secondary roads. Then what people forget is we had wind, which blew the snow back onto the roads. And I know this because I had to clean my driveway twice because of the wind blowing the snow back onto the driveway. So they had to go back out and treat the roads again, clean the roads.

[01:16:39] And I'm not talking about just a dusting. I'm talking about two inches of snow back onto the driveway because of wind. So then that, in effect, is like a third snow over two more days. The temperature never got above freezing for five days.

[01:16:57] And so this is – and that's not normal for us. Normally we get a snow and then it warms back up. This stayed cold. so while uh and then once you drive over snow and it becomes ice no plow is going to be able to take that ice off the road so it's and so um so then and and we i experienced this living in alaska and because if we got we dealt with this a lot you learn how to drive on ice and and of course you put sand you put a hot mix and that's what um i did attend the two o'clock call on

[01:17:30] saturday from rochester new york and listen to you know uh their plan they're they're moving forward and i will say they are working collaboratively with the school system that was their guarantee to us that and i and then i followed up from that conversation with uh superintendent mcdade to said hey i i'm wondering first of all i want to make sure she was aware of the phone call um and that she could participate but unfortunately she didn't get it in time um But I did follow up with her, and she said, no, she has been in constant communications with VDOT and that the communication is improving.

[01:18:10] So I'm very happy to hear that report from her. But I think going forward, yeah, we've got to look at, you know, there's, you know, a sort of saying we have in the military, Semper Gumby. You know, every snowstorm is going to present unique challenges.

[01:18:29] We've got to bend and flex to meet those unique challenges. It can't be the same response every single time because not every snowstorm is the same as the previous one. And so while I recognize there's a lot of frustration, I also recognize this was very different than what I've personally experienced in Virginia in 17 years.

[01:18:50] And so it presented VDOT with unique challenges. And one of the things they did ask us to do is, and this is something that used to be pretty routine, was that we asked people to park on one side of the street.

[01:19:08] And they said they were running into challenges where the cars would come out, the snow plows would come in, plow the roads. Well, then the snow would be sitting on the side of the road, and now the cars would park on the side of the snow bank, and now the trucks couldn't pass through because there was a car on each side.

[01:19:30] So part of it is we can take on the opportunity to remind our constituents in the neighborhoods, please park on the odd side of the street to give the trucks the opportunity to move through and clear a path that's wider than eight feet.

[01:19:48] Right now, they were literally limited to about eight feet because of that challenge. And so in terms of communications, yes, we need better communications between VDOT, schools, with us, with the community, but we also need to improve our communication with our constituents in how to better manage the storms and being prepared ahead of time to park in the right places so that the trucks can get through.

[01:20:16] And so we asked VDOT to help provide us with those communications, things that we can post on social media, things that we can send out via email. And so their communications department committed that they would do that. Thank you. And I apologize to Supervisor Vega and then Franklin.

[01:20:34] Supervisor Vega, did you want to speak? Yeah, just real quick. I also think it's important because we keep talking about VDOT. VDOT does not maintain every road in Prince William County. Okay, so just saying that it's, you know, a VDOT thing, that's not accurate either because we have different, you know, entities that play a role in ensuring that roads are cleaned and taken care of.

[01:20:52] And we saw it across the board with everybody. And, you know, while I appreciate some of the comments being made, the governor declared a state of emergency with ample time, ample time for all of us to be prepared. It's very difficult to ask of our constituency to do something when there's no real mechanism to enforce it.

[01:21:13] And so maybe this is a deeper conversation that needs to be held when we have, you know, situations of the like, because if you can't enforce it, then, you know, it really means nothing. And so all I'm asking for, Mr. Shorter, is that we tighten up the lines of communication and that, you know, when we're hearing from the very top, right, that there's a state of emergency being declared, that we have all of our T's crossed and all of our I's dotted.

[01:21:37] And if we have to look at, you know, roads where the county maintains, if it's, again, a staffing issue, a budget issue, that we're prepared to close those gaps so that we are prepared to handle. Because at the end of the day, safety is paramount, And that's what we're looking for, for folks to be safe and taken care of, especially the elderly who were trapped and couldn't get out.

[01:21:58] And, you know, we can do better. Thank you. And Supervisor Franklin. Yes, I'll say, Madam Chair, if I can, just in response. Supervisor Vega, thank you very much for that. I appreciate that. I do want to take this opportunity just to thank all of the volunteers that came out.

[01:22:15] I think I sent the board an email. Especially want to thank volunteer Prince William. They are always looking for new volunteers, especially during inclement weather events. So those who are looking for opportunities to support community, that is certainly a way to do so.

[01:22:31] There are a number of organizations that focus in. I'll also say, Supervisor Weird, certainly heard your point. We actually did our own research during the inclement weather event in terms of responsibilities around sidewalks and the sort.

[01:22:48] And so I will certainly follow up in terms of which institution and or system has what responsibility. I'll say that there, as far as I know, are not many enforcement tools around homeowners in the sidewalks, in the sidewalks in front of their homes.

[01:23:13] But we will do the research and we'll follow up in terms of responsibility there. Just real quick, Madam Chair, I know that the cities have snow route signs, And so if it's a main road and there's snowfall, again, while you're conducting your research, it's something to possibly consider.

[01:23:30] We do have emergency snow routes, and those emergency snow routes are, so when I mentioned Virginia code, those snow routes are what VDOT focuses on first and considers primary. And so, as Supervisor Gordy mentioned, when the second wave of inclement weather hit, VDOT redirected assets back to those primary routes because that is their responsibility as a primary.

[01:24:01] And so we have those as well as the cities. And those emergency snow routes are marked. So motorists should know where those emergency routes are. There is absolutely opportunity.

[01:24:17] know that I will absolutely focus. I appreciate the board's direction here, and I will continue to work with the superintendent and emergency management in terms of this coordinated response. All right, thank you so much. Supervisor Franklin? Yeah, thank you for that, and I appreciate the dialogue. I do not want to let VDOT off the hook, though. The calls that I got and the emails that we receive raw VDOT roads. And I did speak to VDOT a couple of times, again, before they stopped responding to my calls. And I spoke to the superintendent several times as well. And it

[01:24:56] wasn't until then that she was actually now in meetings with VDOT in the county. And so we need to make sure that we hold people accountable. I get we want to, you know, have great working relationships and we want to make sure that we're providing support but we got to hold people accountable because remember people are going to hold us accountable too and they did over the past couple of weeks whether it was our fault or not so I appreciate the work VDOT does generally but they dropped the ball here and we need to be honest about that. I just want to interject real quick I do agree that they dropped the ball and hold them accountable but that's not the same as maintaining good working relationships you can do both you can do both you know I'm not sure what

[01:25:35] happened, why they didn't return your calls, but, you know, we can work together, we can figure that out, because that is a problem. They should be returning all of our calls, so that's something that happened. Certainly, my office will be in touch with yours to see how that we can resolve that situation. Supervisor Angry. Thank you, Madam Chair. So, I spoke with Dr. McDade, and she said something that I really love what she said. Maybe y'all don't like what she said, but she said it's her job, her responsibility to get the kids to school, and it's family's responsibility to get in there safely.

[01:26:03] And I want to say what that meant. One of the biggest issues to Supervisor Ware's point was the sidewalks that we just talked about. Now, question for you, Mr. County Executive, I don't like the fact that if you walk on the sidewalk in front of my house, if you fall and hurt yourself, I don't want that to happen just because of the safety.

[01:26:24] But I also was told that that is my responsibility to shovel that sidewalk because if they fall and hurt themselves in front of that portion of my house, that is my responsibility. Is that a true statement, or can someone verify that? Because I think that's a big issue. People don't. Mr. Shorter.

[01:26:39] So I would like to, this is partially what I'd like to provide in writing. I don't want to get that wrong. So I want to just give you that question to clean up, because I think that's a big one for the community to know if that, in fact, is their responsibility. Secondly, I said this on that last one we had.

[01:26:57] I wish we could invest in some of those sidewalk little motor plows. I mean, I didn't even go out to do some of those sidewalks that we have that belong to the county that we need to clean up and help in some of these areas where it's not your sidewalk but it's a sidewalk that, you know, in front of schools or, you know, they have personal.

[01:27:15] I don't know if they have equipment that can do that themselves, but BDOT's not going to clean a sidewalk. Let's just not kid ourselves. But those are real major problems because when they push that snow off, it generally gets on the sidewalk, and you've got to get it off the sidewalk if you're going to do right by the kids if they're going to go to school or just anyone generally walking on the sidewalk.

[01:27:33] So I just want to make an emphasis on that again. Thank you. Very good. We have a few of those. We clear our own sidewalks for our government buildings. We could loan one to you. I just don't want to accept their liability. I'm sorry. I've got to call you out because a couple days after the snow, that sidewalk out there needed a little, I'm just sorry.

[01:27:53] All right. It doesn't look like we have anything else. Did you have, because Supervisor, we're with you. Did you have anything else, Mr. Shorter? No, ma'am. All right, then we are going to go to agenda item number seven, county attorney time. Ms. Robel, the floor is yours.

[01:28:09] Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. This afternoon in closed session, we will have personnel discussions relating to the following members, to the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments and the Virginia Railway Express VRE Operations Board, and a discussion of reports or plans related to the security of the McCourt governmental building complex and the safety of persons using such building complex, including briefings by staff members, legal counsel, and law enforcement or emergency service officials concerning actions taken to respond to related threats to public safety.

[01:28:40] These items are appropriate for closed session pursuant to 2.2-3711A1 and 19 of the Code of Virginia. So moved, Madam Chair. Second. All right, we'll give it to Bodie. Any discussion?

[01:28:58] If not, let's go ahead and take a vote. Woo! All right, vote unanimous. Thank you all. Yay! All right, we're going to go back to our county attorney for agency time.

[01:29:16] County executive, I don't know. Guys, I'm tired. I'm sorry. I'm done. I'm done. Let's adjourn now. We can make the motion. Okay, thank you very much, Madam Chair, members of the board. So we have a three-part series of presentations, two coming a bit earlier than normal.

[01:29:39] And so I look forward to the discussion and the board's consideration. First, we're going to hear an economic outlook presentation from the finance team. Then we'll hear a budget outlook presentation from our management and budget team.

[01:29:55] And then we will do a part two to the CIP presentation that was done in the fall, also by our management and budget team. And so with that, I will turn it over to Tim.

[01:30:18] Green was good. Got it. Good afternoon, Chair Jefferson and board members. My name is Tim LeClaire. from the Finance Department. I'm going to try and succinctly give you an economic outlook, after which Michelle Atreid will fill in and do the updates on the general revenue fund balance and reserves. Let's see if I can get this right. There you go. Our economy has weathered five years of a grand experiment of fiscal and monetary policy, meant to stave off a prolonged recession due to the pandemic. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the pandemic drove

[01:30:57] the economy into a deep but short recession, lasting only about two months, wherein more than 21 million Americans lost their jobs and the economy shrank at an annualized rate of more than 33 percent. In comparison, the 13 previous recessions over the last 75 years were on average 11 months in duration.

[01:31:17] I say experiment because the magnitude of governmental spending in a zero interest rate environment combined with massive supply shortages was unprecedented. have worn repeatedly since over the last four years that the economy might lapse into another recession. But each time, the economy remained resilient. As you can see on this slide, the short-term outlook of economic indicators in general for inflation, growth, employment, and business activity all remain neutral. While the September Consumer Price Index, or CPI, has fallen from the prior quarter and year, further progress has stalled over the last

[01:31:56] several months. The Cleveland Fed Inflation Nowcast, which is a phone app, had CPI at 2.7 percent for November, and it's currently tracking at 2.79 percent year over year. With headline inflation above the Fed's 2 percent target and core hovering around 3.3 percent since June 2024, a separation has emerged between the prior period trend and our short-term outlook. Additionally, gross domestic product, or GDP, one measure of the growth of the economy, has been slowly slipping lower.

[01:32:29] Atlanta Fed GDP now, as of today, indicates it was 2.7 percent for Q4 in 2024. So, growth is sliding downward, and inflation is inching its way upward, which is never a good scenario. Former Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond president and CEO Tom Barkin, a 2024 FOMC voting member, recently addressed the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, stating the economic forecast for 2025 is sunny with a chance of business optimism, citing that we shouldn't forget that after the

[01:33:05] last pandemic in 1918, the country experienced the roaring 20s. As a lifelong curmudgeon, my mind immediately jumps to depression after that, but I'm no expert. He is. He went on to say that you've got a strong but choosier consumer, coupled with a better valued, more productive workforce that's landed the economy in a good place, even though inflation is not yet back at target. County revenue due in part to consumer spending on goods and services, including vehicles and real estate, the county's largest revenue source, appear relatively healthy, although there

[01:33:44] have been some ups and downs over the last quarter and year, with the short-term outlook again trending neutral. Once we hear from Ms. Waddell over the next few weeks, we'll have a much better feel for 2025 and beyond. So we're kind of using the team pulled together all this information, but we have one final economic presentation to go for the revenue committee, and it just happens to be the most important one, the Federal Reserve of Richmond. Another Federal Reserve quote I find interesting, and you may too, is from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. At the onset of

[01:34:20] the pandemic, there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the economy. And after adjusting to new health policies, Americans went back to work and the economy swiftly recovered. I don't exactly remember it that way. It seemed like a long, painful slog, but he's the expert. Unemployment has returned to a somewhat normalized range as of October 2024 after spiking over the last several months with Prince William County in Virginia hovering just below 3% and the nation at 4.1%.

[01:34:50] U.S. job growth surged in November after being severely hindered by hurricanes and strikes, even though it's not represented on the graph because it was after we put it together. And yet to come is the impact of the raging wildfires in California. Who knows what that's going to do for us.

[01:35:08] Underemployment, or U6, for Prince William County is not something that's calculated or published. However, nationally, it was 7.5 percent, and in Virginia, 6 percent as of December 2024. Further easing of interest rates appears to be the short-term trend as the FOMC, or Federal Open Market Committee, cut interest rates by 50 basis points in September, 25 in November, and another 25 at their most recent meeting in December, bringing the federal fund's target range down a full percent or 100 basis points.

[01:35:44] The December rate cut, however, wasn't exactly viewed favorably by the market. It was termed a hawkish cut, which was kind of a strange term for them to use, as the FOMC seemingly cut contrary to what the data indicated they should do. The current range is 4.25% to 4.5%.

[01:36:02] The FOMC's narrative indicated future rate cuts are on the table, but with the caveat that the number and pace of cuts may be slowing. This was emphasized in Mr. Barkin's speech and by the FOMC, reducing the forecast for rate cuts from 4 to 2 between the September and December meeting minutes for 2025.

[01:36:26] Moderating house prices. Let me first say that the Series 1 data that you see on there is the U.S., and the Series 3 data is PwC. So green is the U.S., and blue is PwC.

[01:36:41] I missed that in the slides, so sorry about that. Experts generally expect home prices to continue increasing nationally, but the pace of those increases should slow in 2025. Fannie Mae sees home prices rising 3.6% year-over-year in 2025 and 1.7% in 2026. The Mortgage Bankers Association sees price growth slowing to 1.3% in 2025 and holding steady at 1.3% in 2026. The National Association of Realtors thinks existing home

[01:37:14] prices will increase by 1.8 percent in 2025 and 2.3 percent in 2026. So we've got a lot of opinions. In Prince William County, according to the Virginia Realtors Association, the October 2024 median sales price increased 6.8 percent year over year. An upward pressure continues as exhibited by the year-to-date average sold to list price of 101.2 percent. The Real Estate Assessment Office is working nonstop to validate Prince William County's final 2024 sales prices

[01:37:47] as the basis for the January of this year assessed values. A recent Zillow analysis found that the U.S. is 4.5 million homes short of the healthy housing supply, further pressuring both home and rent prices, which is inflationary in nature. In terms of new home construction, Fannie Mae expects new home construction to drop 1.3% in 2025 before increasing 5.3% in 2026. The Mortgage Bankers Association says starts will rise 3.4% in 2025 and 2.6% in 2026. Nationally, existing home sales

[01:38:26] in 2023 was actually the worst year since 1995. The modest uptick in existing home supply in the graph was a result of a reduction in mortgage rates from historically high levels, which is displayed on the next slide in prince william county the market remains competitive however and homes continue to sell quickly with median days on the market remaining at nine in october 2024 the virginia realtors association expects 2025 to be a year where home sales increase 9.8 percent the median home price to increase 3.4 percent and new housing starts to be up 2.6

[01:39:00] In a few weeks, we'll be discussing the 2026 budget, and hopefully we'll have all of our sales in and verified, and we'll be able to come up with a percentage for what the value has increased for residential homes here in the county.

[01:39:21] Assuming lower interest rates are on the horizon, as expressed by the FOMC, 30-year mortgage rates should begin to ease again, as forecast by the National Association of Realtors, to average, they're calling it 6.5 percent by the last quarter of 2025, while the Virginia Association of Realtors forecast is for rates to average 6.1 percent by next December. The Mortgage Bankers Association forecast has rates falling to 6.4 percent, so in between the two, by Q4 2025 and 6.3 percent for 2026, based on their 10-year Treasury yield forecast of 4.3

[01:39:56] beginning in Q2 2025 and extending throughout 2026. Prince William County continues to have the strongest commercial real estate market across NOVA, especially when comparing office sector vacancy rates, even though we have a very small office sector as comparatively speaking to the other NOVA localities. Last year, Revenue Committee presenters forecast 2024 development was coming to a screeching halt, apart from data centers, of course. That same cohort for 2025 forecast new development deals for multifamily, retail, and office still don't pencil out

[01:40:33] and won't until interest rates drop further and rents continue increasing until they reach equilibrium somewhere in between. Industrial, of course, remains very strong with data centers still the dominant category of development. You may remember this slide from a previous economic update. The graphic and content is as prescient today as it was then, except that one might argue that higher global energy, food, and commodity prices have moderated somewhat.

[01:41:02] The supply chain challenges have diminished. A possible replacement, however, and I mentioned it a little bit earlier too, for the supply chain box might be the cost of recent natural disasters with the impact materializing in the form of insurance premiums. Between the hurricanes and fires and all the stuff that's going on, I mean, no pun intended, but the world really is on fire right now, unfortunately. And what's evident is that prices are significantly higher today than pre-pandemic levels, and wages have not kept pace. Therefore, absent any disinflationary data to food, energy, rent, etc., it'll take time and growth before the malaise turns positive.

[01:41:42] These last two slides are comprised of recent economic commentary from several sources. Economists have celebrated inflation's rapid descent and perhaps even more the relatively little pain it's caused the U.S. job market. For over a year now, wages have been rising faster than inflation as prices slow, and the job market holds up, giving Americans an opportunity to recover the buying power that they lost after ultra-low interest rates, supply shortages, and a stimulus-check-fueled spending boom combined to form the worst inflation crisis in 40 years.

[01:42:14] But the race isn't over yet. Past 16 months of real wage growth, as economists have called it, haven't been enough to offset the 25 months where prices were rising disproportionately faster than Americans' paychecks, according to a new analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics, or BLS, data from Bankrate that was published in September.

[01:42:33] In that analysis, prices were up 20%, whereas wages were only up 17.4%. This same analysis, however, predicts Americans' paychecks are on pace to bounce back to even by the end of the second quarter of 2025. I had one final thought.

[01:42:52] I went out and was looking at the Consumer Sentiment Index, as measured by the University of Michigan, which is based on survey data, and it appears to have bottomed out in June of 2022 at 50, which was its lowest level since May 1980.

[01:43:08] Amazing. And it was 51.7 in May of 1980. It's a forward-looking measure, however, and is currently sitting at 71.8 as of November 2024. As was most of the indicators, it hasn't been a smooth climb, but it does indicate that consumers are feeling slightly better about the economy in general. I will now turn the presentation over to Michelle, unless you have some questions or some additional requests for economic information going forward. Thank you so much. Supervisor Gordy.

[01:43:43] Thank you for this presentation. I do have a couple of questions. I know, First of all, I do have a question on page three related to the average weekly wages. I don't know where the disconnect that I'm having is between the Virginia numbers and the Prince William County numbers for weekly wages, given the fact that the AMI in Prince William County is about $130,000 and AMI for Virginia is about $89,000.

[01:44:13] I'm trying to understand where's the disconnect and how our weekly wages are so much lower than both Virginia and the nation when we seem to be outperforming at the AMI level. It always confuses me, too. It's been that way every year that we've presented it, and I honestly don't know why.

[01:44:33] It would be a good question for Ms. Waddell when she shows up, and we can chat with her. But it is in Virginia and nationally, too. It's perplexing. It really is. Yeah, I mean, I was really trying to dig into it, looking at different resources today.

[01:44:51] You see that when they compare us with Arlington, Fairfax, Alexandria, those kinds of things. But to compare it to Virginia, it's just mind-boggling. Okay, yeah, I mean, because $327 a month is a significant number comparatively.

[01:45:09] So I appreciate your confusion as well. A lot of the data that you're providing has a date it was provided. But in the last couple of, since December, and particularly in the last couple of weeks, particularly related to the bond market, and what we're seeing is that bond prices are falling, bond rates are skyrocketing.

[01:45:35] How does that sort of change our economy at a glance from what you're seeing? So it doesn't really change that. I gave some additional data that is newer data. The latest one was a jobs report, right? Yeah. Jobs came in much hotter than expected, which typically is a good thing.

[01:45:54] But when you look at it and economists look at it and they say, well, that may mean that the Fed is going to do even less cutting or maybe even reverse course. So that causes the stock market to plummet and it causes bond rates to go up radically.

[01:46:12] But it's only one, right? It's a series of one, which is good right now. You know, and the bond market typically affects more of the governments rather than, you know, the federal fund rate. And so, you know, this is something I definitely want us to pay attention to going forward as it relates to our borrowing abilities and the impacts on our ability to meet our needs.

[01:46:36] The last question I have is related to the housing. What we're seeing in some parts of the country is housing supply. We have housing particularly in fast-growth states. that housing is starting to sit, new construction.

[01:46:53] And they're saying that the rate is matching that of about 2008. And so while that isn't necessarily our situation here, if the builders have all their capital tied up in this housing that's not moving, then what is the impact downstream on our ability to meet our housing needs and on the housing market?

[01:47:17] And that's just something I want us to kind of pay attention to as we start to see this happening in California, Florida, I think Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, where they have massive numbers of large numbers of housing, new housing starts just sitting on the market, not moving.

[01:47:34] And so how that downstream affects us is something I'm certainly interested in. Yeah, we've had kind of a very constrained inventory for a long time. Houses sell really, really rapidly. I mean, it's been a few years since the smaller builders lobbied the General Assembly, and they helped by changing the proffer laws, which caused us not to accept proffers and build things for quite some time.

[01:48:00] Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Supervisor Bodie. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for the presentation. Just a couple questions on the jobs market piece of the economy. You know, we talk about unemployment and the unemployment rate continues to be relatively strong, all things considered.

[01:48:19] And I probably ask this every other year or so, but do we look at data points that are on underemployment? Because we know, especially in light of COVID. Yes, so U6 or underemployment, I covered that. It's roughly twice what unemployment is. We don't have a chart on it.

[01:48:37] Right. But let's see. So U3, the last several measures of U3, 2.8, 2.8, 2.7, 2.8, 3.1. 5.26 or underemployment, 5.5, 5.3, 5.3, 5.6, and 6.

[01:48:57] I appreciate that. And 7.5% nationally. Right, which is better. But that's Virginia, right? We don't have an economist, we don't employ an economist, and so we don't have underemployment data or numbers for Prince William County, unfortunately. I appreciate that because, you know, especially given the massive change in employment and how people do their jobs after COVID.

[01:49:21] You know, the gig economy is still a thing, and it's only grown. Tons of people are doing things on the side, what have you. So I'm always skeptical now when we just look at just the unemployment. You make a very good point there at the end now. We don't actually have data for that for Prince William. But just knowing, to go back to something that was being discussed earlier, the wide divide we have in this county between, frankly, the haves and the have-nots, the folks that have massive amounts of wealth and those that don't, and then folks that are sort of struggling in those margins to make that difference in different ways, and how really unemployment as a rate doesn't really capture that piece of it.

[01:49:55] So I'm always curious on how we're able to capture more of that data and knowing the reality of some families that they may have one or two breadwinners, but those breadwinners aren't making enough to put food on the table. Well, and inflation has really killed them, right? I mean, over the last several years, we have pumped so much money into the economy.

[01:50:15] Everybody's spending it. Inflation has run rampant. Anyone that owns a home or any kind of real estate has all kinds of inflated values, right? It may not make them happy when tax time comes around, but they're very happy when they go to sell something.

[01:50:31] All the poor folks that are at the lower economic strata, they've experienced inflation. The money that came into their pocket has gone out, and now everything is more expensive, and there's not a whole lot left. So I'm not sure we have helped tremendously in that respect.

[01:50:48] Appreciate that. And my last question, Madam Chair, going back to the housing piece that Zuraza Gordy was talking about, again, you know, we're not the same market as some of those very high growth communities, but also knowing that we sit in a unique place, even in Nova, where we've seen the inner jurisdictions, they're losing people, right? We're sort of managing to keep even based on where we are. Some people are still moving to Prince William by other parts of in Northern Virginia, other people are leapfrogging us down to Fredericksburg, Stafford, what have you.

[01:51:25] Has there been any kind of indicators yet on where that's bearing for us over terms of that population growth vis-a-vis housing? So I don't have any specific knowledge about the population growth. However, we still are growing faster than most localities. Loudoun is growing faster than we are.

[01:51:42] But other than that, in Northern Virginia, we're growing still pretty rapidly. It'd probably be interesting to see once we get a build-out from the schools and see what they're forecasting. Appreciate that. Thank you.

[01:51:59] All right. It doesn't look like anyone else. Thank you so very much. Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm going to talk a little bit about the 24 and 25 revenues.

[01:52:23] This chart here, this pie chart you've seen many times, it's part of our adopted budget each year. For fiscal 24, it was a $1.4 billion adopted general revenue budget. I want to, if you take a look at the pie, real estate, obviously that's the biggest piece of real estate taxes at 61.2%, followed by personal property tax at 22%, sales tax at 6.7%, and then BPOL at 2.4%.

[01:52:46] But really right behind it is your new food and beverage tax, which is at 2.3%. So that's the fifth largest revenue stream for the county. And I point these out because I'm going to show you 25, and this mix has changed a little bit. And so I think that's important. Our surplus for the end of 24, it was $68.7 million.

[01:53:04] As you know, we issued our ACFER and our PAFER report before the holidays this year. So these are audited figures. With our biggest surpluses coming in personal property tax, largely driven by our data center revenues and our vehicle valuations, the food and beverage tax, which we knew our estimate as adopted was conservative.

[01:53:23] As we brought in this new revenue source, we really, you know, we had a pretty wide range of what it could be. we went towards that lower end. We're finding it's really coming in much stronger. So we have retooled our forecasting model, and I'll talk about that when we get to the slide on the accuracy of the forecast. We also saw some increases in investment income due to the Fed actions that Tim spoke about, which positively impacted us. So how does this surplus get used? That's where we're going to fund balance and reserves. So as you know, you have a principles of sound financial management with a new reserve that was most recently added to it. So we've modified

[01:54:00] this chart at the bottom you have the general fund unassigned fund balance or a rainy day fund which is seven and a half percent of our general fund revenues we fund that before we share any of our surplus with the schools so the schools in essence are sharing in that unassigned fund balance our surplus is then split with the schools in accordance with the revenue share agreement 57.23 to the schools 42.77 percent to the county next we fund our revenue revenue stabilization reserve at two percent of our general fund revenue we then make sure our capital projects our capital reserve is funded at 2% of our current year capital project appropriation. We replenish our economic development opportunity reserve up to the

[01:54:38] $3 million threshold. And then next now we're establishing that data center revenue stabilization reserve at 10% of the prior year computer equipment and peripheral tax revenues. And so I'll have a graph to show you that. And then lastly anything that's left falls into capital reserve for one time capital to support community investment. Our balances unassigned is now at $124.2 million. And I have slides on each of these that I'll talk a little bit more in detail.

[01:55:03] Revenue stabilization is at $33.1. Capital reserve at $87.7. EDOF is back at the $3 million. And our data center revenue stabilization reserve is at $5.6 million, with an additional million being added in fiscal 25 in accordance with your adopted budget. So this shows how we split those revenues with the schools. That surplus of $68.7 million, funding $13.3 into unassigned, leaving $55.3 million to share.

[01:55:32] And so the schools will be receiving $31.6 million, and at a February board meeting we'll be coming forward with that budget and appropriation and transfer as we do in years past. So on the county side, this shows how those funds get used.

[01:55:50] So you'll see here that $68.7 million general revenue surplus. In the next presentation, Dave will be speaking about the agency shortfall and the expenditure savings of $6 million and $10.1 million. so I won't go into detail here, but those add into that available balance. So $72.8 million of resources coming in, but then wait, there's uses.

[01:56:09] So unassigned fund balance, $13.4 million, the $31.7 transfer to the schools that I just spoke about. Funding the revenue stabilization requires $3.6 million. $1.4 to replenish the Economic Development Opportunity Fund Reserve.

[01:56:24] $5.6 to fund the new Data Center Revenue Stabilization Fund Reserve. $5 million for your adopted budget that funds the Affordable Housing Trust Reserve. And then I put $1 million proactively into committed fund balance for a litigation reserve.

[01:56:40] If the board doesn't agree, it goes to the capital reserve. It cannot be spent without your consent. But it is there because I think as the county executive brings forward the budget, we did talk about the need to budget appropriate for litigation funding. So there is a place to go for that. And so the uses as programmed right now are $61.7 million.

[01:56:59] So that leaves 11.1 that then will flow to the capital reserve. You've seen this chart before. This is our history of our unassigned fund balance that shows we share this with the rating agencies that shows that we maintain that financial bedrock at 7.5% throughout the years.

[01:57:16] And so you'll see there that $13.4 million increase between 23 and 24. Likewise, on the revenue stabilization reserve, you'll see that $3.6 million increase with the orange being the 2% requirement. I remind the board, in 2015, we had excess, and we moved that all to the capital reserve.

[01:57:35] So again, in the capital reserve, you would see a big spike in 2016. And this is our new computer and equipment and peripheral data center revenue stabilization reserve. So it's at $5.6 million in 2024. And then on July 1st, it gets up to the $6.6 million, which is 10% of the FY23 computer equipment and peripheral revenues.

[01:58:02] So our capital reserve, what's the balance there? At the end of 23, the audited number was 89.4 million, bringing in that surplus of 11.1 that I just spoke about. We also close out projects each year. We have interest earnings that get recorded into the capital reserve.

[01:58:18] So we really try not to have scope creep and bring projects in under budget, and then we close them out. They get moved in. So that's that 9.3 that makes up the interest. Closed projects, that brought in $20.4 million as an inflow into the capital reserve.

[01:58:33] And then for the outflows, there's been a number of actions through the adopted budget and through board resolution. You'll see the board put $6.3 million to the judicial center renovation. As you know, that's a very large project. The 911 call handling, public safety communications at the schools, our capital maintenance program for building facilities, tank replacement, and then some smaller amounts listed there.

[01:58:57] So $22.1 million already budgeted to be used by the capital reserve, bringing it down to $87.7 million. And then I do always back out mark-to-market. It's an accounting term. At June 30, we have to mark our investments to market value. It's not really true cash sitting there, so we back that out.

[01:59:14] It's not really spendable funds at this point. So $84.9 million. Going into fiscal 25, we have that beginning balance. So far, there's been one resolution to use 1.3 for historic preservation land purchases. that would bring it to 83.6 of course we are entering the FY 26 budget process and so like each year as we're going through our deliberations with the county executive he will be bringing forward a proposed budget that may require some use of capital reserve so there'll be there could be more to come on that that's the balance as of right now and then this chart just shows that

[01:59:51] history and I do remind the board you'll see them 2015 to 2016 that's where they're that big movement from revenue stabilization into cap reserve. So our rating agencies have typically seen this balance around $60 million, and we'd like to keep it there. You'll see we do let them know that we build it up, we spend it down for one time, and then we spend it, you know, build it up again. And so you'll see there between 2016 and 24, it dropped back down, but then we build it up quite a bit, and we're gradually bringing it back down again. Moving on to fiscal 25. You see this

[02:00:30] every year. This is our revenue forecasting process. It's data-driven. We bring in lots of subject matter experts, and we're pretty gosh darn accurate, 99% most of the time. You'll see once COVID hit, things got more challenging. Vehicle market got very challenging to predict. We had new taxing sources coming in for which we didn't have trend history, but we have tightened it up.

[02:00:52] We do believe fiscal 25 is on target not to have quite as large as surpluses as we've had in the past. Largely, a lot of our forecast is trend-driven. So if we miss it the prior two years, it sort of trickles through our five-year plan. And so we've really had to tighten that up to come up with a new methodology for some of these revenue sources to make sure that we are more accurate. I remind the board that you have a diversification principle within your principles of sound financial management such that we don't rely on any one revenue source. And why is that important, this next graph really shows that if you remember that pie, fiscal 25, it's now 1.5

[02:01:30] billion. But look at the real estate, 57.8%. Personal property has grown from 22% of the pie to 25.9% of the pie. And BPOL has now taken the number five spot with food and beverage now moving into the number four spot. So that mix has changed a little bit, but certainly a good message for our rating agencies in that we are we have become more diversified with the first quarter for fiscal 25 we did not make any changes to the revenue forecast but there are a number of things we're watching we're very closely watching tax relief and our exonerations those are items that particularly disabled veterans

[02:02:08] category I have a slide on that continues to grow so we may be making adjustment to some of our exoneration numbers next quarter or the following quarter personal property tax is on target to meet our adopted forecast although we are behind on the collections while the board did take effort take action to move the due dates it did set back the collection period a little bit so we're about 80 percent collected mid-december so by next quarter we'll have a better feeling on where we'll come in on our actual revenues sales tax on target the first three months suggest that we'll meet our adopted forecast and then finally food and beverage is on target to meet our adopted forecast as well

[02:02:47] Tax Relief. So this is our, like I said, continues to grow each year. It's about $50.1 million for fiscal 24, or five pennies on the tax rate, 83% growth over the last five years, with our fastest growing category being Tax Relief for Disabled Veterans.

[02:03:09] These are mandated by the Code of Virginia, and you'll see there the number of exemptions, 4,474, $28 million exempted on tax relief for disabled veterans, with the average amount exempted of 6,359. And I do suspect that will continue to grow.

[02:03:29] Computer and peripheral, the board spoke about this in her State of the Economy. We are now at a tax rate of 3.70 per $100 of assessed value. The rate for computer and equipment cannot be higher than the rate on vehicles. there was a period where they could be separated during COVID, but that sunset January 1st. So I believe jurisdictions that now have different rates, it will go back to the same. And each nickel is about 1.76 million. You've seen this slide many times. It shows the growth in our data

[02:04:03] center tax revenue since we started measuring data centers in 2012, 2,475% growth. There's a lot of detail on our data center tax revenues in our data center annual report. We put out the first report, the 2023. We are now working on our 2024 data center revenue report as well, and it is posted online. Rating agencies. I want to talk a little bit about our credit strengths and credit weaknesses. A lot of strengths you'll see in the green there, positive, but I want to really focus

[02:04:39] in a little bit on the negatives. Some of the negatives that credit rating agencies, and we went through a bond rating over the fall where we had our AAA upheld. The areas they're most concerned about are obviously our fund balance levels. While we have very strong reserves, we do lag behind other similarly rated counties and communities that are AAA nationwide, and I'll have a slide on that in a moment. Our population growth and our rising debt may lead to expenditure pressures in the future year, and obviously our debt and pension burdens are slightly above the triple A

[02:05:15] median. What I will say, though, is we went through two new methodologies. Fitch and S&P both revised their methodologies. In both cases, we maintained our rating this last time around, so that's a good thing. Both of those agencies increased the importance of debt metrics. We did strengthen, as you know, the board took action to strengthen our debt metrics within our principles of sound financial management by adding a new debt metric, which was helpful. Fitch, they expected, when they put out their new methodology, they expected 35% of the ratings to be affected.

[02:05:50] We were not one of them. They did add a new driver called demographic and economic strength, which brought in factors for which we have little control, things like population trends and economic concentration. They are looking for diversification. So to the extent we bring in different types of businesses. That helps in that category, but we can only control that but so much in terms of where businesses choose to locate. Collective bargaining was viewed as a credit negative. They reduced us from high flexibility to mid-range, so that's one of the areas we do want to make sure we're paying close attention to, that we maintain as much budget flexibility

[02:06:27] around collective bargaining as we can. On S&P, they expected three percent of their ratings to be affected. We were not affected. They did increase the weighting of debt and liabilities as a credit factor from 10% to 20%. Our ratio under S&P for available reserves to revenues was 19.2%. Once you slide below 15%, that could affect the rating. And so what they're really looking for is, as our revenues are increasing, are our reserves keeping pace? And so as long as we maintain those principles, we're adding to those reserves, the answer to that is yes.

[02:07:05] What else? Oh, they also, debt capacity, we'll have to continue to watch. Assuming our revenues continue to grow, we believe we'll continue to have sufficient debt capacity. When the revenues stop growing, that's going to start limiting our capacity. So those are things that we'll carefully watch each year as we do our revenue forecast and project out for the five years.

[02:07:30] So those are a few things I wanted to say about the rating agencies. And this is that slide that shows us you'll see in 22 to 23 kind of a dip in our total um fund balance is a percentage of revenues compared to peers so we did dip between 22 and 23 some of that was the large driven by the large committed fund balance in surplus that we had that had to be transferred to the schools so you see a dip because of that piece but you'll see we lagged far behind our peer median and our triple uh triple a county median and that's been the case for a number of years and it's these other factors that then bring us up to that triple-A for this metric on true measurement

[02:08:07] with double-A on fund balance. Qualitative considerations, as I just spoke of, again, maintaining that balanced budget, that five-year plan, trying to maintain as much budget flexibility as we can, and we'll talk about that as we go into the CIP presentation. I'll introduce that and talk a little bit about how that relates even to the rating agencies. They do say that, you know, when governments attempt to increase expenditures for services and programs while at the same time pledging not to raise taxes, that typically over time will start to deteriorate your fund balance. So as we add new things, we have to think about how are we going to fund them.

[02:08:47] Fund balance is really not an ongoing source for funding ongoing costs. And with that, I'm going to move into tax directives follow up. This is all information consolidated that we have sent to the board in presentations. I also went around and met with each of your offices individually. There was three different directives that we had, and then a fourth related to vehicle valuation. We'll cover these first three, B-POL, C&I, and meals tax. So Directive 2311 and 2414 asked us to look at a B-POL license fee, and then we also did

[02:09:26] proactively look at a B-POL exemption versus a threshold. That was not part of the directive. That was just information I'm bringing back for your information. You also asked us to look at the CNI tax through Directive 2421. The CNI allows us to tax at a rate of 12.5, not 1.25.

[02:09:42] I think the decimals are the wrong place there. Up to 12.5 cents per 100 of assessed value. And that is earmarked specifically for mobility projects. And then lastly, we were asked to look at what would it look like if we were to reduce the meals tax rate from food 4% to 2%.

[02:09:58] And so I have a slide on each of those. So on B-Poll, the very first piece, the fee itself wouldn't be a big revenue generator, right? You could have a fee of $30, $40, or $50. It would bring in anywhere between $300,000, $306,000 to $510,000.

[02:10:18] What it would do is allow us to start to gather information on all the businesses that exist in the county so that we can proactively, one, reach out to them from an economic development side, From permitting side, for assistance, small business support, but also to let them know what taxes they may be subject to.

[02:10:38] What we do find sometimes is businesses just aren't aware. And when we do find them, they are now, they have a backlog of taxes, they may get hit with penalty and interest, and they didn't know. If we know they exist, we can send out information very early to them so they can figure out what it may be subject to within Prince William County.

[02:10:54] We did, when we floated this idea of this business license fee, we do suggest that the revenues get pulled out of that sort of rev-share agreement to fund the positions for administration of it. Like I said, it doesn't bring in a lot of revenue, but those positions then will help bring in revenue for the school.

[02:11:09] As we go through and work through all this processing, we may find that there's personal property tax that the business didn't know they were subject to that can be collected and shared with the school. And so if the board wants to go down the path of a business license fee, The county executive would need direction to do so.

[02:11:26] The earliest we could do it, because it runs on a calendar year, would be calendar year 26. So that gives us ample time to market, to communicate, to put in place the ordinances. We'd have to have public hearings. And so that direction would be needed. But just know it wouldn't take place until fiscal calendar 26, which is really kind of fiscal 27.

[02:11:48] The exemption side, this is an area that we in finance occasionally hear from businesses about the unfairness of moving to that next dollar, right? They're a business that earns $499,999.

[02:12:04] They have to pay no taxes. Once they hit $500, they're paying on the full $500, and that could be up to $1,600 depending on what category they are in. This isn't one that we've heard a lot of people come to the board and talk about. I don't know if your offices have heard from businesses, so I just put this out here.

[02:12:22] We hear occasionally, it's not an overwhelming sort of complaint, but you could move to an exemption where the first $500,000 is exempt for everybody. However, it does come with a cost, about $4.2 million, because you would be exempting some that are currently paying on the full $500,000.

[02:12:38] They now would get that tax break on $500,000. Again, if you wanted to do that, the county executive would need a directive. We would then have to work with the attorney's office to figure out what changes need to happen to our ordinance, et cetera, and calendar 26 would be the earliest that we would be able to implement.

[02:12:56] Food and beverage. You adopt it as part of your 23 budget, the food and beverage tax at 4%. If you were to move it from 4% to 2%, it's about half of that. It would be $21 million. That would be a loss of about $9.3 million to the county, $12.4 million to the schools.

[02:13:14] And you'll see in the five-year plan that revenue source continues to grow. So, again, it's shown there about half each year. You will see that most of our surrounding jurisdictions have in place a rate. You actually can adopt up to 6%. We did leave it at 4%.

[02:13:29] Again, that's a very good rating agency story that we can tell, that there's flexibility, that if we had to raise revenues, there's a place we could go. There's another 2% authority that you have if we had to raise revenues. And so they like to have that flexibility for raising revenues in the future.

[02:13:52] If you wanted to lower that food and beverage tax rate, again, not recommended because of the diversification and the impact. The county executive would need to know that because we would have to really look at our budget and figure out where we want to cut, and we'll be looking also to the board on where would you want to cut in the budget. There are a lot of, like I said, it would be about $9.3 million for fiscal 25, for example, or 26, I'm sorry.

[02:14:19] And then lastly is the commercial and industrial tax. The commercial and industrial tax can be levied up to $12.5 cents dedicated for transportation. The CNI tax would also count towards our maintenance of effort related to NVTA, 30 percent dollars.

[02:14:36] Each year we have to go through an exercise of proving we spent at least the equivalency of a CNI tax to the state commonwealth. If you have a CNI tax in place, you've kind of already met that requirement. So our current MOE, maintenance of effort, is $25.8 million.

[02:14:54] You'll see that our CNI, we expect it to generate about $27.5 million for fiscal 26. if you put it in place, and you'll see the out-year projections. The composition of how it would be paid, the gray versus the blue. Gray would be commercial properties other than data centers. About 41.9% would be paid by data centers.

[02:15:13] It does exclude dwelling units, like apartment buildings would be excluded. We'd have to work with our county attorney's office if you're interested to see. I think it would also likely exclude assisted livings because they have dwelling space, but we would need to consult with our attorneys on that this is something that the board wants to move forward again the action that would be needed would be a directive to the county executive if you wanted to bring this forward for fiscal 26 fiscal 27 we'd have to work with to get the right ordinance in place to be able to actually levy this tax and then to at what amount um you can go up to 12.5 percent 12.5 cents and then lastly i

[02:15:51] want to follow up on our vehicle valuation directive um from supervisor i believe franklin we did send out i think copies of memos that we had responded to this a couple years back But I do want to, I think she asked to have a presentation on this here as well. Just so you know, on vehicle valuation, we assess every January 1.

[02:16:10] We are required by code to use a nationally recognized pricing guide. We use NADA, which was acquired by J.D. Powers, as do most, if not all, jurisdictions in Virginia. It does cover the pricing of about 95% of the vehicles in the county.

[02:16:26] That's why we use that particular book, because it is the most comprehensive in terms of valuation. and we use the clean trade-in value the clean training trade-in value assumes no mechanical defects that it passes necessary inspections with ease and the vehicle has a clean title history and will need minimal reconditioning to be made ready for resale there are a number of other valuation methodologies listed here in jd powers as well this is the one prince william county has used for a number of years and on the next slide i show some of the valuation methods that our neighboring jurisdictions use um you'll see fairfax also uses clean trade-in loudon though

[02:17:06] you'll see uses clean loan but you'll look over the tax rate they have a bunch of higher rates some of them use a method that may bring in a lower valuation but then they've increased the tax rate um so kind of a little bit all over the place um but there are a number of of methods the ones that we really don't think are viable when you go back rough right like most of our vehicles in the county don't need repair um sure there's going to be some vehicles out there that are in a rough value but most people maintain their vehicles we have state inspections there's a minimum requirements rate for your vehicles to be even on the road so rough would not make sense clean retail actually is a higher value than clean trade-in so that would be another one that

[02:17:43] that would increase your valuations and so some board considerations your pricing guide we plan to stay with that clean trade-in value we do believe that is most reflective of most vehicles in the county the tax due date i bring that up we currently have a tax due date of annually The board could opt to switch it into two payment dates.

[02:18:07] While it may give some benefit for ease of payment, I also think it just sort of brings up taxation with our residents twice a year versus once a year. So there may be an unintended consequence with that. But some of our neighboring jurisdictions, as you saw in that last slide, do have two due dates.

[02:18:24] Loudoun, for example, Loudoun and Stafford have two due dates. Tax rate, the board can control that tax rate of $3.70. cents. That could be raised. It could be lowered. Just knowing that whatever you do with that, you're also doing with computer equipment and peripheral unless we get the General Assembly to change the state code. And that's where legislative change comes in. It would require legislative change to separate those two rates in Richmond such that you could move them independently. With that, I'm happy to take questions. All right. Thank you so very much.

[02:18:57] I'm going to start and I'm going to let people kind of jump into queue. So with B-Poll, you were talking about needing to create more positions how many positions do you need and what do you think would be the cost yeah so we um let me go back to that slide so we had I think at 306 that was it was like two three and four positions that those could fund it depending on what level you put the the fee at if you did 30 at 30 I think that funded sort of two positions and benefits and their computer equipment etc if you did the 40 dollar rate we would add we'd be able to add

[02:19:32] one more in. So three to five category, depending on what you put the rate on, we would ask for administrative positions in tax, but at least three. And again, although this really gives us a marginal rate of return, but the real value we're saying is what keeping track of the businesses we have in the county? So the real benefit is two things, right? We know what businesses are here, right? There could be a number of home-based businesses operating that very likely earn more than $500,000. It's very easy to work at home and have a viable business. We may not even know they exist. We also can proactively really provide small business services to our small businesses.

[02:20:08] We know where they are. We can proactively give them the list of, here's all the taxes in Prince William County that you could, may or may not be subject to, and they don't find out about it later after penalties and interest pile up on them. And so it's just a, you know, it's just a better way. We get asked quite a bit by Economic Development for a list of, you know, what are all the small, what are all the businesses you have in the county? We can't really tell you. We can only tell you if they have, if they're over $500,000, they should be filing. We do have some businesses that are under $500,000 that file anyway because they want that certificate to hang on the wall.

[02:20:41] What I will point out is if you implemented this license fee, they would not pay both. You either pay a tax or a fee. So the ones that are currently paying taxes today on a B-Poll, they would not have to pay the additional fee. This would be for the businesses that are, one, either filing for that license today just to hang on the wall they're not subject to the tax they would now really officially be there's an administrative cost for processing so it would go toward that processing cost but it also would hopefully get the businesses that aren't filing in our system so we know they exist in prince william county and really have a better handle on what type of businesses do we have across across the county so quickly just to follow up so if we have like

[02:21:19] suppose someone has a home-based business and is not currently you know paying the fee we don't know who they are how we're going to find them to pay the fee are we going to go to the state and see you know which businesses have filed to incorporate Prince William County how would we find some of these businesses so we would do an outreach I'm trying to post a lot of information publicly social media etc about this new fee all businesses being required to file it we do use state databases to try to track down non-filers that should be filing but we do have a limited number of compliance and inspection staff you know we've added a few over the years but each time we've added new staff we've added new tax type so it really hasn't created a lot of additional

[02:21:58] capacity to do that compliance and enforcement and my final question is on the food and beverage tax do we know how much of the tax is borne by residents versus non-residents we do um that's actually bullet two and when i say we do this is through a source uh we we used through pfm our financial advisors a subscription that um they have through a database that measures cell phone data, where you pay with your cell phone and places, and so about 25 to 30 percent of food

[02:22:32] and beverage sales in Prince William County are pinged by cell phone services outside of our area code. Now, we know people do take their phones away, so I say that it's not completely accurate, but there is a fair share of percentage that are likely people not in Prince William. We don't have a way to measure where people actually shop.

[02:22:56] No, I appreciate that because it's something that, you know, we've had a lot of discussions about that, and I know it's going to come up again during a budget season, and I know at least Supervisor Gordy was looking at, you know, luring, but I just wanted to see if we had any idea of how much it's impacting our residents versus non-residents.

[02:23:12] So I appreciate that. Let me go on to the next person. That would be Supervisor Franklin. Yeah, you had several slides with regards to, I'll just call it the data center tax streets you had numbers for the revenue from 2024 correct i believe i saw a couple of slides right here can you just highlight that real quick i don't know if that was the one that i was looking at or a different one um so yeah so this is just talk about the 2024 sure so um tax year 23 is our fiscal 24 fiscal 24 revenues and so from data centers um the the big two drivers is real real

[02:23:50] estate right the real estate as we know the land that they purchase um is continuing to increase And so that brings up their real estate values, as does their capital investment in these facilities as they're constructed. They are growing our real property. $75.36 million is derived from data centers related to real property.

[02:24:10] Computer equipment and peripheral, those are all the servers, computers, et cetera, within them. $66.41 million for fiscal 24. They do also pay personal property tax on their furniture and fixtures, $23.3 million. So it's not a small amount.

[02:24:25] And then there are some that pay some fees and licensing. Those are BPOL. If they provide some services as part of their operations, security services around, if they have tenants and they're providing some type of security service around those tenants, I think that gets filed as BPOL.

[02:24:42] So that's a smaller piece, $1.28 million, but a total of $166 million in data center tax revenues, double-digit growth since we started measuring it in 2012. Okay, and so that 166 is for FY 2024? Yes.

[02:24:58] Okay, do you have numbers yet for FY 2025, specifically as, I mean, obviously we're about to start our budget process, so I'm assuming you have that number somewhere. We do. I don't think I have it in the slide deck handy, but we can break it out. We have, as we adopt the revenue forecast, it's in big buckets of real estate, personal property, but we can peel into our system and break it out on what we kind of projected for our adopted and what we have to date.

[02:25:23] Not looking at it right now, do you have a sense, or can you give us a sense of what that number is? Yeah. I don't. I don't want to give you a number that's inaccurate. Right. So we got 166 for FY 2024. What was our projection for FY 2025?

[02:25:43] Like I said, in this presentation, I only have broad buckets of real estate. I don't have it broken down by data center. So we can follow back up with that. That would be helpful. If we could, yep. That would be super helpful. All right. Supervisor Ware. Thank you, Madam Chair. Let's stick with data centers for a minute.

[02:26:05] Given the power constraints on future development, have you got any considerations in the out years of flattening the curve of growth on the C&P tax, given that there's only so much you can power with it? So I will say when we develop our forecast, we only count things that are permitting and we know about, right? There's a lot of planned data centers, but until they start, really start to get to that shovel in the ground you know permitting approved we're not building them into our forecast yet um so for example digital gateway we have not built that into our forecast because you know it's

[02:26:40] tied up in litigation it hasn't got through wade shop and under uh mandy until it gets there that's when we start building it into that five-year plan but i guess the question is if you're permitted and you're building 240 000 square feet with a 65 megawatt requirement but you're only being allocated 30 megawatts. Do we adjust for that or is there no way for us to know that? So we do try to value on megawatt capacity. Getting that information is a challenge, but we do try to, you know, if they don't provide it, we're looking at generators. We're trying to guesstimate what

[02:27:18] that power load going into that facility might be. And what we typically find is if we miss it in our estimate, they're going to file an appeal and typically they'll provide it when it gets to the BOE and then we make the adjustment if we're high. That sort of gets to it I mean we're already having issues collecting C&P from a reporting standpoint from an exemption standpoint we don't know where we stand with respect to that Fairfax lawsuit against jurisdictional authority to correct it so I'm just I would just be cautious going forward on that. With respect to the decoupling from the from the vehicle and other personal property tax you are correct there is

[02:27:56] actually a bill in right now it's hb 2428 by delegate webert to decouple um so we're going to be talking about that later i hope um so there is that opportunity and the other part's the real property tax um i suspect that we're due for a comeuppance in one form or another here in the very near future either through uh additional um boe adjustments court adjustments possibly

[02:28:29] uh and then have you factored in or started to consider what the implications of adoption of bills such as sp 1305 might have on us and how we would then fill in the revenue hole uh sure yes um without without giving the store away yeah no we we have um so when um digital gateway because that particular bill only affects parcels rezoned after a certain date December 1, 2023, curiously enough.

[02:29:04] Yeah, right. So Digital Gateway is the biggest impact in Prince William County. We had provided to the board the impact of, you know, at that time, it had a new higher and best use. So there's a number of things that happened. One, some of the properties got subject to rollback taxes. Those rollbacks were about $1.1 million.

[02:29:21] And then for fiscal 25 revenues or 24 tax year, it was about $4.58 million. And if you assume some type of growth for the out years, that could grow up to $7 or $8 million over a five-year period, perhaps.

[02:29:38] But we do know it's $4.8 million for 2024. That's the delta between the agricultural and the – okay. Yep, that was the rezoning new higher and better use that was billed for those properties. I will say that we do have – we position ourselves for things like exonerations.

[02:29:57] We have a fairly large exoneration budget built into our revenues. It's sort of a negative revenue budget, if you will. I will say I think it's low for this year based on what we're seeing go through the BOE. There was a number of things that went through the BOE that we actually agreed with based on new information that came out, kind of like what I described.

[02:30:14] If we don't have the information, we are going to make assumptions, and sometimes we assume too high. And when they provide the factual documentation, we have to adjust down. And we're able to really bring those in line without having to eat into our existing revenue budget through our exoneration budget. We have an amount built in each year for adjustments.

[02:30:31] We also have reserves in place. And so for these, if there was an immediate impact, we have a place to go without having to make adjustments to our revenue forecast, depending on how long, you know, like I said, we don't. Assuming that includes the data center stabilization fund that we're adopting. We have that as well.

[02:30:46] Which we would essentially wipe out. Yep, absolutely. But that's sort of the purpose in putting it there. Yeah. I'll leave it at that for the moment. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Angry. Thank you, Madam Chair. Hey, Michelle, I didn't see it in here, but, you know, we had that piece with the vehicle licensing, and we had a program to go and get people to, you know, Maryland and D.C. who are living in Virginia.

[02:31:11] Where is that? Do you have that? Is that in here anywhere? We do. And specifically the reason I'm asking is not necessarily for the revenue generated, but how that program is working. And, you know, I guess we didn't do a pilot on it, but if, in fact, it's not a beneficial program, I just want to hear a little bit more about that.

[02:31:30] Yeah, so we do have a reporting mechanism that residents can, you know, sight vehicles that have out-of-state license plates. We go out and do those investigations. I call them investigations, but go and look to see if we can find the vehicle, do research on it.

[02:31:47] What I think is frustrating probably most to residents is we can't provide that information back to them we can't tell them oh they're military and they have you know they have a legit a lot of times there's and sometimes they're already paying taxes we can't we can't tell the resident that so sometimes they may feel like nothing happens but we do have an active program with an active team we have a manager of that team and that's all they do we are also looking at other tools we may be back before the board with other tools that we can use to enhance that program but yes it is it you know it's kind of built into the personal property tax revenue We don't have a particular line item that we track, but I'm sure we can get some data on how many vehicles we've brought into compliance.

[02:32:25] If you could, just a little bit of revenue generated from that, just a little bit. All right, thank you. Sure. All right, Supervisor Bodie. Thank you, Madam Chair. Most of the questions I had were already answered, but to go to the B poll very quickly, I know we had talked about in some of your previous presentations, and thank you for this one, by the way, Michelle.

[02:32:55] I didn't say that before. We talked about how some other localities sort of break them out depending on certain types, and I know you recommended against that because that gets a lot more complicated to do. But in terms of other flexibilities, would it be possible that if the board wanted to consider this, they would be able to exempt the first year?

[02:33:12] As an example, you have a new business that's starting up, and would we be able to exempt them from the fee that first year? We have to look. I'm not sure that code would allow us to do that, but, yeah, we could look into that. Sure. So, flexibility like that, because again, knowing that there are considerations that, especially newer businesses, you know, are getting hit with a fee as they're starting up, what have you.

[02:33:31] Again, obviously $30 isn't a lot in the grand scheme of things, but we know that some of these businesses have very small margins and they don't want to get hit with that. Then plus, like you said, that surprise tax they weren't expecting and what have you. So, that was just one of my first questions. my second question is for the cni tax um you said we can go up to the 0.125 rate um you don't have it in this slide but i know you've had it in previous slides what's i know only a couple other jurisdictions currently have in northern virginia do you know off the top of your head

[02:34:04] what what their theirs is at do you remember uh yeah they're at that yeah well we can we can get that slide to you i think we have that data um of the northern virginia jurisdictions sure i appreciate that um and i'll just end by saying you know i i've been a supporter of us at least looking at the cni tax for quite some time you know we have that that uh moe that we have required but we also frankly have transportation needs in this county that we've been sort of having

[02:34:41] concerns with especially last year around the budget and omni rights asks so you know and as you see on that chart i appreciate you sharing that over time the percentage of that that's being paid by the data that is in our industry has increased and it's only going to probably increase over time as well so i think that we should all consider that as we continue to look at you know various needs and especially looking at our transportation transit needs in this county that that is a potential source of that thank you madam chair thank you supervisor vega thank you

[02:35:12] madam chair um michelle if we could go to slide 18 please so on december 2nd um mr shorter sent the board an email that I guess came as a result of an ask that supervisor we are made I want to talk a little bit about the split with the schools for just a moment because as a board I know that we've danced around the conversation of the revenue share agreement but it's never been a really meaningful conversation and so revenue increased by a hundred and forty million dollars

[02:35:47] from FY 24 to FY 25 that's an 11% increase last year we learned that the school division has approximately 25 percent of their budget unencumbered and that total based on the sheet that Mr. Shorter sent to us is five hundred and thirty one million dollars that's a lot and so my question to you is what would the revenue sharing agreement look like if the board of county supervisors assumed that amount assume I'm sorry assumed the 583 531 million that have

[02:36:24] been unencumbered um i'd have to we'd have to do the math we'd have to go back and figure out that percentage split if we were to you were saying if we were to remove that amount from there what that would the percent look like we'd have to do that math but yeah i can't do it in my head i did it oh did you but i still want you guys to do it because i think that it's important as we have budget conversations and we initiate in those discussions it's 45 and prince william county schools would never even feel the hit if we want to call it that. And so I think that as we talk

[02:37:01] about priorities, as we talk about things that we want to fund, I think that it's important for us to have a serious and meaningful conversation, Madam Chair, about the revenue share agreement and the split that we currently have with the school division. Because again, $531 million is a lot and for it to be unencumbered also says a lot in my opinion. Going on to the next question that I have. It's slide 12 and this has to do with funding. I'm specifically looking at the

[02:37:38] Commonwealth Attorney Staffing Plan and it's just are these positions approved already or are these positions the ones that were requested from the last budget cycle? Which slide are you on? Oh we're not there yet. You're not there yet. We just kept going and going and going that I lost track of where we were at. Sorry. Just want to be on the record again stating my opposition to the meals tax and that I'm happy that Supervisor Gordy has made a recommendation for us to review it and start somewhere. If it were up to me I would do away with it completely but I do like the fact that we're even having the conversation to look at lowering it. That's

[02:38:16] all I have for now, Madam Chair, I think. Let me just make sure before I, yes, and then I'll save the other questions that I have for the next slides. Thank you so much. Supervisor Gordy. Thank you, Madam Chair. So on the BPOL tax, how would this apply to agritourism, agribusiness, farms? How would you anticipate that affecting them? So BPOL applies to retail, Well, so on farms, our farms have evolved, right?

[02:38:52] To the extent they are selling items that they produce on the farms, those are not subject to BPOL, as I understand it. Once they start selling other things, other products not produced, jams, jellies, things, you know, some of them have craft shops, whatever, those things would be subject to retail.

[02:39:09] Of course, it would be subject to that $500,000 threshold. So if they're selling less than $500,000, they would not be subject to the BPOL today. If we implemented the fee, I think they would be subject to that license fee. But again, we would have to work with the attorney's office to see how a license fee works for all of our businesses.

[02:39:28] It's not what we have today. In our county code, do we actually have an exemption for farms, or is it just a practice based on state code? So that's a little bit of a legal question. From a taxation side, what I will say is farm equipment, for example.

[02:39:48] Your ordinance does not exempt farm equipment. You adopt the tax rate each year through resolution at .00001. It's so low that it doesn't generate a bill, right? We don't generate a bill until it hits. It has to be at least $5 before we're going to send a bill.

[02:40:04] It has to generate some amount. It's so low that that exempts it. So it's that action you take every year by adopting a very low rate that is exempt. Now, state code may have some other things. There was recently the thing with the cabbage, that particular farm, solar that farm those indoor farms and there's certain things that might be exempt again i think we have to it a lot permits it we have to take action to do something by ordinance um so there's things that state code allows there's some things that are shallows there's some things that are may so we would need to work with the attorney's office to really thoroughly answer that question

[02:40:39] but in terms of the taxation of equipment itself generally farm equipment it's not exempt but it has a low rate applied to it that it doesn't generate a bill. And I think you kind of helped make the point that farming is an evolving industry.

[02:40:58] You know, the challenge of selling products as a commodity is not profitable for many farms. Interestingly, the number of farms are increasing in Prince William County. In the last five years, the number of farms went up by 4%. So we actually see this as a growing industry within the county.

[02:41:16] but it means they're also retailing their products. And I think this is something that we're really going to have to take a look at to make sure that we're not, you know, wandering into just because their industry is changing. It's just they're figuring out ways to survive financially.

[02:41:33] And if we're throwing taxes on top of them because their industry changed, it really kind of cuts at their innovation to try to survive in a very dynamic economy. On the car tax, we're seeing Loudoun eliminate their, I believe it's their proposal to eliminate the vehicle license fee, which I think for us is what runs about $120 million a year.

[02:42:02] The vehicle license fee is about $12 million a year. $12 million, okay. Yes, $33 for vehicles, $20 for motorcycles. Okay. And then have you taken a look at what's happening in Richmond related to the governor's proposals and what that potential impact might be?

[02:42:22] So from what I understand from that proposal, that's a refund that will come from the state through, I think, like when you do your tax filing, a family would get sort of almost a rebate back from the state. That's how I understand it at this point. I don't think it impacts that $54.3 million that we get for PPTRA personal property tax relief that's the amount we spread out for the first $25,000 of a vehicle to provide relief to our taxpayers but as we get more vehicles that number's fixed the percentage of that goes down you'll see on this slide here it provides relief of about 38 percent

[02:43:00] of the tax bill but if you look at like Fairfax who when this went into effect right they were still very populous we've grown since then it still provides and they haven't grown as much because they were much fuller built out same with um alexandria it's providing 50 relief for those residents um whereas us you know in stafford for example you know 30 i think of stafford they were even less built out so that amount they got allocated back when pptra went in place was a much smaller amount they've grown significantly so it gets spread among more vehicles i don't think that legislation impacts that as i understand it today all right thank you very much supervisor Professor Rear.

[02:43:40] Excuse me. I'm going to dovetail on Supervisor Vega's comment with surplus, and I'm just going to reiterate my philosophical problem, I guess, with part of the revenue sharing agreement. In theory, when we adopted the budget, we fully funded the school division, and it would appear, given their unencumbered balance, that we did fully fund them.

[02:44:08] So as a result of the surplus, because we, quite frankly, missed the target, and accumulated or achieved a higher total revenue stream than we anticipated, we're then taking a portion of that windfall that we could otherwise use for capital projects or other things in the county, and we are just blindly transferring it to the schools who didn't know what to do with the last surplus we gave them, their words, not mine, and now we're going to simply hand it over again and then get the new budget request next year

[02:44:44] for even more money when this amount of capital that they're sitting on continues to grow. I'm just going to say it one more time. It's time to get rid of the revenue sharing agreement, hold them accountable for their spending, hold them accountable for their budget, and stop subsidizing what seems to be just a complete unaccountability on their part for the monies that we give them.

[02:45:14] We have to remember that we are the ones with the fiduciary authority and the fiduciary oversight not them because this is county budget county budget monies that we give them they don't control it because they don't have the tax authority i'm just going to say it one more time and i'll get off my soapbox but we we've got a problem here and it's high time we address it rather than continuing to ignore it supervisor bode thank you madam chair um i just had a previous question that i forgot to ask so back during covid as it pertains to the vehicle

[02:45:48] property taxes we if i remember correctly we went down to what 80 valuation um and that wasn't an emergency thing we have the authority to do that every year right so not really um so that was done because at the time so we have this we we by code have to assess a fair market value during covid most commissioners of revenues believed that what was happening in the vehicle market was sort of an anomaly. It wasn't very, it wasn't stabilized. And that fair market value,

[02:46:24] the values that we were seeing, that huge appreciation in used vehicle prices because of the chip shortages, et cetera, that really wasn't fair market value. I mean, it was what it was selling for, but it was sort of COVID event driven. And so we assessed at 80%. There's not, I don't know that there's an argument today that we could prove if we were challenged to say, if we were assessing at 80% of fair market value today, vehicles are still selling at these prices, but they've come down because by and large, most vehicles are now depreciating.

[02:46:57] We heard yesterday from J.D. Powers, yesterday, the day before, for example, out of one in every four people, three out of every four have equity in their vehicle today, have some sort of equity, but it's a much more normal market. By and large, most vehicles have depreciated year over year. Like I said, there's a few outliers. I'll give you one, a Bronco. A Bronco is a popular vehicle. Everybody wants one. You can't get them. You have to wait for them.

[02:47:28] They didn't depreciate this past year. Some certain models of them did not depreciate. They appreciated even on the use side. But by and large, most vehicles depreciated. So it is a much more normal market. So I don't know how you would justify that we're not in normal market. We did that because we made the argument kind of internally, but if we were challenged, that it wasn't a normal market environment. Sure. I appreciate this. And I'll just finish after this matter. Because I feel like every year for at least the last two years, we've come across people at tax time getting much larger bills than they anticipated. And I get that generally speaking,

[02:48:08] the market is normalized, but we continue to have folks that call our offices show us their tax bills and show that they've had even used cars are supposed to depreciate over time, appreciate tax bills that aren't normal for current times or if you get back to pre-COVID. So I struggle with that a little bit because yes, to your point, they're outliers, but right now you're basically making it seem like we don't have a mechanism to affect that other than lowering the tax rate, Which, again, we don't necessarily want to do necessarily because we don't then want to pull back that computer peripherals tax.

[02:48:41] So that's why I asked the question because, again, I see what you're saying. But, again, the reality of folks on the street is that some of them, at least a non-insignificant amount, are seeing higher tax bills, which to me shows that there is still some kind of an anomaly in the market, at least to a smaller degree, that is affecting people's values of their cars.

[02:49:03] I'd be curious to know if some of them, so one of the challenges I will say that we have with any evaluation method is they don't always have all the vehicles in there. So if you have a new vehicle, it may not, at the time when we do the assessment, it may not be in there. So then we are using estimates based on our own research, and it's catching up the next year.

[02:49:23] It may then be in a guide, and we may have estimated too low. And then once you run that, you know, we get a Venn, and it gets run through our system, you know, you then know what else is on the vehicle. It may be something higher than we estimated. So I don't know if any of those are newer vehicles.

[02:49:39] We do run into that from time to time where a particular model just isn't yet in J.D. Powers at the time of assessment bills need to go out. Anything else you can think of? I'll just add one other thing. We rely on the DMV database, and when J.D. Powers does not have a vehicle in it yet, we take the sales price, which is what DMV reports, and we depreciate it 5% for the first year.

[02:50:08] And then J.D. Powers picks it up the next year, and it might be a much higher value than that. I will tell you, DMV data is so dirty, there are times when vehicles move out before they've moved in. And we have a team of people trying to clean that up.

[02:50:24] So the DMV data is not exactly reliable. Yeah, I appreciate it. Again, it just seems like, at least especially in this case, taxpayers are being hit because of, frankly, things that are beyond their control, right? Again, certain vehicle types have depreciated, other ones haven't.

[02:50:42] People can't necessarily control that. And then to that point, the changing of that data and our estimations end up hitting people and hurting them in places where they're not expecting it. So that between inflationary pressures of groceries, everything else, it's something that I know my office has been called about.

[02:50:59] We get emails about it basically every time those tax bills come out. I've seen it in some of my tax bill, too, with my car. So it happens, and I just want to figure out how we can grapple with that as a board, knowing that, again, some of this, to your point, though, is still anomalous.

[02:51:14] It isn't what we traditionally see, or at least we saw pre-COVID. So going to take sort of my very last slide, a couple things. You know, one is legislation, right? I come back to that Personal Property Tax Relief Act. You know, is there, could Richmond, you know, that number needs to be adjusted, quite frankly.

[02:51:32] We're spreading it over fewer, more and more vehicles. And when it was set up, you know, populations were very different. I don't know what the appetite in Richmond is for that, but that would take a legislative change. But that's something that impacts, you know, all of our peers as well. Their numbers are coming down, that percentage, every year.

[02:51:49] Some faster than others, you know, us in Stafford faster than Fairfax, for example. But they have declined. You know, at one point it was set out to be that PPTRA, it was going to relieve 100%. That wasn't affordable by the state. So that's one piece, legislative change there. Obviously, the personal property tax rate, right, those two being separated makes it much more easier for policy decisions where we're not impacting all of our revenue types.

[02:52:16] today you know you have on any on any given tuesday you could well for boarded budget adoption you could adopt a lower rate but you're also just keep in mind you're impacting the rate on the other personal property types for data centers for other types of businesses etc so it's a much bigger number in terms of the revenue hit it's not just impacting vehicles so that piece you know obviously would be a legislative change as well and that's why you know i've advocated every year for those two items that you just talked about to be in our legislative agenda the bifurcating i know supervisor weir talked about that earlier but also again reforming the pptr because again i and i appreciate you adding this slide because

[02:52:53] to me it's not fair that people in fairfax are basically having to pay less tax bills proportionately speaking i apologize we're gonna have to go on to supervisor frank say but thank you for that yeah and if i could follow up on one one thing on the vehicle license fee you know you did mention um could you eliminate that that cost is about 12.1 million dollars um some of our peers don't have that vehicle license fee that is per vehicle um so that you know as a as a form of relief that would give relief but it does again come with a cost yeah just want to um say that i

[02:53:29] agree that i think part of it is legislative the other part of course um is looking at other pricing guides for how we do assessments because that's part of the reason why those numbers come to what they are and to point out every single jurisdiction has had this issue and if you look here we have one of the lower rates um and actually we have the lowest rate in the region and so i think it goes down to really how we do the assessments yeah and the cost just um to give you an order of magnitude while we we today don't have those other guides loaded we tried to do some

[02:54:06] research on what taking a particular models of car and what would the impact be um anywhere from eight million dollars to 17 million dollars depending on which methods you went with like I said, rough, I don't believe that really is representative of most vehicles. So we don't think that's a viable source. Clean retail would make your valuations go up. So between average and clean loan, it could be anywhere between $8 to $17 million. Adopting a new methodology would require, I will say, changes to our system. So there would be some costs there. Testing, it would make forecasting revenues more challenging because we wouldn't have trend history on that method.

[02:54:41] So we may go through some bumpiness in forecasting that revenue source if you were to change. Like I said, a new, if you were to do something related to vehicles, the vehicle license fee would be easier to implement without changing methodologies. Again, about the same cost, $8 to $12 million cost, I think, 12.4.

[02:54:59] Thank you so very much. We don't have any other speakers. Really appreciate you. Yep, you're welcome. I will introduce Dave Sinclair to talk about FY26 budget outlook.

[02:55:13] All right, good afternoon, Chair Jefferson, members of the board.

[02:55:41] I'm just going to do a really quick fiscal year 2026 budget outlook. What we're going to talk about today, I'm going to quickly review fiscal year 2024 agency operating surplus. This is separate and distinct from the general revenue surplus.

[02:55:58] We'll review FY 2025 budget highlights, and then we'll get to the budget outlook for fiscal year 2026, which the county executive will be presenting to the board in February 18th, I believe. So just a quick review of surplus from agency operations.

[02:56:18] This is the general fund unrestricted savings and agency revenue shortfall. On the expenditure side, as you can see, countywide, our general fund expenditure savings was $10.1 million.

[02:56:33] That is a savings rate of only 1.3%. I don't have a magic number for you of what that savings rate should be, but it is getting very, very close. It really depends on who you ask.

[02:56:50] If you were to talk to bond rating agencies, I believe they would like to see AAA-rated jurisdictions save anywhere from 4% to 5% of their annual budget. However, I also recognize that that would translate to $40 million of savings, and I know that's a difficult conversations elsewhere, especially with county residents.

[02:57:15] But offsetting those expenditure savings, you will note that we have an agency revenue shortfall countywide of $6 million for a net of only $4.2 million, and that is very close.

[02:57:31] you might be asking, well, why do we have that agency revenue shortfall? You'll see that predominantly in health and well-being. And what's happening there is we get a lot of state revenue in our Department of Social Services and Community Services. Some of that is for specific services and state grants.

[02:57:50] And if we don't spend that money on a reimbursable basis, it might get carried over to the next fiscal year because it's associated with a grant. Okay. Madam Chair, can I ask a question? Supervisor Rear. Can you go, you just said something about $40 million from savings, if I understood you correctly.

[02:58:09] No, I'm sorry if I misrepresented that. If we were saving 4% to 5% of our expenditure budget, that's roughly equating to what that would look like. But the actual total from the savings is only 4.2? That is the net between our expenditure savings of 10.1 and our agency revenue shortfall of 6 million.

[02:58:33] The net is 4.2. I'm having a problem with this. If we've got a budget surplus, how do we have an agency revenue shortfall that you're crediting against the savings?

[02:58:52] Does that make sense to you? It does, yes, sir. It's basically reimbursable revenue. That's also why we're having the savings in health and well-being, the expenditure savings, because we're not able to bill the estate on a reimbursable basis for those services.

[02:59:10] But at the end of the day, we've got a $10 million savings, which shows up in the surplus. And then we, because of our efficiency, we then give half of that to the school division? No, sir. We don't? We keep that $10 million if it's factored in the budget? On our side, yes. So you keep that off the budget surplus?

[02:59:28] It does not get sent to the schools. There's a difference between revenue surplus, where you collect more than you expect, and then them spending less than you pay. That's what I'm getting at. That's the delta. This is not tied any way, shape, or form to general revenue.

[02:59:45] That's what I'm just confirming. Yes, correct. Thank you. This is another way of looking at that $10.1 million in expenditure savings. I will note here countywide salaries and benefits, that expenditure category, that general expenditure category, we were short $3.7 million.

[03:00:05] As a budgetary practice, we have about almost $20 million in budgeted salary lapse. that is meant to capture salary and benefit and employer tax savings from vacancies that naturally occur in every county agency throughout the fiscal year, okay? If it weren't for budgeted salary lapse, the year-end expenditure savings would be up around $28.5 million. So budgeted agency savings is doing what it is designed to do. But as you can see, countywide, we did

[03:00:44] overspend salaries and benefits, but that is offset in other expenditure areas. And the reason for that is the county in general has been filling vacancies. As you can see from the final bullet, County turnover with retirement is down from 10% in fiscal year 2023 to 8% in fiscal 2024.

[03:01:07] That may not seem like a lot, but it does add up. Moving on to fiscal year 2025 budget highlights. First, on the revenue side, the Board of County Supervisors adopted a real estate tax rate of $0.92 per $100 of real estate valuation.

[03:01:30] That is a 4.6% decrease in the rate from fiscal year 2024. And the average real estate tax bill on existing residential properties increased $26 or one half of 1% based on the budget.

[03:01:51] And during the past two years, we're talking fiscal year 2024 and 2025, that average residential tax bill increased $31 or six-tenths of 1%. Since fiscal year 2021, the county's real estate tax rate has reduced 20.5 cents from $1.125, I believe, in fiscal year 2021 to $0.92 in fiscal

[03:02:22] year 2025. Commensurate with that, the Board of County Supervisors has increased that personal property tax rate on computers and peripherals from $2.15 to $3.70 per $100 valuation in the fiscal 2025 fiscal plan. Lastly, as the real estate tax rate is decreased and we're mitigating

[03:02:54] those rising real estate assessments based on the market value, the county's total general revenue increased $183.6 million, or 13% over fiscal year 2024. That's a very healthy growth rate in overall revenue. On the expenditure side of the 2025 budget, education funding, based on the agreement with the schools, did increase $105.1 million, or 13% over fiscal year

[03:03:29] 2024. And the two-year increase in the county transfer to the schools increased $196 million, a little over 27%. That's a two-year growth in that transfer. In the FY 2025 budget and the adopted five-year plan, our collective bargaining agreements with the Police Association and Fire and rescue, collective bargaining units. They are fully funded. That cost in fiscal year 2025

[03:04:01] was $15.4 million. The board made significant commitments in the budget to make contributions both in fiscal 2025 and planned across the five-year plan to the housing trust reserve. I realize there's there's not i don't think officially a trust yet um but this is a signal of intent over the six years a total of 31 million dollars is what is programmed in the adopted five-year plan

[03:04:37] a real quick on capital projects the board made some some investments to increase the maintenance and parks and recreation facilities that's a 1.2 million dollars you also made a million dollar annual investment for uh pedestrian and mobility safety improvements um this last bullet is significant to me because i'm a bit of a nerd in this regard but um the board cash funded a significant mobility project that was included in the 2019 mobility referendum it was 70 million

[03:05:15] dollars for the minneville road prince william parkway interchange project so uh moving that off of debt financing saves the county significant interest costs over a 20-year period, which is what we would have financed it for, okay? And then as the chief financial officer mentioned earlier, you also made some significant investments to start the data center revenue stabilization reserve in the FY25 budget. That was a million dollars to kickstart that, and you also allocated

[03:05:53] $1 million for purchase development rights program. Okay, moving on to our fiscal year 2026 budget outlook. Before we begin, we have about $37 million programmed as budget additions for fiscal year 2026. And as you might have mentioned, imagine the largest portion is employee compensation, a 3% increase to salaries for year of service or pay for performance adjustments,

[03:06:29] and a 1.25% market adjustment specifically for fire and rescue. Yes, that is part of that collective bargaining agreement for fire and rescue sworn staff, and 1.25% market adjustment for ADC sworn. We have programmed increases for health and dental insurance and a police staffing plan. That is 20 officers and three civilians, new staff in program for fiscal year 26. We have

[03:07:04] debt service increases. These things that we have to do based on progress made for the parks bond referendum and some capital projects that are moving forward, such as homeless navigation Center in the east and the Public Safety Training Center expansion project. Department of Fire and Rescue, the Station 27 engine unit, that's based on the capital project schedule. If you recall, we funded the medic unit in fiscal year 2025. This would finish the career staffing at that

[03:07:43] new station. And then as part of the collective bargaining agreement, Fire and Rescue would get another 30 positions in fiscal year 2026 as we try to bring that average work week down from 56 hours per week down to 50 hours per week. Again, that's already programmed in the five-year plan.

[03:08:06] I hope this answers your question earlier, Supervisor Vega. The Commonwealth Attorney Staffing Plan does have programmed eight positions for fiscal year 2026. There were eight new positions in fiscal 25. There's another eight programmed for fiscal year 2026. And then the affordable housing dwelling unit program, there were two positions started in fiscal year 2025 to start standing up that office. There's another two positions programmed in fiscal year

[03:08:44] 26 as well to finish that office staffing. However, I'd like to review with the board a number of things that are not programmed in fiscal year 2026 and they're in these general categories. I call them budget structural issues, decisions that for the most part the board has already made off cycle. We'll review some developing issues that might put some pressure on developing the FY26 budget. I'll quickly review some budget deficiencies as staff sees them

[03:09:21] And I'll try to take inventory of board directives. I've done the best I can to take inventory of board directives that may impact the FY26 budget. What I am certain is most likely I have not captured everything.

[03:09:38] So please forgive me if you don't see something on those slides. First, in terms of budget structural issues, there's the building and facilities capital program. I know there's a lot of interest in increasing our maintenance, especially for our parks and recreation facilities in the county. But the baseline program of $4 million per year has been funded from the Capitol Reserve. This is an ongoing program. We have programmed $4 million each year in the adopted five-year plan. And from a structural issue standpoint,

[03:10:17] point, we really ought not to fund a recurring program with one-time capital reserve. We really should consider transferring the funding source from the capital reserve to the annual budget paid for by current year revenue. As part of the policies of sound financial management update that the board approved during the summer, there was an increase in the minimum contingency from half million a year to $1 million a year, we need to increase as part of the budget to catch up with

[03:10:56] that newly adopted policy statement. And then budgeted salary lapse. This is something that we and OMB are taking a look at in light of the FY2024 performance that I showed you a little while ago. Just be aware, right now the FY 2025 budgeted salary lapse is about $24 million in savings already baked into that budget. That is the starting point for fiscal year 2026.

[03:11:29] If we reduce that amount, that comes with a cost. Okay. Taking inventory of decisions that the board has already made. We've acquired historic property acquisitions during the course of of the current fiscal year namely the ned distiller house and rollins farm um this comes with some costs that we identified in those staff reports uh the good news is most of this one million dollars is one time in nature in fiscal 26 to do architectural and and condition assessments

[03:12:07] things like that um the fire and rescue pharmacy program was um authorized by the board and uh we have to continue the four fire and rescue personnel on an ongoing basis in the fiscal year 2026 budget. The good news is the one-time cost was funded out of contingency in fiscal 25. Moving on, data center litigation. It's likely that that litigation will continue

[03:12:44] into fiscal year 2026. What you're seeing here is the mid-year adjustment in fiscal year 2025 for outside legal counsel and two real estate appraisers that were added in the finance department. We need to carry on those costs in the fiscal 26 budget. Some developing issues, I believe staff has presented the current situation with the crisis receiving center

[03:13:17] as it pertains to the need to get a waiver from DBHDS, the state agency, so that we can bill Medicaid in the future on that.

[03:13:35] So we'll see how that unfolds. And then last year we found that the Commonwealth of Virginia provided a $5 million state grant for the Americans at Wartime Museum.

[03:13:51] that requires a two and a half million dollar local match. The state would like to see Prince William County provide that local match at some point during the fiscal 2025-2026 biennium, the state biennium that is. We did not provide any money towards that local match in the fiscal year 2025 budget. And then of course, as mentioned a little bit earlier, last year Prince William County made some significant investments using county mobility funding sources to sustain

[03:14:29] OmniRide, namely grantor's tax and transient occupancy tax that must be used by state code for mobility. Based on what OmniRide presented, I believe last month in December, They're looking at a $9.6 million gap between their local subsidy request of Prince William County and their projected motor fuels tax.

[03:14:59] So staff will be making a recommendation as part of the proposed budget in terms of how we fund that gap. Staff has identified some budget deficiencies in terms of staffing capacity to serve the community.

[03:15:21] Some of those services will be revealed during the county executive's proposed budget. Last year, if memory serves me, Supervisor Gordy, you were particularly interested in technology, not only in terms of a technology improvement plan to modernizing legacy systems, and some of those systems are no longer supported by vendors or in danger of no longer being supported by vendors, as well as innovation in terms of introducing new technology one of the things that we're also

[03:16:00] learning is that when we migrated the county's in technology infrastructure about five years ago as part of a technology modernization project where a lot you know the end of the server farm some of of that went to the cloud. The county has a lot of equipment in those data centers, frankly, that need to be updated. For example, as specifically as it pertains to cybersecurity

[03:16:30] and network equipment that needs to be replaced on a secular basis. And then in parks, I know that The board is very much interested in catching up with deferred maintenance on existing facilities.

[03:16:50] The board is also interested, I'm sorry, I went backwards, in expanding or improving existing facilities, whether that be lights or permanent fixed restroom facilities, for example, and, of course, trails.

[03:17:09] Everyone likes our trails and greenways. So that's some of the things that we're trying to make investments in in the FY26 budget. And then on to the board directives of which there are money.

[03:17:26] This slide is dedicated specifically to the planning office. I'm not the subject matter expert, but we do have a backlog of small area plans that I believe the board has initiated over the years. And so the planning office may need help on delivering these to the board, okay?

[03:17:47] And I won't go through all of these. This slide is dedicated to board directives, specifically to parks and recreation. Don't worry, I'm going to get to the capital project directives here in a couple slides.

[03:18:04] But this one is specifically identifying those directives pertaining to preserving history and stories of African-American residents and Native American residents. There's also been board directives as it pertains to employee home ownership.

[03:18:28] There has been, I believe, a staff response on that. This would be an annual cost that assumes home ownership grants to up to 40 employees per year. Please note that this would require an ordinance by the board.

[03:18:46] And then also we have various pilot programs underway specific for automated traffic enforcement. And the FY25 budget basically funded some special events for household hazardous waste collection in the West.

[03:19:08] This slide gets to board directives specifically as it relates to capital projects. Obviously, you have the board adopted the Community Energy Sustainability Master Plan. That calls for significant capital investment by the year 2030.

[03:19:29] naturally we're making progress on the homeless navigation center in the east and obviously the board is very has been very interested for it feels like three or four years now on providing homeless services in the western portion of Prince William County. We have acquired a site for a future Linton Hall library. Now what? And also the board has funded a number of master plans

[03:20:05] I think I've captured them all here. So some of these master plans are in progress. They have not been completed. But then what is the next step after that? And of course, we do have one master plan that has been completed, and specifically that's the Woodbridge Library and Senior Center.

[03:20:28] Now what? And this is the final slide that I have as part of the FY2026 Budget Outlook. this is uh this is the calendar i believe that the board approved earlier this afternoon the proposed cip will be presented on february 11th and the county executives proposed budget on february 18th i just want to thank you for your time thank you so very much um so we're going to start here so who's birthday i'm sorry i just heard chat right so when we get there we'll

[03:21:08] give you you you will be celebrating with us yay all right supervisor weir thank you madam chair can we start on page seven for the for the benefit of those playing at home um we're showing an 18 percent tax or 18 reduction in the rates since fy 21 that being said to give the other side of the coin what is the increase in revenues from the real estate tax over that same period and what increase was that? Or do you have that off the top of your head? I wish I did. I will find that

[03:21:45] out for you. But I'm assuming it's significant. Since fiscal 21. The same period. We reduced the tax rate 18%. But I'm assuming that the tax collections, despite the rate increase, have gone up significantly, safe to say? I would assume. I mean, there was a COVID year in there. But But, yeah, we can – I'll send that out to the board.

[03:22:08] I just want both figures out there so that, you know, oh, you cut the rate, but, you know, that's – we're losing money. No, that's not the case. Page 11, Commonwealth Attorney Staffing Plan. Is that $1.2 million to – is that $1.2 million for the new positions or to offset the positions that were funded this fiscal year by delegatorian?

[03:22:39] Or are we on the hook next year for the positions that he included in the budget as an unfunded mandate? Where does all of this shake out at the end? I'm not quite sure about what's going on with the state.

[03:22:54] This assumes eight new positions in fiscal year 26 funded locally. But does that include retaining the positions that were funded by the legislature for a year? No.

[03:23:10] You'll make sure that you'll address the Commonwealth attorney on that? I will. Okay. Because I don't want there to be any misunderstanding when the budget ask comes in. You know, there were positions that were funded by the legislator on a short-term basis, and I don't want us to get caught holding the bag on an unfunded mandate where they paid for it one year and then dumped the cost on us and add infinitum.

[03:23:37] I just want to, if I can, I want to make sure that I don't want to misrepresent sort of what's happening here. The staffing plans associated with the Commonwealth Attorney's Office have been, for the last few years, and will be, in terms of the proposed budget, consistent with the comp board recommendations.

[03:23:55] So we are, I'm not so sure about what the legislature is. I just want to make sure that we're not assuming the cost of what they laid on top of what we wouldn't fund last year. Okay. by way of a budget amendment at the state level, if I remember this correctly.

[03:24:19] I'm not sure about what may have happened at the legislature. What the Commonwealth Attorney generally approaches us with is what the Comp Board approves or recommends per jurisdiction.

[03:24:37] All I'm saying is part of her FTE total right now is funded by the state. Yes. So are we going to assume that state funding, since it was short-term, Are we now going to, because she's got it, are we now going to, you know what I'm asking, if we could just get back to me on that.

[03:24:54] Yeah, we will check with the Commonwealth Attorney, Supervisor Weir. My understanding is, and I'll find out if this is an incorrect assumption on my part, my understanding was that that additional revenue from the comp board would be recurring.

[03:25:11] Okay. But I will get to the bottom of that. I just want to make sure, because it was done by budget amendment, and I don't, I seem to recall it was short term, not long term. And if the board recalls, mid-year and fiscal year 25, a couple months ago, the board authorized with that additional comp board revenue for new Commonwealth attorney positions that were funded by the Commonwealth.

[03:25:33] I am assuming that that funding will continue by the comp board into fiscal year 26. And I believe at the time I questioned with respect to what would happen if the funding dried up. Last but not least, page 15.

[03:25:53] Two things. Real quick, the American Wartime Museum local match. What happens if we don't match? The funding will be lost. Okay. Simple enough. And then on OmniRide, if they've given you the year-over-year increase from last year and what their ask is year-over-year versus two parts.

[03:26:17] what they asked for this last year versus what we gave them and what they're asking for this year compared to what we gave them and what they asked for have they given it have they given you that in fairness to them i haven't asked for that specifically but i will parse that out i will i will take that up with the prtc board chair uh because they were supposed to have had that to you by now and we will call correctly you can have your um you know you can do your next round later because we have others okay this is if i may this is based on what the commission presented publicly on on december 5th i do want to be clear about that they may not have sent it to me

[03:26:56] directly but all right thank you so much supervisor franklin yeah uh this is not really a suggestion i'm just kind of asking page 18 with regards to the historical portions under parks and recreation i know um micron funded or sponsored i should say the bandalong in the neapsco creek and just wondering um are there opportunities for future partnerships along those lines on some of our other parks and recs uh activities not not specific to bandalongs not specific to

[03:27:34] band i'm sorry i just yeah but i'm using this as an example uh let's say maybe the oral history program or one of the other, is it possible to partner with some of our local entities to get those things underway?

[03:27:50] I don't really recommend it because I believe governments should pay for and do government work, but I'm just wondering, since we have an example of that through the band-a-long. Right. I think what might be difficult is the band-a-long is usually a one-time cost.

[03:28:12] um these would be uh programs and yeah understood thank you supervisor gordy i will say just quickly just i don't want to lose the opportunity um the print the parks uh the parks foundation uh does just a phenomenal job representing the the county that is where donations would if you will go or these kinds of partnerships would go where uh an outside organization would want to assist the county. I've already lost a minute and a half. All right. I haven't started yet.

[03:28:53] So I want to talk a little bit about just kind of deferred, go back to the deferred maintenance. We're seeing two major examples in our headlines right now of localities that kind of strung systems along for a long time, and it finally came back to bite them in the backside really hard.

[03:29:20] and one of them, of course, being what happened with the water systems down in Richmond. Do we have any systems or any infrastructural things that we've been deferring that we really should take a look at?

[03:29:40] It's basically holding on by a thread that we really need to get after, but we've just never put the funding behind it because of other priorities, and there's our fleet facilities. So Matt walks into the chambers. No, no, no. Welcome to the meeting. I will say that, Supervisor, we will do our best to work with the team to make sure that we bring that to the board as part of the budget, the proposed budget.

[03:30:06] There are a number of systems, namely associated with our facilities and obviously with technology, that will absolutely need some investment. And so we'll bring that together in a thoughtful way and bring it to the board next month in a few weeks.

[03:30:22] Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I just, I don't want us to be the headline. You know, we took action preemptively to get after these challenges. And so I think that absolutely should, we should absolutely learn a lesson from other localities that are experiencing this.

[03:30:41] To go back to the OmniRide on page 15, so the taxes that are highlighted in yellow, we're just waiting, what's the TBD, where's that information coming from, and what's the... That's a decision point on our end, those TBDs.

[03:30:59] What I will say is we could choose to continue to sustain OmniRide from grantor's tax and transit occupancy tax. Those are funding sources that must be used for mobility. However, there is an opportunity cost with that, and it comes with investments that Mr. Canizales and his outstanding team, they're trying to advance other mobility priorities on behalf of the county.

[03:31:29] So that also kind of ties in with that C&I tax discussion as well. And just to go back to your statement regarding the building and capital program program and moving that from capital reserve into the annual budget i think that is a smart move and i really appreciate you highlighting that and uh completely support that i know i know it's really difficult to to consider that it it's it's really um especially at a time when when the board would like to increase funding especially for the maintenance of parks because parks and recreation

[03:32:06] has done some really outstanding things through this program and also with the ARPA funding that the board allocated. And you're seeing those improvements throughout the county. So I understand that's a that's a tough ask. Yeah. And, you know, and you governments have a tendency and it's kind of go back to my previous point, you know, when we when we are looking at programs and then trying to budget out those lifecycle costs, you know, fortunately, and I've mentioned this early last year after visiting George Mason University, they actually have a program that helps businesses,

[03:32:44] localities, figure out those life cycle costs so they can appropriately budget that over time so they're not eventually getting down the path and realize, oh boy, we've got this massive cost, this bow wave of cost headed our way because we haven't been maintaining things over time.

[03:33:01] And so, you know, what do you see as is this something that we are actively pursuing within our budget processes and within our systems, these lifecycle costs, or is this more as a pay it as you need to address it?

[03:33:20] I will let me first say that this is also shared by our outstanding staff and facilities and fleet management so that we don't have that catastrophic failure in county-owned facilities, okay? so there's also that element i i was i'd be remiss if i didn't remind the board of that as well um so it's it's difficult uh in terms of the maintenance i you know this number could probably double you know um and and still be very productive but we're also trying to weigh that against the investments that that the board and the community might like to see for those existing park

[03:34:00] improvements for example um whether it be uh lights or um replacing artificial turf fields or providing that dedicated restroom facility that has uh water and sewer to it rather than um the port-a-johns um i'm working on some so that's something that that staff is evaluating and and um we'd like to do both so thank you dave appreciate it all right we're going to move on to Vegas and Bailey. Thank you, Madam Chair. Dave, not sure if you're going to be able

[03:34:37] to answer this, but you're certainly welcome to try, or I'll just look over at Mr. Shorter or at Matt. Is the Crisis Receiving Center still on schedule to open this summer? Matt Villareal, Director of Facilities and Fleet Management. Right now we are a little bit behind, but we anticipate having occupancy or temporary occupancy probably in June and in the facility being open probably

[03:35:13] in late august okay and you know i asked because again the longer it takes the more costs increase you know and so um we've also had our fair share of we can call them hiccups along the way so mr shorter i don't know if you have any other additional updates in regards to the crisis receiving center um at all is everything resolved because i know that at one point we were um looking at trying to uh figure out how to bridge the gap in funding from what the state had promised or allocated and so just want to know if there's been any changes or

[03:35:51] progress so we absolutely will so thank you Matt for the construction update I'll say that from a budget perspective we are still very much dealing with the sort of reimbursement if you will Medicaid reimbursement issue the waiver is out there that said I will be bringing as part of the proposed budget what that gap will be and so we'll be asking for the board's consideration so that we can open as promised this summer and and so the board will see this in a few weeks okay thank you and then just want to be on the record you know talking

[03:36:28] about my at least intentions to bring forward some sort of actual plan to earmark these small area plans we have for right now that were presented to us Yorkshire Sullyward corridor and so on and so I do think that it's important us to allocate funding to ensure that these actually get started because they are important to the corresponding districts but there are additional reasons why I believe that we should set funds aside to fund these small area plans and so it's kind of just a heads up as we continue to talk about budget priorities and what to earmark and whatnot thank you madam chair

[03:37:05] supervisor Bailey thank you very much supervisor Vega thank you I love when great minds think like I want to ask the same questions that you asked about the CRC. So I'm glad that that's on your mind as well as the rest of the board. I am not concerned because I've been hearing positive responses in terms of the crisis receiving center, but I would encourage us to just keep that. Thank you to the county exec. Keep that on our minds. And Elijah, thank you for the conversations that we've held as well. And the waiver I'm hearing is in a

[03:37:41] positive trajectory as well in terms of the funding. And so we will work. That certainly will be, as you know, part of my board request in terms of the board as well. The other thing is I just wanted to just my concern is something that Bob said also in terms of OmniRide, you know, we've really got to wrap our arms around that as well so that that information was supposed to be at hand now.

[03:38:11] So we have to work a little harder on the board to make sure that you have what you need. And I just want to make sure, I was present at the PRTC meeting on December 5th. I don't want to get OmniRide in any trouble here. Well, you may not be good because I got a question about it.

[03:38:30] So when we get to the board, so just putting it out there. And, of course, my colleague runs a tight ship at the OmniRide board meeting, So I know we'll be more at hand on that. The other thing is, for the American at Wartime Museum, again, appreciate the state's support of that.

[03:38:54] But if we don't do what we're supposed to do, what will happen? I imagine, as the county executive mentioned earlier, we would lose the $5 million from the state. Okay. Thank you. That's all I got. All right.

[03:39:09] Thank you so very much. I don't see any other speakers in queue. I see Michelle coming back. Thank you. Thank you. Hi. Good afternoon. Michelle Atreid, I'm going to introduce myself for this one as the Acting Deputy County Executive for Government Operations.

[03:39:28] I want to take a moment before I turn this over to Matt Cornelison to talk about CIP for a moment, to remind the board that as part of the FY25 budget, County Executive Shorter and then Deputy County Executive Quinton Haynes introduced a CIP project delivery process improvement.

[03:39:46] A couple things happened. During the FY25 budget, or during the budget process, you approved some new positions for procurement, for example, to really try to move forward some of the projects. You've heard a lot about the capital projects going on in the county. We have a lot of things going on. And so he also, as part of this, put together a work group.

[03:40:03] We have internally been meeting to really figure out how to streamline the process and improve the process. And I'm going to switch hats for a minute. I'm going to put on my CFO hat for a minute. Why is this important? You heard from the rating agencies. You did hear about budget flexibility. That's a big thing they look at.

[03:40:21] I mentioned the collective bargaining. That brought us down a notch because we lost some flexibility with budgeting through a collective bargaining agreement. They discipline in a process, right? Putting together a project delivery process, improving that process, is designed to put discipline around the capital improvement project.

[03:40:39] It goes through a well-thought-out process that a project will enter before the five-year plan. It will get on a parking lot list. We're starting to think about it. We go through land acquisition. It will market its way across that five-year plan to the point of construction.

[03:40:55] And then occupancy and operating costs go into the budget. Those are all things that we do today. We do build in those operating costs. But we do want to try to put in place a process for prioritization of projects. We've heard that we have a lot of projects, far more than we have capacity to fund in any given year.

[03:41:13] How do we prioritize those? And so this whole process is designed to put really a discipline around a process for staff, for the board, for better decision-making when you are faced with approving your CIP and your budget. So that's one reason it's important. The second reason, and I'm going to touch on this a little bit, really leads into sort of this maintenance piece even.

[03:41:33] When we bring assets on, we have to maintain them. Once they open, we're not just done with them. We have to pay to operate them, but we also do have to maintain them. And this is becoming more important. There is actually a GASB exposure draft out that jurisdictions are starting to be concerned about that may require us to disclose the condition of all of our assets.

[03:41:53] You know, you think about at the state, they have those various levels of maintaining the road conditions. We may have to have a disclosure for our assets. Bondholders want to know that we're maintaining those things that we're funding. We're using bondholder dollars, you know, investments they've made that we're maintaining it. This is an exposure draft.

[03:42:09] It isn't adopted yet. There's open for comment period. We will be commenting, lots of GFOA, I'm sure, will be commenting, because there's a workload that comes with that, too. It is an impact on localities. But these are great discussions to be having, because as we start to think about the CIP process, we can think about the maintenance, too.

[03:42:26] And so it's all tied together. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Matt Cornelius, and he will take you through CIP delivery. Thank you, Michelle. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the board.

[03:42:42] My name is Matthew Cornelius, and I'm with the Office of Management and Budget. I'm the coordinator for the county's capital improvement program. Gonna talk this afternoon, just for a few minutes, about project delivery and the capital improvement program.

[03:42:57] At the outset of our presentations, Mr. Shorter mentioned that this presentation, he called it CIP part two. If you'll recall, back in October, there was a CIP work session presentation. We call that CIP part one. At that time, we said that we would be returning to the board in the near future for additional information.

[03:43:16] So as promised, here we are. Just do a quick recap of that presentation, refresh your memories, and I'm going to review the current CIP project intake process and then discuss some proposed new projects for CIP prioritization and intake.

[03:43:33] And back on October 15th, just a couple of months ago, it was Quentin Haynes, who was the deputy county executive at the time. He led the presentation where we heard from members of Transportation, Public Works, Facilities and Fleet Management, and Parks and Recreation.

[03:43:53] They gave an overview, just a high-level flyover of their staffing, some of their active capital improvement projects, Some of the processes that they go through for their projects, for example, transportation processes are dramatically different than a parks project or a facility project.

[03:44:12] They talked about funding, some of the funding issues they're having, both good and bad, and then they just gave a high-level future outlook. And talking about future outlook, many agencies, they have long-range capital visions.

[03:44:28] They've got big visions, and this is wonderful, a lot of great projects coming our way. Just a couple of examples, Parks and Recreation, from their 2020 master plan, they've got about $542 million in unfunded capital projects.

[03:44:46] Public safety, fire and rescue, they're talking about the need for several new stations, and then renovation and rebuilds of existing stations. Police, they've begun discussing about the need for a 4th District police station. Libraries, Mr. Sinclair mentioned a few minutes ago, Linton Hall Library repurchased the site, and what do we do with it now?

[03:45:08] Dale City, there's a master plan underway for a library, and then, as mentioned again a few minutes ago, the Woodbridge Library and Senior Center, they're currently looking at acquiring land for that facility. Human services, we've talked about, the board has been interested for several years now about a homeless navigation center in the western area.

[03:45:28] And again, the Woodbridge Library and Senior Center. IT, they've got countywide technology modernization. There's currently an assessment underway right now to review the current systems and what may be needed in the future. And they've also got their annual technology improvement program.

[03:45:45] For mobility, of course, transportation is a very robust department. And then there's also a lot of trails in the counties. So a lot of agencies have a lot of big visions, a lot of big plans for projects that are coming our way. And this graphic just shows some of the inputs and constraints to consider when we're talking about when we're putting together the CIP.

[03:46:07] A lot of things go into potential projects. You know, we focus on the comprehensive plan and the strategic plan, parks and recreations master plan, the recent community energy sustainability master plan, outside funding as grants, either federal or state funding becomes available that maybe a new project goes into consideration citizen input we're currently working on some transportation and parks projects that were approved by the voters back in 2019 as part of the bond referendum so there's a lot of different ways projects can be can enter consideration for the CIP then there at the bottleneck there's some of the

[03:46:45] constraints that we need to consider you know funding capacity how much can we afford debt capacity how much debt can we afford to support to pay for some of these projects. Staffing capacity, how much can our existing staff actually manage? And then operating capacities, Mr. Sinclair mentioned a few minutes ago, once these projects, and as Michelle mentioned also, once these projects are finished, that's not the end of the story. We need to continue to pay for them in the future. So how much can we afford? So when you consider all the inputs and then the constraints, what results? Ultimately, is the board adopted six-year capital

[03:47:20] Improvement Program. There are three ways, three main ways, that a project can enter the CIP. There's through the annual budget process, which is what we're in the season right now, where agencies will submit requests, usually the September-October time frame, and then ultimately projects or the CIP will be adopted by the board in April. Another way projects can enter the CIP is funding becomes available. And what I mean by that is transportation, primary, usually transportation, stormwater, and parks. They will get board approval to apply for grants and maybe

[03:47:57] a month, couple months, a year goes by, whatever the time frame is, we'll get notification and congratulations, Prince William County, you've just been awarded this grant. At that point, the board will create a project and fund the project. So the project enters the CIP that way. Another way the projects can enter the CIP is off cycle requests throughout the year. Any given On Tuesday afternoon, the board may decide to create a project and that can enter the CIP that way.

[03:48:28] So I think we need a new process to meet the vision. As I said a few minutes ago, the agencies have all these big vision, big requests coming our way, big wonderful projects, and we're proposing a new process to meet that, to meet the vision.

[03:48:44] We want to manage the intake of new capital projects so we can maximize delivery, efficient delivery, so we can manage staffing levels and workloads. So we can improve prioritization, we can improve selection of the projects, which projects advance now, which ones maybe get deferred, which ones maybe don't enter at all.

[03:49:01] And then, of course, consider the financial policies. So staff, as Michelle mentioned, staff, there's a work group that's been meeting for the past several months. And for all the brainstorming and coming up with ideas, here's some suggestions, some initiatives, ideas that we propose to the board for a new way to intake and consider projects, the CIP projects.

[03:49:27] First, number one, projects should enter the CIP through the annual budget process, the process we're in right now. And we really want to limit off-cycle projects to address really anything that's just got an immediate need. Maybe a piece of land comes up and it's beneficial for the county.

[03:49:43] Yeah, let's jump on it. Let's buy it. That's certainly understandable. Or maybe some emergency, you know, life safety issue comes up. Certainly those will be addressed. But to the extent possible, we want to keep projects entering through the annual budget process. The second initiative we're proposing to the board is, we at staff, we want to establish a CIP steering committee, and that will be made up of representatives from executive management, budget, finance, the planning office, any interested or involved stakeholders, agency heads.

[03:50:16] The steering committee, we're going to review all capital project requests, and then, you know, evaluate them, rank them, judge them, not judge them, but prioritize them, make recommendations on which one should advance. Not passing judgment. And then it's the intention this committee would meet on a regular basis to discuss potential projects on the horizon coming our way. But the big thrust of this is what we really want to get away from. We talk, we tend, historically we'll talk about the CIP right about now in the budget season. There's a big spotlight on the CIP in January, February, March for the CIP and then kind of we really don't think

[03:50:54] a whole lot about it again until the next year. We want to make the CIP a continual process where it's being considered throughout the year. Number three, collaboration with the board. The steering committee is going to meet with the board's finance and budget committee to review future projects and any anticipated budget or staffing impacts. The steering committee will meet as a counterpart, if you will, with the board. So there's a lot of collaboration between what the county is considering for the CIP what the board's considering for the CIP and the meetings would be on whatever you know interval or cadence we decide maybe it's every month maybe it's every quarter

[03:51:34] every say whatever it may be it's still to be determined but the idea is that we as staff and are meeting with the board continually throughout the year to discuss the CIP rather than just once a year and finally we want to develop standardized project prioritization criteria for ranking projects. And what I mean by that is here's just a few examples of project urgency. Does the project, how does it align with the strategic plan or the comprehensive plan? Financial stewardship are the projects, are they cost effective? Fourth bullet there, community service impact. The anticipated

[03:52:12] impact on public services and community benefits. It's not just bottom line, you know, rate of return or whatever the numbers may be. It's how does it impact the community directly. And then also, as Satri alluded to a minute ago, asset preservation.

[03:52:28] We've got a lot of facilities. We don't want to just merely focus on new projects. We've got to come back and take care of the ones that are existing. But these are just examples, and the specific criteria will be developed collaboratively between staff and the board's finance and budget committee.

[03:52:45] We're really starting all over with a blank sheet of paper. This is our program, our criteria to build. And then finally for next steps, if directed by the board, the staff will establish a CIP steering committee.

[03:53:02] We'll work with the board's finance and budget committee to develop standardization, standard project prioritization criteria. And then we'll work with the board to develop a meeting schedule and a reporting format. How often do we want to meet? Is it going to be, you know, an agenda item on the finance and budget committee's agenda or will it be a separate standalone meeting?

[03:53:23] Again, these are all details that we can work out. And the timing is to have all of these things I've been talking about, have these in place for next year's CIP, next year's budget process. We're in it now. You know, we're not going to develop it for this year, but maybe starting over the summer we can, or even sooner, we can, once this budget is approved, we're looking forward to have these processes in place for next budget season.

[03:53:48] And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. All right, let's begin with Supervisor Weir. Thank you, Madam Chair. If you could go to page four, bravo for the new process. Bravo. I'm going to hold you to it.

[03:54:04] Oh, yes, sir. And let's start with that new process. Let's look at parks and recs. You've got $542 million in unmet capital project needs on top of unmet maintenance needs, deteriorating parks, things we haven't completed. And you're talking about, you know, sustainable projects, expansionary projects, and visionary projects, all based on their 2020 Parks, Recreation, and Open Space Master Plan.

[03:54:28] Given our performance to this date four years later, Do you believe it's time to revisit that Parks, Recreation, and Open Space Master Plan? I would defer that to Parks. Well, let's get to that, because one of the things you were just saying was... I don't mean to be wise about it.

[03:54:45] And I'm going to explain why that answer is not acceptable if you go to page 8. You're just talking about off-cycle things being put into the CIP. And I'm going to be very blunt about this.

[03:55:02] I hope you have told or presented this new manner of doing business to both Parks and Rec and economic development, because we get constant off-cycle things that seem to derail existing projects or push back further.

[03:55:18] In fact, I just got one this week, just out of the blue. You know, these solicited or unsolicited PPP3 projects and that, which chew up their time, my time, staff time, Instead of planning for what they should be doing or what's already on the books, we're looking at some other project and expending resources, dollars, et cetera.

[03:55:40] So if you're going to go to this being tied to the budget cycle and no more off cycle, I think the first people you need to talk to are economic development and parks and rec. And then last but not least on page 10, you want to establish a CIP steering committee.

[03:55:57] I have some assurances from you that I'm not going to have to budget another FTE. I don't believe so, no. Is that a promise? To the extent that I have to get done, not at this moment.

[03:56:12] No, the intent is to be made up of people, existing staff members, through all these various departments. So I'm not going to see a request for an FTE in next year's budget of the year after? Well, we're not discussing FY26 now. Just getting ahead of the game.

[03:56:28] I don't want to put Matt in that position. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. All right, Supervisor Vega. Thank you, Supervisor Rear, for stealing my thunder. I will hold you to this one. He wants to hold you on the new process.

[03:56:44] I'm going to hold you guys to this one, and I'm glad to hear that as it stands right now, there is no request for an FTE for this committee. And then the only other question that I had was, in general, as it pertains to capital improvement, how do you all determine when a consultant is needed?

[03:57:03] It depends on the scope of the project. If it's something large scale, certainly if it's something like a library or a fire station or the judicial center, you're going to have to bring in an architect or designer for that. We consider that a consultant. Again, it depends on the specific project.

[03:57:22] If it's something large enough where it's out of staff's capabilities, say, hey, listen, smaller ones we can handle ourselves, but this comes to something maybe outside of their sandbox of knowledge, a fire station, for example. We're going to go out and hire people who are experienced in that.

[03:57:41] I don't know if that answers your question, But it's based on the complexity and the size and the scope of a project will kind of trigger whether or not we need to bring in an outside consultant for services. Yeah, it does answer my question, so thank you for that. The reason why I bring it up is because I just want to, you know, for reference, share with my colleagues how much money we're spending on consultants.

[03:58:03] In 2022, we spent $8.2 million. In 2023, $6.1 million. And in 2024, we spent $8.8 million. We are a growing county. That is a fact. we're going to continue to grow. A lot of these larger projects that you reference are redundant projects that we do on the regular. I would suggest to the county executive that we start to look at perhaps hiring those subject matter experts so we can have them in-house, so that we can avoid having to spend millions of dollars on consultants. And so food for thought, and again, as we continue to talk about the, navigate the budget process, you know, I'd be

[03:58:39] happy to entertain any additional thoughts on this matter thank you the ones that we and I justify my asks okay and so that's keep that in mind so this isn't a comment for Andre I just want to make sure that everyone knows um I just want to ask because if directed by the board so we have to have a sense correct you would like us to have a sense of what direction to move tonight not necessarily not necessarily these okay oh you guys think it's true yeah no we should

[03:59:16] give direction but if you're in a position to do so then then certainly so i ask when people speak ask me let me know if you are ready to move forward if you want additional time to speak with that supervisor bode thank you madam chair um i actually was just going to talk about that piece because i think my colleagues have already sort of talked about some of the concerns what have you we have some long-standing assets that frankly if they were prioritized into a CIP some of these other opportunities that be coming forth would actually be easily then sort of worked into the process I mean I could go on for days about I know the Supervisor Gordian I talk about at length

[03:59:55] the need for you know these state of good repair all these other issues what have you now we're sort of playing whack-a-mole for a lack of better terms when it comes to some of these these priorities so for my 1/8 I definitely support the direction of us going in this new process i think it does bring some more clarity in terms of transparency the constituents on how we're going about these processes of course some of that will have to go to some education of the constituents that we won't be able to then do the whack-a-mole where you know suddenly people feel like they really want x y and z so they come to the board in droves asking for something like hey that's a great idea but we do have a standard

[04:00:31] process and part of that we worked out with the budget committee but also this new committee for the uh for the staff so i like that i like the new standardization i like the fact that there's a lot of clarity around it and and uh reliability and also again to that earlier point where we have a lot of older things to that point that we just don't think about after we adopt the budget in the cip so it just goes off out of sight of our mind but frankly we should be at forefront and i i know that i've said this a number of times where i feel like the budget but also cip should be to your point, Ms. Cornelius, an ongoing year-long conversation and not just between the months

[04:01:08] of February and April and everyone packs up and we're all exhausted for a couple weeks and no one thinks about the budget for another three or four months. So I like this process. I think it brings more certainty and, frankly, gives us a lot more even ability to talk through large, complex sort of prioritization strategy as colleagues and with the staff as opposed to, again, being these sort of one-off conversations.

[04:01:32] So I support this new process 100%. Thank you. Madam Chair, if I may, you asked about taking action. I said not necessarily. What I meant by that is you're just hearing me speak about it right now. I didn't want to drop something on the board without consideration. But I will say there are a few people on this board who are interested in moving forward with this process.

[04:01:51] Wonderful. You know, so, I mean, I know we have a couple people who, I guess, maybe want more time to think about it. But I would like to get a sense of where everyone on the board is. So with that, Supervisor Bailey. if I please come yeah I just wanted to clarify so in terms of establishing a CIP steering committee this is internal and I'm gonna make that decision and we will establish the CIP steering committee we have while I have sent the memo out around the boards committees I have not received formal directions so while I have spoken to a few of you about the committees and bless you the

[04:02:30] intent is to at some point move these resolutions to a board agenda and so if there is direction tonight it would be helpful to to to make sure that I'm that I have very clear direction from the collective board to make so directed any objection none baby so direct none I think it's an outstanding idea I think think it's progressive. I think we need it. My question is, why is economic development not a part

[04:03:08] of on page eight? They may very well be. I think they should be. Sure. Because one thing that you just mentioned, Matt, was, you know, when we talk about acquisition of land and how we're going to utilize that land, it's not just planning. It's not just parks and recs. It's economic development as well. And so I think that would be just adding a lot more of oomph, if you will, to the process. But I think kudos to the county exec and to the team because we need this

[04:03:46] because of something that the county exec said on Saturday. I'm getting ready to quote you. We are a transformative county. Yes. And so how can we be transformative if we're not ahead of the game and we're not progressive in thinking in terms of this. And we're doing things the same way all of the time. This is not the same way all of the time. This is collaborative. This is thinking ahead. Gives us proactivity in what we're doing, even in our finances. And so I certainly would support this in a directive.

[04:04:20] And yes, ma'am, direct answer to your question. That list up there is just an example. It's not an exhaustive list of everyone who would be included in the committee. I highly encourage economic development. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. And again, I know this is something we don't have to act on right away, but I would like to get a sense again from the board.

[04:04:36] Supervisor Ingrid, what are your thoughts on this? So I got a thumbs up from him, Supervisor Vega. This is for the committee, just to be clear. Yes, I'm okay with it. Supervisor Franklin? This is, wait, hold on.

[04:04:58] No, it's about the process. So I want to, let's go again. Thank you for our clarification. This is about us looking at a new process. so if we are directed by the board that slide here we're going to start with the committee we're going to work with the finance board and budget committee to develop so that slide there all the stuff will happen so you're okay with it bailey we're you want us to start yesterday or five years ago all right so vote is tagging on to that angry all right vega 150 50 franklin all

[04:05:34] right gordy i'm supportive all right and i respect you know people who feel like they don't have enough information i think we should move forward with this and obviously have we're going to be you know having good conversation around this so everyone knows every step of the way so we would like you to move forward um you are directed to do the three points on that slide very good anyway so under our new rules do i need to give you a directive and send it to you and michelle and everyone else or is this good enough madam chair supervisor franklin sorry just for

[04:06:08] clarification so we just gave you our opinion on the process and we've all also heard about whether we want to move forward on the other committees but if we go through all three all three of these we don't have a budget finance I'm sorry a finance and budget committee so consistent with the memo sent the memo and two draft resolutions sent out maybe last week to the board what I will do based on this conversation is move those resolutions to the February 4th draft agenda

[04:06:46] for the chair's consideration, and so in terms of the creation of the committees, that resolution will do it. That said, once the committee, for the budget and finance, or finance and budget committee, that is a committee of the whole, so we will be looking for the board to make decisions on the chair for that committee, and then we'll move forward in that way, so we are prepared to move forward with the committee once the board collectively acts on February 4th. Brilliant. Thank you.

[04:07:23] All right. I don't see anyone. Thank you so very much for this. This was a thoughtful discussion. Thank you. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I just want to give a thank you to all the presenters. This would typically come a little closer to the start of the budget process or development process.

[04:07:44] This is a very, in my mind, very creative way of making sure that we start this discussion as early as possible I think Vice Chair Bodie said it I just want to acknowledge Tim Michelle Dave and Matt for all that they've done to and the entire team for all that they've done to get these presentations uh together and present it today so with that Madam Chair nothing else for me all right thank you so very much we're going to move on to agenda item number nine supervisors There's time.

[04:08:13] Madam Chair. Yes. Without objection, I'd like to withdraw item 9I. I won't give a real short explanation. Upon reading it, I've got some concerns all of a sudden, but more importantly, there are several bills before the General Assembly that may or may not make the issue moot and will give us a better alternative that's not currently contained in the code.

[04:08:38] So if we could pull, I would just want to withdraw 9I. Is there a second? - Second. - All right, any discussion? All right, I don't think, do we have the vote, or yes?

[04:08:53] Oh, no worries, I could do that. - I could be ready to go. This is just a withdrawal. I know, I'll change it, do you want me to clear it out?

[04:09:15] I just, okay, hold on, let's see. Okay, hold on.

[04:09:45] I'm sorry, who was the second? Supervisor Bailey, was that you? Thank you, ma'am. Okay, is anybody else who's working?

[04:10:05] Okay, okay, vote unanimous.

[04:10:21] - Madam Chair. - Supervisor, voting. That said, I would like to move to approve items 9A through 9H. Second. Thank you so very much. Any discussion? All right. Let's take a vote. Vote unanimous.

[04:10:43] Supervisor Weir abstaining from vote. All right. Thank you so very much. We are now going to go around the horn. I am going to shake things up, and I will start with Supervisor Angry. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just real quick want to congratulate Sean Porter from Loveless Porter for opening up his Meredith House in Manassas City.

[04:11:05] It's a beautiful facility if you're ever over that way to take a look at it. Also, I want to congratulate all the recipients from the Human Rights Commission. They had their award ceremony this past weekend, so congratulations to all the winners there.

[04:11:21] And also, I want to congratulate our 10 volunteer firefighters that just had their graduation last night, actually. So welcome to the force, to the family, and we expect great things from you. Just quick upcoming events is this Saturday, MLK Oratorical.

[04:11:39] Delta Sigma Theta sponsors that every year. It's going to be at Mount Zion Baptist Church in Triangle. So looking forward to that. And also I want to go ahead and congratulate now Buck Hall Volunteer Fire Department. They're going to be installing their officers Saturday night for their installation dinner.

[04:11:55] So congratulations all and happy new year. Thank you, Madam Chair. Supervisor Bode. Thank you, Madam Chair. Supervisor Angry just said most of the events I was going to. So I'll just say Happy New Year, everyone. I want to thank my colleagues for two years of being able to be vice chair and serve alongside my colleagues and be able to step in a few times over the last year.

[04:12:15] And, again, Happy New Year, everyone. Supervisor Weir. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a notice to the public, on the 22nd next Wednesday, we'll be having a Gainesville District Town Hall at Battlefield High School from 630 to 9. Excuse me.

[04:12:36] As usual, no topic is taboo. Bring your questions, bring your slings and arrows. I would also like to thank both Delegate Lovejoy and Senator McPike for carrying—I'm being nice to him—for carrying the water for us on adding Prince William County and other jurisdictions to 15.2-2304 of the state code, which would allow us to address the affordable housing under the provisions that Fairfax and Loudoun do.

[04:13:12] I'm appreciative of that. That's really all I've got, except I would beg the indulgence of the board. As everyone's aware, this is a short session of the legislature, which has had three days shaved off it due to the water crisis in Richmond.

[04:13:35] Ordinarily, I would have done this about a month ago. However, the new and improved LIS system of the General Assembly is, well, although it's new, it is certainly not improved, and they have not, I think, to even this point, fully populated it with all of the bills that have been filed.

[04:13:55] Ordinarily, this would have been done weeks ago as a result of any number of factors. It has not. I have tried to glean out data center bills that apply to Prince William County. sent you a preliminary list. I sent everybody on the board a preliminary list a couple days ago.

[04:14:11] I have now winnowed it down. I would appreciate the indulgence of the board to consider authorizing resolutions in support of several of these, either after supervisor's time or after closed session, so that we can get some resolutions down to the delegation prior to them actually going to subcommittee or committee because of the short session and because of the abbreviated calendar because of the three-day three-day loss things are getting jammed in rather quickly and i think

[04:14:48] we need to chime in on some of these particularly those that preserve local authority over land use decisions so i'll leave it out to the chair and that's all i have madam chair so um i believe that everyone just quickly received a your chief of staffs were copy those received a packet that supervisor we are referring to to I don't know it's a number of bills I have the packet I have winnowed it down significantly and thrown out the ones that involve Loudon or transmission lines for the most part so then let's chat afterwards which ones you and then we can discuss how to move

[04:15:25] forward please send it to yes that would I would really appreciate that and we'll talk you know after this, after Supervisor's time. Supervisor Bailey. Thank you, Madam Chair.

[04:15:40] First of all, I just want to thank you for your level of confidence in me in becoming the Vice Chair and for my colleagues on the board. Thank you so much for your vote today. I appreciate it. I'm looking forward to 2025. We've got still a lot of work to do, but we're going to get it done.

[04:15:58] On the 14th of January, I mean, excuse me, on the 9th of January, had the wonderful opportunity of attending the Quantico Town swearing and ceremony. And it was wonderful. Small group, but large voices, and they're just like a family.

[04:16:15] So congratulations to all that are on that council. And then on the 11th, we attended the Human Rights Ceremony. It was absolutely wonderful and jam-packed on Saturday. So everybody looks forward to that. And then I want to thank Mr. Calvin Farr for attending a meeting with my staff, I on the 13th and just telling me about the wonderful things that he's done in Potomac details to come in my upcoming town hall but we appreciate you to the CEO and to the the board you're doing great work with our water industry here in Prince William County and then yesterday I attended the swearing in for

[04:16:54] Manassas Council so congratulations to that group as well they are partners to us on the western corridor and we appreciate you just making sure that the citizens in manassas city are taken care of um uh thank you uh to my staff for attending the listening session for the fire and rescue graduation and then uh on the 18th which is this saturday congratulations to delta sigma theta and to my colleague margaret franklin who is a member of delta for your 40th anniversary for the mlk oratorical is always a big deal in the county um and then on the 21st i'll be going

[04:17:30] to the Adult Detention Center to offer them my congratulations and accommodations for the great work that they do here in the county. We appreciate them. On the 29th, I'll be having a town hall in the district, and so I will be having more details on that on a later date. And, Madam Chair, thank you again for your vote of confidence. Thank you so very much. Supervisor Vega.

[04:17:52] Thank you. Just want to give my notice of intent to reappoint Ron Krieger to the Animal advisory committee that's all madam chair supervisor franklin sure yes thank you i just want to highlight that um just want to give congrats to those who received the university the universal human rights day uh award um from our human rights uh commission so um just congratulations to those who uh were honorees um just a couple of events um i will also be hosting a town hall a virtual town hall on january 29th at 7 p.m and the information will be on our website

[04:18:32] and social media as well as our newsletter so we hope to have everyone in attendance from the woodbridge district also i just want to point out has been mentioned by several of my colleagues the delta sigma theta mlk oratorical contest this saturday i believe it starts at 11 a.m at mount zion church in triangle this is the 40th anniversary of this event and looking forward to attending and having several of our elected officials there as well as community leaders and of course we'll be hearing from our amazing prince william county students so looking forward

[04:19:11] to that always and with that i also want to do a notice of intent for j michael hill to the board of equalization. Thank you. Supervisor Gordy. Thank you, Madam Chair. First of all, I just want to congratulate Supervisor Bailey and Supervisor Weir on taking the reins for Vice Chair and Pro Tem for this next year, and I definitely want to congratulate Supervisor Bode on doing a great job. He had to step in a couple of times. He did a fantastic job, so thank you for your service over

[04:19:44] the past couple of years even though i was only here for half of it so um i want to um uh a couple events that we had uh the shabbat's annual hanukkah menorah lighting i was joined by supervisor bailey out in haymarket for that event a little rainy cool night but warm in spirit and a lot of a lot of folks there um we had fun trying to actually light it with the wind but we we got there eventually. But I want to really appreciate Rabbi Shmuley and his congregation for their warm

[04:20:18] welcome. And then also last night, Chair Jefferson and I held a listening session at Gainesville High School. Very well attended. Appreciate everyone who came out and their perspectives on the issues facing Prince William County. And just, you know, this morning waking up to the emails of many who responded just saying how good it was to see the board collaborating and working together in a positive way and that things have definitely been positive, much better

[04:20:55] atmosphere and collegiality over this past year. So a lot of people providing that feedback and so I just wanted to share that with my colleagues as well, that it is absolutely noticed. And then And I did bring up the issue during when we were talking about taxes, about agricultural taxes and exemptions.

[04:21:17] And at some point, I know we're meeting together with finance here in the next week or so. But I would like to try to get a better understanding of what that looks like and if there are any things that we need to do to sort of solidify that in our code as we go forward.

[04:21:36] because there's some belief that it's just a matter of policy rather than what's in our ordinance. And if there's something that we need to lock down in our ordinance, I would love to be able to try to understand that. So look forward to those conversations. And lastly, Happy New Year, everyone.

[04:21:51] Look forward to a successful year this year. It looks like it's definitely going to be a busy one. And I will say this. We have 65 planning cases in the Brentsville District, And that's out of the 150 that's before our planning department right now.

[04:22:09] And I'm trying to help folks understand if you're trying to force and jam because of that one-year thing, even with the robust agenda that we have for this year, that's going to be hard to achieve. It's just almost impossible. So just trying to help manage folks' expectations.

[04:22:28] We have added a lot more opportunities for land use. But at the same time, there's just a lot of cases out there. So I appreciate everyone's forbearance as we move forward, trying to knock these things out. Thank you so much.

[04:22:44] I want to begin my comments with recognizing my appreciation for Supervisor Bodie. You know, you have been a great, not just colleague, but someone who, thought partner, mentor, someone who I can bounce ideas off of. And it has been a pleasure working with you.

[04:23:00] you know, obviously I had an unexpected medical leave and I felt better knowing that you would be at the home. So I really wanted to name that. And I did want to touch on the Brinsville Town Hall last night. It was a great event. We had good turnout, very thoughtful questions, but it's really nice that people can see us on, you know, the Board of County Supervisors working across the aisle. You know, one of the things that's been hard for me when I go to town halls or have events, when people stand up, thank you for the chair for attending. We haven't had a chair to an event. I mean, I think it's really important for all of us to be, you know, active, for

[04:23:37] constituents to see us and to know that we are actually a part of the community. In fact, I had so much fun last night that I'm going to do the first ever State of the County Forum. No, so I want to talk a little bit about the State of the County Forum. It is going to be an event. I mentioned it earlier, but I want to say it again. On Monday, January 27th at 7 p.m., Hilton Performing Arts Center. Doors open at 6 30 p.m. The purpose of this is to bring our county agency heads, our leaders together, to have a high-level discussion of some of the things that we're hearing around the county so that we can address that. And it's part of the commitment, our

[04:24:16] commitment, to be transparent and for people to have a stronger and better connection with local government. Now with that, I have one notice of intent. I would like to announce my notice of intent to appoint Benita Fitzgerald Mosley to the Parks and Recreation Commission. For those of you who are not familiar with her, she is an Olympic gold medalist. She is a phenomenal asset within our county, and I'm so honored that she accepted my invitation for this appointment because I think

[04:24:54] she can bring a lot, and I think she has a very, you know, a different perspective, one that's really needed um so with that let's go on to closed session thank you everyone take on a great

[04:25:16] outdoor adventure today great thank you everyone we are back from closed session um the first thing

[04:26:02] i would like to do is entertain a motion to certify a meeting before we report out so moved second i'll give it to gordy um so thank you so much let's take our vote vote unanimous all right and then we i would like to have the people who are reporting out madam chair i move for the recommendations of appointments to the vre board uh supervisor andrea bailey margaret franklin tom

[04:26:33] gordy victor angry as an alternate and kenny bodey as an alternate as well second yes you're ready all right here we go let's vote vote unanimous our next item yeah madam chair i would like to report out the metropolitan washington council of governments appointments for princeton county for the board of directors member deshundra jefferson alternate kenny bodey other member

[04:27:13] Andrea Bailey, other alternate Tom Gordy, Transportation Board, DeShundra Jefferson and Victor Angry as members, alternates Ricardo Canizales and Megan Landis, for the Air Quality Committee, member Kenny Bode, alternates Megan Landis and Evandro Santos, vacant member number two, Human Services Policy Committee, member Andrea Bailey, alternate Josh Lee, member Kenny Bode, alternate Phyllis Jennings Holt, Climate Energy Environmental Policy Committee, member name Bob Weir, alternate Julia Mano, Chesapeake Bay Water Resources Policy Committee, member Kenny Bode, alternate Supervisor Weir,

[04:27:51] Food Agriculture Regional Member Policy Committee, Tom Gordy, Kenny Bode, Emergency Preparedness Council, Tom Gordy, Regional Ford Coalition, Tom Gordy, Kenny Bode. Thank you so much. I'd like to entertain a motion.

[04:28:06] Second. Oh, second. All right. Let's go ahead and take our vote. All right. Thank you. I know Supervisor Weir earlier had sent around some documents.

[04:28:21] I don't know if anyone received the updated documents. Madam Chair, I apologize. I mean, we're kind of limited on time here. I don't think many of these are going to be, if any of them, are going to be controversial.

[04:28:37] In fact, I would suspect that most of these would have unanimous support. If we could just kind of run through them and if there's unanimity, get some resolutions out the door. If there's some opposition, I guess we can reconsider them. We can consider them next week. but I think some of these are pretty much no-brainers.

[04:28:54] If I could just kind of get a sense of everybody. I'll read through them real quick. It won't take me a bit about, I can probably do this in less than five minutes. Let's see how fast you can go. First one is HB 2068, Local Land Use Authority. Local Land Use Decision Authority provides that the authority for a local locality's planning and land use decisions belong solely to the locality and shall not be ceded to any state agency or state-sanctioned body.

[04:29:17] I don't think anybody has a problem with that. Which one? I'm sorry, HB what? HB 2068. I'm just going down the list. I sort of grouped them together. HB 1601, Sighting of Data Centers. This one might have a little bit of an issue. It requires localities to consider noise, water, historic sites in consideration of data centers.

[04:29:40] I'm looking at my... Before we go on, how many people have had a chance to look this or have looked this over? I'm probably not going to support any of them, but... Local authority? I respect everyone who does. So Supervisor Franklin, we know, is non-agreement.

[04:29:57] I'm sorry, Supervisor Angry. Can we, instead of you reading them all, can we just kind of simply say what this is? And I'll just give you my take on this. Like, you know, when it comes to Richmond and the delegation, you know, pushing authority, I'm not for that in any way because all of this we can do.

[04:30:16] But I will say I do like HB 268 and what you just read about us having the authority for land use and solely resides with the county or the locality. I just, you know, I want Richmond to tell me or help me give some leeway to the decisions I need to make locally.

[04:30:34] I don't want them constraining and tightening down because, you know, people didn't like the way we made decisions here, and particularly today, the Senate, I'll say, because most of these are going to be things that Richmond are trying to put a tighter grip on that we really have the authority to make decisions on right now.

[04:30:52] It's just that once they put these in place, then we technically count them, will not. And I don't know if you want to read the rest, but I'm simply saying I don't know where everybody is with this, but maybe you guys want to write a letter and go at this. I like the one about us having local land use. I don't particularly like the rest because it seems like it tightens up decision-making that we can make locally now anyway.

[04:31:18] I would somewhat disagree on some of these. Yes, I mean, HB 1601 on the water, yeah, you're right. It does sort of require additional stuff. 1046 on noise abatement, same thing. 1984, siting of data centers near parks and schools, same thing. Industrial use on 1045.

[04:31:35] Let me go to the ones that shouldn't be at all controversial. Obviously, the retaining our local land use authority, HB 2068. The other ones that should not be controversial are HB 2101 and SB 960, and those are...

[04:32:01] Give us, let's go slowly. HB what was the first one? I jumped the gun on that. Okay, yeah, both of those. HB 2101 and SB 960, they're grouped together. All that is a study to ensure that data centers do not, that the customers, the electrical customers, not the data centers are unreasonably subsidized the cost of the customers that are the data centers.

[04:32:27] And then the one that I think SB 1243 requires that electric distribution infrastructure serving data centers prohibits the cost associated with construction or extension of any electric distribution infrastructure that primarily serves the load of a data center from being recovered from any other customer, in other words, charging us.

[04:32:52] And then HB 2428, which allows us to decouple the tax rate, the personal property tax. And those are probably the easiest ones.

[04:33:08] I would suggest we do consider a resolution in opposition to one. I didn't include it on here because I didn't think we'd get to it. But that's SB 1305, which I think the county attorney might want to address. Before we let her address, I want you to give us, again, all the numbers, because this is a lot, and I know you've pared it down.

[04:33:28] The ones that I think shouldn't have any, and I can restrict today to this, is HB 2068, which is Retaining Local Land Use Authority. Everything else is not permissive except for, and there's HB 2101 and SB 960, which require a study on unreasonably subsidizing costs to customers.

[04:33:55] It's not actually an action. It's requiring a study by the SEC. Oh, and I'm sorry, before you move on, I just want clarification on those. That's with regards to rate payers? Correct. Okay. Correct. Both residential and commercial, other than the data center that's requiring the subset of the requirement.

[04:34:13] Which, by the way, I agree with. And then SB 1243, which puts the cost for new infrastructure serving only the data center on the data center. HB 2428, which decouples the computer and peripherals tax, and the rest of them I can put together something for at some future date.

[04:34:39] So I just want to make sure you have five. Is that what I'm reading? Five. One, two, three, four. I feel like I'm missing one. Five. That is correct. Okay. So again, HB 2068, HB 2101, HB 2428, SB 960, SB 1243.

[04:34:57] Correct. Madam Chair. Supervisor Franklin. Yeah, so the ones with regards to ratepayers, you know, I could probably support. Part of my opposition is more so to the process in that, you know, we do have a legislative agenda that we've approved.

[04:35:12] And I know some of these bills didn't come out until, probably weren't drafted until right after the holidays. They didn't come out until last Friday. And so, you know, maybe we didn't see the specifics. But I don't want to create precedents where we're opening up the legislative agenda and just adding a bunch of things to it.

[04:35:31] Because, you know, quite frankly, if I may just finish, you know, I can go back and come back with five or so bills that I would like to support as well. But I don't think that is efficient for how we do this process. I appreciate that, but given that we just literally added this stuff from JLARC to the legislative agenda at the last meeting, I kind of wanted to, I think these are going to be some of the first bills that they address, given what's been going on down there.

[04:36:00] They are jamming through bills at a rate that I've, quite frankly, never seen before. And I don't want us to miss the opportunity. To your point, there are actually a couple of other ones, and I suspect that you would be – I can't – I'm not going to presume to speak, but I would also offer support for HB 2603 and SB 1313, which add the authority for affordable housing under 2304 that we don't have.

[04:36:34] So you've got actually one bill from each side of the aisle and one bill from each side of the, or each chamber, that fixes the problem that we've got and that we have addressed in our legislative agenda. I'd be willing to add those two as well.

[04:36:51] We generally already have in the legislative agenda what we're looking to do. Again, I think kind of setting this precedence of just continuing to open it back up and adding things, I'm not sure it makes the most sense. But I would think for purposes of today, what I can say, at least for my one-eighth, is that I can support the ones on rate payers.

[04:37:10] So I want to get into this because I don't think this is opening the legislative agenda. That was something that we had discussed, we had been briefed on, that we voted on. This is sending letters of support and things that the board agrees on and supporting specific legislation, showing that these specific bills, you know, the board is unified and we want to throw additional support.

[04:37:34] And I'm sure that the patrons down in Richmond would appreciate that. But I just want to say this is a separate process from our legislative agenda. This is us looking at specific bills. And I do think maybe this should be the conversation we have in future years.

[04:37:50] If there are bills, like, you know, getting us access to 2304, you know, if that's something we as a board decide we should be looking at and we should get behind, I would like to do it. And before I go to you, back to you, Supervisor Bode's in the queue. Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. But I wasn't. Oh, sorry. Sorry, I wasn't done with my answer.

[04:38:07] Well, no, I would like Supervisor Bode to weigh in because, you know, he's a new voice. He's also weighing into this discussion, so. Right, I just wasn't done with. Okay. What I was going to, just what I was going to say is, I think what the conversation could be like moving forward, because we have a legislative agenda for this specific purpose, and if we're going to start drafting letters on specific things, I'm not really sure then while we go through the legislative process.

[04:38:40] I'm sorry, I'm just going to go through just for additional clarity, as I was saying. We do have our legislative agenda. We vote on that. We talk about it. We're individually briefed. What I'm saying, this does not supplant our legislative agenda. It's not meant to usurp it. It is if we see specific bills that we think may be germane to the county, to our collective interests within the county, you know, and I do not have a problem, like again, if, and we can discuss this further for future years.

[04:39:11] Are there bills that we feel strongly that we want to share with our colleagues and that we want to send additional support to Richmond? So that's how I see this. But I just want to be clear, this is not in any way, shape, or form supplanting our legislative agenda. It's more like, let's put a little extra off behind these bills.

[04:39:27] And with that, I appreciate your patience, Supervisor Bode. I'd like to go to you. I appreciate the conversation, Madam Chair, and I think Sarah Franklin, I see what you're saying. But to go back to Madam Chair's point, I see the legislative agenda as so the overarching policy ideas that we support for the framework, exactly while these letters support for individual pieces of legislation.

[04:39:47] I will just say, as I've said it ad nauseum, that practices like these are frankly why I've been advocating for the past year for actually to have as a legislative committee. So there's an actual process for that. So a board member or multiple board members like legislation that comes out of Richmond that they want to see talk through and support for, there's an actual process for it.

[04:40:08] You know, today we went over directing staff to make a process around the budget and finance piece and the CIP and things like that. To me, I see this as a very similar conversation where other localities do it. They have a committee for the legislative agenda, and then legislative pieces that come of interest as the General Assembly is going through so we could do it then.

[04:40:29] Now we don't currently have that committee, so this is one of the only ways we could do this. I'll be supporting all five that have been sort of outlined by Supervisor Weir for this piece. But I think that the other ones, I don't support prescriptive anything on us. So I would be opposing those anyway, but I think the other ones outside the five that we were just listing need to be brought forth later at another board meeting.

[04:40:53] So I also want to quickly say, Supervisor Weir, I don't know if you sent around some of these to us. You know, SB2101, SB960, SB124, they were all the packets?

[04:41:09] Okay. I'm going to move on, I guess. All right. You're in the queue next. And actually, I'm going to say something. You know, I would like to, for us to, I forgot. Do we need to take a vote if we want to suspend the rules to have this discussion? Does that need to be a vote or we can just suspend the rules?

[04:41:28] Madam Chair, members of the board, it's not legally required. Okay. So let's go ahead and suspend the rules. I know some people want to get out here early, but you know what? I kind of feel like this is a really important discussion. We need to allocate the time.

[04:41:44] And I also want to add on, again, we've already had kind of a, some of our nerves maybe frazzled from some of the things we did earlier. But I think if we're going to go in a new direction, you know, I think if we're really going to take a stronger stance and really give weight to our legislative agenda, we should have discussions like this.

[04:42:03] So, Supervisor Weir? Thank you, Madam Chair. I think we're in sync here. You know, to what Supervisor Votie said, we've adopted a framework with the legislative agenda. But that framework is meaningless unless we give staff guidance or the General Assembly direction in what we are supporting.

[04:42:24] To my view, and that's why I've given it to all of you guys, these bills are supported by what we adopted as the legislative agenda. I'll be honest with you, our lobby staff, quite frankly, wants these resolutions because it's difficult for them to lobby either our delegation or the members of a committee or the members at large without something from the board that says we are in support.

[04:42:51] It makes their case much stronger to argue, to advocate for a bill. You know, we can't do a legislative agenda where we list every bill because, well, in some years we could.

[04:43:07] In years past we could because they were releasing the bills in November or December. This year is somewhat of an anomaly in that they didn't even release the bills until after the session started. And I apologize for that. I did everything that I could to get it out to everybody as quickly as possible. But if we don't support individual bills, but we throw out there a legislative agenda that we don't then pursue, what purpose does the legislative agenda show?

[04:43:34] To Supervisor Franklin's point, there are a number of other bills that I would love to throw in here. I mentioned SB 13 and HB 2603 regarding the affordable housing because that cures a problem. And I'm going to probably get in trouble with the county attorney for this. but I think we also need to do a resolution in opposition to SB 1305, which is backdated to 2023, which will require us to give the rollback taxes back and forgive tax and forgive tax assessments.

[04:44:04] And there's a variety of legal and other issues with that that could cost this county tens, if not, if not a hundred more or more million dollars if adopted. I doubt it will get adopted, but, but I, that's too controversial. So I didn't include that in the list. I just thought preserving our local land use authority is a no-brainer.

[04:44:25] But I guess I thought wrong. And I appreciate that the governor reaffirmed that. I'm just looking around. Supervisor Angry. Thank you, Madam Chair. Let me just, if we're breaking these out, I can support HB 2068.

[04:44:40] You can add me to that letter. You can add me to HB 2101. You can add me to SB 1243. I'm not sure what SB 960 is. Okay, okay. If we're doing these individuals, those are the only three that I want to get behind.

[04:44:58] I don't want to be added to any. If you're just going to make a board letter, then I would just make my voice known that I don't support any of this. But I want to specifically talk about HB 2428, which is that uncoupling of the peripheral tax. I just, I am never, I'm not in support of that because it is literally signaling out an industry.

[04:45:19] And the one thing about how that all became is because of peripheral tax is a peripheral tax is a peripheral tax. and to literally separate this out to get more from an industry because we don't feel like that number is high enough, I'm not sure where we're going with that. I think that sets a bad precedence.

[04:45:35] That one I definitely don't support. So the three I can get behind, the rest I cannot. I don't know how we're going to do this, but at this point, you all make the decision if you're sending one letter on all, are you going to do individual letters, and I can be behind those three letters. Thank you.

[04:45:55] i'm sorry i was did you have anything supervisor franklin because i saw your turn um so when we take votes or when we agree on something votes drop whole it's usually a majority and i don't you know i know people have different not just political leanings but agendas or you know what have you so with this i would prefer that we have you know um a strong consensus but i said i just want to get back supervisor franklin you didn't want to vote for anything correct and do you

[04:46:29] remember those specific numbers does anyone else have any strong feelings objectives because i'm going to kind of go down and get a straw poll to see where people are at anyone else uh supervisor

[04:46:52] bailey that's in a bill anyone else any questions so i'm going to kind of do i mean there's so much laid out and again i you know supervisor frankly you mentioned this when we're talking about land use sometimes things are messy and it's not tied with a little bow unfortunately this conversation

[04:47:29] it's not going to be it's kind of messy and not going to be tied with a little bow um so but i just want to get a sense of where everyone is because yes so this would be on you know for the board us as a collective body to move forward and send these are bills that we support I'm sorry I thought Supervisor Weir's purpose was to have a resolution for each one passed by the board

[04:48:06] stating either support or opposition to identified bills that would give direction to staff so it'd be a resolution it wouldn't be drafting a letter it would just be a resolution resolution okay and the bill number so i just want to okay we'll do a resolution how do you want this delivered do you want an actual lever or you just want them to know hey the board voted on us we have this resolution and it's healthy i will say that i have spoken to members of our delegation who have said that

[04:48:46] is helpful um you know for us to get behind certain bills or to give it a little extra push it's something that they can use as a it's easier bargaining chip but just show of support so again so for my own clarity we would do a resolution on each bill that is what do you have

[04:49:01] the language or is this something we would discuss next time i'm sorry and i will say i know for us and this is a board not everyone here agrees on data centers you know and it does disproportionately

[04:49:40] impact you know the western and the county um so i know that you know there might be a couple of people who are not comfortable signing on to some of this but again i appreciate the conversation i'm sorry i know supervisor frankly you're pointing at mr shorter i was did you have something or you want to add no no you're just looking at me like confused okay staff's time so again that's just so i'm clear um you will work on the resolution language but is that something

[04:50:17] we should be voting on tonight if we don't have the resolution prepared i believe the county attorney's got standard boilerplate for resolutions and support we've seen it before it's just insert insert bill number and title madam chair members of the board it can be a now therefore be it resolved the board of county supervisors hereby supports these bills and that's it that's all it needs to be yeah no narrative no justification just we're in support of thank you very much and throw it in the circular file well majority all right let's go down the list you just want to

[04:50:54] deal with those five let's deal with those five can i uh hold on hold on hold on the clerk for my own clarification are you doing five separate resolutions yes yes ma'am okay yeah i think it'll be actually i'll combine two but that's just because of the same bill right house bills um i would start with HB 2068 local land use decision authority this provides that the authority for a locality's planning and land use decisions belong solely to the locality and shall not be ceded to any state agency or state sanctioned body this is not limited to data centers this involves anything second all right it has been moved and properly second any additional discussion

[04:51:30] on this particular one I see none if you're ready Andrea we're we have to go yeah we're vote unanimous the second group would be hb 2101 and sb 960 creates an scc study with results due 1 january 2026 that to look into whether data centers have their costs unreasonably

[04:52:05] subsidized by other consumers second sb 960 yeah their companion bills it's been properly moved in second any discussion all right seeing none when you're ready andrea we'll take a vote vote unanimous uh the next one would be sb 1243 which prohibits the cost associated with the construction

[04:52:43] or extension of any electric distribution infrastructure that primarily serves the load of a data center from being recovered from any other customer second any discussion on this one all right seeing none let's go ahead and take a vote sorry madam chair um supervisor franklin yeah for the vote that we just took because i thought there were two right there bills hold on Did I get the...

[04:53:15] No, I put 2101 and 960 together, and then the second, because those are the same bill. They're just ones on the House side, ones on the Senate side. I got you. And then there's the other one, which is, this is the actual one that precludes the cost being borne by other customers, and that's SB 1243.

[04:53:32] But to be clear, there are three separate repairs. Total three, yes. Thank you, thank you. Two are just identical. Gotcha. Vote unanimous. And then the last one that I'm going to put forward, unless somebody wants to give some other input, is hb 2428 which decouples computer peripherals from other personal property second all right it's been moved properly seconded it we have um supervisor bode you'd like to speak to this sure just very quickly madam chair i respect folks that may feel a little bit differently about this

[04:54:09] one but i've said uh from the very get-go that i believe that there should be a difference between those two computer peripherals used in a mom-and-pop shop or even light industrial businesses are very different than how they're used in data centers and because of that i've always felt that they should be able to be taxed differently and again to the point that we've been discussing even earlier today we should have a mechanism of highlighting and capturing that revenue from that industry versus having to raise the the business or the the personal property taxes on vehicles and everything else so this will allow us to do that so i of course will be supporting it thank you

[04:54:46] madam chair there are no other speakers we can go ahead and take a vote motion passes six to two supervisors angry and supervisor franklin voting nay and so i want to keep on this i'm sorry supervisor wait hold on um supervisor we are real quick before hold your thought you said hb 2603 and sb 1313 13 those are the ones dealing with affordable housing getting us access to 2304 i want to yes please move those i think that's very important i move a resolution in support of Just hang on a second.

[04:55:26] Make sure I've got the right numbers. Yeah, we're going to make sure we do it. HB 2603. I'm sorry, Madam Chair. Supervisor Franklin. Just point of order. Supervisor Weir, were those included in your original? They were not. Okay, I just, obviously I support affordable housing, but we've got to have some type of process here.

[04:55:44] We can, you know, these are very important bills. If you feel that we need further process, we can hold until next week, and I will send around the bill and the text to everyone, just as Supervisor Weir has done. Would that make you, that works?

[04:56:00] I just feel like we have to have a process by which we're going about this and to make sure that we're all understanding kind of what each of these legislative items are and what they do, particularly if we're asked about them. So what I will do, and, you know, I appreciate your point, what we'll do, is I'll make sure after this meeting I'll do what Supervisor Weir has done.

[04:56:21] I will send around the description as well as the bill text to everyone. And I encourage other people, if you have things that you feel we need to get behind, please put it together. Send it in an email so that everyone is aware.

[04:56:38] Because you're right, not everyone's really following what's going on down in Richmond, and I respect that. So let's make sure that we get what we want in there. Because you say it so many times, and you say it so eloquently, we've got to support our Richmond delegation.

[04:56:54] so I want to make sure that we are giving them additional tools in their toolbox so that they can fight for our legislative priorities. Madam Chair, I'm sorry, Supervisor Weir. Supervisor Weir and then, I'm sorry, Supervisor Weir and then Supervisor Franklin. Yeah, I just want to say I appreciate that, and I don't want to be difficult.

[04:57:10] I want to make sure we're organized because even though these are the housing bills that we support, there are hundreds of housing bills. About 50. Yeah, we've got to make sure. And that's what I want to address. But the point is there are lots, and so we've got to make sure that we know. what we're supporting we're talking about so i appreciate you saying that yeah we will research them i'll actually work with my legislative aide thank god she used to work in richmond so she understands the process a little bit better so i will work with her on narrowing down and making sure which bills you know again 2304 we have all agreed that we'd love to have access to that so we'll make sure we have the bills and we will send them around i you know appreciate hold on

[04:57:46] supervisor bailey has been in queue so i do appreciate you know supervisor bailey and your patients, and then we'll go to Supervisor Weir. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I just would, when you send that information around, if you could please include the piece of the, I'll find the number for you, but for the Crisis Receiving Center, for that level of support as well.

[04:58:06] Yes, I will speak with you afterwards, and we will, my team, my people, we'll call your people, and we will work it out. Yes, I just wanted to bring it. Supervisor Weir. Madam Chair, Supervisor Franklin, you're right. I focused only on the data center ones because, quite frankly, those were the, when reading almost 1,000 bills, those were the easiest ones to sort of divine out.

[04:58:30] I actually thought about going through the affordable housing ones. But the thing with those bills is that most of them are prescriptive and not permissive, and many of them conflict with each other.

[04:58:48] And the only reason I was willing to even think about these two was these are possibly the two simplest bills. For example, in Delegate Lovejoy's bill on 2304, it just replaces, as it currently reads, the counties of Albemarle and Loudoun, the cities of Alexandria, Charlottesville, and Fairfax, made by amendment to the zoning ordinance, and it distinctly strikes that and says the county executive form of government anywhere. There's only two. There's us. There's us and

[04:59:28] Albemarle. Senator McPike's bill is something, is very similar with respect to that. He adds a little more maze and permissive stuff, which I don't object to, but I didn't want to get into defining prescriptive permissive what we wanted what we didn't want it so i just i kind of just i also i'm sorry i want to be very clear here too these are our delegates these are this is part of our delegation lovejoy delegate lovejoy and senator mcpike they're part of the richmond

[05:00:03] they're carrying our bills so that's why they were highlighted again you know i want you're right we do need to create a process so let's create it but i just have to be clear they're carrying the bills that we want so you know i will send them around so we're all familiar with them but they're carrying bills that we want our lobbyists got them to yeah so that's why i feel comfortable pushing them tonight but again if people want additional time you know i'll make sure that i circulate it so we could start to create a process but there is urgency and so i appreciate everyone we will continue this discussion um next week i don't know if we'll be part of supervisor's time or how to best do it but i'll start speaking to chris about it i'm sure i mean there's nothing

[05:00:42] prescriptive in these two. This is just a change that allows us to participate. My fear is given the tenor of the legislature right now and given the unknown scheduling that they've got, it's sort of willy-nilly on what bills are going. And I'm not so concerned about Senator McPike's bill since he controls the committee that it's going to appear in so he can control the agenda and wait until after we vote. I'm not sure that's the case on the House side with Delegate Lovejoy's bill,

[05:01:19] which is quite frankly even simpler. I will defer to the wishes of the board, but I don't see any harm in putting a resolution in support of two bills that we actually had our lobbyists go down there and beg them to submit and took to the last minute to get them to do. You know, I'm going to look over, I mean, we could certainly move forward a resolution, but I know some people don't feel comfortable because they haven't had a chance to see this so as much as i hate this i i want to make sure that people feel comfortable and that they've had a chance to look at these bills even though again this is our delegation these are bills that you know we really should be behind

[05:01:58] in supporting but this is going to be you know first time we're doing this uh wait i see supervisor bode lastly i would just suggest that if we have any other additions we send them to you that would be great okay good and madam chair to that point because i i agree i i know some folks don't really want to move on these necessarily tonight but could we then at least communicate with our delegation that we intend to to take these up at the next meeting i think that is an excellent idea um i think that's something we can you know speak with our lobbyists about let him know heads up um i know some of us have relationships with different um with different legislators you know if you want to give them heads up hey we've been talking about your bill

[05:02:36] um supervisor franklin you know i'll let you speak because you know you um haven't you know you've pointed out that you'd like to have a process so I'll let you. Oh, I was just going to give a heads up that I have a couple of other bills that I will be sending around. Oh, you don't need to give us a heads up. I mean, good.

[05:02:51] This is what we need to do. Supervisor Franklin, this is exactly what we need to do and what I said. If we have other bills that we want to talk about or discuss, so I'm sorry. So I'm extending this, and I said this, I'm extending it one last time. I'm extending this opportunity for everyone. You know, if you have additional bills that you feel that we should get behind send everything to me actually send it to me and my team my senior legislative aide Allison Green Day and send it over to Virginia Douglas you know copy Allison Green Day and Virginia Douglas as well and we will you know

[05:03:28] make sure that we get everything together we'll make sure that we send it out I'm actually going to put a deadline on this too so that we can get it to people in a timely fashion if we can send things um to my office by six o'clock on thursday i know that's still a tight timeline but i want to be able to get it to people turn around get it to folks and so that we have adequate time to look it over and then on tuesday take um discuss and take a vote was there anyone else because if not i don't see anyone else i'm sure i would just ask the county attorney if she wants to see them or if she just wants to wait until it's i can all the bloodletting is over i don't

[05:04:08] want to speak for the county executive but i think the county executive and i would also like to be copied on these so that we can see what the board would be discussing that you can copy them as well or you know i would copy when we send it out but copy them as well everyone so we are creating new processes on the fly and i really truly hope that this will help us better serve the county and that this will help our richmond delegation and it will help our government affairs team in pushing forth what it is we have created inside of our legislative agenda is there anyone else supervisor bailey and then after you we're going to close it out thank you thank you just bob we

[05:04:45] appreciate what you did um putting these together but if just give us heads up so we can read it before i can't send you guys a group i know but just do what you did so that we yes you can we can't just hit reply all ouch all right send it to us no everybody can get an email i only do that they're just okay they're having a little fun so what we're going to do is everyone again let me just reiterate thursday night i will say 6 p.m if i said 5 6 p.m thursday night my team will turn it around is to everyone as quickly as possible so that we have time to

[05:05:22] read overnight and you know i like to do check-in calls i'll make sure that i have it as part of our check-in so with that madam chair just real quick before we adjourn i mean we've already spent so much time on this. What's another two minutes? Going along with what Supervisor Franklin said about the process, what is that going to look like? Look how much time this has taken. If people send you bills, which I think this has opened up Pandora's box because we're going to start getting all kinds of bills, how much time are we going to allocate to going back and forth as to whether or not we're going to support all of these bills? Do you have a limit on the number of bills you want to bring up on any given meeting? Because this is going to take an enormous amount of time. I think

[05:06:02] next meeting we should because of the tight timelines we have you know with crossover and everything coming up because this is a short session i would like for people to really think about the things that they would like to bring to this you know to this body and then next meeting we will have this discussion and we'll close it out because we are under a tight timeline we are in a very tight timeline and i had pulled it up earlier and i closed it out you know when some of the deadlines you know the filing the final final deadline um you know when crossover happens so i would say send it to me thursday six o'clock you know copy chris shorter um copy michelle roble

[05:06:40] we will get things together and we'll send it out to the board as soon as we can turn things over around and we may just send a few different emails you know because again our goal is to make sure that we get everything to to folks in a very timely fashion and i do think i know it's frustrating i know this was not a scheduled conversation and we are all tired but this is To me, this is a critical part of our job and our influence as elected leaders.

[05:07:08] Supervisor Bailey, and then I'll close out. Real quick, I just want to check with, since Nikki is here, I just want to make sure, as we're making this wonderful plan, which is, I think it's a good plan, that we'll be in the synergy of getting things with y'all. We'll be in coordination with y'all.

[05:07:23] Okay, I just wanted to make sure. Okay, thank you. Yeah, we are definitely going to coordinate with, you know, Lottie Dottie and everybody, as my dear friend Josh Cole always says. Josh Cole says. all right so with that this is our favorite part of the evening hold on let let vega go let vega do it okay that's not a proper motion second all right let's vote thank you

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