Coraggio Consulting
Prince William Board of County Supervisors Meeting — Work Session, Tuesday, February 25, 2025

Date: Tuesday, February 25, 2025
Place: Prince William County Board of County Supervisors, Virginia
Length: 5h 6m (video)
Official meeting video (Prince William County, Granicus): https://pwcgov.granicus.com/player/clip/3603
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 2026-10-30. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:50:24] you everyone the time is two o'clock all right i had a request for a loud gavel so i gave you all a loud gavel all right let's begin with a moment of silence thank you all rise if you are able for the pledge of allegiance to the republic for which it stands one nation under god the injustice for

[00:51:01] all right we are going to now go into public comment time um we are going to start with people who've signed up to speak in person right now we have one person when you go to the microphone please state your name and generally where you reside and you know who you are so let's get the party started. Good afternoon Rachel Ellis Gainesville district and before my remarks I want to say I'm here today as a member of the strategic plan community advisory committee and I do want to say

[00:51:39] that I've enjoyed being a part of this I've enjoyed meeting other members in the county and just kind of getting to know other people outside of the Gainesville district. Back to my remarks. One thing on this committee that was a common theme that I heard from all districts was smart growth. And smart growth for planning the county trickles down to all goal areas, from quality of life to safe and secure community. How you grow the county will impact all of these goals. The strategic plan offers a direction for Prince William County, but this plan only works if all supervisors are willing to implement the plan on decisions across the county

[00:52:17] as a whole when voting on a decision outside of your district are you considering the strategic plan for far too long developers have decided the direction of this county not the board of supervisors and certainly not the residents i am hopeful that when this board adopts this plan all supervisors will hold firm to its vision statement which says prince william county is a diverse community striving to be healthy safe and caring with a thriving economy and a protected natural environment. This plan only works if all eight of you agree to follow it. Prince William County needs to be a county where people want to live. I leave you with these final thoughts,

[00:52:56] and they are the overreaching values or tenets of the strategic plan. Communication and engagement, equity and inclusion, innovation, efficiency and effectiveness, accountability and transparency, integrity and trust. Thank you. Thank you so very much. We don't have anyone else in person, so I'm going to turn it over to Vice Chair Bailey. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good afternoon, everyone.

[00:53:21] Are we ready to start? Thank you very much. Please begin, Ms. Ellis. Thank you very much.

[00:53:43] Mr. Amato. Good morning, Madam Chair, Board of County Supervisors. I'm Steve Amato from the Ophipon District, and my discussion this afternoon is about the FY26 budget proposal, which I've had the opportunity to do virtually review on February 22nd by the Coles District that posted the county representatives to give an overview to the citizens.

[00:54:20] And I've also reviewed the budget that has been posted online through the county website. Madam Chair, for the past fiscal years, we have had a budget surplus.

[00:54:39] Fiscal year 2022 was $75 million. Fiscal year 23 was $42.3 million. And for fiscal year 24 was $68.7 million. My first question is for you all to ponder is, why haven't the supervisors considered refunding homeowners on these surpluses?

[00:55:01] Nothing went to the homeowners. There were many pay raises throughout these years for numerous county employees. So just want to keep those facts in mind about these budget surpluses and how come our personal property and our real estate taxes continue to rise.

[00:55:21] In the proposal for FY26, as I reviewed that, there's 153.5 FTEs projected if the budget is approved. Why are we growing the government so much?

[00:55:36] These are going to be forever payments with salary and benefits to these individuals, 153.5. That is extremely high. So my other questions are for this proposed budget for FY26, when it's presented to the board again, to have a summary slide of all the surpluses from FY19 to the present to show the county supervisors.

[00:56:06] Also, to have a summary slide of all the FTE that's proposed in the FY26 budget. I am advocating that the real estate property tax be dropped two more cents to a 0.90.

[00:56:25] That is approximately a $20 million reduction in revenue. Well, supervisors, you're going to have to really look at where to cut that out of this budget. We have not gotten any tax relief. this surplus examples are proof the taxes are high please take a look at this to reduce the tax rate to 0.90 thank you thank you mr omarro are there additional speakers there are no more

[00:56:59] speakers at this time thank you so much madam chair that concludes remote time all right thank you so very much we are now going to go on to um item number four that's county executive Mr. Shorter, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Board members, good afternoon.

[00:57:17] I'd like to start with just some quick updates from last week, if I can. Four directives were issued last week, as you may recall. The first, to prepare a resolution for the board to initiate a Federer Park small area plan. This was assigned to the planning office.

[00:57:34] Two, to schedule a public hearing regarding Parcel B, Section 1 of Walton Drive. This was also assigned to planning. Three, to initiate a comprehensive plan amendment to remove Route 28 from the mobility plan and to add the widening of the existing Route 28 from four to six lanes into the mobility plan between Manassas City Line and Fairfax County Line.

[00:57:58] This was assigned to the Department of Transportation and Planning. And then finally, to provide a cost estimate and funding options to conduct a master plan process identifying locations where the county might add new community recreation centers countywide.

[00:58:14] This was assigned to the Department of Parks and Recreation. I'd also say that, as you all know, the General Assembly adjourned on Saturday. And so this past weekend, you received an update on the status of all of our bills on Saturday from Glenn Loop.

[00:58:31] Just want to thank Glenn, really, and the entire team for all the work that they did during this session. All of our bills, I understand, are on the governor's desk except for one. And so just want to, again, appreciate the team and board members, you, for all the work that you did.

[00:58:50] Certainly want to thank our delegation for the hard work that they did pushing our bills up forward. And we'll certainly continue to provide updates as the process continues. So I think. Before you move on, I was going to say, we have a comment or a question, Supervisor Vega?

[00:59:13] Well, no, but I'm going to go through the website next, so you feel free. Yes, since we're still in executive time. Just real quick, I don't think I need to issue a directive, and I can't be the only one, I think, that gets emails about folks still complaining about how small our public hearing signs are.

[00:59:29] I know that in my first term I requested a change, and I'd like to thank planning staff for actually adhering to that change, and we did make them slightly larger. However, when you drive past these signs, you really still can't read or make out what is being advertised, And so I'd like for you to look into the possibility of making it bigger, larger for folks to be able to read, and if it's going to involve a cost to obviously brief the board on that as well.

[00:59:57] Absolutely. Thank you. Happy to do that. Thank you. All right. I don't have anyone else. Madam Chair. Supervisor Franklin. Yeah. I don't have the option. Mr. Shorter, I believe it was Supervisor Bailey last week that asked about having some information about the federal workforce.

[01:00:18] I could be wrong about who asked about it, but I know Fairfax has, they put up some information, have a specific webpage for it, and was wondering if we can, are you going to talk about that? Okay, perfect. Well, there we go. What a lead-in. Yeah, yeah.

[01:00:36] So, yes, the team worked, and I really want to just start by thanking Supervisor Angry, who called last weekend and suggested this. It was really right on time, and so let's pull up the website.

[01:00:52] I want to have Nikki, if you don't mind, Nikki, just going through all of the resources that the team and really want to thank the cabinet here for so quickly pulling this kind of list together. You will see it is very comprehensive with a host of resources in accounting for federal employees.

[01:01:13] Nikki, you want to? Brown, to piggyback on what the county executive said. As you can see, a long list of resources here. And really want to thank our directors, cabinet, and Tavian Britton, and my office for putting this together so quickly.

[01:01:35] This really is a list of resources that are available in the county. There are a few outside of the county, but mostly we wanted to provide resources for folks who live in the county and where they can get help within the county. We did add some of the things that have just come out, like the governor's new website, Virginia Has Jobs, is up here as well.

[01:01:58] But you can see we broke this into different categories. There's employment opportunities and career support where they can find, you know, help finding a new job or job services. That is all available here.

[01:02:14] I learned a lot in this process. We have a ton of entrepreneurship and workforce training resources for folks within the county. So through the Mason Small Business Development Center, through Northern Virginia Community College and our own Department of Economic Development.

[01:02:30] So that information is up here. Prince William County Public Libraries offers a digital library that has a ton of learning resources. And with a library card, which is free to county residents, folks can access this. We talked also about counseling and mental health, so mental health being obviously a very important aspect.

[01:02:51] And so mentioning ways that folks can get help through our CS, but also just ways that they can stay active in the community and stay connected to their community during this time. Housing support resources. We do offer housing counseling.

[01:03:08] And then First Home Alliance and Center for Assistance to Families both have offices in woodbridge that also can help with that and then of course for anybody worried concerned about potentially losing their home the coordinated entry system is a great resource that folks can call and get connected to appropriate resources for their circumstance food assistance the northern virginia food rescue can put you in touch with the the sources that are close to you that can help you and of course there is the the WIC program financial counseling

[01:03:44] and assistance I won't read through this but we have a lot of programs and financial counseling that is available for folks to take advantage of and then one of the things that I learned and I'm probably most excited about is this comprehensive resource guides there is a ton of information out there and I will say that was the hardest part about the website is trying to figure out what to include and what's going to be helpful but both the cocs resource guide the Human Services Alliance a UVA has a community health resource guide for those 60 and over all of those have a ton of information on them so we wanted

[01:04:24] to make sure that we shared them I can show you super quick just kind of an example of one but you can see it is there there's a lot here so wanted to share that and of course be able to share with folks that if they need help they're not sure who to call 2-1-1 is always a resource for them as well so if they call 2-1-1 it's free confidential service and they'll connect you to resources within your community so this information is available obviously on the website we do have it from our home page here we also have a short url

[01:05:02] for it um and we will send out something um after we're done here uh that will uh we'll share it with the community that this page is is up and running um i do know cog i just got a message that cog is putting together a list of resources that counties are providing so i will provide this link to them as well so hopefully we can get it out far and wide yeah it's certainly no secret just over 30,000 Prince William County residents are federal workers so this will be a very big deal for our community and again I want to thank Supervisor Angry the website pwcva.gov

[01:05:41] forward slash fed dash workers resources fed dash resources almost got it so thank you very much Nikki and again thank you to the team for working so quickly as new information comes or if there are questions we will certainly be up for adding additional resources to this site. Alright, thank you so much. First we have Supervisor Angry who should be quite happy. Supervisor Happy. Thank you, Madam Chair.

[01:06:11] You answered one of the questions with the COG piece. You know the barcode thing, that little scanner pane? QR, there we go. I don't know all this term. That's always another good piece. Can I make a comment here? Okay, just because I know this is a very critical point that we're doing right now because, you know, we're all receiving phone calls.

[01:06:33] I've had two real conversations that were very concerning. One with the gentleman, won't say any names, but he did use the last link they had about the one where you can call the resources.

[01:06:54] 2-1-1? 2-1-1. Not 2-1-1, but we have it in the county. Oh, the coordinated entry? Coordinated entry, yes. And so, you know, because he wasn't in a situation where, you know, we kind of spell out we're like someone homeless and we think that's a different part of people.

[01:07:15] And then folks who really, you know, are coming from a 9-to-5 job, get laid off for whatever reasons, don't think they can use those services. But he used the services, said it was the best thing he ever did, literally got him back on track, got him involved. So he's sharing the message that, you know, you can't be embarrassed by coming to these services if you need them because they're there for you.

[01:07:38] The other one I'll just kind of share for this board is with I've always said that Prince William County is a bedroom community, you know, because we know that half our workers, we were kind of born out of the federal workers of D.C. People lived here and worked in the city.

[01:07:54] So this is going to hit us the hardest, the most. But the thing is, and this list that you just put together is so dynamic. A lot of folks, it's kind of too much to take in all at once when you find yourself needing something from this. But the fact of the matter is, and this is where we're going to have to come in, is that, you know, we're going to have to, like, send people to this site and to these websites.

[01:08:16] And really, while I'm not a counselor, you know, I think I've actually talked to somebody off a ledge because their world changed so fast, and they didn't know how to go about it. So I think we're talking about the last. Now, I did send them to real help, so that 2-1-1 is very important that folks can actually call the number and get someone to talk to them about their situations.

[01:08:37] But I just want to kind of point that I know that, and I believe we all know, that this is a very serious place we're in in our current history, and the question becomes almost like a COVID year. We don't know how long we're going to be here or how deep this is going to go with actually figuring out services, you know, what's next, and really keeping this all together.

[01:08:58] So I just kind of want to have that conversation about, you know, why we're doing this, and thank you for doing this, and that we're here to really guide and send people to the areas they need to be in, you know, until we can figure this all out, you know, we're going to be going through it. So, yeah, thank you, Madam Chair.

[01:09:14] Thank you, Supervisor. Supervisor Franklin? Sure, yeah, just one recommendation. I think this information is good. If we can also have a link to our federal representatives because, quite frankly, they're the ones kind of on the front lines for this in making sure that, you know, people that call us, we can direct them both to this page, and then they can be directed also to our senators and our representatives because they're the ones that are going to do the constituent services on a lot of the federal resources.

[01:09:42] Absolutely. All right. Thank you. Supervisor Weir. Thank you, Madam Chair. On an ancillary issue, we were looking at the Prince William Page job. opportunity page, and it doesn't appear that all of the vacancies in the vacancy lists are advertised.

[01:10:02] So can we make sure that the list of available positions or the list of positions we're actually hiring matches up with the vacancy? Because it would appear, and I could be wrong, but it appears that quite a number of them are not listed there, and this would seem to be an opportunity to fill them if indeed qualified people are being laid off.

[01:10:24] This is an interesting, thank you for that, Supervisor Weir. There is, needs to be a crosswalk of positions that are being hired on the vacancy list. Some of those positions, for whatever reason, may be frozen for vacancy savings, maybe, so we'll do the next vacancy report that we send out for vacancies that are not actively being advertised.

[01:10:50] We'll notate those. That way, you know that we have done that review to make sure that all positions that are available are listed. I will remember that little bit when we start talking about the budget. Well, vacancy savings isn't a secret. All right. Thank you.

[01:11:08] All right. I don't have anyone else. All right. Thank you very much. And, Nikki, thank you for walking us through. I wanted to cover next PWC works. So, obviously, I'm very excited about the new tranche of projects and initiatives that we have listed here.

[01:11:29] Board members, you all may recall, just a few months ago, we launched PWC Works, a platform really to engage the public around important initiatives to the board and to this community. And you see here a list of the first, well, actually, this is the second tranche, but maybe we can go down the first tranche of initiatives that were placed on the page.

[01:11:54] We've gotten some great feedback, some really good engagement. You will also notice that if you go a little bit lower, that some of the projects, particularly the Solar App Plus initiative led by Development Services, was completed.

[01:12:09] And so a lot of significant work. We don't want to lose sight of the initiatives as they were identified, So we're going to, as projects sunset, we will place them at the bottom of the site just to make sure that we don't lose sight of them.

[01:12:26] But excited to be here today to talk about the next tranche of initiatives as we work on the first. Wanted to particularly highlight, and you have listed here, so the Crisis Receiving Center.

[01:12:41] We talked about it last week, the Crisis Receiving Center, Digital Prince William, that is the 311, and Digital Transformation. Rob Mancini is here to talk about that. I want to highlight that project just as an example, so we'll spend a few minutes talking about that.

[01:12:57] The Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance Update. Tanya Washington is here to give an update on that initiative. Very excited about those two, really all of them, but we're going to take a few minutes with the two of those to talk a bit today. Capital project management, residential and commercial parking initiative, which I know a few of you have specifically asked us about.

[01:13:22] No wrong door, a lot to say there. In fact, and then the strategic plan, where we got a lot of great engagement. Nikki may recall the number I do not right now of, okay, all right.

[01:13:38] So just, as you can see, very important topics to us, initiatives to you, and so very excited that we are getting started. Maybe if we could hit the, if we go down, I think that was no wrong door, just because we've been at it for so long, and it's just great work.

[01:14:03] As you could see, and this is just really a reminder how we've set up the framework of these pages, landing pages, where we're giving an update, giving background on what the initiative is, and then on the far right, a breakdown of some of the milestones that have already been met and milestones to come.

[01:14:25] And we've done that for each of these initiatives. So that said, Madam Chair, I'm going to ask Rob to come up first to give an update on digital transformation. Rob Mancini, Director of our Department of Information Technology.

[01:14:47] Thank you, Chris, Madam Chair, members of the board, county attorney, county executive, and everybody else. I'm Rob Mancini. I'm your Director of the Department of Information Technology, otherwise known as your CIO.

[01:15:03] I'm pleased that two of my projects were listed in PWC Works. Thank you to the Transformation Office for that one. I'm prepared to talk about both of them today, and Digital Prince William is actually Tech Inclusion. Although 311 is in the list, I can talk about both today, but let's start with Digital Prince William.

[01:15:22] I've called it Tech Inclusion. You might call it Digital Divide, right? We've been at this for a little while. I'm going to give you a little bit of information on it today, and I want to bring you back to the three-legged stool example I keep using when I talk about Tech Inclusion.

[01:15:38] You can't do tech inclusion without dealing with access, affordability, and education. And in 2020, we started really with getting hotspots in the hands of the community with a partnership through schools.

[01:15:55] And we slowly built a program where we're teaching classes. And the big, the long bomb was last summer when we awarded a $1.3 million award, a fiber infrastructure contract to Verizon. I'm going to give you some stats on where that is, how far reaching it is, which one of your magisterial districts it's playing in, and give you an idea on how all that comes together as we call it Digital Prince William, but I always refer to it as tech inclusion because it's about technology for me. And digital, the term is just kind of a 1980s or 90s term for me, so I keep

[01:16:29] dragging technology into it. So the first thing you think of when you think of broadband adoption is the access piece. Who has access? Who doesn't have access? And in our county, we have some areas that just didn't have very good connectivity for a long time. So I'll spare you the mystery.

[01:16:50] The three of you up here whose magisterial districts are in play here are Gainesville, Brentsville, and Potomac. Gainesville has about 275 addresses. Brentsville is just a little more than a dozen. And Potomac has about 175 addresses in scope. So we've got 474 addresses that Verizon is bringing fiber to.

[01:17:13] We're not paying for their internet. It's really the provider being able to connect to that home and offer them high-speed internet, right? We have 197 already available for service, so we're about 41% done. Most of that's in the northern part of the county.

[01:17:30] They're going north to south because they can get it done quicker that way. They have a lot of infrastructure up there, and I wish I could tell you how many miles of fiber that they've laid, but I don't have that number with me, But I'll get it to you the next time I get up here. 277 remain under construction.

[01:17:48] A lot of that is Potomac. A little bit more of Gainesville will be done. Brettsville, I think, is all lit. So from an access standpoint, when we're done with this project, we will be .997 connected in this county.

[01:18:06] That leaves us about 350 addresses. And we'll go get some more grant money, and we'll go get the rest of them, right? Because then we've got a pretty good track record. Horizon has done what they said they would do when they said they would do it. We will be done with this project early to midsummer.

[01:18:23] So I'll be back when that happens so we can celebrate. And thank you for your partnership there. There are two other pieces of tech inclusion. We started teaching classes years ago. We've gotten much better at that. This is a time where I'd be embarrassed if I don't mention our partners.

[01:18:40] Libraries, schools, economic development, social services, CSB, they're all our partners. They've all come to our meetings to learn how to be digital navigators. We have one digital navigator who teaches a lot of classes. She's bilingual, so we teach classes in English and Spanish.

[01:18:58] And a lot of our classes are at senior centers. I didn't mention aging. Sorry, Josh and Sarah. We started out with the aging population, and we continue to teach a lot of them at the libraries. But most of our classes are at the libraries. We teach 30 to 40 a month at the libraries.

[01:19:13] We have 50 specific courses that we can take people through in terms of going to get a certification or like a track of education. right? And I noticed this week in Dr. Engelman's latest update with demographics, almost 12% of this population is over 65. I'm not there yet. I'm a couple stones throws away, but I like the fact that we started there and we're doing some very good work. I'm really proud of that team. So we've talked about access. We've talked about education. We are moving the needle on education, and I'm very, very proud of this team. Libraries is such a good partner. We're doing something very unique

[01:19:51] in teaching seniors how to navigate the financial world of the internet and how to use banking apps and they are just eating that up there and i hear every week my team comes and tells me how people stop them and tell them tell them what this means to them so it feels really good to be doing that type of work on the affordability piece which is the third leg of that stool you remember a few years ago we got an acp grant from the federal government and we were to use that acp grant to get the word out in this community for people who are eligible for subsidy federal subsidy to go and get it and we did a lot of work in that area use some of our arpa money to do it and just as we

[01:20:30] were about to light and start spending that that grant money they froze that program we didn't get to spend a penny of that grant but we did the work and we continue to do that work and when we teach classes we let people know how you can connect with vendors who offer this subsidy we also work with the vendors on it i have two or three really good vendors in the county through the cable franchise agreement who are in this business and we have a lot of conversations about their programs so from digital prince william it's a thriving program it's a good program completely funded by grant so um we do have another grant out there the uh i can't remember the name equity

[01:21:07] the equity grant the federal government just froze that we're up for six million dollars in that grant that would fund this program for another four years so if they loosen up that money again i'm pretty sure we're going to get something but you don't get it until you get it right so that is Digital Prince William there's there's a lot of timeline here excuse me I won't bore you taking you through all of it but this is the year we will finish the broadband fiber infrastructure project and we'll continue to ramp and evolve and iterate on our education side and we'll keep people informed on how they can get to subsidy one day we might have a conversation on how we can

[01:21:43] contribute to that subsidy right any questions about Digital Prince William no Rob just want to Thank you very much for all the work. I remember maybe a year ago, Elijah and I attended a housing event on a weekend.

[01:22:01] A resident approached me about connectivity at her home. And I was not very optimistic, but reached out to Rob and asked him and his team to reach out to her. And wouldn't you know it, a few days later, he sent me a note to say her addresses, one of the addresses included.

[01:22:22] This is fantastic work, and so we don't get to often see do it here externally facing. So I really wanted to take advantage of the moment to say to you and really the entire team, thank you very much. I've got a great team. Thank you.

[01:22:38] I get to take all the credit, but I'm not doing all the work, but thank you for that. I want to, before you leave, Supervisor Bodie had something. Sure, thank you. Appreciate it, Rob. I wanted to echo what the county exec just said. Phenomenal work. I know that this was sort of just a concept, frankly, a few years ago.

[01:22:54] No one really thought that it would really pay dividends and already has. That said, I know I ask this of you every single time. It's great that we're getting people connected who didn't have access before. What are we still doing? Look at people that are underconnected, who have spotty connection, who may be subpar. They have access to, let's just face it, 90s-era dial-up speeds versus the new kind of stuff.

[01:23:15] What are we doing for those folks? You are on point, as usual, Mr. Bode. And I neglected to tell you that the folks in scope here, there's a term called unserved and there's a term called underserved for broadband. Both underserved and unserved are actually being served in this effort.

[01:23:32] I don't have the percentage of unserved, but both are being addressed here, and you're on point. So the 350 that are left, most of those are underserved. Thank you. You're welcome. Supervisor Bailey. Thank you, Madam Chair. Rob, just thank you. And I mean that from the standpoint of when I think about when we were in COVID in 2020 and some of the obstacles that you had to overcome as it relates to our education component. It was big and you did that and you've been growing ever since. And so it shows in the underserved neighborhoods, like in my district, where you've kept your eye on the pulse, you and

[01:24:12] your team, and you've not broken a promise. And that's not that you're perfect, but you've not broken a promise to get us to where we need to be in the county and so we see the trajectory and we really appreciate it thank you i appreciate that i'll take that back to my team all right thank you very much hold on supervisor everyone you know you did a last call but then oh my bad supervisor gordy yeah there are people on this end of the days too you know so way over here so um thank you madam chair um there's a lot of uh fiber optic expansion uh

[01:24:48] taking place right now in uh in the brinsville district um i literally passed two projects on the way here one major one um has been coming down bristow road going down valley view and based on my research that is a major pipeline uh to connect richmond to northern virginia um do you have any insights into, is that just simply for commercial, you know, connecting data centers and just the network broadly, or is any of that expanding locally to folks along the route, or is it,

[01:25:28] again, just this major trunk line that's just being built through central Virginia to get from northern Virginia to Richmond? I think it's the former. I think it is industry adding, you know high speed connectivity the area you're speaking of we've already gone through in fact we got a few addresses in catlett that were really really suffering with i know that's already been done so if you saw that recently ours is already under the ground yeah yeah our it's it's interesting the the head of deq um mike robin lives out there and he sent me an email saying hallelujah we

[01:26:03] finally have internet out here so i've exchanged a lot of emails with mike so uh so he was very happy about it. So thank you. My pleasure. Anything else? I think this is it. All right. Oh, let's go 3-1-1. All right. Let's have some fun. And Nikki, you teed it up with 2-1-1. What comes after 2-1-1? 3-1-1. Okay. Let's hit some high points for 3-1-1. I'm going to be back here on March 11th to get into some of my budget asks and this topic. So I'm going to touch some of the surface level things. And if you take me deep, I'll try to swim deeply with you. So I want to

[01:26:39] kind of talk about what we're doing, why we're doing it, why it matters. What do we get? What do we get from 311? Don't you want to know? I think it's everybody wants to know what we get from that. First and foremost, it is a commitment to continuous improvement by this government in ways we really haven't seen. It's a commitment to the constituent to constantly try to improve how we deliver services to them on the device of their choice, at the time of day of choice, and wherever they are in the world. And that is something that we started because I think Chris knew it was time right that's what we're about the business for doing for the county right give them

[01:27:17] service from their government on the channel of their choice at the time of and place of their choice what is a channel it's either your phone it's a chat bot it's an app it's a 311 website it's a county website however you want to contact text message however you want to contact your government for service we should be there we should be there for you and that's what we're building here right it sounds easy there's a whole lot of technology work that's being done

[01:27:43] And there's a whole lot of work across other agencies in this government, many of whom deliver services directly to the community, that we need to have conversations with and identify a series of what we call service requests that becomes one workflow in the 311 system.

[01:27:59] Excuse me. We're delivering 46 service requests in phase one of this project. I can tell you what they are if you want to know what they are, and I can send all that data to you. Some departments have several. Some only have one. But as you might imagine, we're starting with low-hanging fruit.

[01:28:17] What do we already deliver to the community today? And why do we want to bring everybody into one system? I think it's pretty clear for you. You get constituents contacting you all the time. If you all had one way to punt them to the county to get service, it would be a lot easier for you.

[01:28:34] You'll be able to do that with 311. If you have a question, send them to 311. We'll get them an answer. And we'll track that answer, right? Think about all of the departments who deliver service to the community. And don't do it in a unified manner. You have 30 different levels of quality, 30 different ways to track performance.

[01:28:53] The county executive does not know how well his government is performing. And he will know that soon. And so will you. So will the community. That's what we're doing. That's what we get. Better service, automated service, follow-up, and accountable government.

[01:29:09] Okay? There are several things on this page. If I just point your attention to the December entries, there are four of them. Nikki, if you wouldn't mind scrolling up just a little bit. Those four look like they're done. They're checked. All four of those things are going to be happening right up to the day of Go Live.

[01:29:28] Okay, so they look done. We started those. Nikki, yours is the first one, right? Chatbot development or have a couple more sprints to go there. Website modifications. Nikki and my team working on that. Knowledge library. We have almost 1,200 knowledge articles written for this system to answer at least 1,200 questions.

[01:29:50] And that's what this team is doing. That's not something your IT team is used to doing. So we struggled a little bit there, but no, we were hitting our stride on that one. So there's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes just to be able to go live. So let's talk about go live. I can't give you a date. It's this spring, but I can't give you a date.

[01:30:08] If I give you a date and it's not the right one, you're going to beat me about the head and face. I don't want that. But it will be this spring. We have a lot of departments we're working with, and they're in various states of readiness. We still want to finish some of the technology. While it looks good, we've got a lot of UAT work to do.

[01:30:24] Some of your staff will be invited to that testing closer to go live. We don't need you to see it as it's not working, right? We want you to start testing it when there's something to test, right? So you'll be involved in that, okay? Some of the success criteria. There's one success criteria that isn't shown here, but it's implied throughout the project, and that is optimizing cycle times for service to the constituent.

[01:30:48] That is a goal, and we're not going to ever be done with that. We'll always try to find new and better ways to improve how we deliver that service, okay? And so there are a lot of success criteria. I know you have a lot of high expectations. I know, Mr. Weir, we didn't get the numbers right in the beginning because we found a whole lot more technology that could do the job for us.

[01:31:10] But I think we've got the right number now. And I really am looking forward to this go live. But I do know we have a lot left to go. We were shooting for March 31. I don't think we'll be ready. But as soon as I know what that date is, Chris isn't going to let me skate much longer. I'm going to get that date to him and he'll get it to you.

[01:31:27] Okay. Do you know what 311 is based on? It's really CRM, right, with a whole lot of workflow. We have some very good technology partners here. We've got Accenture, who bought the company, who's done this elsewhere, all over the country, in fact, Encapsulate.

[01:31:44] We have AWS as a partner. We have Salesforce as a partner. We've got some really good partners in this. And we're going to do some things other communities haven't quite done. You're going to see some of that on Thursday or Friday, Chris.

[01:32:00] So we've got some big plans here. Who has a question about 311 that I can answer? Supervisor Bode. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Rob, for this. I know that at least when my office was sort of posed to this, I said, hallelujah, right?

[01:32:17] Talking to my staff, talking to other offices, talking to county agencies and not having the ability to see what's going on and who's doing which work. Because as you said, most of our day-to-day job is just fielding constituent service requests. And knowing that many of them aren't just siloed into one agency, transportation issues, traffic issues are a prime example of that.

[01:32:41] folks not being able to see what other agencies are doing, knowing what those points of contacts are, who is contacted who when, what other constituents may have reached out about the same issue. There's a lot of sort of siloed out redundancies that doesn't necessarily need to be the case, especially in the year of our Lord 2025, right?

[01:33:00] So thank you for this. My question, especially with Nikki sitting next to you, is what's the comm strategy about rolling this out when it is ready to go? Say that again. The comm strategy about letting people know when it's available and how to access and what it's what it's like and how this is going to help them would you like to answer that one nikki yeah please do sorry thank you supervisor that's a great question so the comms team has been working directly with it team we do have a whole comms plan and strategy um that's actually twofold it's for employees as well as residents um but there

[01:33:34] will be a there a lot of things are planned for that um and once we have a go live day we're they're already in the works um but and we're I'm happy to share the plan with you all if that's helpful um or if you want me to go through some things now I can but there is a plan in place and I'm happy to share that with with Chris and the board. If I could when that's ready I make this request of the CXO quite often nowadays when that's ready you guys start pushing that out please send that to our offices as well so we can have mirrored messaging out so it's not so we don't have to reassemble the wheel from scratch. Absolutely that is actually one of the items is that we would create almost like marketing kits.

[01:34:12] So we'll share that with you guys. All right, anyone else? I'm looking to the yonder, you know, yonder. All right, yonder over here. All right, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much, Rob. So I wanted to also highlight this afternoon the comprehensive zoning ordinance update.

[01:34:33] So Director Washington is going to give a quick update there. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the board. tanya washington director of the planning office very excited for the comprehensive zoning ordinance update to be added to pwc works to help to spread the word to the community about this very important initiative we will actually be back on march 18th with a request to initiate this project and so we will give a very in-depth presentation on that so i'm going to hit some of the highlights you'll get a bit of a preview here in terms of the content that we've included

[01:35:10] on this website. So one of the things that we kept in mind as we were developing the content for the PWC Works page was how can we explain this very technical thing about zoning and the zoning ordinance for the general public.

[01:35:26] What is zoning? Why is this important? Why should you care about it? So we made our attempts and we worked with communications to try to explain things a bit more than maybe what we would do in a staff report to the board. So, for example, actually, if you can go to the very top.

[01:35:43] So we talked about, you know, what is this project in general? We talked about, you know, starting with the comprehensive plan. We have an adopted comprehensive plan. And obviously, one of the big ways to implement the comprehensive plan is through the zoning ordinance. But as you all know, we need to get the zoning ordinance updated so that it reflects the updated guidance and the comprehensive plan.

[01:36:07] We also have an explanation about that connection, and then you can keep going. Links to the current zoning ordinance. And then we have several points where we talk about several main goals of the comprehensive zoning ordinance update.

[01:36:24] And again, we will have this in our more in-depth presentation on March 18th, so I'll just hit a few highlights, one of which, one of our biggest goals is to get the zoning ordinance in alignment with the comprehensive plan. Another one is to look at how can we update the zoning ordinance standards and other components to support a number of policy moves that are called for in our comprehensive plan, as well as in other resources, one of which is the expansion of housing options.

[01:36:54] Another one is green zoning. This is an action item from the Community Energy and Sustainability Master Plan, so we want to use this project to accomplish that as well. You can keep going. Another big project goal is innovation. We have the benefit that a number of communities around the country as well as in this region have done comprehensive zoning ordinance updates just in the last five years or so.

[01:37:18] So there's a lot of lessons learned in terms of some innovations that have been incorporated into those zoning ordinances. So that's something that we also want to look at. You know, how can we introduce more innovation in our county zoning ordinance? And then there's another big important thing, which is modernization.

[01:37:37] and looking for opportunities for efficiencies. So this is very much both a policy effort as well as a technical effort in looking through our zoning ordinance. And then a last sort of big project goal is other county priorities.

[01:37:54] Again, with our updated strategic plan as well as a comprehensive plan and other resources, there are other areas where the county articulates important priorities and policies and goals and so are there ways that we can incorporate that into our zoning ordinance so we'll keep that in mind. We included as part of I think all the PwC Works websites success criteria for this update and just to highlight a couple of them, one is to ensure that development reflects the policies and visions in our comprehensive plan. Another one is and this is something that we also want to try to address which is

[01:38:33] a reduction in the number of waiver and modification requests for land use applications to make sure that, because we get some of those because the types of development that these proposals are calling for or are requesting is actually in alignment with the comprehensive plan but the zoning ordinance has standards that are not in alignment with that. So we want to make these updates so that we can reduce the need for those types of waivers and modifications. And another one very important one in terms of success criteria is an improved user experience with the zoning

[01:39:07] ordinance with easier to understand and predictable guidance we want to make it easier to look for ways to make it easier for community members for development applicants for board members county staff anyone who has to interact with the zoning ordinance to be able to look through it and find the type of guidance that that you're looking for and just from what i am aware of just myself of some more recent zoning ordinance updates, there have been some different changes that have been done to make zoning ordinances more user-friendly, so we want to look at those examples too. And if you go back up, we also have project milestones. This is a

[01:39:45] preliminary timeline, again, which is some major milestones. So as you are all aware, we actually did some initial work over the fall into the beginning part of this year. As part of developing the scope of work for this project, we conducted a I think over 20 stakeholder scoping meetings where we talked with internal stakeholders such as county staff.

[01:40:10] We talked individually with board members, with planning commissioners, as well as external stakeholders like the development industry and civic associations to identify other ideas of what we should consider including in a scope of work. So again, we'll have a lot of that feedback that we'll share with some sort of big themes that came out of that in the presentation on March 18th. But then following the initiation, that's when we are going to shift into the formal public launch. And as a part of this project, we do intend to do community engagement throughout the project, not just when we have draft changes. That will be a part

[01:40:49] of the public hearing process. So we've already started some initial conversations with the Communications and Engagement Office. And as part of the consultant team that we're going to be bringing on board to support this project we intend to have consultants who are the technical experts on zoning ordinance as well as community engagement consultants as well and they will all be a part of the on-call consulting contract awards that we're also bringing to the board next week so we're looking forward to identifying ways to have conversations with the community about zoning why it's important

[01:41:26] and to continue to get ideas that we should consider, including as we are doing these updates. And I think, and again, just in terms of the major milestones, again, this is a preliminary timeline. Once we get into the public launch and bring together a full project team, we're really going to be looking into this in more detail in terms of the specific pieces of the process.

[01:41:53] But I will say, though, just in terms of expectation setting, comprehensive zoning ordinance updates are major projects. They take at least two years. Some of our peers and others take longer than that. We don't want to take four years or even three years to go through this.

[01:42:10] But I'm just laying that out just to manage expectations that this is a very significant project. And so part of what we're going to be looking at is how can we proceed through this in a fashion where the work is getting done, but we can also get it done in a timely fashion. So I'm happy to answer any questions at this point.

[01:42:29] All right, Supervisor Bode. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Ms. Washington, for this presentation, for including this on PwC Works. Just a couple of questions and a comment. You mentioned that there's going to be additional engagements throughout the process.

[01:42:46] I know that so far we've had sort of a mixed bag in terms of people really engaging because they still don't really understand what a zoning text does. So I wanted to hear sort of what your strategy was to overcome some of those barriers, people just even understanding why it matters. So part of our strategy is we're hiring community engagement consultants, and we're also looking for consultants who have had experience working on zoning ordinance updates because a number of them have been done more recently.

[01:43:14] So we want to learn from those examples to see what worked. We also intend to actually have already started reaching out to some of our peers and other planning departments who've done this to see what has worked, how have you gotten community engagement and, you know, ideas from this project.

[01:43:35] So we don't have a specific set of how we plan to do that, but this is something that, you know, we talked internally, that I talked internally with our team as well as with communications. We certainly want to look at different ways to reach people and to engage people, multimedia, videos, online options, not just your typical in-person and virtual meetings.

[01:44:01] So we definitely want to look at the full suite of all the different ways that you can get feedback from people. And something that I've certainly learned from my own experience working on a lot of different community engagement activities is any type of feedback is feedback. Whether it's you get an idea on a Post-it note or someone sends you a text message or an email or just happens to share something to you, it's still an idea, it's still feedback.

[01:44:27] So we want to definitely try to be flexible in terms of how we can get folks engaged in this project. My second question, if I could, Madam Chair. On that note, and I appreciate that thought process behind it, is casting a wider net than we normally would in certain situations. And so my second question is that knowing that you're still working through the scope who's going to be contacted and sort of part of that shareholder or stakeholder group, is are you going to be looking at perhaps the development community outside of the ecosystem that exists in Prince William County currently?

[01:44:56] Certainly. We can certainly do that. And, you know, one thing I'll note with regards to the stakeholder scoping meetings, we define stakeholders as sort of the power users of the zoning ordinance. You know, who are the people, the organizations that use the zoning ordinance on a regular basis?

[01:45:11] So that's why we talk to both, you know, all the internal review agencies to review land use applications as well as development industry as well as civic associations and the decision makers because those are the folks who are dealing with this document on a regular basis but in terms of the broader community engagement it really is intended to be broader and to reach you know a much wider net not just a quote-unquote power users. My comment if I could thank you for that because I've said this I know some of my colleagues have said this we have I wouldn't call it a small ecosystem of folks that use it but it's more limited than other even other

[01:45:48] parts of the region so knowing that some of that barrier and why could be just the arcane nature of our current zoning ordinance i hope that that'll be part of the conversation my second sort of last piece of of constructive feedback is right now um the example you give on this site and sort of it's a lot more tailored towards applicants or power users right but in my experience in my office some of the folks that run into issues around zoning ordinance frankly people that are just doing things like trying to build a new deck or expand their garage or something like that running into issues where i know i've shared this example with you where they didn't realize they had to have a

[01:46:24] certain setback from uh the property line even if they are pretty far away from another house because of how arcane in some cases our zoning ordinance is and there's several zoning districts that wouldn't even remedy that so there's not really a good way for them to navigate that process so as we continue to look at this on the macro level with our development community in mind i hope we'll also really gear in on those folks that frankly of individual homeowners and families that also interact with the zoning ordinance for one way or another when they're trying to do things with their own parcels in their own homes yes thank you for that for that feedback and you know again this this is why as part of the project we wanted to do the broader

[01:47:01] community engagement at the beginning of the project before we have any drafts changes or anything like that for specifically that reason. And as you were talking, that actually gives me an idea of definitely partnering with development services and maybe creating a survey with them to send to some of their, you know, customers to try to get some feedback based off of, you know, folks who've gone through that process.

[01:47:21] Thank you so much. Advisor Gordy. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Ms. Washington. And I was going to kind of make up a statement and then ask some questions related to it.

[01:47:37] I am concerned about the timeline because when this is done, it's going to basically be four years after the passing of the comprehensive plan. In the meantime, we've got a significant number of planning cases coming through that I know from my perspective, I would love for it to align um those projects to align to the comprehensive plan um and so um and and i'm also concerned that over that over the the next basically two and a half years um as i'm dealing

[01:48:14] with trying to save businesses in prince william county who can't find a place to operate uh because of the zoning um that that gives them the zoning that where they don't have to compete with data centers who are paying a lot more money for land i'm just concerned that we're going to be missing a lot of economic development opportunities just simply because you know everything's wrapped into this comprehensive rezoning so my question is are there any other attempts will there be any other attempts to modify any of the ordinances outside of the comprehensive rezoning to address

[01:48:53] very specific things like the M2 zoning or other things related to particularly like the villages and the things that are in the comprehensive plan that are looking for some very unique settings that those things will take place separately, or is that all being wrapped into this one comprehensive rezoning?

[01:49:15] So one of the things that we note as part of this website and on a presentation we'll given a couple of meetings is that, you know, as you're aware, there are 20-plus zoning tax amendments that have already been initiated and are all in various stages of development. And what we're doing is we're looking at incorporating as many as we can within this project, but there may still be some ZTAs.

[01:49:36] They may happen independently and separately. And you have raised the issue that you just noted. So we are still looking, kind of figuring out, you know, are there going to still be some ones that we're just going to move forward with doing those as separate ZTAs, and which ones do we want to wrap into this project?

[01:49:55] Thank you very much. All right, Supervisor Weir. Thank you, Madam Chair. A couple of things. One, I would caution against using the phrase power users. I'll be honest with you, that sets the wrong tone, especially in my district, where a lot of concerned residents already view them as, quote-unquote, power users with undue influence with respect to how the zoning ordinance was crafted in the past and currently is constituted including taking things and moving it from the zoning ordinance to the DCSM.

[01:50:31] I would simply caution against that particular characterization of who some of the stakeholders are. With respect to what Supervisor Gordy just talked about, and that's interim changes before the plan is adopted, I'm hoping or I'm assuming that there is going to be some method in place to accommodate statutory changes that will occur every July 1 as a result of General Assembly action because historically we haven't done that.

[01:51:04] And I think we need to get out in front of that before it comes back and bites us again. So on your first point, point taken, thank you for that feedback. And in terms of the annual statutory changes from any changes to the state code, that is something that we can still move forward on separately to get those incorporated.

[01:51:26] To that end, I mean, we're going to know which one the governor signs before July. I would strongly suggest we expedite those simple changes, Madam County Attorney. Expedite those changes so that they can be effective July 1 so that we are in compliance.

[01:51:43] Assuming, of course, that we can meet the statutory deadline or the requirements for public notice. Madam Chair, members of the board, every year after the General Assembly session, we go through the bills that have been passed and signed by the governor, and then we bring it to the board with regards to the annual county code update and then the draft ZTA for you to do.

[01:52:02] We do that in May, June timeframe, and then we plan it for the advertised public hearing to be before the July 1 effective date. And so those ZTAs will move forward and communication with planning staff on how quickly we can move them with the planning commission then to the board.

[01:52:22] I'm happy to hear that. All right. If there's nothing else, I just have one quick question Because I know we passed, I think the previous board passed a comprehensive plan in 2023. When is that open again? 2027? So the 2040 comprehensive plan, the update was adopted in December of 2022.

[01:52:42] And from what I understand, we have to do a minimum of a five-year update. I think per the state codes to the next window would be 2027 in terms of meeting that mandate. But we can make changes outside of that time frame, too.

[01:52:57] No, I just want to ask because I know this is going to take time. It's going to be a process. I just sometimes fear that, you know, you guys get caught up, then more changes are made. And so I just want to highlight that. Sure. If I can just really briefly note that, you know, once the comprehensive zoning ordinance update is completed and adopted, what may come out of that may be changes we will need to we may need to make to other sections of the county code to the DCSM potentially to the comprehensive plan it really just depends on what

[01:53:31] comes out of it and so it is to some degree a bit of an iterative process but we certainly you know will have a better idea once we get through the project and under and kind of see okay are there some other changes that are related to updating the zoning ordinance that we need to that we need to make. But I definitely understand your question. All right. Thank you. I think that's all from us. Thank you very much, Director Washington. I appreciate the update and all the work that has already been done and certainly all the work ahead. Madam Chair, members of the

[01:54:06] board, this is just, again, another update. I remember certainly six, maybe six months ago, sitting in Supervisor Gordy's office and hearing from him, and I think Supervisor Rear was with us on the zoning ordinance update. And I said to them both, you know, we're doing the work and we have a platform that will help us to show the public what we're doing and to say, follow along. And this is exactly what this is, an opportunity for us to not just do the work

[01:54:43] internally, but to ask the public to follow along. And so we are very excited about all of projects listed and we will continue to move these initiatives as they come so with that madam chair that is all for me all right thank you so very much we will now then move on to item number five and that is county attorney time thank you madam chair members of the board we have no items for closed session this afternoon all right thank you so very much we are going to go back to you mr county executive to tf our work session yes thank you very much madam chair members of the

[01:55:21] board we are we are at the stage of the process the strategic planning process where we are looking for for board feedback in action we have as you know been through a year-long process where Kay Wallace our consultants PBI and so many stakeholders including each of you have been a part of a very long journey to get us to this point.

[01:55:52] I really want to just thank Kay Wallace for all the work she has done and just her excitement around this work has been pretty inspiring. So, Kay, if you will lead us through, I'll turn it over to you now.

[01:56:11] Thank you, Mr. Shorter. Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the board. My name is Kay Wallace, and I'm the county strategic plan coordinator. I'm here this afternoon to present the proposed 2025 through 2028 strategic plan.

[01:56:27] So in this presentation, what I will do is give you all a high-level overview of the proposed plan, share with you all next steps as far as implementation and execution after the plan is adopted, and finally to actually ask you all to ratify the plan. This slide here you all have seen several times over the last year.

[01:56:49] It shows our development phases of the strategic plan development process. What I will do is I will briefly remind you all of activities that we did in each of these phases. Right now, we are at the end of Phase 4, which is Strategic Plan Adoption, and we're getting ready to enter Phase 5, which is Implementation.

[01:57:08] So our strategic planning process can be summed up in four words. Inclusive, aligned, aspirational, and supported. Our desired resorts of this process over the last year have been to create an inclusive process that inspires ownership of the next strategic plan to create an aligned and measurable plan to guide execution of our work, to create an aspirational and actionable plan where staff and the community understand their contribution to the plan's success, and most importantly, to create a strategic plan that our community supports.

[01:57:50] Phases one and two of the process were planning and launch and gaining insights. In phase one, we hired a consultant, devised the project plan, assigned roles and responsibilities for the process. And then you all, the board, appointed a community advisory committee comprised of residents who provided community feedback in terms of participating in a focus group.

[01:58:15] They also assisted with community outreach, and they also served as your liaisons throughout this process. Phase two is where we solicited input to identify priorities for our next strategic plan.

[01:58:32] Outreach activities included eight community town halls, one hosted by each of the supervisors, seven resident focus groups, one in each magisterial district, two community conversations, one with the local business community and one with the leaders of our cities and towns.

[01:58:50] We also did a focus group with our community advisory committee to get their input on the plan. And we also did six focus groups with county employees. Our consultant conducted individual interviews with each of you as well as CXO Shorter to get your input about what you feel like should be our priorities over the next four years.

[01:59:12] We also sent a strategic plan survey, which were the same questions that we asked in the focus groups, to all of the members of our county boards, commissions, and committees. And finally, we also included strategic plan questions in our biannual community satisfaction survey.

[01:59:30] So I feel safe to say that we did do quite a bit of extensive outreach in terms of trying to get input from the community regarding priorities in this next strategic plan. So this slide here shows some of the priorities that were garnered from the community input.

[01:59:47] Priorities included focusing on smart development to include the impact of data centers, forecasting and planning for growth, maintaining and expanding green spaces, affordable housing, improving transparency and trust between residents and the county government, and community safety, as well as a few other topics.

[02:00:10] These themes are addressed in this proposed strategic plan. So to quote Mr. Shorter, we are a transformative county, and I'd like to add we are an innovative county, and we are always constantly changing and trying to get better and improve how we do any and everything as far as services and the way we go about processes.

[02:00:34] Local governments use various types of processes when they develop their strategic plans. Strategic planning is kind of more of an art than a science because there's no one set way that you can go about developing your plan. But what I can say about this iteration of the process is that one of Mr. Shorter and Mr. Haynes, who's not here with us anymore, one of their goals was to be much more inclusive with regard to this process.

[02:01:01] So with that objective in mind of being more inclusive, What we did with this particular strategic planning process is we used a cascading strategic planning model. What we did is after we received input from the community and our leaders and the staff about what should be the priorities in our next plan, we did something we've never done before.

[02:01:24] We asked the board to be more hands-on with regard to developing the plan. So with that cascading strategic planning model, what we did was we asked the board to take that input And you all select our high-level goals of what we want to focus on over the next four years.

[02:01:40] Then cascading down, then our executive cabinet recommended the objectives that we would need to focus on in order to achieve those goals. Then cascading on down, our executive, I'm sorry, our directors, our department directors created the strategies or recommended the action steps that we need to take over the next four years to achieve these high-level objectives and goals.

[02:02:03] And I don't know if you all recognize the pictures on the right, but that's from your strategic planning session that you held in July of last year. So this slide here shows the strategic plan vision statement.

[02:02:23] The vision of our strategic plan is that Prince William County is a diverse community striving to be healthy, safe, and caring with a thriving economy and a protected natural environment. This slide here shows the overarching values of our strategic plan.

[02:02:43] They are accountability and transparency, communication and engagement, equity and inclusion, innovation, efficiency and effectiveness, and integrity and trust. These principles run throughout the entire strategic plan and are paramount to every goal, objective, and strategy.

[02:03:05] The proposed strategic plan has eight goal areas. They are education, environment, government, mobility, quality of life, safe and secure community, service delivery, and smart growth.

[02:03:25] Please note, these goals are listed in alphabetical order in this plan because they are all equally important. We do understand that some of these goals may be more important to some residents than they are to others.

[02:03:41] However, what we did was listed them alphabetically because each of these goals are important and they will all benefit the entire community collectively. So next what I'll do is I'll take a few minutes to provide a high-level overview of all the goals in the plan.

[02:03:57] But for the sake of time, I'm only going to review the goal statements and the objectives. I'm not going to touch on the strategies, but I would encourage, I'm sure you all have already read it, but I would encourage the community to please go online and read the entire plan. So goal one is education. The goal statement is to advance high quality learning opportunities that enrich residents and build an educated and skilled workforce.

[02:04:27] The objectives for this goal area are to provide lifelong learning opportunities for residents of all ages, to seek partnerships to provide targeted workforce training programs, Elevate awareness and access to educational and career opportunities in current and emerging sectors to highlight future industry needs.

[02:04:48] To engage with Prince William County schools and educational systems to support them in achieving their strategic plan goals and commitments. And to support current and new county businesses to facilitate more workforce options in Prince William County. Goal number two is environment.

[02:05:08] The goal statement is to preserve the county's natural beauty and resources so that residents can enjoy nature and open spaces are created and maintained. The objectives for this gold area are to safeguard the quality of the county's air, water, and other natural resources, to enhance and expand our public parks, trails, and green spaces, ensuring accessibility for all, to utilize the county's CESMP to achieve our county's climate and resiliency goals, and to support and incentivize the development and use of renewable energy sources across the county.

[02:05:47] Goal number three is government. The goal statement, innovate and sustain a transparent and collaborative organizational culture that is high-performing, data-driven, customer-centric and values employees. The objectives for this goal area are to position Prince William County as an employer of choice, to enhance training and professional development opportunities for staff and leadership, to be fiscally responsible, accountable, and transparent to foster trust

[02:06:20] with the community, to innovate technology and standardized processes to continuously improve how we deliver services, and to enhance employees' understanding of organizational operations and county services to deliver tailored solutions to our residents. Goal four is mobility. The goal statement is to foster an interconnected and accessible transportation network that advances the county's mobility infrastructure, broadens transportation choices, and enhances safety.

[02:06:56] The objectives in the Discoed area are to enhance connectivity through transit-oriented development and improve pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, to support improving, expanding, and using the county's public transportation network, to increase awareness of transportation options for county residents, to develop mobility projects across the county to ensure access to multiple transportation options and to work with stakeholders to improve access safety and connectivity. Goal five is quality of life and I would like to point out that the goal statement

[02:07:35] actually is not written correctly the way you see it on the screen. We changed the wording slightly based upon some of our community feedback that we got but the goal statement is to enhance the quality of life and increase resident retention by creating a resilient and healthy community where residents can afford to live, work, play, and retire.

[02:07:58] The objectives in this goal area are to develop affordable and diverse housing options for all residents, to advocate for diversity or variety in our businesses, to offer various workplace options, to heighten the county's amenities, entertainment, and recreational experiences, to support residents' aspiration to age in place, attract residents and visitors with the natural beauty of our parks, trails, and green spaces, and finally to highlight the county's cultural, historical, and natural uniqueness to strengthen Prince William County's identity or brand as a sought-after place to live and visit.

[02:08:39] Goal number six is safe and secure community. The goal statement, cultivate a safe and secure community that advances stakeholder engagement, collaboration, and evidence-based results. The objectives in this goal area are to develop coordinated community responses that improve constituent access to services, expand data capabilities to improve community awareness, problem identification, and evidence-based decision-making, to promote fair administration of the justice system, to improve collaboration between local and state government agencies,

[02:09:15] stakeholders, and residents to increase programming for our youth and families, and finally to anticipate, plan, and use a government-wide approach to major disasters and critical incidents. Goal number seven is service delivery. The goal statement is to provide transparent, exceptional, and accessible county services to our residents, businesses, and partners. The objectives in this goal area are to provide timely, efficient, and effective services to residents, businesses, and partners, to continuously forecast county growth, to address resource needs so that we

[02:09:55] can maintain quality delivery of services, to reduce barriers to access by providing county services beyond our regular physical locations and with time flexibility, and to increase opportunities for engagement and communication between the public and county government.

[02:10:13] Our last goal area is smart growth. The goal statement is to advance strategic and intentional community-oriented growth that strengthens and enhances the diversity and sustainability of the economy and county.

[02:10:31] Objectives in this area include balancing our development and growth with our climate mitigation and resiliency goals, to diversify the commercial tax base, to preserve and expand agribusiness, agritourism, and maritime industries, and to enhance small business support and strengthen local entrepreneurial ecosystems.

[02:10:53] So that concludes the high-level overview of the eight goals in our strategic plan, the proposed plan. We did post this draft plan online in January for a couple of weeks to solicit community feedback on the draft, and then we also met with each of you individually to get your feedback about changes that you would like to see made in the draft.

[02:11:14] We did incorporate most of your edits in your requests, and we also took some of the requests from the community or suggestions from the community and made edits to the plan. However, there were a few suggestions that we felt warranted discussion by the collective board.

[02:11:33] So these next two slides cover those three items that could possibly be added to the plan, depending on what you all decide collectively. And Chair Jefferson, we can proceed however you think is best. We can either, I can go over these slides, and then we can stop, and then you all discuss each of these points to decide whether or not you want to enter them into the plan.

[02:11:54] plan or I could finish my presentation and then at the end you all can go back discuss these points as well as any other items that you want to discuss before you discuss whether or not to ratify well I hate to answer a question with the question but I just want to ask how much more on your of the presentation do you have because I'd love to go through these questions I don't know how much more you have because I know people also have individual questions on the strategic plan as a whole. I'm sure. So I do have two more sections to cover. I wanted to tell you all next steps. Well, actually one. I wanted to tell you all next steps, which covers when we're going to do the KPIs and how we're going to actually implement the plan by forming staff work groups

[02:12:34] and then ask you all to ratify the plan. Then I was going to turn it over to you. So I could be finished in about five minutes. All right. Let's go ahead and finish and then we'll do this and then we'll go back to the, then we'll do questions at large. Okay. So is it okay if I just not point out what these discussion points are just yet go to the next steps go to the next step then come back to these slides here yes to review what they are okay great thank you for that okay so as far as implementation of our strategic plan is concerned which is our final phase once this

[02:13:08] plan is adopted the implementation phase begins we've decided to divide this phase into three sub phases or three steps step one will be to convene staff work groups to begin implementation and execution. Staff two, we will establish strategic plan performance measures. And step three will cover reporting and accountability. And I'm just going to provide a little bit of information about each of these steps in the next three slides. So following board adoption of our strategic plan, the plan will be turned over to county executives shorter, kind of like what you all do with the budget each year. And it's going to be his responsibility to implement and execute

[02:13:46] this plan. We have developed another extensive plan, in case you didn't notice, and we will not be able to work on everything all at once. So what we must do is we're going to have to be intentional about how we execute this plan. Step one will be to convene staff work groups or goal teams to begin implementation. These goal teams will assess the plan and basically divide the plan into sections or chunks to determine what should we work on in year one, year two, year three, and four of this plan with regard to our time period. We'll evaluate this each year to determine if we need to make adjustments or changes based on current conditions or circumstances.

[02:14:26] And then we will also, for the first time ever, in our strategic plan, identify owners and contributors for each goal and objective so we can have more accountability as to how we're going to go about getting these things done. Step two, and step one and step two are actually going to be going on at the same time. But in step two of this implementation phase, we're going to establish our performance measures. Again, we want to be intentional about selecting measurable outcomes and KPIs this time. Lesson learned from the last time when our team had great intentions, but some of our performance measures were not necessarily

[02:15:04] measurable. So this time we're going to establish between three to five measures for each of the eight goal areas. Therefore, we'll have a total of between 24 and 40 key performance indicators to tell the public how we're doing as far as accomplishing some of our goals.

[02:15:22] Each measure will have a baseline and a target. The measures will be shared with you all and the community sometime in May or June of 2025. We're working on them right now, but what we want to do after this plan is adopted is take a break and let you all focus on the budget, which is top of mind right now for March and April.

[02:15:43] And then once you adopt the budget in April, then we'll come right back around in May or June and share the key performance measures with you all. As far as reporting and accountability, we're going to set up a public-facing dashboard that will report on our KPIs as well as projects and initiatives.

[02:16:02] Staff will present quarterly to the board to update you all on activities and progress on those activities. And then finally, we're going to produce a strategic plan annual report that will update the community on our accomplishments for the preceding year.

[02:16:19] And so that concludes the next steps. Then the final step would be to ask you all to ratify the plan. But what we're going to do, as discussed, is go back to the discussion points so that we can cover those and then answer any other questions you all might have about the proposed plan.

[02:16:35] All right. And we're going to start with, for the discussion points, we're going to start with number one, goal education. Objective four, foster a more collaborative relationship with county educational systems to align county-government policies and priorities with school infrastructure, programs, and services.

[02:16:51] And there is a request to add strategy under education, comma, objective four, language that increases financial accountability of the school's budget. Specific warning to be determined by BOCS. Supervisor Weir. Thank you, Madam Chair.

[02:17:11] First, to be clear, we're operating on the version of the strategic plan that starts on slide 32 and not the one that starts earlier in the presentation or at least the online presentation I have because the wording is different. When you say that, can you please say that again?

[02:17:30] Ask me again. I've got two versions of the strategic plan here in the presentation with different wording. I'm assuming we're using the one that starts a couple of slides earlier that you showed up here because there's another version that doesn't quite match it. The only version that you should be looking at as far as these slides is, The only changes that were made was what our board clerk put up on the site about us adding a slide, which was slide number 23, because of a request that came in to add an objective action strategy to the plan, Supervisor Weir.

[02:18:03] So I'm not sure what version. There were two versions of the plan, meaning that there was a draft plan online. That's what I'm saying. So the first one is the draft plan that's in my presentation? The draft plan is not in the presentation. I have a different wording for each goal. Are you talking about this one or this one?

[02:18:23] This one? I don't know if it's that. Yeah, that one. So the draft, that's the question. I'm ignoring the draft and I'm looking at this one. Yes, sir. Ignore the draft. The draft was the first one before we made changes based upon your feedback. I just wanted to be, I'm pretty sure that's what you were doing, but it was sort of confusing having the draft thrown in at the top and then halfway through the presentation.

[02:18:48] Getting to the question, Madam Chair, I would strongly suggest that we add that point to the goal. Going back to what the question was, adding a strategy under Education Objective 4, language that increases the fiscal accountability of the school's budget.

[02:19:12] Since fiduciary responsibility is our principal one, I would suggest that that does need to be added so that there's more discussion between this board and the school board, more cooperation between the two. And what is the language that you propose? Give me a minute and I'll write it.

[02:19:29] We will move on then. I'll give you your second tranche. Supervisor Vega. Thank you, Madam Chair. Supervisor Weir, are you thinking about adding language that talks about how accountability measures, is that what you're thinking?

[02:19:49] Yeah. Because that's what I was going to request. I appreciate the intent. Of course, we're always looking for ways to improve our collaboration with the school division, but I would like to see specific accountability measures as to how the school budget will be managed and audited as well.

[02:20:06] So if that's what you're thinking, I support that. And to that end, Madam Chair, I don't think we're going to have that language today because I think we're going to need to discuss that with both Mr. Shorter and the county attorney before we propose any language. And today, I believe we are supposed to adopt it, right?

[02:20:23] We have the resolution today, correct? You do have the resolution today. I'll defer to Mr. Shorter as to how to proceed with regard to that. Yes. What I would suggest, if the plan is in a place generally where the board is comfortable, I would suggest considering adoption and then making any necessary edits, changes, sort of as we go.

[02:20:47] If there are enough changes in this discussion today where we need to adjust the actual timeline of adoption, then that is up to the board. Supervisor Vega? Madam Chair, thank you. If I may, there were some recommendations or suggestions rather that I made during our one-on-one.

[02:21:06] I don't see them listed here, but I did ask if this was final and I was told that it was not, that it was going to come to the board and that we were going to make this document final. So I personally don't feel comfortable approving something today and then changing it. In the interest of time, if it pleases the rest of the board, I don't know if it would be prudent for us to maybe share those recommended changes for the board to consider and then we come back or if the majority just wants to go ahead and talk about it now and we decide on set changes whether we move forward or not all right let me weigh in real quick um because we've been living

[02:21:44] with this we've been working on this some time and we have about three things to go through you know i understand the need to want to adopt accountability measures for the schools but some of this sounds like it's getting tactical um and that's something that the staff is going to work on the actual tactical and the KPIs you know I say let's open up for discussion let's see how far we get today at the end of the discussion we will make a decision whether or not to adopt today and then do a revision doing an updated plan or if we can simply move this forward to another date

[02:22:18] my recommendation strongly is to have that discussion today you know and see where we get at the end um do you have anything else no i want to go all right supervisor gordy thank you madam chair as i was reviewing the strategic plan ahead of today's meeting actually this this one uh i began making edits to the statement is that because even just reading it it sounds like that the county is going to align to whatever the schools want that's the way i read it and i don't think that's what we're trying to establish here. What I think we're trying to establish

[02:22:57] is that we're going to establish a collaborative relationship where we and the schools come together and align together, not that they establish things and that we align to that.

[02:23:15] And so in my mind, and what I was noodling around with some of the language, It was establish a collaborative, because I'm not sure that we have really established a collaborative relationship with the schools, other than through funding.

[02:23:32] And so what I would like to say is establish a collaborative relationship with county educational systems where county government policies and priorities and school infrastructure programs and services are aligned, and where, and we can add something related to the fiscal accountability if that's something that we so choose.

[02:23:57] thoughts all right give us and give us because i don't write as fast as you talk even though you're a southerner you got a good cadence give it to me one more time establish a collaborative relationship with county educational systems where county government policies and priorities and school infrastructure programs and services are aligned all right quickly does anyone have any i can make lots of jokes um does anyone have a statement or anything before we get to you Supervisor Franklin. Does anyone have a statement or anything

[02:24:36] that they want to quickly mention? Supervisor Bode on that statement. Just in response to that, I agree with that. Alright. Anyone else? If not, I'm going to jump over to Supervisor Franklin. Did you have something just on the language?

[02:24:56] I'm sorry, Chair Jefferson. So mine, actually, because we're going in order anyway of education and going down the line, so I actually do have comments related to General and what Supervisor Gordy said. So if we can just go in order, that would be helpful.

[02:25:11] I'm sorry. I apologize. I already called on Supervisor Angry because I thought you had a separate thought. So we'll go to him, and then we'll go to you. Just the word. You said are aligned. I mean, define that. Who's to define that alignment? I mean, we don't have the schools here. So I just want to make sure if they are aligned, what are we aligning to?

[02:25:30] I mean, we have our priorities. They have theirs. Are they really going to align? And shouldn't we have that discussion to see if that is a possibility before we throw it in there to say this is what it's going to do? Just a thought for me.

[02:25:48] All right, Supervisor Franklin. So before I get into mine, if I can just clarify what the process is for this. So for what we're doing right now? Right. What we're doing is we're going by, so we had three things we need to get alignment on. So we're going to talk about each of those points separately.

[02:26:05] We're going to do education. Then we're going to close it out. Then we're going to do smart growth, talk about that, close that out. Then we're going to go to the third point. Once we're done with this, we are going to open it up for general discussions on the strategic plan. Okay, and I guess my question is, going back to what just happened, if someone is in queue but someone has a thought or a recommendation, how are you going to handle that if someone was already in queue?

[02:26:29] Well, the way I was handling it, because I wanted people to respond directly to what Supervisor Gordy said. I saw you, I'm not trying to overlook you, but I wanted people to get on that specific point because he's making a language change, and that's a substantive change.

[02:26:45] So then we'll go directly into what changes people are making. If I'm going to ask that when someone has something like where he had a specific language change, if people want to quickly react to that, and I'm just doing this not to overlook anyone but so that we can keep it i can keep the discussion efficient and keep it on point because i you know sometimes we do and that's okay you know bounce around from thought to thought to thought but i just felt that it would be an easier process understood so my thoughts um generally and then going specifically to supervisor gordy is i think a we already have a good collaborative

[02:27:23] working relationship with the school system we meet with them once or twice a year i know that several of us call up our school board members whenever there's a challenge or whenever we want to partner. In addition, our superintendent has been incredibly available in all aspects, at least in my experience, and I know with other districts as well. So I want to start by saying that in terms of adjusting the language to make it seem like we don't already have a collaborative relationship I think we do now of course if we want to have a more collaborative relationship

[02:28:01] whatever that means I think we need to to be more specific in terms of what more are we looking for now we talk about accountability and transparency so let's have that discussion I am not comfortable making any changes to how we operate with our schools without our schools being part of that discussion if we are serious about and we've had discussions about the revenue sharing agreement before now we're having discussions about transparency and accountability whatever that means the schools should have the right to be in here to be part of that discussion I understand

[02:28:37] that we write the checks and quite frankly we've done an excellent job supporting our school system it's now time for the state to step up and do their part but I think that we have had a very positive relationship with the schools. And if we want to make any changes respectfully, we ought to bring them in here and have that discussion alongside with them.

[02:28:58] All right, quickly, Vega, then we'll go to Bodie Bailey-Gordy. Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, this is our process. I appreciate what you're saying, Supervisor Franklin, but we do not have to invite the school division for this. As a matter of fact, when they enacted their priorities, they do not invite the Board of County Supervisors. And that's the point I think that the three of us that have already spoken are trying to raise is that there is no real collaboration. If there were, they would invite us and vice versa, and that doesn't happen. And so as the governing body that does give them the funding, I think we have every right to demand more accountability, more transparency, more

[02:29:35] collaboration to ensure that we are living up to the phrase, a world-class education for all of our students. All right. Supervisor Bode. Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to chime in here and agree largely with what supervisor franklin said earlier i think we do have a collaborative relationship with them of course it could be a better i i agree with that um but i think that we could i would lean on the side of saying more collaborative as opposed to saying it doesn't exist already um so there's that piece um i'm going to say that in terms of the fiscal

[02:30:11] accountability piece of adding that language i think we do need more further discussion on what that looks like because i i wouldn't want us to put something out there that isn't feasible for them to live up to right we want to make sure that at least that piece if we're going to put in any kind of again as uh the chair said to me that gets a lot more tactical and kpis and stuff like that and what that exactly looks like so i wouldn't want to put anything even broad brush out there without having conversation with them on on what that looks like now understanding that yes they don't come to us when they pass their strategic plan to see our our um our feedback on

[02:30:47] that um but i looking at the strategic plan a lot of their strategic plan or at least most of it deals solely within things that are in their control um versus at looking out towards something the county does so i think it's a little bit different uh to sort of point out there so i like where supervisor gordy is going with some of his language saying that there needs to be a more bilateral alignment as opposed to one way or the other um but i don't think we should be putting anything concrete around fiscal accountability until we can see what's feasible from that perspective hold on supervisor bailey thank you very much ma'am chair um well i just

[02:31:23] have three points one uh in terms of the wording and tweaking the wording to make sure that we're comfortable with the wording i think the word the terminologies that we're using is in uh the objective as it's written. There's alignment with the county there, there's collaborative relationships there, and I think alignment in terms of government policies and priorities, I think the wording is there, and so I don't want us to get into a deeper dive and spend a lot of time in changing the wording when it's right there before our faces. The other thing is when it comes

[02:32:02] to us being collaborative with the school board, I think it's important that they do have a seat at the table when we're discussing this. And we have gone in our processes from not meeting with the school board initially to meeting jointly with the school board to make sure that we have an audience with each other to talk about in depth what we want and what we want to see as we are allocating funding to them, to now I think we're at the point where that collaboration and really fleshing out what we want to see in a discussion, in a meeting, that's a physical thing that we need to do.

[02:32:42] And so I think that we are right where we need to be as it relates to our strategic plan melding with their strategic plan as we provide the funding. But it's just a matter of us sitting down and talking about it. And we said that when we went through this process with Kay, excuse me, for the strategic plan. We talked about that in depth. And so my one-eighth is that respect the wording that we have here from the subject matter experts that has crafted that from the discussions that we've had, and also move forward in the strategic plan by sitting down with the school board and having those in-depth conversations.

[02:33:24] All right, Supervisor Gordy. Thank you, Madam Chair. Ms. Follis, did the schools participate in any of these in community engagements if they did they participated as residents like in a focus group or at a community meeting but no direct contact with the schools with regard to developing the plan okay thank you um i well well i i appreciate the concern again this is our strategic plan and it's about our decisions that we're making as a board

[02:33:59] and so what i look at is what are what is what are we trying to achieve and and and so and and what's going to drive us forward because the only people who are going to be held accountable for this are the people who work for the county not for the school system so what is it we're seeking to um direct our staff and this board and our actions uh throughout the implementation of this plan and to me is is is while i agree that the language is there and i appreciate that i i just

[02:34:36] want to make sure that the wording sounds like that we're not that that the school systems are purely in the driver's seat and we're attached on the trailer hitch um that but that we're actually coming together in a collaborative way to try to align our policies and procedures and with the school uh infrastructure programs because look i mean you know as we're looking at development in in in the Brentsville district you know what does that look like from a school infrastructure perspective and so you know those are things that we have to collaborate on and right now I you know I wish there was greater collaboration and I do have conversations with the superintendent I have

[02:35:14] the soup the school board member works in my office we have conversations about this every single day however from a broader school board perspective and school system perspective um you know there's still some challenges in trying to get to that real collaborative working together on how do we solve some of these issues um and again we talk about smart growth as one of these key objectives well we can't accomplish that without the schools we can't accomplish smart growth without the schools being helping us accomplish and meeting the

[02:35:48] infrastructure needs for the development. So again, I just am looking at a simple wording change that makes it look like we're partnering together rather than one leading and the other following. I'm going to make a quick language change because I hate passive tense. Establish a more collaborative relationship with county educational systems and principal and government policies and priorities I'm sorry I have to go to this one again I didn't take notes establish a more collaborative relationship with county educational systems hold on

[02:36:27] establish a more collaborative relationship between county educational systems where county educational systems are aligned I'm sorry I'm a little all over the place because I didn't take my notes I'm trying to do this off the top I generally I'm going to say I do like this sentence. And I'm going to make a few just wordsmithing changes. I think we're also getting down a rabbit hole a little bit with this. You know, certainly, I care about our schools. You

[02:37:02] know, certainly, many of us have had kids that go through Prince William County schools. We know exactly how important education is. I do think in general, we have a good rapport with our school board representatives. You know, I don't want to take away from that. And I don't want anyone to leave this day as feeling that we are downplaying our relationship with the school board with the superintendent i think everyone here agrees with that i just do like making a simple language change and i'll get back to you guys i do want a simple language change just so that shows that we do have a collaborative relationship um that we are cementing that and then again there's not

[02:37:41] one person leading the other we are equals and we are working together so i have we're and i have vega then i will chime in with my last points on this thank you madam chair i took a swing at the fiscal language and like so many things in the strategic plan i think a lot of what we're doing is restating the obvious putting it in writing and essentially making it policy so what i would suggest for the fiscal aspect of it is again restate the obvious ensure fiscal accountability of the school division regarding compliance with subsection or excuse me section 22.1 stroke 115

[02:38:18] of the code of virginia systems of accounting statements of funds availability and classification of expenditures because that's what we're not getting that we're supposed to get and i think that that's what we need to focus on is ensuring that we're getting the information from the school division with respect to the budget that they have not historically supplied to us and i think that needs to be a strategy. Otherwise, we're going to continue to spin our wheels.

[02:38:50] Sir Fizer Vega. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll just say that it's a little frustrating, you know, to hear that we're going down a rabbit hole. We don't have to be too technical or we're getting too into the weeds. Well, we have to. This is our strategic plan, which is a roadmap, a guiding document for the county for the future. So yes, we have to be specific if we are to align the vision and the whole goal and the whole purpose behind establishing a strategic plan and it was my understanding

[02:39:24] coming into this work session that that was going to be the case but it seems like you know we're kind of all over the place madam chair everybody's throwing different things and so i assume that some form of document is going to be created with the proposed uh recommendations you know it's not that any of us are picking just on on education i have comments and recommendations for other areas But, again, I just want to remind my colleagues on the dais that this is a very important work we're doing.

[02:39:52] Again, the strategic plan is the county's roadmap leading in for, what, the next four years at least. And so we have to be specific. We have to be clear. And I can't stress that enough. And I do have a question, Madam Chair, for Ms. Wallace, real quick.

[02:40:09] Has the school division ever partaken in any strategic planning process in the county? I'm not sure. The answer to that question, I can tell you for the two iterations of this process that I've been involved in, the answer is no. But I do think that moving forward, it's a good idea if we consider it in the future. Thank you. And I think it's a very good idea if we consider it in the future. When I say getting down a rabbit hole, I mean, I think sometimes we're reading things into language or maybe we're taking on certain personal thoughts. But this process is going to be messy because we have to have a discussion around this so this process is going

[02:40:49] to be a little messy it's not going to be clean it's not going to be pretty tied up with the bow but i do want to have these conversations i know that we do have real you know um differences on this board between how we view certain things you know so i am going to propose if you don't mind supervisor gordy something for us to consider and to be quite honest with you i think with these three questions, we're not going to wrap this all up pretty today. And this would warrant particularly when we're talking about fiscal accountability, that's going to require more discussion. And we're going to each have to have more time to look at that in particular so that

[02:41:24] we all understand, you know, what it is we're trying to get at. So please bear with me. Instead of established, I do want to continue the word foster. Foster a more collaborative relationship with county educational systems that aligns county government policies and and priorities with school infrastructure programs and services i will send that out to everybody so that we can all take a look at it um and if there is i see you again going for third round gordy i guess we should suspend the rules we're going to be here for a minute but do you have anything else do you want to you know i still feel that we're it sounds it's coming off is that they're leading and we're

[02:42:04] following um again i think it's about trying to create that understanding that we're working together in a collaborative relationship just as we were talking you know i mean it just proves the point the fact that they did not participate in this process um means we can do a better job of engaging them in the next one um as well as in our comprehensive plan uh our comprehensive plan um because again uh there there are some things i i believe the school should be more a part of the conversations that we're having on the county side um because they have I mean, they're affected by the decisions we make, and so they should weigh in.

[02:42:42] They should be a part of that, part of the conversation. But in terms of the fiscal accountability and, you know, and getting back to what Supervisor Weir was saying, we still have the opportunity to affect the KPIs and lay some of these things that we've talked about as key performance indicators.

[02:43:00] Instead of set, because, I mean, remember, we're talking about broad goals, not very specific tactical things here. The strategic plan is broad. And so to keep this statement broad without it getting too technical and down and very specific, you know, when you start looking at the KPIs, that's where you start to get to some very specific things.

[02:43:23] Yeah, that's where you get to the tactics. And so we can establish those in the KPIs as those come back to us from the staff, as the staff starts looking at this and putting together those KPIs. Those can become key elements of those parts of our ability to measure our success of achieving this goal.

[02:43:46] All right. Do we have anyone else here? I do feel like, again, we haven't landed the plane exactly on this one. We've had a lot of great discussion, but we haven't really landed the plane. And I think the places where we need to land a plane, again, is what is our objective and, you know, the accountability measures.

[02:44:08] So I'm kind of glad we did do this in a separate meeting because last week I think we wouldn't have run out of time. But, you know, who knows? Anyways, let's go back to quickly. I want to land a plane on the objective. I know Supervisor Gordy just mentioned that the objective, the one that I read, it still feels like, you know, they're pulling us along.

[02:44:28] are there any other thoughts on the objective come on everyone don't jump in all at once supervisor bode yeah thank you madam chair i it's it's hard to sort of work through this when we have sort of i wouldn't call them competing but different versions of the language that are out there um i took a shot on my own foster a more collaborative relationship where county government and government and policies and priorities and county education systems infrastructure and programs services align with each other i like i still feel like you and i are saying the same I think it's a different wordsmith thing.

[02:45:07] Mr. Gordy, since you brought this up, any questions on that, comments? You good? Okay. Is everyone else good? We're just going to kind of look around. You good? You good? Supervisor? What about the other aspect of it? We're going to get to that next. Bodie, you good? Angry, you good?

[02:45:24] Vega, you good? Franklin, you good? All right. Gordy, you good? All right. Supervisor Bodie, please say around that language because you have landed the plane for us on that one. All right. Looking at the request to add strategy under education, objective four, language that It increases financial accountability of the school's budget.

[02:45:44] This one, again, we're going to get a little tricky on that. What was it that you wanted to add or what do you felt, Supervisor? Madam Chair, I'll just make it very simple. And it's just, again, restating the obvious. Ensure fiscal accountability of the school division regarding compliance with 22.1-115 of the state code and just leave it at that.

[02:46:08] And for what it's worth, that section title is System of Accounting, Statements of Funds, and Available Classification of Expenditures, which they are supposed to provide with us as part of the budget process. So I'm honestly, I see where you're going.

[02:46:24] I'm a little nervous about that one because that was something I would rather have a little time to read through the state code and make sure I understand everything. And are you saying that that's not something, you're saying that's something we're not currently receiving from them? i would argue this county hasn't done that since prior to 1998 that's a very long time anyone else supervisor bailey and then i see franklin if you can jump into the queue that'd be great yeah i well supervisor no i'm i call it so yes okay um i um i can i uh i'd like to understand i agree with you madam chair i'd like to understand more in depth what's the purpose of

[02:47:01] that how do we use that as we support is that a collaborative tool that we can use is it just for review. Now that's the kind of thing that I want to understand. I know Bob's great on understanding state code and I rely on you, Bob, for that and helping me understand it. So I would like to have more in-depth understanding in terms of how do we use that and how does that meld into our strategic plan as we go forward and how does that help us to support our educational system in a collaborative way as we go forward.

[02:47:33] But right now, for me, it's a little confusing because I think, again, I go back to how they have been providing accountability by showing us their numbers when they weren't before. And they've been doing that for the last four or five years.

[02:47:53] So with the state code, I think they're adhering to it. So what's the purpose in us utilizing that? And how do we support them in our fiduciary responsibility in providing the funding? All right. Supervisor Franklin. Supervisor Weir, can you repeat actually what your suggestion was?

[02:48:12] Ensure fiscal accountability of the school division regarding compliance with 22.1-115 of the Code of Virginia. Yeah, and I would just say to that, I think going back to I would only be comfortable with that if we could have that discussion with our school system.

[02:48:33] And to talk about exactly what do those accountability measures look like exactly. Now, I'm sure they would argue that they will provide any information that we ask for. And, of course, they already have their own auditing that takes place. So I just guess my comments to that would be I'd like to just get them in here to hear their thoughts on that.

[02:48:53] I would simply state that they're statutorily mandated to do that. So let's get them in here and have the discussion. And so this is something, for me, a few more people in queue, and we can, I have a feeling this is something that the second part about the fiscal accountability, that might be something that we add at a later time.

[02:49:15] But I'm going to continue to go around to everyone who's in the queue, and then I will kind of straw poll this. All right, Supervisor Rear, you're back up, I believe, and then Gordy. Thank you, Madam Chair. The reason I bring it up is because it does all tie together. I use 22.1 stroke 115 because that's what they're supposed to supply us with, and they're supposed to supply us with that to be in concordance with another section of the code, which deals with the appropriations by us, the county, to the school division.

[02:49:47] And part of it, and I guess the most important part of that section of the code, and it's rather short, is the amount appropriated by the governing body for public schools shall relate to its total only or to such major classifications prescribed by the Board of Education pursuant to 22.1 stroke 115.

[02:50:08] We're not getting that and historically haven't gotten it, and the only reason we've gotten it for the last two years and in very, very basic form is because I have berated the CFO from the school division for not supplying it.

[02:50:24] And I think there are some members of this board that can remember when their budget presentation consisted of one page. Our principal function is a fiduciary one up here, and we can't do that job if they don't give us the proper amount of monies or account for how they're arriving at surpluses that we're not even informed of.

[02:50:52] Now, I just want to ensure that they're giving us the information we need so that we can comport with our responsibility under the code to fund them properly. And I would argue that we can't fund them properly unless we ensure that they are complying. Again, restating the obvious, but I think it needs to be in writing somewhere so that both we and the school board are on the same page as to what the expectation is come budget time.

[02:51:19] Supervisor Gordy. Thank you, Madam Chair. I've been reviewing the language at Supervisor Weir, And what I'm a little concerned about is that the language specifically relates to their reporting to the state board. And so I want to make sure that whatever that we're stating here, because if we say that they're in compliance, well, if they're in compliance with meeting the requirements to the state board, that doesn't necessarily mean us as a board.

[02:51:51] Or it may even mean, in one section, their own school board, that the school system reports to their school board. So I just want to make sure that, you know, however we manage this, that we're not writing something that they're actually doing in compliance with that code but doesn't require them to report to us.

[02:52:14] But if we want that reporting to be shared with us, that's what we need to be requesting. And even if it's, and as I'm looking at some of the language, they should be issuing these things on a monthly basis. Madam Chair, that's actually a very good point. And I kind of went, I just want to address.

[02:52:32] I do have Supervisor Anger who's been waiting patiently, so I'll get him, then you real quickly. Yeah, let's just cut to the chaser. Okay, we are under a revenue shared agreement with the schools. 57.23% of every dollar goes to the school.

[02:52:50] We technically don't even need to see a budget because we give them 57.23% and then they do what they have to do. It's almost like when they come here to present and say this is what they need, we're not really giving them any more than that because we're not giving them what they need.

[02:53:05] We're only giving them whatever that 57.23% is. And now I do know that we fund the schools in a little bit few other areas, but the reality is it's not over what that number is. Now, yes, we want to hear their budget presentation. We want to hear how the schools are going.

[02:53:22] And if there's going to be a higher need, then we're going to have a separate discussion. I think what you're doing here and what we're trying to control is figuring out what is the school's budget and money that they need and how do we manage that. And either the real discussion comes up in a revenue share agreement discussion and figuring out if we do something different.

[02:53:40] Or this discussion just doesn't seem organic to me because already the underlying issue is the shared agreement, the revenue shared agreement. So, you know, what are we talking about here? Well, I'm going to go to Supervisor Weir to finish up his point, Supervisor Bailey.

[02:53:56] I'm just going to say, just to keep this going, I feel like we've got the goal part, we've got the language. We're probably going to have to table or, you know, we're going to have to come back some other time about the financial accountability. Because I think some of us, you know, I really like to read up on this and make sure that I understand specifically what's being asked.

[02:54:14] So, Supervisor Weir. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm actually going to go back and rewrite it. But to several of the comments that were just made, we technically don't need to see the budget. The hell we don't. That is our job. And I am tired of hiding behind a revenue sharing agreement.

[02:54:34] We are required to review it. And not giving them more, if you look at this year's budget request from the school division and the budget that the county executive has presented, proposed budget, there's a $40 million difference between what the school division has asked for and what we have in the suggested budget.

[02:54:54] Which translates to roughly $67 million in taxes that we're going to be charging because we're giving them $40 million more in the proposed budget than they asked for. 67 million dollar total when you figure our half the revenue sharing agreement that has to match that's a significant number of pennies on the dollar and equates to an even higher tax increase on the residents than we should even be considering this is all about being fiscally responsible understanding the budget understanding how it works and if everybody just wants to give

[02:55:30] you know let's not let's not do our review let's not live up to our fiscal responsibilities our fiduciary responsibilities then i would suggest you resign and get off this board because that's that's job one all right i would ask members of the board um you know to we should watch what we say and we should you know i know that things get heated um i would be careful about what it is we say on the dais keep in mind that there are people watching at home and some of them might be young children um and i know that the budget brings out a lot of tensions for folks um but i just would

[02:56:04] like to remind people, you know, there are folks watching at home. With that, Supervisor Bailey. Thank you, Madam Chair. I think that, and really I agree with you, Madam Chair, in what you said about circling back and talking about the physical accountability from, again, from my one-eighth and sitting on this board, that each year the school board is more transparent in their physical allocations of funding, of what they're doing with the money. I think it's just something as

[02:56:42] simple as us collaborating more with them, inviting them into maybe a strategic planning session. I don't know if we extended the invitation. If we did, fine, they didn't show up, but let's do it again. But it's as simple as inviting them at the table for us to talk about our fiduciary responsibilities and building a better relationship and not taking this audience to attack them. Because I think we all know that we have to be physically accountable to how we're

[02:57:19] spending these funds. And I don't want our audience in the communities to think that we are not. And we are certainly compliant because we have a AAA rating in all that we do. Where's Michelle at Reed, and we are spending our monies accordingly. There is, in fact, a revenue share agreement in place. It is, in fact, not the best that some of our colleagues want, and we need to talk about that. We need to understand why. But I think the fiscal responsibilities, our fiduciary

[02:57:54] responsibility is being handled quite well, and there's no irresponsibility in what we're doing. And I certainly respect my colleagues' demonstrative upset about the budget and how we do it.

[02:58:13] But I think it's just talking to each other and moving forward. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. And so I'm going to land this plane. I think that, you know, and I'm just going to pull around. I think that this is something we can revisit. I don't think that this is the day we're going to come make a decision on this.

[02:58:29] I don't see if there's anyone who opposes moving forward. You know, otherwise, I will meet with you, Supervisor Rear, and I will meet with the county executive to see when we can circle back on this and any other points that we don't land on today.

[02:58:46] All right, so I appreciate everyone on that one. Let's go on to smart growth. Objective number two, ensuring the county's growth holistically addresses the impact on natural resources and infrastructure and enhances community and economic resilience.

[02:59:03] It looks like a request to add below strategy under smart growth, objective number two. This is a request from our Sustainability Commission. The strategy targets 75% of new residential growth to be located in activity centers near high-capacity transit nodes.

[02:59:20] All right. Supervisor Bode, you're first. You're first with your fingers in the queue. Thank you, Madam Chair. This one, I just have a question. I saw the resolution, and I sort of asked a couple members of the Sustainability Commission on what their intent was. I don't know if Ms. Wallace or anyone else who worked on this can comment on this.

[02:59:39] My confusion with this one is that it says activity centers near high-capacity transit nodes. Well, we have our COG-designated activity centers, and we have our county-designated activity centers. Those are not the same thing. We have about close to a dozen county-designated activity centers, and only, I want to say, two or three COG-designated ones.

[03:00:04] So did they specify when they sent this along which ones they meant? And again, in my conversation with some of the sustainability commissioners, they didn't tell me which one they had in mind when they said that. If I can, I'm going to ask Director Washington to come down just to make sure that for information we are providing the board with an answer to this question.

[03:00:27] I'll also say this is a little different from strategies that we have seen throughout the plan in that it is a target. And so I just want to keep that in mind as we have this discussion. Thank you.

[03:00:42] Tanya Washington, Planning Director. So, again, just providing some background information, I did a quick check on this one. So, first of all, the recommended strategy targets 75% of new residential growth to be located in activity centers near high-capacity transit nodes.

[03:01:00] That's very similar to an existing COG regional housing target. It just changes a couple of words. But in looking at this, I looked at COG has a definition for high-capacity transit nodes, and that includes metro rail, commuter rail, streetcar, bus rapid transit, and light rail.

[03:01:19] And I also, just a few minutes ago, checked COG's high-capacity transit map in terms of Prince William County. And the only ones that we have that meet that definition are VRE stations. And then if you look at the activity centers, there are only, for the quick check that I did, only a couple of, and these are the COG activity centers that are COG activity centers and have high-capacity transit nodes on their high-capacity transit maps.

[03:01:49] So it's basically two areas in the county. So that's just something to keep in mind. Even if all of the COG activity centers met the definition of high-capacity transit nodes, it's just the VRE stations in the county. So that's just something to keep in mind for this. All right, thank you.

[03:02:07] Supervisor Weirth and Franklin? Thank you, Madam Chair. While I like the strategy, agree with the strategy, I'm going to probably irritate Ms. Robel here. I don't know that it's legally impossible to enforce, but I suspect it's something close to that given by right use, entitlements, the comp plan, and the zoning ordinance.

[03:02:39] I don't know that putting that in there serves any purpose because I don't think there's any real way that we could enforce that target.

[03:02:52] So I'm kind of reluctant, as much as I like the strategy, I'm kind of reluctant to put something into a strategic plan that's by and large unattainable just given the land use, the way land use is, God, how do I say this without, the way land use is defined and regulated by the state and by the county.

[03:03:21] I just, I, perhaps, I would, before we do anything with this, I would actually prefer the county attorney to take a look at it, unless she already has and can opine on it, but I'm uncomfortable with it just from a legal standpoint.

[03:03:41] Madam Chair, members of the board, with regards to land use, obviously the state code and the county code are going to govern the zoning ordinance, and then your comprehensive plan is your guide. the strategic plan is an aspirational one. I do agree that an aspiration of targeting that amount may conflict with your zoning ordinance and your comp plan. It may be sending a mixed message. Your strategic plan is not legally enforceable, and I would advise you to comply

[03:04:15] with the state and county codes and your comp plan with regard to land use. I think the short version of that is next item please next speaker please and that would be supervisor franklin from the woodbridge district sure i just want to um point out in so i've said this publicly before a thousand times i've expressed this to you miss washington i'm very concerned about the language about uh putting uh residential growth next to activity centers near high capacity transit nodes because what that translates to me is put it all in Woodbridge, okay?

[03:04:54] And I'm very concerned about that because we already have a lot of density. Now, we've done some important infrastructure work, and so we're at a manageable rate, I think, with regards to traffic and congestion. But let's be careful when we have these type of targets because we need to make sure that, again, we're putting density across the county and not even if we're inadvertently putting it in one part of the county.

[03:05:20] That's why we're having a lot of these controversial discussions today because for a long time only one part of the county grew at a rapid rate. Now we're seeing growth everywhere, which is good, but let's make sure that we don't inadvertently continue to constrain parts of the county.

[03:05:37] The other thing I will say is we also need to be careful because we know that when we put housing near transit, that also skyrockets the cost of housing. So if we're going to do that, then we definitely need to make sure that we're talking about affordability because if you go to D.C., even if you go to Arlington, even some parts of Alexandria, you go to where there's residential next to the metro or next to one of their bus terminals, those are some of the most expensive housing in those areas.

[03:06:09] And so we also want to be careful in making sure that we're not creating an affordability issue with regards to this particular language as well. So I would actually rather, and I understand COG has it as a goal too, because on paper it makes sense.

[03:06:25] People should be able to live and then walk out of where they live and walk to a transportation node, go to work, go to the grocery store, go wherever. so it sounds good on paper and it sounds good ideologically but when you think about it in in actual uh practice uh it presents a lot of challenges so i would actually be in favor of removing this until uh we actually know what this means and what that looks like at least here in prince william county all right bailey thank you madam chair um i i agree with uh what my colleague

[03:07:01] just said, I think that this one scares me a little bit because it's a measurement, and I don't think we're there yet because we've got a lot of moving parts with the strategic plan, rezoning plan. We've got a lot of moving parts, and until we settle a little bit, that one makes me a little bit nervous, and so I'm not in support of that.

[03:07:22] I appreciate it, and it is an initiative from COG and from NBRC, if I'm not mistaken. It's in their documents as well, but we are not there yet, and so I'm a little uncomfortable with that.

[03:07:41] All right, Vega. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I guess this is a perfect example as to why unelected bureaucrats, if you will, that are comprised of COG know nothing about Prince William County and or our needs. and or if we've even assessed the situation.

[03:07:57] So, you know, to add to what my colleagues out of Woodbridge and Potomac have stated, my concern is not for a district specific, but my concern is for the county as a whole. Does our infrastructure even support this recommendation? And that's what we constantly find ourselves asking when we have to make a decision on a land use matter, right?

[03:08:18] How is that application going to negatively impact existing problems that we already have, whether it be school overcrowding or whether it be transportation challenges. And so I don't know that removing it altogether is the answer, but I certainly do want to revisit and have further conversation about this because, again, you know, there is no mention as to whether or not the existing infrastructure can even support this increase.

[03:08:43] All right. Gordy's up. Thank you, Madam Chair. As I was going through the comp plan and on the Planning Commission, correct me if I'm wrong, Ms. Washington, But my understanding was to target 75% of affordable housing near activity centers, not just all housing.

[03:09:03] Yes. Okay. So, yeah, I mean, because right now of the 6,000 homes proposed for Brentsville, only 17% are in the Sudley Corridor, which would be the closest thing that we could even begin to identify as an activity center.

[03:09:22] And so, I mean, I appreciate what the Sustainability Commission is trying to do, but I agree with all my colleagues. Every one of you has made a very valid point. We don't have the infrastructure. We don't have – it concentrates too much in too small of the areas within the county.

[03:09:41] It creates imbalance. But the issue of affordable housing, putting affordable housing in areas where it is much more walkable and transit-oriented is something I think makes a lot of sense. And so I just want to kind of have a reset on the 75% number and what that was referring to as we were going through the comp plan and working from cog numbers.

[03:10:09] But that was specifically related to affordable housing units. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes. All right, I'm going to jump in real quick, then I have one last person before we land this plane. i think this is just simply too prescriptive i understand the goals i understand what they're getting at but i don't think that this is the right strategy i think it's overly broad i don't think it really applies well to prince william county um so and it seems like most of us do not agree with this i don't know the way it is written it seems like the majority of the board does not agree with me please raise your hand if i'm wrong because after this you know i'll call on the last

[03:10:47] speaker, but I think that it's fair to say that we can exclude this from the plan. So, Supervisor Franklin, did you have anything else? Sure. I just want to point out, A, I do support COG, and B, as we talk about affordability, I also want to point out that is an important distinction. That's an important distinction there, and I'm glad you brought that up. But also, the Woodbridge District has the most affordable units in the county, so it still presents a problem from from my point of view as well so just wanted to point that out all right thank you so very much

[03:11:22] we are not going to add that end to let's go to goal number three environment i'm not going to read all of this but you know it is up in the screen and most of us have printed out packets but it's request to add below objective and strategies under environment goal and this is coming from our office of emergency management um i don't know if anyone has any thoughts questions suggestions all right supervisor weird and bode thank you madam chair um i think

[03:11:58] this is probably the wrong time of the year to be starting looking at floating a new bond or funding a new bond but with respect to some of the other stuff continue to update maps and monitor flood prone locations sorry isn't that the county and the state's job to do anyway i mean aren't we required to do that um working to identify funding for projects that would eliminate i mean that seems like it's already something staff should be doing um and i just presume that they

[03:12:38] are um and working with emergency management to identify and implement mitigation actions i mean that's sort of my expectation of what they're supposed to do so why are we restating this or why would we restate this as a strategic goal when it's, quite frankly, my expectation of the division? Supervisor Gordy, we are, I'm sorry. If it would be okay, I'd like to invite Mr.

[03:13:07] Brian Meisner up here to share a little bit of information. This objective and strategies are in our current strategic plan, and there is a specific reason why Brian actually asked that it be added to our next one as well. Good afternoon, Brian Meisner, your emergency Management Coordinator. So specific to the item that Ms. Wallace just mentioned, number four, that does allow us to tie our strategic plan to the Northern Virginia Hazard Mitigation Plan, which is a FEMA-required planning document that the community must participate in to maintain eligibility for the National Flood Insurance Program. Number two and three are items that

[03:13:43] we're doing above and beyond the existing services provided by the state and FEMA, which is a kind of a once-every-10-20-year look at the overall flood plan. So it's tracking specific instances of flooding either where a rescue has occurred with our fire rescue department or a road has been closed because of flooding uh item number one uh again as ms wallace mentioned was carried over from last time i believe that was community input um and not something that was specifically requested by uh county staff in the current plan madam chair if i may um with respect to the fema funding is it mandatory that it be part of our strategic plan or we just or do

[03:14:22] we just need you to need authorization or direction from us. So participation in the hazard mitigation plan is what's mandatory, and that plan was brought before the board and the board adopted. So that is what's required for participation in NFIB. Okay, so then we don't, you've already been directed with respect to number four.

[03:14:41] It's already taken care of. I mean, we participated in that plan. There's a table of mitigation actions in that plan that we should work collectively with our stakeholders to help implement. okay i think the answer is yes number four is probably not as necessary i mean we can talk about the other ones but if we've already authorized step four i don't i i don't see us withdrawing such authorization i mean and it seems to me that it's just you know part and parcel of

[03:15:16] the county's responsibility and our responsibility uh i yeah the strategic plan is restating the obvious on a lot of things but this seems like it's getting way down in the weeds on on a policy that I think we've already implemented for my two cents. All right Supervisor Bode. Thank you Madam Chair. Um was actually just to say what you just said so I agree with you that it might seem a little redundant but like you said at the outset with the previous goal at the beginning of this we stay in the obvious because to me we should be having a little bit clearer um strategies

[03:15:54] or strategic thinking around flood mitigation and mitigating impacts of flooding. The first one, I know it came from the community, I think I heard the first time around. I have a little bit of issues with that because to me, I know this isn't the intent, but it kind of reads like, hey, development community, you can sort of subpar your flooding mitigations and then the county will come in and step in and bail you out if you don't do the right job so I think we could probably play with the wording on that one a little bit but I do like

[03:16:29] two three and four um because really and I know this is just a Prince William County issue but localities all throughout the region the country are seeing more severe flooding every year we know that you we can have philosophical disagreements on why that might be but the main protocol evidence we have is that weather and severe storms are having more and more frequently and things that we're supposed to be a thousand-year storms, we're seeing a lot more frequently things, we're supposed to be a hundred-year storms, we're seeing every other year, what have you.

[03:16:59] So that being said, I do think it would be good for us to add some, like I said, more concrete guidance around looking at anticipating and mitigating flooding impact to our communities because we see it happen more often and we know that there are parts of the county, county-wide, that they currently don't have great mitigation of flooding and our shared constituents suffer because of it.

[03:17:24] Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you so much. And Supervisor Vega. I guess it's just an issue that I want to raise in terms of there really being no clear funding or feasibility study mentioned in this. And, you know, whenever we set these goals, I'm always of the opinion that if we're going to set a goal it's because we're going to achieve that goal.

[03:17:46] And I've often said that goals just get thrown, you know, left and right from the dais. They're moonshot goals that we would like to achieve. But realistically speaking, they're just words on the paper, right? And so the funding component of this worries me. I know that Supervisor Weir mentioned the flooding bond that is also listed here.

[03:18:06] But I would say to that point that there are still no details on potential financial impact or cost benefit analysis even to that proposal. And so I don't know, Madam Chair, you know, if that's a concern that anybody else on the board shares, but I do think that, you know, we should take that into consideration because how are we going to achieve these goals if we haven't thought about the financial impact, right?

[03:18:30] Is it even feasible? So that's the point that I was trying to make in regards to that. And then the question that I do have is we started this process, what, Kay, about a year or so ago? Yes. Okay. Data centers were hot. If you take a deep dive into the strategic plan, there are dozens of recommendations in terms of, you know, sustainability and things that have to do with the environment, you know, talking about making our entire fleet, you know, EV and this and that and the other.

[03:18:59] But not once do I see anything being mentioned in regards to data centers and their impacts to the environment or any recommendations as to how to mitigate those concerns or to even begin talking about it. Is there a reason for that? I cannot answer that question. I would defer to CXO Shorter for that.

[03:19:20] This is a reflection of the process that we went through last year. So ultimately, the language that we use, the follow-up that we'll do in terms of execution, this is a reflection of what we went through by way of the various town halls and other feedback forums.

[03:19:39] So I don't know. I know I'm not answering your question. You're not. But if I could add something else to that, though, the bulk of what's been recommended didn't come from the community engagements, it came from the staff and the consultants.

[03:19:55] And considering what an important issue the data center industry is, and everything that comes with the industry, one would think that this would be something important to be included into our strategic plan as we think about, right, the next three, four, five years. And so, again, Madam Chair, Is there room for us to amend this?

[03:20:17] This is the board's document to consider now. At this point, we are making a recommendation, and it is, like the budget, a document for the board to consider. Thank you, and I'll just say, Madam Chair, because all of it matters.

[03:20:35] It will impact us achieving these goals or not. I appreciate that. Before I go to Supervisor Baylor, I just want to say, You know, after we go through this goal, I'm going to open the floor up for our general comments and discussion. So if you want to raise that point then, that would be a great time to initiate the discussion.

[03:20:54] But with this, Supervisor Bailey. Thank you, Madam Chair. Did Brian leave? Where did he go? No, he's right there. Oh, there he is. Okay. I had him bad glasses on. One of the things, Brian, that I just thought of this, and I just need your comments on this.

[03:21:13] One of the points, hopefully it can be point number five for my colleagues to consider, is that I wrote down because of something we experienced in the past. I said, consider, improve, strategic, preparedness, processes, and funding.

[03:21:31] And thank you for that, Supervisor Vega. For unforeseen health crises for the future and immediate execution. And that came from what we went through with COVID and how we needed to be prepared for that and how you had to execute in so many different ways because that's something that we had never considered.

[03:21:55] And I'm kind of surprised that you didn't put that up there because you're brilliant and you usually think of everything. But please give me comments on that because I think that there needs to be a strategic plan for that if it ever happens in the future. So we'll defer to Mr. Shorter and Ms. Wallace, but I think if we need to, we can probably tweak the language a little bit under safe and secure community.

[03:22:17] I know we have kind of a broad all-hazard statement under there, But if there's specific public health concerns that you still have, I think that would probably be the more appropriate place to have this. In a different place. Okay. That just came to me, so thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you, and that's a great point, but thank you. So looking at environment, the way I see this, because this came from our Office of Emergency Management, I'm inclined to include all of it.

[03:22:38] And, you know, supervisor, what he mentioned about a flood bond, you know, maybe this isn't the time to, you know, float a bond, but it's just saying considering it, consider establishing. So I'm okay with that because we're not making it a definitive decision. It's just let's throw that thought out there in case something we ever need to do this.

[03:22:56] I feel it's more of a placeholder. I don't know if there's anyone else who has any nays, but I just kind of want to check anyone has any nays because I'm inclined to include this as a whole. Any nays? Speak now before I ever hold your peace. All right, so we are good with adding these strategies to our third goal of environment.

[03:23:17] with that i'm going to move forward and i'm going to open this up for general discussion all right come on y'all let's go i'm ready all right i guess nothing else all right oh wait nope all right it looks like we good all right we good he's good well why are y'all getting cute thank you okay supervisor bailey you broke the tie um first of all okay beautiful job Thank you for your presentation.

[03:23:51] This process was a whole lot easier to follow than our previous process. It was tighter, and we needed tighter. So I really appreciate that. I support the resolution, if it's not too early to say that.

[03:24:10] But here's the other thing. Enlighten me in what I just said to Brian about safe and security. Is that something that I recommend that I add now, or we wait? There, if you check under goal number six in safe and secure community, objective number five talks about anticipating planning and using a government-wide approach to major disasters and critical incidents, which would include what you spoke about, Supervisor Bailey.

[03:24:38] Okay. However, if you would like to add some type of a specific strategy, then, of course, that's your prerogative to recommend it. Okay, and I can do that now or later? If you have something specific, now's the time, because after this, we're closing out, moving out. Yeah, we're moving forward.

[03:24:53] Well, I want to add that, if I'm not too presumptive. I want to add that because we need to have a strategy in place in case of a health crisis. And can you read that again for us? Yes, I can. It says, and it may be a little wordy, and I don't mind you taking the words out, but it says, consider improved strategic preparedness processes and funding for unforeseen health crises for the future and immediate, with COVID.

[03:25:23] Immediate execution all right, and if you also don't mind if you would send it around to everyone on the board Just to kind of take a look supervisor. We're sure I would suggest the easiest thing to do is just add Unforeseen health crises to major disasters and critical incidents and then it's covered How do you feel about that quickly supervisor? I can support that. All right anyone else? All right. We sound very good Thank you so very much. So to be clear Here we're going to add that wording to the objective, number five, Supervisor Reyes' suggestion.

[03:26:00] Okay, that works. All right, thank you. Supervisor Vega. Thank you, Madam Chair. Kay, I just want to thank you for making yourself available to the dozens of questions that I had throughout this entire process.

[03:26:20] And I also want to thank my appointee for the contributions added to this discussion and ensuring that we actually had this discussion here today. So just thank you and everybody that took a part in drafting this for us to take into consideration today.

[03:26:36] And, Supervisor Bailey, and then after that, we have Gordie if we can get a resolution from somebody. Absolutely. I just want to thank my appointee. Thank you, Supervisor Vega, for that. My appointee for attending today and for your hard work. Patrice, I really, really appreciate it.

[03:26:51] Thank you. All right. Gordie. Madam Chair, I just also want to thank Kay. You've been herding cats. It's fine. And you have done it with a smile. So thank you. I applaud you for how you have managed this and how you have been patient with all of us.

[03:27:13] And you've just done a fantastic job. So I just wanted to say that. And, Madam Chair, I support the resolution and would make a motion that we adopt this as our strategic plan. Second. Wait, hold on one second.

[03:27:40] All right. We're good. All right. We have a motion. Who seconded it? I'm sorry. All right. Bailey seconded it. Any further discussion? Supervisor Franklin. Yeah. I just want to, again, thank you, Ms. Wallace, for the opportunity to really have a joint effort in putting forth our vision for this county as well as our individual districts as well.

[03:28:03] we had some very successful town halls in the Woodbridge district we were joined by our school board member and so we had some pretty productive conversations and this is kind of the process that that it should be and we've been doing this for for a couple of years now and so you you know how how we operate and you've been very patient with that but wanted to thank you and I don't see any members of your staff here but want to thank them for the help in setting up those town halls and those productive conversations I think it really makes our residents feel like they're part of the process. And I saw some people come out from Woodbridge that I had never met before, and I was through this process. So thank you for that.

[03:28:42] Thank you. All right, Bodie. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to sound like a broken record, but I wanted to thank you, Kay, County Exec, and all the team on the county side that helped put this together. I also wanted to thank all the appointees to the advisory committee, including my uncle and the ones that we have in the audience from the other districts. It feels like, you know, This is some of our second time doing this.

[03:29:05] It feels quite a bit different. I'm sure part of that is because a global pandemic didn't happen this time, which derailed a lot of it. But I think that we're getting closer to a better process. We'll have to just, everything else, you know, it's iterative.

[03:29:20] We have to see what works, what doesn't, what gets broken by outside forces, what doesn't. But I wanted to commend everyone who's been involved up in this point for their involvement. I will say, and I've said this the first time, I said this again this time, my biggest hope for this is that it doesn't become another policy or a piece of paper on a shelf.

[03:29:42] It's great that we go through this process, it's great to hear from folks what they want, it's good for us to collaborate even from the dais on wordsmithing down to different words and whatnot, but if those things just sit on a shelf and we don't actually implement them, we don't track their progress, we don't try to make tweaks when you don't meet that progress again i feel like it's all it's all just an exercise and not really something that's really really going to move the ball forward or move the needle for our residents so i as much as i can again emphasize that that follow-up and that follow-through is a lot more important in my one-eighth of this board than everything else that came before and i hope that you know as we can

[03:30:21] continue on once we adopt this god willing we do that today one we have that follow-up meeting among the folks that still had outstanding items but more importantly we have ways of continuing to support you all making sure that we implement this thank you madam chair all right super nice to hear thank you madam chair given that everyone else has publicly thanked their appointees so as not to get screamed at by my chief of staff when i get back to the office although my appointees know it i'd like to thank rachel ellis and jessica grove and rachel is here tonight uh they did put a considerable amount of time and i also want to thank the

[03:30:55] gainesville residents who showed up and to my understanding the largest number of people at one of the at the community meetings um for showing up and giving their input although i suspect it wasn't quite in the manner that you wanted them to do it that night i think it sort of threw all the rules out the window uh but i would like to thank everybody for their input all right thank you so very much and i am also going to take the um time to thank you i know this has taken a lot of time you know i'm sure that you have eight different personalities or eight different individuals and 76 different personalities on this board i say it all the time because it's true

[03:31:34] you never know which personality you're going to get in any given moment so but i do thank you and i want to thank my appointees and that's ruth balton from gainesville and our school board member justin will from the potomac district and i want to thank everyone who took the time to respond to this it's really hard to get citizen engagement and input it's very hard so I appreciate the people who have come here tonight and the people who have given us their input and with

[03:32:01] that let's go ahead and vote on this so we can move on to the next all right thank you all very much I know where you live no that's not all right anyway I withdraw my motion we are going on to supervisor's time um we first um i don't have i guess we don't have anyone to to vote in so i just want to let you know i'm going to go around the horn starting with supervisor gordy and then go

[03:32:39] in blah blah blah when it gets to my time i'll say my piece and then we are going to talk about setting tax rates so guys yes all right we're going to have lots of fun i know you're looking at me funny but i'm going to ignore you supervisor vega so let's go into gordy thank you madam chair I just want to, the last two meetings I had talked about, the Virginia State University Small Farm Orientation Program, it was held virtually last Wednesday.

[03:33:05] We had 21 Prince William County residents participate in the program. It looks like they were from all over the county, and so that was exciting. But there were a total of 67 total participants from around the Commonwealth, and I really appreciate Virginia State University.

[03:33:23] and their small farm team and all the work that they did to provide that orientation. Great job and much appreciation to them. Yesterday I had a meeting with Josh with our Area Agency on Aging, trying to get those words out, and with Scott Crockett, my appointee, to the commission.

[03:33:50] And, you know, they mentioned that we have 101,000 senior citizens in Prince William County and that, you know, we're really challenged in trying to meet the needs, particularly compared to other jurisdictions in providing things like senior centers and things like that.

[03:34:16] And I really appreciate all the work that they're trying to do to meet the needs. But I think as we just adopted our strategic plan and we talked about this being a great place to retire and age in place, I think we're going to have to take some serious consideration of what that looks like going forward and trying to help meet the needs of folks.

[03:34:38] And so look forward to having conversations about that. And I just want to close by, and I really hope my colleagues take this in the spirit in which it is intended, because I do believe we as a board, we respect one another, and we've done a great job of respecting one another and treating each other with respect.

[03:35:04] But something happened last week with someone that I care deeply about, And that's my chief of staff, Erica Tredenik, who's also our school board member. And, you know, as we think about Black History Month, and I just want to say it doesn't matter whether you're a Republican, Democrat, or independent.

[03:35:28] We should recognize people for who they are. And I recognize and I respect each and every one of my colleagues for who they are, the value that they bring to this county. And I just want to thank Erica and the entire school board for the work that they do for our community.

[03:35:49] But my hope and prayer is that as a community we can elevate ourselves to be more respectful and put the partisanship aside so that we can get to finding real solutions to the issues and the challenges that we face as a community.

[03:36:09] And so with that, I just yield back, Madam Chair. Thank you so very much. And we're going to go on to Supervisor Franklin. Sure, yes, thank you. On Friday, February 21st, I had the opportunity to serve as a judge for the 4-H Contest Day program sponsored by the Virginia Cooperative Extension.

[03:36:30] The students' presentations were outstanding and had a great time watching our students exemplify great oratorical skills, fashion skills, and the likes. And so thank you to the 4-H club for inviting me and had a wonderful time and looking forward to working with them moving forward.

[03:36:49] I also want to acknowledge Voice's annual meeting where they discussed affordable housing in particular. I was not able to attend but wanted to just recognize that as they've been fighting alongside us to get more affordable housing here in the county and across the Commonwealth.

[03:37:07] And to that end, I will be hosting a roundtable on April 23rd to discuss the county's proposed affordable housing ordinance and other housing issues. And we will provide more details as they become available. Tomorrow, I will also be hosting my annual Woodbridge District Black History Month program at 7 p.m. virtual.

[03:37:27] The topic will be black professionals working in public safety and the law. Our panelists will be U.S. District Judge Rossi Alston of the Eastern District of Virginia. Lieutenant Astrid Robinson of the Prince William County Police Department. And we were hoping to be joined by Sheriff Glenn, but tomorrow is his birthday, so we gave him the day off.

[03:37:48] And so instead, we're going to be joined by our very own Victor Angry, who has served in our fire department. And I'm looking very much so forward because we've had a lot of discussions nationally about the importance of public safety and what does that mean to our communities, particularly communities of color in the black community.

[03:38:07] And I am so honored to be joined by some black professionals in public safety to talk about their experiences and really the reason why they decided to serve in public safety. So looking forward to that discussion, and I hope that you all will join us as well. And with that, I yield. Thank you.

[03:38:27] All right. Supervisor Vega. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a few things to share. I, too, was a judge for the 4-H contest that took place around McCourt this past Friday. Madam Chair, you were also in attendance, so thank you for attending. It was pretty remarkable to see seniors, juniors, and even elementary-age children come before us adults as judges on the cuff and come up with a speech on a topic that they didn't even know about.

[03:38:54] And so it's truly remarkable to be a part of a community here in Prince William County where we have, you know, not just young talent, but talent at all ages. So thank you again to Mary Beth for the kind invitation, and I, too, look forward to future competitions. I want to also congratulate House of Mercy for their ribbon cutting and blessing of their mobile pantry van.

[03:39:14] For those that don't know, House of Mercy is a community partner. They're located over in Supervisor Gordy's district, and they truly have an incredible operation. So if you haven't heard of them, I would recommend that you go online and check them out. And again, congratulations on your mobile pantry.

[03:39:31] We had a great time stuffing the van, so they had a bunch of canned goods to be able to share with the community. And then lastly, I will not be able to attend because we have an evening session today at 7 p.m., but First Lady Suzanne Yunkin is going to be in Prince William County this evening.

[03:39:48] She is going to be over at Potomac Valley Church with a group of phenomenal women talking about the well-being and dangers of fentanyl. So for those that are watching at home and those in attendance here tonight, if you're interested in going, again, 7 p.m. tonight at Park Valley Church.

[03:40:06] That's all I have, Madam Chair. Thank you. And we're going to go over to Supervisor Bailey. Oh, switch a room, Madam Chair. Okay. Well, good afternoon, everyone. And on February 20th, I had the wonderful opportunity to have my Black History Month program focused on the first in our community to serve here in Prince William County.

[03:40:31] And so we did a podcast with Mayor Michelle Davis-Younger and Madam Chair Jefferson. And we girls had a great time. And so thank you so much for your contribution to our community. On the 20th, also, I had the opportunity to have dinner with NVBIA for their Presidential Board of Directors installation.

[03:40:54] Congratulations to Safe Rahman, who has been very instrumental in helping us to understand the navigation and crafting of our affordable housing ordinance here in Prince William County. So he's going to be the president, so congratulations to you.

[03:41:10] And then on the 22nd, I was a guest panelist with the Omega Sci-Fi Black History Month program, where we had the voices of changes, and I participated with my regional colleague, Rodney Lusk, and also the new mayor for Alexandria, Alicia, Aaliyah Gaskins.

[03:41:30] And it was a very good program in Fairfax, Virginia. And then on the 23rd, the Dunfreystown Township had their annual Black History Month program, and Madam Chair and I attended, and it was great.

[03:41:45] It was entitled African Americans and Labor. And so it was at the Little Union Baptist Church, and it included residents from Bates Town, and we really focused on the old cabin branch and Clark School environment back in the day, and we had dancers and youth participating, and it was a great event.

[03:42:03] Then on the 25th, today, as Supervisor Vega said, our own First Lady of the State of Virginia, Mrs. Youngkin, is going to be at Potomac Valley Church, and she is, again, focusing on our youth and fentanyl in our neighborhoods and also focusing on women and girls of Northern Virginia.

[03:42:24] That's her theme, Strengthening the Spirit of Women and Girls. And she's bringing with her Janet Kelly, Secretary of Health and Human Services, And Carolyn Cook, author of Hungry, Celebrating Life After Overcoming an Eating Disorder.

[03:42:40] So she is very much focused on our youth and women in the community. So on the 26th, upcoming events, Black History Month at Dale City Elementary School. I will be the guest speaker at the Dale City Elementary School for Black History Month.

[03:42:58] I'm excited about that. And then on the 26th, tomorrow, Chair Jefferson, I won't steal your thunder, but I will be there to support you at Tone Hall at Pally Elementary. On the 27th, I'll also be visiting with Senators Kane and Warner for their annual Black History Month breakfast.

[03:43:19] And then on the 27th, my staff and I look forward to, oh, we're going to go to the breakfast with Senator Kane and Warner, pardon me. And then on the 28th, I'll be on the panel at Potomac Senior High School, honoring them for Black History Month.

[03:43:38] And I appreciate the invitation. And lastly, I want to congratulate Reverend Michael Sessoms, who is going to be the new co-chair for Voice. He's the pastor for Little Union Baptist Church, and we appreciate his service as well. Lastly, I just want us to continue praying for those federal workers and other employees within the federal government who's lost their jobs and their lives are at risk of uncertainty.

[03:44:07] And so we just have to keep them in our prayers. And, Madam Chair, that's all that I have. Thank you. All right. Supervisor Ware. Thank you, Madam Chair. First off, I just wanted to give everybody a heads up. I'll be bringing a directive I've been working on with the CXO next week. Essentially, as soon as I clean it up with the county attorney's office, but it's going to reference the facts that residents of all three towns, all four towns in the county pay taxes and our county residents, and it's going to suggest amending the MOU between the police departments for the towns and the county with respect to use of the firing range

[03:44:45] and the county absorbing the cost so that the residents of the towns don't pay their taxes twice for it. And the only other thing I've got is this. We've been getting a lot of phone calls in my office with respect to a variety of land use questions. And I just want to tell the residents, you know, I don't really care what district you're in.

[03:45:07] You've got a question, please feel free to call us and ask us. You know, it's going to be confidential between you and I if that's the way you want it to be. But our office is there to answer your questions to the best that we can. sometimes all you're going to get is an opinion but part of our function is you know if you want to know what something is zoned as currently what something is long-range land do you see as what you know bounce some ideas off it please feel free to call us we'll never turn you down thank you all right supervisor bode thank you madam chair a few housekeeping items first wanted to put in

[03:45:45] my notice of intent to appoint paul amira to the idea and madeline start to the board of equalization I'll make sure that my staff gets those resumes over to the clerks as soon as possible. Wanted to just go over some of the, one event I went to last week and then a couple on the horizon.

[03:46:03] Sweet Spire went to the open house the applicant held last week on Wednesday. Not a great turnout, but I still appreciate the applicant continuing to do outreach on that project. I know folks literally across the street in County Center have been sort of top of mind for them for the past couple years.

[03:46:19] We continue to work with everyone on that project moving forward. Tomorrow evening, for folks who care about Route 28, I know that's been on the newsreels lately, there will be a VDOT-hosted town hall on the Innovative Intersection Design public hearing from 6 to 8 at the Manassas Park City Hall.

[03:46:41] I will be in attendance. I know, again, there's been a lot of buzz around Route 28, especially around the board's decision a couple weeks ago. But wanted to just make sure that people do know that there are still things being done for Route 20 to alleviate traffic congestion out on it. And I know that this board is committed to doing something about it as well.

[03:46:58] Then Dumpster Day, the Occoquan District first dumpster day of the year is not for another few months, but wanted to plant the flag out there now. It's going to be on the morning of June 7th of this year. So dumpster day site to be determined. But I know that there's always a lot of interest around our dumpster day events.

[03:47:17] We will be talking to folks about having the shred truck out there, some of the recycling folks that we had out there last year as it pertains to furniture and other things, but it will be a good time. So, again, the morning of June 7th. Final thing I wanted to say, as I know, as Supervisor Bailey mentioned earlier, there's a lot of folks that are community members, neighbors, loved ones that are going through some chaotic times right now in regards to what's going on in D.C. around people being laid off, federal funds freeze.

[03:47:47] losing positions being frozen people taking decisions and then finding out that those decisions weren't necessarily what they thought they were going to be um i appreciate again the county exact working with his team and everyone else putting up and standing up a resource page to do that um i know that you know there's only so much we can do uh in the face of things going on from the federal government but as much as we can continue to make sure folks know um as was said last week of what's even just available currently let alone what can be done to help make sure that as folks go through these sort of difficult chaotic times that we're doing everything we can as a locality understanding that we do have an outsized number of our again

[03:48:27] friends and neighbors and loved ones who work or who have worked for the federal government for some time so again thank you madam chair all right supervisor angry thank you madam chair once again i want to congratulate uh president safe ramen on his uh term term as the mvbia Also, Streetlight Ministries, I want to thank that entire team over there under Gabriel.

[03:48:51] They put on a 5K walk for the coldest night of the year on Saturday. I believe they raised, I don't know exactly the number, but they raised a lot of good funds over there for that. It was kind of a last-minute thing, and so great event.

[03:49:07] I'm happy I was able to attend, and congratulations to them for putting that on. So this 27th, I guess that's $28,000. $28,000, wow, thank you. Raised $28,000, that's amazing. So the 27th, Thursday, the reschedule of the Black History Month program for the county.

[03:49:24] That's going to be over at the Hilton Performing Arts Center. I forget the time on that, but just know that Thursday coming up is the county's Black History Month program, Hilton Performing Arts Center. Also, the Friday the 28th, Neyapsco Elementary is having their career day again.

[03:49:40] Always a great time to go over there and talk to the young folks about current careers and their futures and what they want to do. And then one March, the Saturday, is the Women's Small Business Expo at BFW Post 1503. If you're in the area, please stop by.

[03:49:56] Thank you, Madam Chair. All right. Thank you so very much. I will see you on Friday. I love career days. But tomorrow evening at 630 at Patti Elementary, I am hosting a Montclair listening session. for all you millen clarions and okay you know if you live in the area you can come by too i ain't gonna stop you um on saturday march 15th at 3 p.m in the board chambers i'm hosting local government day again that is for middle school students and it's really designed to introduce them to local um government and hopefully maybe spark an interest in public service in some of them um i do have a quick notice of intent i would like to announce my notice of intent to

[03:50:34] appoint Lisa Clymer to the community service board. We have as a board, we haven't done too many board dinners, but we are going to do one tonight. After this, we're going to go to Carrabba's. If we have time, I mean, I'm going to try to make this quick. I did say at the top that, you know, we were going to talk about the rate, you know, maybe discuss advertising rates. I know a few people felt that they weren't ready to have that discussion. I'm just kind of looking around the board we can do it next week we can quickly do it today anyone dying i don't hear any direction all right next week all right next week it is so we will do it next week okay you know folks we got

[03:51:13] a little bit more time to wrestle i mean honestly with advertising the rate i really want to go to the highest rate that we can because we can always go down we can't go up but we can go down so with that we are going to go to carabas um hold on something i have to do i am so sorry chair jefferson supervisor gordy did you have a notice of intent that you were going to do today we i think we got bad tom mr snow perhaps no mr snow sam snow and because of snow yes yes thank you

[03:51:51] I'll get my staff and I include that. My notes, I know you're listening. Yes, notes of intent to appoint Mr. Snow to the Board of Equalization. Due to the snow. So, yes, that's right.

[03:52:07] Correct. Thank you. Thank you. And we will update. I don't know if that's on the next week's agenda, but thank you so very much. We are in adjournment until 7 o'clock. Recess. Recess. I'm sorry. We're in recess. Like we're going to go out and play. Okay? We're going to go out and play. Recess. Thank you. Karabas. Bye.

[03:52:56] I've got to go.

[03:53:51] Everyone can hear that? I hope so. Are you okay, Bob? All right. Welcome back, everyone. We are now moving on to item 9A. Mr. Shorter, I'll kick it to you to tee it up.

[03:54:07] Thank you very much, Madam Chair, board members. Happy to be having part two, really, to the budget conversation that we started last week. I want to turn it over to Dave Sinclair, Director of our Office of Management and Budget.

[03:54:23] I'll say this, and I know I said it last week, Dave and his entire team have really worked hard to make sure that we are here at this point, both on the capital side and on the operating side, and so I just want to take an opportunity to thank Dave before he gets started for all the work.

[03:54:40] Dave, turn it over to you now. Good evening, Chair Jefferson, members of the board. My name is Dave Sinclair. I'm the Director of Office of Management and Budget. Before I begin, I'd just like to publicly thank two people massively responsible for what you're about to see tonight. We have Sandra Melgar and Matt Corneliusen of our office, so none of this is possible without them. So tonight we're going to talk about the proposed capital improvement program that is going to focus on future projects. We're not going to be talking about

[03:55:17] too many current projects. You receive regular updates on those. This is just an introductory slide. What is the CIP? It is the six-year plan for county facility and infrastructure projects.

[03:55:35] It is guided by the board's adopted policies regarding the strategic plan, the comprehensive plan, and debt management policies, specifically in our principles of sound financial management. The CIP is funded many ways. I have a pie chart later on that describes those, but here's a list of what you're seeing. But also, it has important links to the county's annual operating budget that the county executive presented last week, as well as significant impacts to the county's five-year

[03:56:11] plan. And I'll review those from a monetary standpoint as we conclude the presentation tonight. And built into that is debt service and facility and program operating costs. And we'll go over those differences between a capital budget and these costs that impact the operating budget and five-year plan. But first, we're just going to go through, I think we have four or five slides here of projects that have been completed or are expected to be completed by this summer.

[03:56:44] And as Mr. Shorter alluded to last week, county staff has been very, very busy delivering projects to the community and the board. Obviously, the crisis receiving center is expected to be occupied this summer. We've made quite a few investments in trails in the county. You're seeing two bridges associated with the Occoquan Greenway that has either been completed or will be completed very, very shortly. Moving on, Helwig Park, field number three. I think that is a bond referendum project

[03:57:24] as well as the Howison Park Concessions Building. These are bond referendum projects authorized by voters from 2019 that staff is delivering. We have ARPA-funded projects, as you can see, at Joseph Redding Park.

[03:57:42] But also we have, excuse me, a little too fast there, Long Park intersection improvements, Page End Lane, Right Turn Lane, Signals, Signalization, and North Woodbridge, Annapolis Way extended by way of mobility projects that are coming online to the community. This project in the lower right-hand corner has been a long time coming. The Pat White Elevator Project is,

[03:58:13] I believe that's about completed, and this project specifically addresses those projects that are either completed or will be completed with ARPA funds during this summer. Okay, so the six-year proposed CIP is a $1.2 billion plan. I do need to tell the board up front this does include the Route 28 bypass project. After we take that out, as the board directed on February 4th, this

[03:58:49] slide is actually updated to be a little over $1 billion, $1.05 billion to be precise. It is funded by many, uh, different sources. Uh, the primary version, uh, funding source is, uh, debt financing with route 28 bypass excluded. Uh, the amount of debt comprises about 39%

[03:59:15] of the overall plan or a little over $400 million. Uh, we're going to go over the future projects by quadrant area. And the first stop is safe and secure community. Um, I want to just emphasize the Fire and Rescue System Existing Station Renovation Program. This was a program that started in fiscal year 2024, and the intent here is to do large-scale station renovations,

[03:59:50] taking care of the assets that we already have in place through the various renovation projects, such as concrete repairs, window replacements, HVAC improvements, things like that. The Prince William County Fire and Rescue System establishes the program of improvements. Okay. And it is funded at $4 million per year from the fire levy. And as you can see, various upgrades and repairs are underway. Those specific projects deal with HVAC upgrades, fire alarm system upgrades,

[04:00:29] bay floor repairs, and emergency generator replacements. Those are pretty much a snapshot of the existing projects that are underway. The current CIP project is Fire and Rescue Station 27, located near the intersection of Spriggs Road and Route 234.

[04:00:51] The Board of County Supervisors approved a public hearing regarding the land swap on, as a matter of fact, I think that occurred last week on February 18th. So that land issue is progressing forward, and we expect construction to begin this summer on that project.

[04:01:11] We already pre-funded the medic unit in the FY25 budget, and then we're going to complete the engine unit staffing projected in fiscal year 27. Now, we have a number of new fire and rescue station projects entering the proposed CIP.

[04:01:33] As a matter of fact, there's four stations that did not exist before in the proposed CIP, And this strikes an adequate balance between new stations serving the community, but also rebuilding existing age stations.

[04:01:52] And this is based on a 2024 Fire and Rescue Station Location Study, as well as various facility condition assessments that occurred in the system. And so as you can see here in the table, the first station we have is Station 30.

[04:02:11] That would be located, I believe, in the Wellington, somewhere in the Wellington Corridor in western-central Prince William County. And that is the first station programmed in the proposed CIP. As a matter of fact, we're asking the board for a $4 million design appropriation for fiscal year 26 to start that project.

[04:02:35] The next station is the rebuild of an existing station, Station 3. in dumfries that station is currently 64 years old and um you can see a picture of it in the upper right hand corner of the slide so by the time that that that that station is rebuilt it's probably going to be closer to 70 years old okay um so that's uh this is the plan and what i wanted to

[04:03:08] share with the board is uh we recognize that this is a big ask and we have a chief labelle and the fire and rescue team coming to discuss with the board during a work session on march 11th various elements of the fire and rescue system and these projects are one of them so i think these are some overdue improvements that you're going to be seeing further later on in the proposed cip you're seeing a new station in the lake ridge area with station 29 and then another rebuild

[04:03:42] project in the bot station, Station 2. That station is currently 55 years old today. But as I mentioned earlier, staff is requesting a, I'm sorry, it was a $3 million appropriation for design to begin the design for Station 30. All right, staying in safe and secure community, the public Safety Training Center. The land was acquired in 2018. We anticipate that construction is going

[04:04:21] to begin this fall. As you can see, some artist renderings of what the facilities will look like at the expanded training center, and that project is approximately $30 million. Like I mentioned, construction is scheduled to begin this November with occupancy in March of 2027. All right. The judicial center renovation is winding down or ramping up. This has been in

[04:04:56] the CIP for a while. There's lots of renovation work occurring at the existing judicial center. We are requesting a capital construction appropriation in FY26, funded by the county's Capital Reserve to finish the renovation project. This includes finishing up a juvenile domestic relations courtroom. If you recall, we received a new judge in the FY25 budget. It's going to

[04:05:31] finish a roofing replacement, elevators upgrades, and a third floor renovation at the existing facility. And then that should close out the renovation projects until we get to the Judicial center expansion project this is a 200 million dollar project that includes a new parking structure as well as a new quartz building the design i believe kicked off just a week or two ago

[04:06:05] and so what we are asking for the board is um in fiscal 26 is a 35 million dollar construction appropriation for the parking garage okay just this is the first phase of the overall project Now, the reason why we're asking for that appropriation in fiscal 26 is we believe that by the end of fiscal year 26, May and June, we may be in a position to go out for procurement of a construction contract.

[04:06:40] In order for that to occur, staff needs appropriation authority granted by the board. We cannot enter into procurement phase unless we have that. It demonstrates a good faith that the county is serious about the project.

[04:06:57] Moving into health, well-being, and environmental sustainability, we have the Homeless Navigation Center East project. I know the board has had a lot of questions. We do anticipate construction beginning this spring.

[04:07:17] On the slide, we say this April, with occupancy in January of 2027. This is a new project entering the proposed CIP. It is the Homeless Navigation Center West.

[04:07:38] Although it is a new project in the proposed CIP, it is a very old discussion. As you can see, this board and the prior board has issued directives dating as far back as 2020 for staff to look at suitable space for a facility to serve in the western end of the county.

[04:08:01] I do want to emphasize we are asking for an FY26 appropriation for design of $4 million and we'll have a construction cost and schedule will be determined once we can get through some of that preliminary design and get better cost estimates after we get through a say a 20-30% design.

[04:08:30] All right, the Juvenile Services Center and Woodbridge Library and Senior Center. But first, let's talk about the Juvenile Services Center.

[04:08:47] There continues to be a moratorium on state reimbursements. As a matter of fact, in a 2024 Juvenile Detention Center efficiency study report, it recommended that the county's Juvenile Detention Center be closed and consolidated with the Fairfax facility.

[04:09:12] As a matter of fact, I believe there was an early bill that suggested doing just this. It has been defeated. What I'm trying to say is this proposed CIP does not anticipate any state reimbursement.

[04:09:31] I believe that is highly unlikely that that is going to happen. Never say never, but I think it's highly unlikely that the state will receive reimbursement on this project. What we have done is we have maintained debt service capacity to finance approximately $30 million of improvements.

[04:09:57] Having said that, staff has to develop some options and bring them back to the board for your consideration. In terms of Woodbridge Library and Senior Center, land acquisition is an ongoing, it's been a slow process.

[04:10:18] and in FY25, we did allocate $4 million funded by debt for land acquisition design, right? So that's a slow-moving project, but of course the debt service would be supported by the general fund. I will mention that construction for this facility is not funded at this time, okay? Staying

[04:10:50] in health well-being, let's talk about the parks and recreation referendum projects. We are wrapping up the debt financing that was authorized by voters in the 2019 bond referendum. We have two appropriations in fiscal year 26, both for construction activities. They are Fuller Heights Park, which will construct two Little League youth baseball fields, as well as wrapping up appropriation for Neabsco Greenway, which will be two phases. The first phase will replace three

[04:11:29] wooden bridges and construct a new bridge. The second phase entails a connection between Andrew Leach Park and the Sharon Bauckham Dale City Recreation Center. So I just want to emphasize that of the $32 million of total 2019 bond referendum funding, there's about $18 million here for trails and greenways. That's Powell's Creek Crossing at $9.5 million,

[04:12:05] Occoquan Greenway at $5 million, and Neabsco Greenway at $3.5 million. When you also include the ARPA funding, this board and previous boards has made a commitment reaching nearly $30 million for trails and greenways and connections in the county.

[04:12:28] This is a new investment in parks and recreation. This is not the building and facility capital program. This is to provide recurring cash funding for park improvements at existing parks.

[04:12:46] to provide amenities such as lights, comfort stations, playgrounds, picnic areas, parking expansion, and spectator seating shade areas. All right, as you can see from the schedule at the bottom, this is cash-to-capital funding, $2.5 million in fiscal 26, and then it grows to $5 million a year beginning in fiscal 27.

[04:13:13] What I will tell the board is I believe the board has the final decision, as always. I believe this money should be invested to improve existing parks. What I have not programmed in is big operating costs for big expansions that generates a lot of operating costs.

[04:13:36] I believe this money, at least preliminarily, should be invested in existing parks consistent with the Parks and Recreation Master Plan. And then we can start talking about the more ambitious projects.

[04:13:52] That's my two cents. Don't know if it's wanted. All right. So in addition to this, we also are continuing to fund the Building and Facilities Capital Program to maintain existing community assets, to do major replacements for things like HVAC and boilers. These are not fire and rescue projects. That's the other program.

[04:14:24] But also trail bridge replacement. This is funded at $5.2 million a year. And Mr. Bode, You asked a really good question last year. In the FY25 budget, the board increased maintenance specifically for parks and recreation by $1.2 million.

[04:14:42] That's why we're at $5.2 million. And yes, that is recurring funding that you will see maintained in the five-year plan. What I will mention is we did change the funding source for the base amount of $4 million. It used to be funded by the Capital Reserve.

[04:15:00] Now it is funded by the annual budget. It is a recurring program, and I just want the board to please be aware of that policy change that staff is recommending, because this is a recurring program, and the capital reserve is not an appropriate use for a recurring program.

[04:15:18] All right, moving on to government operations, performance, and innovation, we have a county-wide space. There is a master plan that is underway to assess the county-wide space needs.

[04:15:35] We anticipate that being completed in 2025, and when that is ready, it will be presented to the board. And those recommendations, with board concurrence, of course, will feed into future county facilities identified from the master plan.

[04:15:52] As you can see, the county does lease a lot of space, nearly half a million square feet of lease space at nearly $10 million per year.

[04:16:10] All right. Mr. Shorter touched on this a little bit when we talked about the technology improvements last week. This is the computer-assisted mass appraisal system. It is a legacy system that our assessors use to update real estate values throughout the county.

[04:16:36] It is the basis for more than a billion dollars of real estate tax revenue. So this is actually a very, very critical system that we need to replace to provide more functionality that allows assessors to upload data remotely from the field.

[04:16:58] We don't have that capability now. They have to return to the office. The estimated cost is $3.6 million for integration. We are recommending it be funded by the Capital Reserve so that it does not impact general tax support in fiscal year 26.

[04:17:19] As you can see, it will not go live in fiscal 26. We have to go through a vendor selection and contract award process. It is expected to go live in early fiscal year 28. Moving on to mobility, economic growth, and resiliency, we have the landfill phase 4 infrastructure project.

[04:17:44] There is a $12.4 million appropriation in fiscal year 25. This finishes the appropriation of $3.3 million in fiscal 26. As we move and we start to develop phase three and phase four of the landfill, we have to develop road networks.

[04:18:02] We have to move the scale house, wheel wash, all sorts of infrastructure as we start working into those new areas of the landfill. And that's what this project does. There's a $5.8 million appropriation for county watersheds.

[04:18:21] I know the board has had a lot of discussions about new MS4 permit requirements that need to be achieved by June 30th, I believe, 2028. That was an acceleration by a year or two to try to mitigate and provide reductions in nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment. And I am certain that quite a few of you know about those requirements more than I do. And then as the county executive presented last week, we are happy to increase trip funding for each

[04:19:00] magisterial district from $225,000 to $450,000 per district per year. You do a great job of working with the county's Department of Transportation to use this local funding for safety improvements in your district, sidewalk improvements. In some instances, leverage this money to receive state and federal capital grant funding. The funding source for this

[04:19:30] is recordation tax revenue that is designated by board policy for mobility. We're happy to report that recordation tax revenue has stabilized in an area of higher interest rates. Just to give you some perspective. It generated $10 million in fiscal 22, but in fiscal 23, that amount came down to about 6.4 million. That's the impact of higher interest rates. That has stabilized in the

[04:20:06] fiscal year 24. The revenue was stabilized, and we think and feel comfortable that we can do this safely. Mobility referendum projects. Please forgive me. I know I still have Route 28 on here.

[04:20:26] it's not so much about the name, but it's about what the board is going to do with that capacity that the voters approved in November 2019. You have a couple options. One, you can choose not to issue the debt. Two, you can direct staff to reinvest it and look at other options for existing Route 28. And three, none of these are my recommendation. But a third option is you can

[04:21:00] choose to transfer those funds to another project on the referendum vote, okay? As I see it, those are the board's three options. I do want the board to please understand that there is a ticking clock, all right? When the board authorized the referendum in November 2019, I believe the county has eight years to issue the debt. I believe the county attorney or the board, excuse me, could

[04:21:35] choose to petition the courts for a two-year extension for a total of 10 years. But yeah, that clock is slowly, slowly ticking by, okay? But in FY26, we do have two appropriations from the referendum. There is the Devlin Road appropriation that completes the initial plan for bond referendum funding. That appropriation is $28.7 million for design and construction.

[04:22:07] And then the Old Bridge-Gordon Boulevard appropriation of $9.2 million. This completes the original plan for 2019 referendum funding. I think the total on that project is about $15 million. I will note.

[04:22:26] Could you quickly repeat? I'm sorry. The board could choose to direct staff to look at existing Route 28, the current alignment.

[04:22:58] And then I've shown this slide a couple years, and I'm sorry to be reticent, But there is the issue of funding the Mobility Referendum Debt Service. In the five-year plan the county executive presented last week, there is an assumption that the annual debt service from the referendum will have a funding source.

[04:23:21] It does not assume general tax support through the real estate tax or personal property tax. This table shows the schedule of debt service. There's very, very little impact in fiscal 26.

[04:23:38] it's only about $8,000 actually. But as you can see by fiscal year 30, it increases to 15 million. Now the reason for that increase from 29 to 30 was the route 28 bypass. Okay. So there's the issue of funding the debt. Now let's review the current options available to the board that we have available today. All right. There's NVTA 30%. That generates about 20, our estimate in fiscal

[04:24:11] 26 is about $23 million, but $5.8 million of that funds VRE. There is transient occupancy tax for mobility. That is not available because it's recommended to provide the local subsidy for OmniRide. There's grander's tax, but that's unavailable because that's going to help provide the local subsidy for OmniRide in the proposed budget. So what's left over? You have NVTA 30%

[04:24:46] funds. The remaining is about $17 million a year for Mr. Canizales and his team to fund Mobility Referendum Debt Service, but also advance the county's other mobility priorities.

[04:25:04] There's projects in the proposed CIP that are not fully funded, such as the Gordon Boulevard flyover to Old Bridge Road, such as the Van Buren Extension. Both those projects are in the proposed CIP, but there's about a $200 million shortfall combined on those two projects. Plus, you have all the other county mobility priorities not in the CIP. I do not have a firm number for you what the value of those projects are, but I can guarantee you it's in the hundreds of millions

[04:25:42] of dollars, perhaps a billion dollars, and what is available to Mr. Canizales is about $17 million a year to leverage local funds and apply for those state and federal grants that they have been very successful in receiving. Okay. So I just wanted to say that once again for the board to consider. Okay. All right. We're almost done. These are some summary slides. The total capital

[04:26:16] appropriation staff is requesting in fiscal 26 is $125.5 million. And what you can see in this summary is the capital appropriation by project, the project phase, the amount, and the funding source. Of this $125.5 million, $96.5 million is debt financed. The general fund is $8.7 million.

[04:26:46] Capital reserve is $7.4 million. Fire levy is $4 million in cash. Recordation tax is $3.2 million. That's for TRIP. And stormwater management fee accounts for $5.7 million of that total.

[04:27:05] I'm about to show you the impact of the proposed CIP on the general fund five-year plan, but I just want to make this distinction that capital project budgets pay for the land, the design of a project, the IT infrastructure for that project, think of the fiber, as well as construction activities. But once the project is finished, we have to pay

[04:27:39] the ongoing financing costs and facility and capital costs. And that's where it impacts the county's annual operating budget by way of debt service, the facility operating costs. Think of the utilities and maintenance that has to occur, but also the program operating costs, which is the people the staff that operates from that facility okay and this shows the impact on the county's general fund five-year plan by project and with totals at the bottom that impact in fiscal

[04:28:19] 26 is 23.4 million dollars in totality but as you can see as we progress across the page and we get to the fourth and fifth year of the five-year plan those costs total almost 100 million dollars by fiscal year 2030. I do want to emphasize that the proposed CIP is in compliance with the county's debt financing policies in the principles of finance, principles of sound financial management.

[04:28:50] Thank you. And it is affordable by way of the five-year plan that the county executive presented to the board last week in all five years. As Matt presented to the board in January, to the board, we are taking steps to improve the CIP process, such as working with the board's finance and budget committee to develop a standardized criteria for evaluating new projects, to working

[04:29:29] with the new committee to establish a meeting schedule, a regular meeting schedule on capital projects and a reporting format and we hope to have this in place for the next cip cycle in fiscal year 27 as we work with the finance and budget committee this is the remaining budget calendar there is one change i want to inform the board we are actually present matt is actually presenting to the planning commission tomorrow night this had it on march 12th but we were asked by the

[04:30:04] planning office staff hey can you come on uh tomorrow night uh tomorrow night is uh county government cip and then at another time the the planning commission is is splitting it up they're going to talk about the school cip at a later date and i know i've been talking a lot um i'm sorry to be rambling on i'm happy to entertain any questions you have all right thank you so very much for that presentation um first up is supervisor angry thank you madam chair hey um dave just a couple

[04:30:38] of quick questions the um what slide is that the um funding through the fire levy for that four million dollars yes sir that how long has that been in place it started in the fiscal 24 budget oh so this is new okay fairly new but it this is would be the fiscal 26 would be the third year of existence okay and my understanding from chief labelle is it's it's been going very well okay um assisting you know uh volunteer and and career operated stations with those um those cyclical replacements that um okay i think we're quite proud of it i i like that because it does um

[04:31:17] now it puts money to uh a lot a lot of overdue repairs that were long needed so that's good hey um and then the whole jdc discussion because you know we had that discussion and the state was going to come in and we're all happy that we're going to get a new facility if you've been through there we know how old that building is you know i'm really not a fan of what we're doing to that kind of like we do what we're doing to the courthouse just kind of patching it up because that's really what ended up happening but my question here is how much was that total project i don't know if you know this i think when we presented it there was a total project of what

[04:31:53] that facility would cost and then the state was going to go in and match us on that but what was that total bill because i'd rather look at what a total bill is for a new facility and if we have that discussion about what we want to do with that versus putting 30 million that you just read you know let us investigate that for you i want to say it was about a 70 million dollar project when we were hopeful of state reimbursement okay but that was that was not a i'm sorry to interrupt No, no, no, go ahead, go ahead.

[04:32:22] That was not a renovation project at the time. That was a new facility. Yes, sir. And that's, the new facility is really the discussion I want to have because if you, you know, hopefully we've all been through that building.

[04:32:38] It is a very old building. Right, and I, you know, as I mentioned earlier, never say never, but I would be remiss if I didn't feel that at this point in time, that if we did a new facility, we're most likely going it alone.

[04:32:56] Exactly, and that's a true statement, but I'd rather us have that conversation about going out of the loan. That is certainly an option. Give us that number, because, you know, it's needed. So anyway, thank you for that. All right, thanks. All right, next is Supervisor Bodie.

[04:33:11] Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Dave, for the presentation. A couple questions. So on slide 14, you have the Judicial Center, like the first part of it the renovation project um and the expansion um do we get any other funding sources for this project no and why i ask that question is as everyone knows that this facility houses not only a lot of constitutional offices and state funded positions but it's also shared with with one of the cities at least and then actually both cities

[04:33:46] so is there any contribution from anyone else on this no it's at this time as the expansion project i believe is 100 supported by county debt financing something for us to think about in the future because it just seems weird to me that we have a bunch of state funded positions in there and no no support from the state on it and again we know they we share this facility i i will say that um i think please correct me if i'm wrong by state code localities are responsible for the space code code could be changed that's all i'll say about that um second one thank you for that

[04:34:24] dave um in terms of furlazo i know that us moving uh our so our our homeless services in there was basically a byproduct of covid i know that that's what happened and then we're going through the process of of revamping into the homeless navigation center east um especially as we have conversations around county-wide space has there been any thought about what furlazo will be utilized for after the the homeless navigation center east is complete i'm not sure that's a really good question um if that will be covered by the master plan or not just let us find out for

[04:34:59] you consider because i know that and i agree with the the the county-wide space study knowing that we have you said almost 10 million dollars per year of least space but knowing that at some point in 2027 a bunch some of the space in for laws will reopen wondering what we're going to do with that. So I appreciate that. JDC, I appreciate some of those are angry on that. I know that leading up to the state making their decision on their side about it, we were talking about the fact that, like was said, that building is really old. We don't have any trauma-informed spaces in

[04:35:36] there. It's very archaic, very last century in terms of how it's set up in there. And I had had some conversations with some of the delegation around that bill that you mentioned. And my concern is closing it down and moving to fairfax suddenly we're sending a bunch of our children to fairfax and what part of fairfax has that been worked out yet who's going to pay are we going to pay fairfax for for doing some of those services do we know those kinds of things but most importantly i don't always like the idea of having to send children to other counties because

[04:36:12] what if their family wants to see them what if there's issues with that so i i i appreciate Supervisor Angry bringing that piece up, too, and how there should at least be an option for us to go in alone, look at a new facility as well. Next is the new park capital funding that you mentioned.

[04:36:34] Appreciate your mentioning there my question from last week, and this might come as part of the committee's work, but is there already sort of a thought on what the prioritization of what this funding will be put towards?

[04:36:49] because you list a lot of things I support all those things but there's different parks that have different states of good repair different priorities and different frankly different amenities in each park so has it been talked about on how that that money's gonna be programmed we do have candidate projects we can send that out to the board we've been working with parks and recreation nothing definitive but we do have a list of projects that we can I think we can send out to the board um for your review sure and then my last question and then i'll wait to take my second tranche later madam chair is on the referendum the mobility referendum where you

[04:37:25] talked about the 28 bypass um correct me if i'm wrong but if in my recollection the wording around the 28 project on the referendum in 2019 wasn't just bypass it also had widening as a bustle option that's is that correct that's that's how i i took it okay so and the county attorney's nodding. She blessed it so I appreciate that. I just bring that up because you mentioned some of the decision points we have since Supervisor Vega and I appreciate her doing this last meeting has her her uh directive for the seat for the CPA is we can consider that too as potential funding for

[04:38:02] a widening project. The board has options. Thank you Madam Chair. All right thank you Supervisor Bodie. Supervisor Franklin. Thank you uh I guess I'll start with the Ferlazo discussion. Thank you bringing it up supervisor Bodie so it is my belief that once we're done with housing our homeless population for laws of building that we should revert it back to a gymnasium we desperately need that in the Woodbridge district obviously I'm pushing excuse me for a rec center but in the meantime it would

[04:38:40] be great if we can kind of revert that space back whenever we're ready yeah it It hasn't been a gymnasium in a long time, has it? That's correct. And so that would be my recommendation for that space. Kind of moving on, I want to start with the fire stations, particularly the Dumfries and OWL.

[04:39:02] In understanding that those are older fire stations that we're rebuilding, obviously we want to do that. But I also want to make sure that we can capture some of the history of those fire stations as well. And I don't know what that looks like, but if that's preserving some part of the current facility as we rebuild.

[04:39:21] And I know that this is in the future, really, but I want us to keep the historical portion intact and making sure that, I mean, 55 years, it's like that's a long time and we need a new fire station. But, I mean, what an honor to have a structure of 55 years that's still serving our community.

[04:39:38] So let's also keep that in mind, too, as we move forward with building new facilities, making sure that we can have a piece of that historical significance from the past. Yes, and this is not to your point, Supervisor Franklin. I do want to mention that these projects are staggered.

[04:39:54] Sure. We're not doing all these projects concurrently so that we can give the attention each one deserves. Absolutely. And I must say, as we talk about other structures in the county, too, that we are rebuilding or modernizing. Let's keep that historical discussion in mind, too.

[04:40:11] Talked about the Fralazo Gym. I was actually going to just mention about moving it back to being a gym. And then just a question with the JDC, with the juvenile detention. I guess it was my understanding I thought that that was going to be included in the larger judicial center expansion. Was that never the case?

[04:40:29] They were always separate projects. Always separate. Okay. And so this study has said that it would be more efficient for Prince William County and Fairfax to merge the operation into housing in Fairfax? I believe so, yes. Okay. That's not county staff's recommendation.

[04:40:47] Sure, sure. That's what the report said. And then there was legislation to do just that that failed in this General Assembly session. That is my understanding. Okay. So, yeah, I think we should just continue to have those discussions. Yes. I just want to be clear about that it was not just between Fairfax and Prince William County.

[04:41:05] Other northern Virginia jurisdictions were involved as well. And so we all worked together to make sure that the impact on all jurisdictions were made clear. So Loudoun, Arlington, Fairfax, and Prince William County was involved.

[04:41:22] Yep, thank you for that. And I guess I'm less concerned about Fairfax. Of course, it depends on where. But once you get kind of towards Loudoun, I guess, you know, if you have a relative in the JDC that's on the western end of the county, maybe Loudoun is closer. But as you get further north, it really does get out of bounds for a lot of families.

[04:41:39] So let's just continue to have that discussion, including, I think, with our members of the General Assembly to make sure that we're having an equity discussion as well. Thank you. All right. Supervisor Weirth and Bailey. Thank you, Madam Chair.

[04:41:57] Could you stay on this slide? Could you expand a little bit on this because I don't know if I'm confused or irritated. You know, Senator Marsden's bill died a rather ignominious death in committee and an overwhelming death, I would suggest.

[04:42:14] What I've never quite understood was what the cost to Prince William would have been under the bill or the closure would have been mandated by the state as well as Loudoun's and the Northern Virginia one and everything consolidated into Fairfax.

[04:42:30] did we ever get any indication of what the cost for that might be to us from a service standpoint? And then did we get any sense that because of what would have to be done at the Fairfax facility, the state was going to contribute to Fairfax's maintenance and why they didn't give us any money?

[04:42:51] And I guess this all comes down to why is Fairfax getting everything and we're footing the bill? Those are very good questions, Supervisor. I'm not aware, I have not seen any of the logistics or the financials of what that would have resulted in to the county.

[04:43:08] So they would have simply passed it on to us? I mean, I'm reading the language and it's, you know, we've got to come up with an agreement or somebody's going to dictate how much we were forced to pay Fairfax County to accommodate what we're doing in-house. I guess nobody ever approached us with any parameters, cost estimates.

[04:43:29] I haven't received anything, but I'm not saying that they— No fiscal impact statement. I didn't see anything, but that doesn't mean it didn't exist either. What we prepared and sent around to the board and ultimately our team sent around to the delegation was a white paper that laid out the impact, and the impact was more operational and not financial.

[04:43:52] I don't know that I've seen, at this point, a financial impact statement. So what it meant to transport young people to court and then back to the county, what it meant for staff, what it meant for families, and then there were some program impacts as well. So I don't know that I've seen a financial impact, but we certainly...

[04:44:12] And that's why I asked, because the transport, at least in my reading of the proposed legislation that thankfully died, was that our transportation costs wouldn't be covered, but the teachers at the facility's transportation costs would be covered by the state.

[04:44:30] And so it seems like they were digging us a deeper hole. I mean, even given the nature of what we need to do with the Juvenile Services Center, I mean, and I'll just leave it at that, but it seems like there's more questions than answers. And quite frankly, it seems like a bill that was designed to benefit Fairfax and lower their operational costs by passing the operational costs on to us and using their excess capacity.

[04:44:57] If I'm misreading it, I'd love for somebody to disabuse me of that, but I don't think I am. I'm not suggesting that. I'm just saying we haven't seen a fiscal impact analysis. And Fairfax County was definitely not in support.

[04:45:13] They were not in support of this? They were not in support. We were all, all jurisdictions were not in support and worked with VACO to that effect. Okay, well, then I hope next year before he resubmits the bill, somebody speaks to Senator Marston, because I'm sure he's going to reintroduce it.

[04:45:32] Page 25, and I just want to note for everybody, this is the situation we're in, specifically the grantor's tax and the transient occupancy tax because of PRTC. our fault their fault nobody's fault you know grantor's tax transient occupancy tax i said this last year the year before um you know it's having an impact on us and it's going to have an impact on rick's operations and it'll have an impact on the county so we need to get a handle of it on it i would also note that those very same neighbors to our north and north and east

[04:46:09] also have their eyes on a portion of our grantor's tax and our transient occupancy taxes they stated quite unequivocally because they want us to help fund their metro we don't have the money and the last thing is this as I look at the CIP I look at the CIP for Prince William County and I look at the CIP for a variety of other jurisdictions and Madam County and Attorney and I are going to be speaking about this further in most jurisdictions fleet replacement costs whether it's facilities

[04:46:42] management, fire, police department, those vehicles are built into the CIP. And I've always been led to believe, and there is some documentation in other counties that supports this, that the reason for that is so that you can make use of proper funds to pay for that. I think we're going to probably need to explore that in the future. And the reason that causes me problems is, you know, we've got fire department units that are being replaced out of the capital reserve fund. But in the budget, we're also replacing other fleet vehicles out of

[04:47:22] the general fund and not out of the capital reserve. So if we put everything in the CIP, then we've got the paper justification to either draw down from the capital reserve or from the proffers if eligible. And I think that's something we probably need to work in to work in next year so that we're not constantly drawing down general funds for new equipment that to some extent are the result of new development, whether it be commercial, industrial, or

[04:47:51] residential. All right. Next, we have Supervisor Bailey. Thank you, Madam Chair. Dave, I just wanted to clarify something. On slide 25, is that for FY27, is that $300,000 or $3 million?

[04:48:13] Approximately $300,000. Okay. I just wanted to make sure that I was reading that right. So the debt service on the mobility projects, it's kind of a slow burn. Okay. Not much of an impact in 26, 27, not even in FY28, but then it starts to kick up in 29 and 30.

[04:48:31] What is it in 31? It'd probably be, let us get that for you. Oh, just guess. I bet it's probably closer to $200 million.

[04:48:47] But please, or excuse me, not $200 million, $20 million. Not $200 million. Thank you for moving that number down. Matt has just told me it's around $22 million. But again, that assumed the 28 bypass project.

[04:49:09] Okay, thank you. Calm over here, keep it calm. $200 million, okay. So on slide 22, I'm going back to the, where the Dumfries list with all the rebuild for the Dumfries and the, yes, that one.

[04:49:40] So with that, can you just kind of describe again, rebuild is what? Is that taking the existing infrastructure and rebuilding? yes it's it's virtually uh uh rebuilding a station now i can't guarantee the board that we're always going to be able to rebuild the station on the same site some of these sites are pretty small and again chief labelle will be here to talk about these projects on march 11th some instances we're going to have to purchase land at a different but close site all right for

[04:50:19] for the rebuild uh some of the existing footprint is just too too small um so but yes rebuild means a new facility it's not a renovation of the existing facility and when we do that dave do we like we did with um fire station 27 do we also consider land swaps in that transaction If the opportunity presents itself, I would say Station 27 was a somewhat unique situation.

[04:50:54] I think you're looking, for the most part, at a pretty standard land purchase. Okay. Thank you, Manager. All right. Supervisor, I agree. Thank you. Just a couple of kind of clean-up, just for the board itself.

[04:51:12] I think that JDC discussion, we should have a really – I don't know how that all – you know, where we got to where we are with Fairfax and all the jurisdictions. But I'm curious, what are the details to all of that? Because I think that there really is an issue there.

[04:51:30] And, you know, I really thought we were going to build a new facility for, you know, I know we have, you know, these kids shouldn't be committing crimes. But the fact of the matter is, you know, we have a place for them. And that place is very old. And, you know, even the school program in there is just, you know, we've got one classroom.

[04:51:47] There's a lot of good stories in there, but there's also a lot of tight stories in there because it's not in the best position. I think we should really have a discussion about how we got here from the state and what that surrounding jurisdiction looks like. And if we have to go at this by ourselves, I just feel like we should, but we should really talk about the details of that.

[04:52:07] That's just one statement. The other question I just have for you is the – well, actually, it's not even a question. Well, maybe it needs to be because we're in questions, aren't we? So I don't need to make a statement. Okay, you know what? It's probably going to be for Chief Lavelle. Because you say we have him coming in to do a work session.

[04:52:26] Okay, I'll save it for him because it's a question about station locations and future locations. The West then needs them. I think we'll all agree on that, and I'm just curious about that line up and what that plan looks like. Thanks, Madam Chair. I don't want to speak for Chief LaBelle, but I guess I am.

[04:52:45] So, yes, as you can see, the new stations in the table are Station 30 and the Wellington Corridor. And Station 29, now that one is in Lake Ridge, and my understanding is that's to help alleviate call volume.

[04:53:05] Just to that, just understood, I will tell you the east end is saturated with fire stations, and so the call volume may be a two-minute difference response time, but when you're pulling units, because a service of calls right now pulls units a lot, a way back into the east from the west, there's a lot of opportunity where that gap of service is really big.

[04:53:28] So, but I see chief here, but I figure that's one we can talk to him about during our work session. But, you know, so I didn't want to go down that road with that. Just wanted to mention that, you know, there's opportunities, a lot of opportunities on the west. And I'm pretty sure he's got an answer for that.

[04:53:44] So, you know. Yes, sir. All right. Thanks. I appreciate you coming in here, chief. Thank you. Supervisor Bodie. Thank you, Madam Chair. sort of last just point for me can you go back to the mobility um funding page yes uh next yes that um you said something earlier dave that i think deserves highlighting you said that the current assumption is that somewhere we will find a dedicated revenue stream for this is that

[04:54:22] correct yes if i would say i'm sorry to interrupt go for it um this debt service that you see in this table. The current assumption is that there will be a revenue source for it, meaning it will not fall in terms of general tax support. So that means that based on existing revenue sources for

[04:54:53] mobility today, because grantors and transient occupancy tax is proposed to be used for the OmniRide local subsidy. Right now, that pretty much recordation is spoken for. It funds existing debt service on mobility projects. It funds trips. It funds orphan roads. The only revenue source currently available to pay for this debt service is NVTA 30% local, but that diminishes what would

[04:55:28] otherwise be available to Mr. Canizales and the Department of Transportation to advance the board, the community's other mobility priorities. Thank you for that. And you hit the nail on the head on why I asked that question, because this board, especially in four fiscal cycles from now, right, we're going to have some difficult challenges ahead of us unless we can come up with a dedicated way funding these issues it was said last year you just you just mentioned it yourself dave that

[04:56:03] right now we're squeezing as much as we can essentially out of our current funding sources for mobility if we want to continue to grow as a community we continue want to have road projects transit more transit in this community we're going to come up with a dedicated funding stream for it so i will sound like yet another broken record and still put my hat in for the cni tax because right now based on everything I'm seeing that's one of the only options that we have now we may be able to get some other kind of lever I know that every three or four years the General Assembly

[04:56:39] liberalizes and gives folks localities some more funding streams more levers to pull but right now especially with the kind of numbers that we're going to need our best bet is a CNI tax so I will continue to advocate for that thank you madam chair all right supervisor Bailey thank you madam chair um and dave i did have some a question on page um 22 on the on 22 yes where it says the real estate um an assessment computer assistant mass appraisal system supports the evaluation appraisal

[04:57:12] real estate is that um is that tax assessment or is that the management of our our own county-owned access that's that's the county's uh real estate assessments office and the database that they use It is the basis for assessed values and the real estate tax bills that go out to the county residents and businesses.

[04:57:39] That's all I had, Minutier. All right. Supervisor Weir? I'm going to beat on this dead horse just one more time because I apologize. It's been a month since I read Senator Morrison's bill, and it makes even less sense to me now than it did then.

[04:58:00] But I'm still struggling with this. he's created essentially a new section of code and stripped stuff out of education and thrown it into juvenile detention and a little bit of vice versa i don't know if this rises to a directive but i'd like for your office mr shorter i don't care who to kind of get a sense for him of where this is going because it looks like in 16.1 there is a mechanism to fund at least a portion of our costs but you're seeming to indicate that there is no funding for it from the state level and i

[04:58:35] don't know if that's a result of how he screwed the pooch on this or how he's rearranged the jet chairs or what's actually going here but it seems like any way you read this we're getting the short end of the stick because if you look at the amended if you look at the language presented buried down in the bottom as a clause that seems to be unfunded but also suggests the state will funded, whereby the remaining facility, in this case Fairfax, would get direct support, but only

[04:59:15] if they accepted our juveniles that we were paying them to accept. The only way they didn't get state support for the operation, construction, whatever, is if they didn't accept the people that were paying them to accept. So I'd really like an explanation on this. Even if you have to get it out of their chief of staff, I'd like to understand this better, because quite frankly, I can't follow this and maybe that's why they tabled it 12 to 2 um but i it seems to me like we're getting the

[04:59:49] short end of the stick not just us but loud as well um so i'd really like some answers before i'm not not immediately but before the next legislative session when this rears its ugly head again all right uh supervisor franklin yeah just to that point can we um and i guess i don't know if we're in a hurry for this or not but i don't know if it's worth having someone come in at some point to really talk about this issue with us or at least do some type of briefing one-on-one with our offices?

[05:00:24] Because I'd really like to learn more about the report, the study, and kind of the rationale around it as well. Sure. What I'll do first is send the white paper back around. Then we will work together with Glenn and Nikki and figure out the most appropriate way to brief the board, whether it's individually or us coming back during either a committee meeting or during a board meeting.

[05:00:53] All right, I don't see any more speakers, so thank you so very much for this presentation. We appreciate you. All right, so next we are, hold on, I was speaking to someone, waiting for the sign-up sheets.

[05:01:41] All right, thank you so very much. We have one person who is scheduled to speak in person, and I apologize. I'm not able to make out the name, but Ms. Johnson.

[05:02:00] All right. Just as a reminder, you have three minutes. State your name and where you

[05:02:04] generally reside. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Aine Johnson. I am from

[05:02:58] the Woodbridge District. I stand today as an advocate and a reminder to select members of the Board of County Supervisors and individuals within Prince William County who would like for you to forget about a child affectionately known as Bumpy. Hopefully, I have enough time to read this letter here, but this letter is dated January 23rd, 2023, and this was sent to Mr. Christopher Shorter, from our family to Mr. Shorter. Dear County Executive Christopher Shorter, our names are Brandon and Aine Johnson. We have been foster parents to a young male child and redacted the

[05:03:35] date there until present. We are a foster son's sole placement. Our biological children know him as brother or affectionately bumpy. He relates to us as family. Throughout our tenure as foster parents, we have maintained a loving, safe, secure, and stable family environment with emphasis on community connections. Our foster son is thriving as a direct result of the early intervention services we advocated for him to have. We continue to educate ourselves and extend the community on best practices related to offering him lifelong support due to his clinically documented statement there has been redacted. We affirmed our desire to adopt our foster son in numerous written

[05:04:13] correspondence and most recently during a court hearing on December 16, 2022. We anticipate our family will appear in court in June 2023 to provide updates on its progress. We have no indication. We have no indication. I'm going to repeat that a third time. We have no indication the Department of Social Services permanency team desires to be in compliance of ensuring services are put into place for our foster son. The Department of Social Services permanency team has not responded to our emails since December 20th of 2022.

[05:04:47] That's the good thing about emails. Emails create a record. And again, every foster child, and I'm stepping aside, but every foster child should have a home visit on a monthly basis in addition to communication. The Prince William County Department of Social Services refused to communicate with our family, hence why we reached out to Mr. Shorter.

[05:05:05] Again, Mr. Shorter said that they've done nothing wrong. Additionally, the following requests have not been made to our family in accordance with Child and Family Services Manual. Monthly home visits, January 2023, and a VMAT, a six-month review.

[05:05:21] We are anticipating another ultimatum will be distributed by email correspondents to remove our foster son from our care. The Prince William County Department of Social Services didn't even respect our family enough to call us to inform us they were removing Bumpy from our care. They sent out an email.

[05:05:36] The only reason why they took action, again, is because we contacted Mr. Shorter. We said this before, but we'll say it again. We are requesting transparency in the Freedom of Information Act, half-truths submitted by county representatives to the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, VMAP proceedings, allocation of funds for foster parents approved but not disbursed.

[05:05:56] Again, those redacted documents, Mr. Shorter, we have those, as well as home visits. Accountability should not be a cost passed on to children who are already at a disadvantage without a voice as they are in foster care. Thank you so very much.

[05:06:13] Do we have anyone for online? All right, we do not have any remote speakers. So, all right, let's go, guys. Move to adjourn. Second. All in favor? I ain't even going to fight it.

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