Coraggio Consulting
Prince William Board of County Supervisors Meeting — Work Session, Tuesday, March 11, 2025

Date: Tuesday, March 11, 2025
Place: Prince William County Board of County Supervisors, Virginia
Length: 2h 37m (video)
Official meeting video (Prince William County, Granicus): https://pwcgov.granicus.com/player/clip/3609
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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[00:33:57] All right. Thank you, everyone. It is 2 o'clock, and we are going to begin today's meeting with a moment of silence. All right. Thank you, everyone. Please stand, if you are able, for the Pledge of Allegiance.

[00:34:31] All right. We are moving on to public comment time. I am waiting to see.

[00:34:49] Thank you. All right. We have two people who are signed up for public comment time.

[00:35:13] And what we're going to do is you go to the back. You have three minutes for comments, anything on the agenda, off the agenda, and state your name, where you live, and I will call you up in groups of five, but today I only have two people.

[00:35:29] I have Russell Bryant, and I have Aileen, thank you, Aileen Johnson after that. So, sir? Good afternoon, Chair, Supervisors, County Executive, County Attorney. My name is Russell Bryant, and after moving here in October of 1987, I still live in the Woodbridge Magisterial District.

[00:35:50] Our recently adopted County 2025-2028 Strategic Plan has numerous key objectives, including one to enhance and expand public parks, trails, and green spaces to improve accessibilities.

[00:36:08] Trails improve local quality of life and provide opportunities for physical exercise for all county residents. Yet, there are currently only some 60 miles of existing trails with a much larger number of miles planned within the trails master plan.

[00:36:27] To assist in fulfilling the strategic plan's sited objective, I request that the 2026 budget cycle include an additional $5 million per year allocation for trails maintenance and construction.

[00:36:45] That can be provided via reprogramming from recently removed projects which had out-year allocated funds available, which I know the projects are no longer going to be executed. Thank you very much. Thank you so very much.

[00:37:02] Next speaker, please.

[00:37:15] Madam Chair, I did pass a, or will pass. Come a little closer, speak in. You're kind of hard to hear. Better? Is that better, ma'am? Okay. I do have a piece of paper there, so it's a bit easier to follow.

[00:37:31] Haven't figured out. Beautiful Elmo here. So hopefully that piece of paper is a bit easier to follow the information. Thank you so much.

[00:37:47] Good afternoon. My name is Mrs. Aene Johnson. I am from Woodbridge, Virginia. I continue to stand today as a wife and a mother of six beautiful children. I've been making sure I emphasize that. I've lost two children by birth, but a wife and mother to six beautiful children.

[00:38:03] And two children through foster care mean an advocacy. And I stand here as a constant reminder to Mr. Christopher Shorter, select members of the Board of County Supervisors, very specific when I say select members, along with the county attorney and our families, about our family's love for a child we affectionately call Bumpy, a child we desire to adopt. Mr. Shorter, this is specifically for you. Last week, you were in a position where it came off as that you seemed annoyed by me speaking. You were smiling throughout my entire presentation, which is perfectly fine, but I want to be clear with you about something.

[00:38:38] I do not smile, nor do I find it funny. I do not smile. I do not find it funny when my children cry out as it relates to the struggle that they are managing, as it relates to the anxiety and the trauma imposed upon them by the Prince William County Department of Social Services due to the abrupt removal. Bumpy could have still been removed but there was the abrupt removal. So again I'm not for sure what your tone was last week and I could be completely misinterpreted but the abrupt removal of our foster child Bumpy who they knew as brother. My children still cry out for Bumpy. My children still have anxiety. My children still deal with trauma. Prince William County Department of Social

[00:39:17] services, nor are you, Mr. Shorter, paying for their therapy. My children still cry out. I do not find that funny. As I reflect on my family's situation, I'm reminded of James 5.16, which states, confess your faults one to another and pray for one another that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. This verse speaks to the importance of community and healing through open dialogue and understanding. I urge each of you to consider the impact of your decisions on family like ours and the foster care environment and the compassion and the support that is needed. Today, I want to make sure that I speak on two different things,

[00:39:57] myth versus fact. Myth number one, foster parents have legal protections that protect them from a removal of a child. The fact is the reality that foster parents often have limited rights. There are very few laws specifically designed to protect them from the removal of a child.

[00:40:14] This leaves vulnerable decisions to be made by the child welfare system. We're specifically speaking to Prince William County Department of Social Services and the courts, often without adequate notice or input. Our family actually received an email. We weren't respected enough to be given a phone call.

[00:40:31] Myth number two and myth number three, and I'll make sure I email the rest. Myth number two, a loving foster environment ensures stability for the child. Myth number three, foster parents can influence decisions about a child's future. I'll follow up next week with the rest. Thank you so very much for your time.

[00:40:49] I'm going to turn it over to Vice Chair Bailey for remote comment time. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good afternoon, everyone. Shall we begin? We have no speakers at this time. Okay, thank you. Have a great afternoon. All right.

[00:41:05] Madam Chair, back to you. All right, thank you. This closes out public comment time. So I'm going to go now to agenda item number four, county executive time. Mr. Shorter, the floor is yours. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the board. Just a few updates for us this afternoon.

[00:41:21] There was one directive last week. That directive was related to a request for us to review MOAs between the police department and our Prince William County incorporated towns in the use of the Mike Pennington Scenario-Based Training Center.

[00:41:38] That directive has been assigned to the police department and county attorney's office. as you know, and wanted to make sure that I noted that the 2025 real estate assessment notices will be mailed out soon to county residents and businesses. The online real estate assessment database will be updated with the 2025 property values prior to mailing. If constituents have questions about their assessments, they should feel free to contact our real estate assessments office. I also want to make note that the board received a message from me last week regarding our

[00:42:14] plan to address long queue lines at our Saturday landfill for residential customers. Starting March 31st, an upgraded system will replace the manual visual ID checks at the county's landfill and compost facility. That'll be replaced with secure ID scanning technology to verify Prince William County residency. This new system is designed to reduce wait times and improve accuracy in verifying county residency.

[00:42:47] We started the campaign to announce this to residents this week. Bless you. And we'll continue to push that information out to residents throughout the month. Certainly want to just give a big thank you to Public Works and to IT for the work that they did to make this enhancement possible and certainly to make the customer experience better at our landfill.

[00:43:11] And with that, Madam Chair, that is all for me. All right. Supervisor Vega, I believe you had a question. Thank you, Madam Chair. On that point that you just raised, Mr. Shorter, is there going to be a trial period or are we just moving right in with this and implementing it permanently?

[00:43:27] I believe, and I want to maybe I'll send this out to you in memo. I believe that there was already a pilot of the technology when we saw the reduction in lines, but I could be wrong on that. So let me send that out via email, kind of an update on the use of the technology.

[00:43:44] If it is the first time that we're doing it, then I'll make sure that I note that in the email. Just want to make sure we leave some room, you know, for improvement. I do know that since folks have been finding out about this new software, there are concerns that lines will increase yet again.

[00:44:01] And so just want to make sure that we have the room to make corrections if need be. Absolutely. Thank you. All right. Anyone else? Any questions? All right. If not, I'm going to go on to county attorney. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. we have no items for closed session this afternoon all right thank you so very much i'm going to turn it back over to mr everyone's so giddy and it's a very nice day outside too so i'm going to turn it over back to our county executive thank you very much madam chair i'm going to be turning it over

[00:44:34] to chief uh labelle to so this is uh we'll have two presentations this afternoon really a continuation of our budget presentation from february 18th you may recall that in that presentation we talked about the changes to and significant investments needed in our fire stations.

[00:44:54] And so Chief LaBelle in the team, as you can see, is here to present and for us to discuss it this afternoon. So with that, Chief LaBelle, I'll turn it over to you. Thank you, sir. Madam Chair, members of the board, Mr. Shorter, Ms. Robel, I appreciate the time.

[00:45:12] I know it's pretty competitive to get your time, particularly this time of year. So the opportunity to review this in detail is much appreciated. Really what we're going to be talking about today is a continuation in fiscal year 26, CIP year 26 through 31 of actions this board's actually taken in the past to try to line up how we fund the fire rescue system with how we develop the fire rescue system.

[00:45:44] Right now there's a bit of a disconnect. And so I was able to spend some time with each of you over the last month or so to talk about our system as a whole, review the station study location, as well as potential dashboards.

[00:46:04] And one of the things that I think probably became clear over the passage of those conversations was that this is an integrated system. It is not single stations working on their own. It's not uncommon to see a Dale City unit over in the Coles district.

[00:46:24] It's not uncommon to see a Gainesville engine over in Brentsville. We don't have singular station response during larger, but not necessarily large, emergencies. Once you're really talking about three pieces of apparatus, you're really starting to draw down on multiple agencies.

[00:46:45] And so, again, how we... How we manage the system should approximate that reality. So some of our current challenges are no single station, as I said, can handle a large-scale event.

[00:47:01] It is integrated. This is a challenge. I'll also say our operational interdependence is one of our strengths. The fact that we all work together, that we have a cohesive system, is incredibly helpful. But it does require a continuous focus on improvement.

[00:47:18] It does require that we make sure that we're being reliable, that units are in the general location they're supposed to be when the call comes in. And it also means that we want to try to be as efficient as possible. We had talked a little bit during our meetings about that concept of reliability, that you don't want a fire engine or ALS unit or an ambulance or a truck company sitting in the station all day long.

[00:47:45] They're supposed to be going out on calls. But at the same point, it can get to a point where it's so busy that the neighboring stations have to fill in more than they should. And when they're filling in more than they should, the next ring out of stations now has to start getting engaged. And so how do we make sure that our units have a right level of reliability?

[00:48:04] Additionally, we're running into, like everyone else, rising costs as well as resource demands. There was an excellent article in the New York Times about a week ago that really spoke to the increase in costs and delivery times for fire apparatus.

[00:48:20] I have a slide I'll get into with some more depth in a minute. Our proposed solutions really are to unify the system even more. And so you already approved in fiscal year 24 the creation of the major repair and renovation program, $4 million a year.

[00:48:38] It's been incredibly helpful. Most of our older stations are volunteer stations, so the vast majority of the funding has gone to support volunteer stations. But there have been some issues with the career stations, or I should say the county stations. They all have career staff, so the county stations.

[00:48:56] But we're also asking that we fund as a system the rebuilding of existing stations as well as new stations as strategically appropriate, and that we also implement a unified purchasing of fire apparatus and structural turnout gear.

[00:49:14] So currently, the fire levy pays for multiple things. It helps pay for career staffing support. It helps pay for the station operating budgets. There's no fixed amount for station operating budgets. They vary based on station.

[00:49:30] It does pay for apparatus equipment, but not in a unified manner. We'll get into more in a minute. It pays for the replacement and renovation program. We already mentioned that. Debt service, as I'm sure you all can imagine, we're pretty IT heavy.

[00:49:47] A few years back, I want to say, I should have looked this up before, about four years back, five years back, the county took over insurance payments, so we used fire levy funds for insurance, annual physicals, the length of service reward program, if you're not familiar, That's a defined contribution plan that the county helps underwrite or fully underwrites for volunteers once they provide a certain amount of service.

[00:50:14] And then the Line of Duty Act, we have contributions to underwrite for firefighters who are injured or unfortunately killed. So the station replacement program, again, I already mentioned this, started in fiscal year 2024.

[00:50:33] As a matter of fact, I had just gotten here when you all had passed the budget for fiscal year 24. And so we didn't at that point have a committee to sort of review these projects, but we did have the facility condition assessment, which really gave us a great breakdown on both imminent repairs necessary and then some longer-term items.

[00:50:54] So we put together a group of DFR career staff and volunteers to help prioritize the work that needed to be done. And really because of the scope of all of the work, they really focused on the highest priority issues first. I do want to point out that because that committee didn't exist when I first got here and because I learned a long time ago to spend public funds as soon as you get them, that we intentionally started off with safety systems.

[00:51:24] So fire alarm systems, things along that nature, and HVAC systems. We had quite a few HVAC systems that weren't working. As you all know, we have staff, both career and volunteer, that are living in those firehouses. To have a working HVAC system, particularly in the summer and in the winter, is incredibly important.

[00:51:41] But since then, this committee is working very closely with FFM, who have been incredibly helpful in helping us work on these projects. It's also worth pointing out that our fiscal management policy also speaks to the fact that we need to be maintaining a focus on cyclical capital improvement and maintenance.

[00:52:07] We can't let these assets sort of wane over the passage of time. It just becomes incredibly expensive. This is a breakdown of what we have already lined up come July 1. And what you'll see on here, as I mentioned before, I think out of these 10, yeah, there's one county station.

[00:52:29] The rest are all volunteer stations. Again, they're older stations. They need the vast majority of the work. And it varies across the county, everywhere from Stonehouse on the north side of Manassas to Buck Hall, just down the road, having projects that would be funded.

[00:52:47] And this totals up, by the way, to about $1.3 million. And we will easily spend the $4 million in the program. So the CIP, again, in the station study, many of you already saw this.

[00:53:03] This is just a breakdown, and it shows you really two things at once. The color coding is the condition assessment, whether it's in need of more rapid replacement or whether it can wait a little longer. And then obviously the bar graph itself is how old the stations are.

[00:53:21] and so the reality is the cip takes a while to actually go into effect and so planning now for stations that will be in their 60s or near 70 years old certainly makes sense but at the same time if i may also making sure that we're doing what we can to make the existing buildings last as long as possible so we did a station location study we took a hard look at travel time analysis how long it takes us to get to various parts in the county we took a look at call volumes

[00:53:54] At that point, because we did the study in the fall of last year, we looked at five-year time period culminating in 2023. We're running the data again for 2024. We just haven't finished it. We took a look at population densities, and we looked at existing call types and frequencies.

[00:54:12] We did not project into the future because the future is uncertain enough. So we just said, hey, we're just going to kind of assume that what is happening now continues to happen. So I'm going to show you a very long-term slide.

[00:54:30] It's a big slide. But you can see the dark line after number four. That's the CIP. Really what I want to convey to you is as your fire department and as a team, we're really looking far down the road. We're trying to make sure that we're never in a position where we're surprising you all with requests And that we're being really strategic and really using data to inform Where we would like things to be and where we believe that they're necessary So again, the fiscal year 26 through 31 you're looking at four stations

[00:55:07] The station 30 is near Western District. You already approved the land purchase on that the Dumfries Triangle Station you'll see has in particular a land cost because we don't know yet if we will need to purchase new land we believe we will but there's some conversations going on that perhaps we won't I'm not an engineer and so I'm going to leave it to the professionals to determine whether we can use the land what I will say is if we can we certainly will there's no reason not to

[00:55:40] uh station 29 uh summit school area uh it's worth pointing out both the station 30 will pick up about 2,500 calls in its first year and station 29 will pick up about 3,000 calls in its first year they're going to be very busy stations and then station 2 uh the OWL station again a rebuild we know in that particular case there's no land cost there's nothing to impede us from building on that land you'll also notice uh the apparatus costs we assume obviously new and replacement uh

[00:56:16] and then for the annual operating costs uh we didn't put anything in for the dumphries or the triangle stations we don't see that changing from what we currently pay for those but for the two new stations we have costs in there and so you can see the overall total costs so again i mentioned it already uh station 30 uh out on wellington road uh the dumfries triangle station we're assuming will stay uh pretty much where it is if it moves it won't move far uh probably a half a mile in any direction is the most you'd want to move it without restudying uh the the location uh station 29 summit

[00:56:55] school and then the owl station so um the next piece sort of continuing on with unified approach not only to strategic planning, but also how we purchase things. Right now, individual stations are really required to not spend money, save as much as possible so that they build up their fire levy fund balance in the hope that they can save enough money to purchase a piece of fire apparatus or a transport unit.

[00:57:28] And it not only puts them at a disadvantage, recognizing that we share apparatus, that units are moving back and forth, it really can put the county as a whole at a disadvantage uh i i would argue completely anecdotally uh that for some of the stations that have had a difficult time maintaining their station it's because they're trying to save money for their fund balance so that they can buy fire apparatus and so we're sort of robbing peter to pay paul um and so the the second part that makes that difficult is that um so if you knew you needed a new fire engine in the year 2028 you

[00:58:05] needed to buy it last year and so the idea that you can save up and then buy the apparatus and get it within a year and a half maybe two years is gone so all apparatus requests in the future would be pretty similar to the way they are now right now what happens is we submit we take a look at things like mileage engine hours how old the unit is how much we think it's going to work and then we collectively get a report from the budget committee which is chaired by a vice president of one of our volunteer companies as a matter of fact this last year i was thrilled

[00:58:44] they didn't put any company names or organizational names on the apparatus they just said this is the apparatus this is the condition don't worry about who's getting it this is what needs to happen which i give them a lot of credit for and so we're already doing that collaborative approach to looking at what we need to buy when but then we go back to the volunteer company and say I hope you have enough money to buy the thing and if they don't they don't it's not a really great system again we mentioned increased cost and time and I've already mentioned the benefits really one of the others that I really want to sort of harp on a little bit is because budgets are different

[00:59:22] across the county it means that different parts of the county have different rates at which they can buy new apparatus and and from my standpoint making sure that there's some consistency in the level of fire protection including the equipment that's available to our our members both career and volunteer across the county is pretty imperative this is to give you an idea the the years that are blank we didn't buy that kind of equipment in that particular year so we didn't provide a price but ambulances we buy pretty consistently they've increased 20 percent uh we're actually projecting in the fiscal year 26 budget based on what we've

[01:00:00] been told that that's actually going to go from 515 to about 575 um engines 38 percent uh rescue seven percent aerials a whopping 44 percent aerials are pretty complex speed the aerial is the big engine with the the ladder on the back uh and then tankers tankers are the units that carry all the water. So you can see what we're up against. If you're trying to save money from the fire levy fund, flip chickens, have bingo events, and trying to match that rate of cost

[01:00:35] increase, it's not going to happen. I had mentioned before sort of the breakdown. If you take a look, we're looking at four ambulances in fiscal year 26. Three out of the four are four uh county stations uh we run county transport units 24 7 and so they tend to get run down more uh and then one for dale city uh we're looking at five engines uh one for dumfries one for yorkshire one for dale city and then one for station 22 over in groverton balls ford and then

[01:01:11] uh river oaks down off route one and then um two aerial devices one for gainesville station four and then one for Linton Hall, Station 25, Noakesville Volunteer Fire Department. The next project is in regard to structural firefighting gear.

[01:01:31] So I was lucky enough that when I got here, they had started a process. A group of career and volunteer staff were assigned to a committee, and they helped pick out new turnout gear. And they did a great job, and I know I'm very excited about what they've chosen.

[01:01:48] But we don't have a unified approach to our spec and the type, again, we don't have a unified approach to how we purchase. And so turnout gear is, the recommendation is changing to recycle it every 10 years, get you in a new set.

[01:02:09] A couple of different reasons. One example is the more you wear it, you've all seen the turnout gear. Well, there's a layer on the inside that you don't really see. And if you think about the insulation in your house, if you kept pinching it over and over and over again, it would crimp down and it's not going to provide you as much insulation.

[01:02:26] That happens at our elbows, at our knees, places like that, which increases the chances of burn. The other thing is this board has really been paying attention to PFAS. One of the things that makes turnout gear incredibly fire resistive is PFAS.

[01:02:43] And so we'd like to move into gear that doesn't have PFAS in it. And then, so we did a quick survey and looked at just DFR personnel, but we know it's similar for the volunteers. We have 124 people who both their first and second set of gear, because everybody gets two sets, is older than 10 years. So we have 124 employees who are in gear that's older than 10. And again, I think you'd find the same is true on the volunteer side.

[01:03:11] and then we have 200 folks 199 uh who one of their two sets uh isn't and so we're uh suggesting we're working uh right now uh with our volunteer partners uh to come up with a criteria on how we would roll out this replacement there'd be five million the first year part of what happened is the fire department got a really great grant and purchased a whole bunch of gear at once and then didn't establish a rotating process so what this does is establishes an initial five million dollar purchase and then a million every year thereafter so that we don't get into this situation again in

[01:03:50] the future the the other thing that I want to point out is for our recruits we're actually going to put them in a slightly cheaper set of gear while they're waiting to get up to to live burns uh crawling around in that concrete building tears that gear up and so there's no sense in doing that on the front end so the recruits will be in that slightly cheaper gear then once it's time to actually do live fire we'll get them in their good gear and then we'll probably take it right back from and let them crawl around on the concrete again in the old the old gear and so

[01:04:25] we're trying to figure out ways to save as much money uh recycle gear when appropriate uh and uh make this stuff last as as long as possible but no longer than it should last so again really the the the work session the conversation is really about taking a collaborative approach to how we make strategic decisions for the fire department and having the funding mechanism be more in sync you've done it in several places scba you've done it with thermal imaging cameras again the other

[01:05:01] projects this is really just a continued march down that road so i can take any questions thank you so very much for this presentation i'm going to actually kick it off while i wait for people to jump into queue on page five i appreciate that the uses of the fire levy you know also we do have the fire proffers how do you see that as fitting in so that's something that you know to me if i may i think that's a policy decision uh i don't want to say i don't care where the funding comes from uh however what i will say is some costs are constant and reoccurring and some are one time

[01:05:35] i don't know what best practice is in the in the commonwealth of virginia um but uh obviously we'll we'll support whatever all right no i appreciate that and i think that's a lesson for all of us we need to when we look at these things and what needs to be funded we need to look at our proffers you know some have more than others you know if if i may i think that's one of the things i didn't touch on uh one of the reasons we're looking in particular at the cart program is when you take a look at fire levy fund balance between the county stations and the volunteer stations we have 14 million dollars in fire levy fund balance but the money isn't where it needs to

[01:06:13] be to buy the apparatus and so asking you all to to to take a look at giving us more money when we're already sitting on 14 million just doesn't uh doesn't seem appropriate and that's a great lead-in to my next question, and I appreciate how you're working hard to integrate our professional and our volunteers, and a number of volunteer firefighters have said that. They've commended you on that. But the question I had is, you know, like a station like Buck Hall, it's an older station.

[01:06:40] They've done a great job in saving money so that they can eventually buy whatever it is they need. You know, are they going to be able to spend some of that money because they've fallen in terms of, you know, stations that need to be repaired or replaced? You know, will they be able to use some of the money that they've saved um to do some quick you know um upgrades or you know repairs to their station so if i can a couple a couple of answers uh the first is that in particular the carp program doesn't look at pulling back all of the fire levy fund balance uh it leaves 15 behind also some of

[01:07:16] the things we're talking about picking up the costs of uh the volunteer budgets would still remain steady and so they'd have money that maybe they spent turnout on turnout gear before right they wouldn't have to do that money that they were trying to save towards their fire levy fund bounce they shouldn't try to do that anymore they should take care of the building and then you know the facility condition assessment gives a pretty good pathway and we've had that for three or four years now and so I think really as they take a look at that as they come back to the program that you all

[01:07:53] already have created there's opportunity as a matter of fact uh they're in uh the queue for the next year for uh 180 000 towards their security system gotcha because you know i've talked to someone and again they have other needs like you know needing new bay doors the specialty concrete and those things you know i know it takes a while to also get the bids and so again all that's going to be handled more centralized rather than station by station it is already i I think the issue is the scope of our work under the facility program is somewhat limited.

[01:08:33] And so there's still an expectation that they would be able to go out, they would be able to use the county purchasing and bid process and find folks to make those. We're not suggesting that they wouldn't still continue to take care of their building. Gotcha. We would still want them to do that.

[01:08:50] All right. Thank you. I have Supervisor Angry next. Thank you, Madam Chair. All right, Chief. So my goal here today is to not rehash old things. So I know you're not the new anymore. You're the chief, and we're moving forward.

[01:09:06] But I do have a few questions about numbers and data and basically where we are. The first I'll ask is, when you did the study for the new uniform and the gears, Are you going to go back and find out what that looks like at Volunteer Station before you have an overall number of, okay.

[01:09:30] Oh, yeah. Just because I know you, I think you just said you looked at the county side and hadn't gone into it. Yeah, to be honest with you, complete disclosure. I realized it was a really good piece of information. And so I said, hey, I know I can do this within three days within the DFR ranks.

[01:09:48] And so we just did it completely. Give a little more time, but yeah, got it for the space out. And now, so two questions. You had a slide, and I don't know which one it was, with the insurance and the physicals, medical physicals. Oh, I'm sorry. I went through off. Now, I'm not going back in the past, but what I will just like to ask is if you have done an analysis.

[01:10:08] I don't know what slide that was. Three or four, he says. So my question and concern is I know we've made these changes. Slide five. And we've – slide five. I know we've made these changes, and we're here now.

[01:10:25] But my question is, what does the data show about how it was before and where we are now? My question is really simply, is it easier to go back if it was better before and where we are now? With insurance, I know when we rolled all that insurance up and took over the volunteer's insurance, that cost went up.

[01:10:44] It did, mostly because we're one of the few almost uninsurable communities in the Commonwealth. Right, but I do know that there are some volunteer companies that had a very low insurance rate. Now I know there were others that didn't, so I'm just curious what that number looks like on that.

[01:11:00] And then really the same with the physicals, because I know when we rolled the physicals into the county, that cause significantly went up because all interior companies were doing their physicals separately, and, you know, it fit within the NFPA standards.

[01:11:17] But I think I don't know why we ended up going to that. So, you know, that old saying, if it ain't fixed, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. So I'm not sure what was broken for us to do that. And I would just like to know for the board, with the board, what that data looks like then to now.

[01:11:33] And if we see that it was actually cheaper and working before, why isn't that something we can go back to if it's going to improve the system? All I want to do is really find a system that works. Okay, so that's one. And, well, let me ask you, so you want to comment on that or just on the?

[01:11:53] No, I think we're more than, we can certainly go back and take a look. Obviously, there's a lot of nuance in the word better. And so what constitutes better may be left to interpretation. But we certainly can take a harder look at when those things went in, what the costs were, what we think the costs are moving forward.

[01:12:14] And to some extent, to your earlier point, who got sort of left out. Because we really did have sort of the haves and have-nots. True, which I think, to me, honestly, that should have been the thing that we looked at in the system, like what's not working in certain locations and not a one-failed swoop.

[01:12:33] Like, you know, I think that just really pushed the numbers to a place that I'm curious what those numbers look like so we can at least have some data to go, whether we're going in the right direction or if it's something that we can reverse and go back to and then look at some of these other issues. The last, I just want to make it, well, actually, I'll save my comments, so I'll move on.

[01:12:51] Thank you, manager. No, I'll come back. I'll come back. All right, then, Supervisor Franklin. Yeah, just actually several questions. Just starting with replacing of the fire stations, if you can just kind of walk through very quickly how that works in terms of are you replacing the stations altogether?

[01:13:11] What does that do to service calls and things of that nature? No, so what I will say is before my arrival, and I would have been ignorant to this, too. I'd never tried it before. We did try living in a firehouse while we were rebuilding it. It's a terrible thing if you're building your own home.

[01:13:27] It's a terrible thing if you're in the firehouse. But there are companies out there that can help us find sort of temporary shelter. They're not long-term solutions by any stretch of the imagination, but to try to limit the impact on response within the area. If I may, real quickly, you brought up a wonderful thing the other day, which I very much appreciate it, when one of the things that I've done in the past is making sure there's art in the firehouse and making sure that we don't lose the history of the community.

[01:13:59] Very important, especially for those older fire stations. Also, on page four, just talking about the operational interdependence, can you just talk a little bit more about how, because you mentioned major repairs and renovations having a positive impact on that.

[01:14:15] If you can just talk a little bit more about what that means. Yeah, sure. So, you know, one is that depending on how the station is built, we look at our response time from the minute the call comes in, we don't know it, right? So over in communications, they do a great job over there.

[01:14:32] But then when we're notified, how long it takes us to turn out, right? And then what our response time looks like, what our travel time looks like. So there are things we can do in designs of the stations. Station 12, I think, is a pretty good example. And there are others where it's a little hard to get from point A to point B, particularly in the middle of the night.

[01:14:51] And so we're taking a hard look at what our turnout times look like, daytime versus evening, and figuring out it's really about a fight for seconds. You're not going to find some silver bullet. You just try to find these different spots.

[01:15:07] So that's really where that's helpful from a response time. And then also making sure that when we build new stations, and in some cases if we have to move, we're moving them where the road network gives us the most efficiency in reaching as many structures as possible.

[01:15:25] Yeah, and for OWL bots, we're replacing that, right? But we're also building a new fire station at Summit School. Yes. Does bots currently service that area? It depends.

[01:15:41] Again, it's an inter, I can't tell you off the top of my head if that's in there first. Okay, thank you, sir. It is part of their catch basin, but again, because of their location, it wouldn't be uncommon to see a unit from a completely different station.

[01:15:56] Sure, and obviously I believe in building fire stations if necessary, so I'm assuming we see a volume increase in the Summit School area that calls for a new fire station that OWL can't service.

[01:16:12] That they can service, but they're not as reliable as we would like them to be. And so taking some of that load off their shoulders. Yep, okay. And then the last thing is about the changing to the system-wide kind of service of taking individual funding requests from the stations, making it system-wide.

[01:16:38] But I guess my, I don't know if it's a concern, but my only question would be kind of talking about efficiency. And if the station currently is able to kind of get their resources more quickly than going through what would be a system-wide process, do we feel that that would be a concern?

[01:16:55] Because I would hate for certain stations to now have to wait longer than what they would have if they were just still handling it themselves. We're not really talking about changing process. Okay. We're talking about changing how we fund the process so that people don't have to wait.

[01:17:14] Part of the problem they have now is they have to wait to initiate the process until they've saved enough money. What we're saying is, no, the system has enough money. If it's time, start putting in the paperwork. I would argue all processes are onerous, right?

[01:17:30] But they are using taxpayer funds, and so they do use the taxpayer process. They don't have to for their own corporate funds. Gotcha. Thank you. All right. Supervisor Weir. Thank you, Madam Chair. Chief, I'm glad to hear you're actually putting some structure to things. I would kind of question why that didn't happen earlier, but that's water under the bridge. Let's go back to proffers. First off, do you guys have a sense or a fund balance for those or know where they're at, what your limitations are?

[01:18:08] I do now, again, in full disclosure, as the board has started to talk about proffers, I've started to pay attention to it. And so it really has just come about recently. But I have a general feel for what's in both the special use permit and the rezoning proffers.

[01:18:29] Okay. Because, I mean, I've personally walked proffers through on a couple of different fire stations and a couple of different things. Everything from replacement equipment to Station 4 to swift water rescue equipment, ballistic vests, et cetera, et cetera.

[01:18:47] So I would like not just the fire department but every department to make as much use of those proffers countywide as they can. And I don't know, you know, given the programmatic changes you're making in terms of acquisitions, purchasing, that sort of thing, how that's going to work.

[01:19:08] But, you know, I suspect that using them on a county-wide replacement program should be fine because a percentage of that, you could even argue all of what you're using out of a particular proffer will benefit county services because not one station responds to all calls per that policy.

[01:19:29] It's food for thought. Thank you, sir. Supervisor Bode. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Chief, for the presentation. I appreciate you coming by the office a couple weeks ago now sort of talk through some of this so a couple of questions from me and some of it most of them have to do with your presentation but I had a couple questions sort of went beyond including the budget document itself I know that in a couple different places you mentioned IT as part of this and need for IT sort of be streamlined and to bring that up to modernization now obviously after you we have

[01:20:06] Rob Mancini from Do It have you been able to sort of talk with him and find any synergies or opportunities to streamline what they're doing with what you need to do and vice versa yeah we we work to be clear we work hand in hand we do it um uh we have uh there's a different term for it that they use i can't remember but effectively an advocate within their office uh that works specifically with public safety and with us uh we do have a 24 7 sort of nature so we have some IT folks with the fire department as well, radio systems, things that are a little unique.

[01:20:43] But no, we run our IT process and purchases through DOIT. They provide great counsel and are good partners. Appreciate that. Second question, I know that one of the things that you looked at when you were looking at that station study was travel times.

[01:21:02] And we talked about mobility a little bit here and there. Now that we're at least beginning as a board and from the staff side beginning to unify more of our CIP processes and not them sort of just be silo based on department, have you had much opportunity to talk to Rick Canizales and his team about how we can more align some of our road projects, especially to make things easier for your folks?

[01:21:26] because I shared with you and some other folks that one of the biggest frustrations I have is we build out these neighborhoods and there are obvious places where connections should have been made at the outset that make your guys' lives harder than it need to be. And since we're going through some of these large road projects and knowing that some of them aligns kind of with where you're wanting to put stations, wanting to see if those kind of conversations are being had, So when we're going through the process of looking at the CIP in terms of road projects, we're also looking to see what you guys are doing with your CIP to make sure we're not

[01:22:03] inadvertently, I wouldn't say putting stations not necessarily where they need to be, but making it so the connectivity we built into these road projects help you guys as you're putting in and looking at locations for your stations. I have spoken to him in the past. I'll also say we specifically spoke about Station 30 and that intersection.

[01:22:23] and so yeah that that's a pretty constant conversation i will say i think the more difficult piece is um you know the the obvious uh problem spaces are in existing neighborhoods and we're not gonna you know no no one's going to be interested in uh putting a cut through in an existing neighborhood right exactly right um and that leads me to my next question which is uh i think it's station 29 the one that looking at in that that sort of telegraph area um i know that one of the things that you're budgeting for is land purchase.

[01:22:55] Now, from where I'm sitting, considering that the school system owns land on that corridor, now we purchased land on that corridor, we're looking at this large town center opportunity, is there a thought to hooking that up with your idea on purchasing land? Because again, if we already have land, the school already owns land, we're looking at maybe buying and assembling more land, I would hate for you to all begin the endeavor of buying land knowing that At least us, the school system, there are other entities that we already have relationships with or us control land there.

[01:23:27] It would seem redundant to me to have to buy land as well. I would agree. We've already met with and spoken to the school. They don't have property available for us. Well, what I should say is they don't have enough. We make a pretty big footprint. But we've also spoken to the Economic Development Office about the possibility, depending on the development of that area, just recognizing that that road doesn't exist yet right and and so we kind of need the road to be there and so that the timing of that can drive it as well sure but yeah i'm what i what i'll say quite frankly as a taxpayer in the community i'm willing to do anything to figure out a way to do

[01:24:06] it effectively but if we can save costs let's let's save costs so follow-up sort of corollary question there in i ask the school division this all the time to ask you different footprint types for stations, knowing that in some cases we're going to have constrained parcels, we're going to have issues finding it. Like you said before, we're going to have, especially issues with the county that are already built out, finding that piece of property that fits the traditional style that we're building in the county. Have you been beginning to look at other types of station styles that may need, that have more constrained footprints, more urban style ones that we know

[01:24:45] go up a little bit more I suppose out that those kinds of things we have um so we've been working with FFM uh they began the process of sort of creating three or four variations on the theme uh what I'd also say though is when we're looking at the volunteer stations we need to make sure we're working closely with them uh and their vision uh for the station uh the county stations may be a little more uh consistent but I want to be respectful to the volunteers when it comes to those stations sure next one um did you want your second tranche of 10 or did you just you'll wait

[01:25:21] okay get back in the queue all right supervisor bailey get back in the queue hi chief thank you so much for your presentation i want to start off by first of all saying thank you for the presentation you made with the data from that report it was an eye opener and so that that really helps a lot and just understanding how we should partner with you and your department going forward the um i have two questions one is um and this is this has nothing to do with your presentation but it does in a sense you've you are you continuing uh the program you have a

[01:25:57] wonderful program with the schools for uh to become the cadet program is that am i saying that right and it's still going right absolutely okay i love that because it also shows continuity we have the same thing with our police department and with you and that's good in terms of longevity So we appreciate that.

[01:26:15] The other thing is, what I wanted to ask is, just clarity on one thing. Station 27 is paid for in full. That's the new station. Paid for in full, Station 27? Okay. Yes, Dave said yes, and therefore it is so.

[01:26:33] Thanks, Dave. Okay, he's coming up. He's coming up. Yes, asterisk. And what brought to mind, Dave, what brought to mind is I saw trees cutting down. Station 27 is fully funded in the proposed capital improvement program.

[01:26:51] The county has not issued the debt to finance it yet. We typically do that as we get closer to construction. It is very close to beginning construction. We will be asking the board to issue that debt very soon. Thank you, Dave, for clarity.

[01:27:08] And the supporting debt service is programmed in the proposed budget and five-year plan. Okay, thank you. Through the fire levy. Thank you. Because I saw trees being cut down. I just wondered, whoa, what's going on? So the next question that I have is I appreciate you including the Dumfries Triangle Station in your report because we had an in-depth conversation about that, and having your eyes on that is very important because it's such an old station.

[01:27:35] But what I wanted to ask in terms of the determining factor, whether we need to replace it or renovate it to standard, you know, what does that look like? What's the time frame that you have in terms of that? I think, well, it's in the CIP. I think, you know, assuming CIP moves forward, we'll work closely with FFM.

[01:27:56] I think one of the things to always keep in mind is the older a station is, the more renovation you have to do to bring it back to Cote. And there's a tipping point where it just doesn't make sense. And so that's part of the conversation. Also, say for Station 3, as you're well aware, there's the hill on the side.

[01:28:15] I don't know what that means. Again, I'm not an engineer. But I think if it's possible to maintain and reclaim, we should. But what I'll also say is, and I'm going to pick on Chief Shiro for a second, we've got one of our great volunteer chiefs who has two new stations, and I can tell you that his members are really excited when they get to go into a nice new station.

[01:28:43] Yeah, I do. I can appreciate that. I really can, and I understand when I look at the, in terms of renovations, I'm looking at the amount, smaller amount, but you still have to determine what you need to do. Yes. Okay, all right, I got that, and then the last question that I have, Madam Chair, how much, oh, I got a minute and 30 seconds, let's just talk.

[01:29:02] The last question that I have is in reference to the new CRC that's coming up, and the level of service as you integrate, what does that look like as we go forward? So I would have to go back through and take a look at our call data to determine a hard number.

[01:29:22] What I can tell you is the fire department's taking a really aggressive review of how we support emergent to the individual, but not necessarily emergent calls. How we work with our peer support teams, how we work with our co-responders, how we help within the system.

[01:29:44] I think the one big advantage it likely has is the easier it is for us to bring a patient where they need to go and get back in service, that's a great thing. And I ask you that in reference to funding also.

[01:30:00] Is it a funding opportunity associated with that? And then lastly, I'm going to go quick, the casino. Anything that, and we can do this offline if need be, but. I can tell you the fire marshal was in there on Monday, did a great review, felt really comfortable with it, is going to write up their comments and get it back to the building official in the town so that they can execute based on their authority.

[01:30:26] Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair. All right. Supervisor Gordy. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Chief, for being here today. And I also want to thank you for coming and sharing the information with the new program that you have.

[01:30:41] It scared me. You know, given that, you know, much of the Brentsville District, you know, they do not have fire hydrants. So, you know, so getting, you know, talking about response times and even looking at opportunities for new stations going forward to help meet those challenges, look forward to those conversations.

[01:31:02] Also want to thank Chief Shiro and Mr. Ingman for being here today and also coming in and visiting with me and keeping me up to date with what's happening with our Noakesville volunteers. just a couple of questions first is I'm just kind of looking at this from the 90,000 foot level in in in other areas of our budget in other parts of the county I often discuss maintenance what's our maintenance bow way or our backlog you know and so it looks to me that you're trying to get ahead of addressing both recap as well as ensuring proper maintenance of what you have and when the

[01:31:41] Maintenance no longer warrants the money we're spending on it. It's time for that recap. Is that? That's fair. It's not something we do right now. We're actually going to be presenting in March to the executive committee for the fire rescue system how we can start to share data so that we can exactly capture that.

[01:32:00] We don't have a shared maintenance. We're not set up for shared maintenance. I'm not asking for shared maintenance. But they're collecting data. So how often are units actually working and available? How much are we spending on them? To your point, there's that cross-section where there's sort of a sweet spot where you don't either owe any or you owe very little left on the apparatus and your expenses are going up.

[01:32:23] The problem now is it used to be if you could shoot that window within about two years, you were good. Now you've got to shoot the window in three and a half to five years. And so it becomes much more of a problem. So it's something we're looking to be able to do for next year.

[01:32:40] And so, I mean, three and a half years when you think about what inflation can do in that period of time and you sign a contract for a truck or for an engine at $1.2 million, is that locked in at that rate or are there escalator clauses?

[01:32:59] The company we currently predominantly work with, they lock the rates in. There are companies out there that don't. They just say, it will cost you no less than this, and when we're ready to deliver, we'll tell you how much it's going to be. And if the demand is so high that if you say you don't want it, no problem, they'll have it sold in about 48 hours.

[01:33:18] Yeah, okay. And so going and looking at the chart related to the new and replacement of the rescue stations, you have the apparatus cost and you have the annual operation cost, and if I missed this, my apologies, But does that include personnel, or is that a separate cost?

[01:33:37] The annual operating cost is the first year of personnel. It's the first year. Okay. And then it would just carry on. Yeah, and so in terms of each of these, I'm assuming as we build new, we're going to need additional FTEs. Yeah, so if you look, you'll see that in some, there's no annual operating cost.

[01:33:57] It's because we don't need new. And so, yes, each time you saw a new station on there, you would see that additional expense. OK, that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. All right. I just have one quick question, because Supervisor Angry mentioned something and talking about insurance.

[01:34:14] You said we're one of the few counties are uninsurable, not uninsurable, but we're close. So why? It turns out running into things is bad. And so we have it's pretty common in the fire service. We're getting better.

[01:34:32] We're pretty focused on it, but backing accidents, and I can tell you when you hit something with a fire engine, you're going to do some damage, both to the engine and to whatever it is you're running into. So before I got here, it would do credit to my predecessors.

[01:34:47] They really created a backup program, making sure you have someone backing you up. Again, I'll throw a little credit out to Station 5. One of their new units has a great camera system that really lets you see 360 around the unit, which is helpful.

[01:35:04] We also, not assigning any blame, just to be clear, we rolled an ambulance this year. We had another intersection accident with an ambulance. Those things are expensive.

[01:35:19] One of the things we're working on is trying to identify how do we respond to things before they're an emergency, which will cut down on how often we're running into things, right? And then how do we make sure we're not over responding and putting too many units, which also goes back to how do we save money?

[01:35:37] How do we make our units last as long as possible? So I appreciate that. So again, I assume that there's a mitigation strategy in place, obviously. And does that include like possibly also retraining people or? So there's a training process. To be honest with you, for the most part, what it involves now is discipline.

[01:35:57] They've been trained. I am going to ask, I don't want to ask, we're nearly uninsurable. What would that look like? I mean, how much would that be for us? I would have to get with Lori Gray in her office and give you an idea.

[01:36:12] All right. Well, I appreciate you. Thank you. I'm going to go to Supervisor Angry. Thank you, Madam Chair. You know, the more y'all talk, there's like thousands of questions I have. But, you know, and it's not on insurance, it's not to point fingers at anyone. But, yes, that is a complicated issue because this is what driving to one insurance literally drove us up.

[01:36:31] But I think there was a better answer, a solution to trying to figure out how to best go about that. So that's why I'm curious about the data 2019 prior, you know, I'll simply say the data before 56 hours and the data after 56 hours. Like, literally, what does that look like?

[01:36:47] I think all of our questions can be answered in looking at that process, really, and I'll just pause it there and get to my questions. So when we spoke about the cadet program, a curious question. Can the cadets that we have in the county course train with volunteers?

[01:37:05] And is there a program after cadets graduate, if they're not coming right into a career position, either in Princeton County or elsewhere, that they can be guided to look at volunteer stations for assignments? So the conversation we have with them right now is to encourage them to volunteer, particularly if they're interested in eventually coming to work for us or another fire department.

[01:37:31] The beautiful thing for the volunteer organizations is when that cadet graduates, they're ready to go. And we've given them some level of gear already. Like they have the training, they're ready to go. And even if they're only with you for a few years, they're with you for a few years. The conversations we've had but haven't executed on yet is a volunteer night where all the volunteer organizations are invited in, sort of like a career fair if you will and can introduce themselves and um uh see if we can do that and there's some other programs we're looking at uh part of my goal is to give uh these folks

[01:38:08] uh employment opportunities but not necessarily with the fire department um and so continue to to give in that manner um and just to piggyback off of uh supervisor gordy gordy's question with the uh the maintenance um and the apparatus and and what that costs you know with everything going going up um so let me let me phrase this correctly so the volunteer stations and their current maintenance plan that they use that you don't want to you know meet basically step into their ways of many of these apparatus go out the door 24 hours with our county personnel as well so we know that

[01:38:46] the turnover on these equipment is going up so they're spinning that out of their budget this kind of goes back to your um comments about consolidating the maintenance and because you know volunteers may have a fish fry or whatever and raising funds and keep their budgets up and the fire levy as well but a big large chunk of that is once we went into that 56 much of their budget is spent on maintenance of apparatus which i believe it would the four million that we're doing for the station renovations coming out of that so volunteer stations don't have to worry about that would help that more but i just kind of want to you know is is that a factor for uh

[01:39:23] volunteer stations. I mean, have you seen that data? Do you know that? Yeah, well, I can say anecdotally, I think a perfect example is if you look at the apparatus, we're looking to replace Ambulance 520, right, which is traditionally staffed by volunteers and is crazy busy, right? And because it gets run a lot, it gets replaced. And so, yeah, whether it's career staff getting on the unit, whether it's volunteers getting on the unit, the more you use the unit. I got to tell you, I like that about ambulances, because, honestly, we have a lot of BLS services in the county, so those going out, I get.

[01:39:57] I'm going to lean into now our engines and our rescue and the fact that they're going out the door a lot more now because we put ALS on them, and they're running with medics now to call. So they're turning wheels and maintenance and all that's going up.

[01:40:14] So as we look at how we did that, the data of what that looks like, I'm curious. and just before we went to this and after. So I'm trying not to go backwards, but I just think the data is very important to see where we are because as we navigate down into this new frontier of fire and rescue, I think it's worth to look at are some of the things we did worth investigating again to see if that was better or there's another way to cost, save, and efficiency for what we're doing.

[01:40:44] And I've got 39 seconds. The last thing I'll say is as we're building out stations, again, to Supervisor Gordy's, point our western of the county is where stations need to be built and so my question for you now is response time um what are we trying to get to here we're we're roughly about six are we trying to go down to four minute response time no well it depends on the type of call right and so this is a really complicated answer and i apologize ahead of time i'll try to make it brief right depending on the the emergent nature of the call right is an als call is it a bls call and the first unit

[01:41:20] showing up can't always ameliorate the problem. And so it's not just, did I get there in four minutes, but did I get enough units there? And so one of the things you'll see in this year's fiscal year 26 budget proposal is instead of saying, hey, we have an eight minute response time. Hey, we have a four minute response time. What it says is 85% of the time we got there this much or or less because that's who we are that's what we what we do 85 percent of the time is who we are and so rather than focusing on those other benchmarks we really should take a look at what

[01:41:59] do we do how often do we do it some communities do 90 some 85 and and then just sort of walk down and if we did it in seven minutes and 30 seconds last year we should try to do it in seven minutes and 20 seconds in the next year right work our way down thank you for the questions all right Thank you, Madam Chair.

[01:42:18] Just a couple more questions to appreciate it. You mentioned going back to the conversation with Supervisor Angry that it's more of the funding that's going to be unified and centralized and not the processes. That being said, though, that we know that some stations do it differently than others.

[01:42:38] There's efficiencies they're able to find that other folks don't have. Is part of the process at least going to be opening up more communication lines So there's more information sharing, best practices, that kind of stuff. Yeah, if I can. We did a study last year.

[01:42:53] We used some funds and we put together a best practices manual on not-for-profit employees. And it's just a toolkit for the volunteer organizations. Also, I requested last year that the presidents start meeting frequently so that they can convey their concerns to us directly.

[01:43:14] They now participate in the FRS Executive Committee as well. So, yeah, and tomorrow night I'll be out having dinner with two volunteer chiefs, right? So it really is about how do we increase communication. What I'll say is, though, we're not necessarily envisioning changing the processes.

[01:43:32] We're changing how we fund it so that everyone has access to funding. Got it. And going to the actual budget proposal you have, and I saw that you have sort of different measurements for how you're looking at different things. One thing you have in there is multi-agency exercises.

[01:43:48] Now, can you share a little bit what that looks like? What's a multi-agency exercise? Sure, that's really from the emergency management standpoint. And so how often, what frequency, what types of multi-agency exercises. You all are experienced enough to know that when the emergency operations center opens up, who's on the call, who's in the room, it's not just police and fire.

[01:44:11] It depends on what the event is. Appreciate that. And then the last couple of questions, I'm going to look over at Sue as I'm angry here for a second, but as you're looking at all this data and all this way to save taxpayers money and talking about really integrating the volunteers and their companies more into these processes, have you done an analysis recently on how much taxpayer money having the volunteers saves over time, really integrating that into that sort of outward horizon look?

[01:44:39] So I haven't, I certainly can, but I'd like to add an editorial statement. Sure. Human beings are not about saving money. And so I prefer to look at our volunteers and how they improve our response times, how they improve our reliability, and the non-emergent role that they play in our communities in making our community truly feel like a community.

[01:45:03] I'm concerned that if we make it about tax savings, then we're putting a dollar sign on human beings. And I know that's no one's intent, but it turns it into this sort of difficult conversation. I appreciate that. And I like that perspective, and that's why I asked it that way, because I wanted to see it.

[01:45:20] I know we have talked about it before. We have. Yeah, I appreciate it. Last one. Actually, two final ones. I have two minutes left. Have you looked at, well, I know that we received the information recently on how many of our personnel live in Prince William County versus other localities.

[01:45:41] Have you been looking at working with different folks on changing that, frankly? Because to me, knowing that there's people that live as far as the city of Richmond that, frankly, commute to work for our fire department is kind of disconcerting for a lot of reasons. And as we have conversations around housing, home affordability, attainment of our local heroes working in the community that they serve, how do you see us working in that regard and looking at that piece?

[01:46:09] Certainly. So what I will say is I think that email came out right before this meeting. I didn't get a chance to take a look at it. I apologize. That's why I didn't quiz you on that piece. I appreciate it. What I would say is when I think about compensation, it's not just about paychecks.

[01:46:25] And I think this board or many members of this board participated in a pretty substantive pay raise a few years ago. And what I would tell you is it helped for a little while, right? And so it's about, do people feel like they belong here?

[01:46:41] Do they feel like they're included? What I'll also say is that the nature of particularly dual-income households lends itself to people in the fire department, career and volunteer, not necessarily living in the community they serve.

[01:47:00] So what I would say is I'd love to have them close by. Appreciate that. And final one, I have a couple seconds left. attrition patterns in volunteers and career. After how many years do you see that as a trend we're getting a hold of? And what's the outlook on that?

[01:47:16] Yeah, what I would say is that we're now, my fellow fire chiefs in Northern Virginia would disagree. I would say we're the employer of choice now. I would say that I'm sure all of you are on social media.

[01:47:33] When we post the job, look who reposts it. And it's members of our fire department. It's members of our career staff. When your own people are advocating, that says a lot. What I'll tell you is also that we tend to have a non-retiree rate of people transitioning out because of our recruit academy.

[01:47:59] And we hire amazing human beings. But sometimes you don't know until you get to the recruit academy that you're claustrophobic, right? You've got to be able to put a facepiece on and go. And it doesn't mean you're a bad person. It just means you can't be in the fire department. And so we lose quite a few people in that recruit process.

[01:48:16] The other thing that we probably should be ready for is that the way the retirement system works for most of our members is they get to count their highest three years. So the good news is that the contract with the local creates some consistency, right?

[01:48:34] You don't see those big up and downs. But what it also means is the big pay raise that was given in the spring of 2023, spring of 2026, will be those three years. And so I think we're probably going to see a pretty substantive retirement at that time period. Thank you, Chief. I'm just going to put on a plug.

[01:48:52] I did a directive last year on homeownership programs for county employees. And with us, you know, I'm assuming I have your support, Supervisor Bodie, Supervisor Bailey. I heard you, Madam Chair. Chief, your story is really good because you just talked about collaboration in terms of volunteer firemen.

[01:49:13] You talked about collaboration in terms of cadets, in terms of attrition. You talked about that collaboration. And I think certainly from my first term and some of us up here, we were looking for that kind of synergy. So I hear you saying that we are on the road for more of that.

[01:49:32] So I appreciate it. And even having dinner tomorrow, that's good. And if I can, the crew you see behind me, Career and Volunteer, also allow me to go out and meet with church groups, other not-for-profits, and to figure out ways that non-traditional volunteer organizations may be able to help us in our mission as well.

[01:49:50] Oh, usher board, place the plate. You can do it. But thank you for that as well. My question is, I asked you about Dumfries, but I didn't ask you about Quantico. Because remember, last year we had a very exciting moment with, did I say that good?

[01:50:10] We had a very exciting moment with the base, and you showed up, you and your team showed up in a very valiant way. And so what I want to ask you is, have you looked at that again in terms of level of service and partnership?

[01:50:27] And if so, what does that look like, and is there a funding element attached to that? Yeah, so one of the things that I do is go out and meet with those chiefs, so the Quantico chief, the Manassas, Manassas Park chief, pretty consistently and try to make sure I understand where they're at, what they need, and let them know what we need.

[01:50:47] And then also going out and meeting with the town mayors consistently, as they're able to, to get a feel for it, and then address the problem. A huge shout-out, by the way, to the Quantico mayor who put together a great smoke alarm program and made sure people in his community had smoke alarms.

[01:51:06] And just to close out, the back gate is going to be open. That gate we were talking, it's going to be open. So thank you for that as well. Thank you, Madam Chair. Supervisor Gordy. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just talking about the collaboration, interestingly, yesterday afternoon I had a meeting at my office.

[01:51:27] One of the participants in the meeting left the office not feeling well. Meeting ended. He was getting ready to leave and collapsed out in the parking lot. But it was Prince William Ambulance and a Manassas fire truck that responded, which just demonstrates the collaboration and the partnership.

[01:51:49] And knowing and looking at, like, some of the responses, I believe it was Station 11, they probably spend as much time out of the county as they do in the county in supporting our neighbors. So, you know, it really isn't just about what's happening within the borders of Prince William County, but it's also about what's happening more regionally.

[01:52:10] One last question I had, and it's related to equipment that has become surplus. So what happens to those vehicles? What happens, do we sell it? And if so, where do those funds go back to? and how are they best leveraged and utilized to support us going forward?

[01:52:28] Depending on the piece of equipment, most of the manufacturers will give credit towards. Otherwise, whether it's the volunteer organization or career, we use a disposal process to make sure we're disposing of the asset appropriately.

[01:52:43] That's as long as we haven't wrecked it. Even if we have, I can tear it apart. We'll get some money for the transmission. All right. Well, I will make a plug next Saturday, the 22nd, is the Noakesville Fire Department's annual awards banquet.

[01:53:01] Look forward to being with everybody there and recognizing all the firefighters who've really stepped up and gone above and beyond over the past year. Look forward to seeing y'all there. All right. Thank you so much. And Supervisor Franklin.

[01:53:18] Yeah, just a question. In terms of us working with other jurisdictions, do you know kind of what the volume is for, like, some of those other jurisdictions, particularly, like, the city of Manassas, when they're doing calls for the county?

[01:53:34] And then also just want to talk a little bit about mutual aid and what that looks like and who actually pays for it when we have to go into those partnerships. Sure. So I get a monthly report sort of within the county. So the park, Quantico, the city of Manassas, how we're responding.

[01:53:55] And then similarly, I get a monthly report for the region. My general rule of thumb is 10% one way or the other is fine, right? And so some months we get a little more, some months our neighbors get a little more.

[01:54:13] But as long as it stays within sort of a 10% overall call amount, it's still mutual aid. Once it starts getting past that, it's not necessarily mutual aid, and we have to have a conversation. We did have a meeting of the Northern Virginia Chiefs this morning to start talking about how we take a look at the way dispatch works for us.

[01:54:35] It's called CAD-to-CAD. And so the call happens in Fairfax. It looks for a unit. We get dispatched from our dispatches, so CAT-to-CAT, but there are sort of background programs that run, mapping that runs, that can kind of offshoot it.

[01:54:56] So I made a request today that was accepted that we're going to start having sort of a shared database on how we're managing our CAT-to-CAT. Thank you for that. Absolutely. All right, and that is it. Thank you, everyone, Mr. Shorter. And I'm going to turn you over for the next presentation, but again, thank you so very much, Chief of Bell.

[01:55:15] We appreciate you. Very good. Thank you very much, Chief LaBelle. Appreciate the presentation. Now inviting our DOT, or not DOT, our DOIT director, Rob Mancini, to give a presentation.

[01:55:38] Again, this is a follow-on from the budget presentation and a continuation of our budget work session. We're going to talk IT, the significant investments in IT that we are recommending. We make this time around, as well as the 3-1-1 call center update that Rob started to talk about just a few weeks ago.

[01:56:01] So, Rob, I'll turn it over to you. Thank you very much. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Madam Chair, members of the board, county executive, county attorney, everybody in the room with me. I'm Rob Mancini, your director of IT. By the way, happy 3-1-1 day.

[01:56:17] Thank you for declaring that last week. And there are four things we're really going to talk about today. The first piece of this presentation is going to be some background because it's very important to my second piece, which is where I'm going to talk about the refresh and replace aspect of my budget request, and then we'll get into some other IT requests in the county, and then we'll talk about 311.

[01:56:40] So here we go. Let's get to work. Infrastructure background. I'm not going to read the slide to you. I'm going to kind of give you the highlights. I imagine you've already read it. In 2017, when I got here, I found a state of massive technical debt for the IT apparatus of the county.

[01:56:59] And when you have a problem like that, you can't do things. And if you leave that problem in place long enough, you can't even do the basic things that the enterprise needs you to do. And that's where we were. What we were good at in those days, and we're still good at, GIS was doing a really good job.

[01:57:19] Our application support division, which was called BASDI at the time, has done and continues to do a really good job supporting applications. But from capacity and capability out of your IT department, the apparatus, the thing you might consider a utility, that was broken. It's not broken anymore. And that's because we started a project to resolve that problem. It was effectively an infrastructure do-over. We built it in parallel and we moved the county to it rather than try to do it in place. And we've talked about that a few times. I don't want to belabor that point, but that history is important because it really has to do with what we're asking for today.

[01:57:54] so in a situation like that these five things are five things you don't want to be going badly in your IT department and they were all going badly in 2017 when you have no capacity and capability you can't offer the basics the one in the middle is the one I'll never sleep on the other four I'm very comfortable that we're in a really great place but the one in the middle cyber is something we never rest on and these are this is what I call the stakes slide these are the stakes of not doing IT well, okay? And so what we did was we designed a multi-layer infrastructure and designed

[01:58:34] security into it, okay? So the next thing we're going to talk about, and we're going to touch and run on this one. We're not going to do any fear, uncertainty, and doubt on cyber. Cyber is growing. Cyber attacks are growing. We are far busier than we want to be on this, and this slide is designed to show you just how much that is scaling at the end of 2024. We saw the jump, and we feel the jump, And we're working regularly on protecting the county in that way.

[01:59:01] So it was time in 2017 to build for cloud, and that's what we did. This slide right here represents different thinking. I remember Chris, me, and David having a conversation during a proposal for FY26, and we talked about the need to replace and refresh, and he had an epiphany.

[01:59:20] He began to think differently about the fact that we need to continue to invest in IT. So if we bought that equipment in 2018 and started implementing it, It's been running for five to six years. And in IT, five to six years is a long time.

[01:59:36] It doesn't mean the equipment won't work, but there are certain things that next generation equipment will do for you that you do want to take advantage of, and you do want to replace that hardware, right? So I think the point of this slide is thinking differently about IT, making continual investments the right type of an investment to enable the enterprise to transform, and that's what we really did the IT modernization for, And that's where we are today.

[02:00:02] We're doing a lot of transformation because we can, right? The other piece of that is that it allows you better options to mitigate risk. That's the reason that cyber slide was up there. And some of what we're asking for in this replacement and refresh is due to cyber. Not all of it, but some of it is.

[02:00:19] Because, again, we designed that into the infrastructure. So let's get to it. We've got a lot of, whoops, this is the slide. I'm going to skip to seven. This is the slide that that background really speaks to. Okay.

[02:00:36] Capability and capacity. What are the three things an IT department really has to do well? You have to do help desk well, you have to provide capability, and you have to support applications. What you see here is effectively the refresh of the IT modernization that we did in 2018, 2019, and part of 2020.

[02:00:56] That's why I remember Supervisor Bodie, when CXO presented his budget in February, you looked at those numbers and you wondered, what were those? That's what that's all about. Supervisor Angry, you've been to the data center. Supervisor Bailey, you've been there.

[02:01:12] you've seen what that is. This is a refresh to make sure that that equipment continues to work well. We can get support on it. You don't want to have an outage, and either you can't get an update to keep your equipment up to date for continual runtime in cyber, but you also need to be able to get that equipment supported. That is the thrust of that $26.5 million over five-year ask, and we're doing it a little bit at a time. That's what that's all about. Those are the stakes.

[02:01:43] That's what that one means, okay? I'm going to go back a slide here. Any questions about that piece before I go back to a different slide and change the topic? I was actually going to have people ask at the end. Okay, great. But thank you. All right, you got it. So here we have some technology needs that you see in the proposed budget that sit in the do it section of the proposed budget.

[02:02:07] I'm going to break these down for you. It's kind of a story of thirds. The top third of that chart, those are contractual obligations for things that we do today. They're allowed by the contract for the things that we bought. Those are increases, and we have to meet those, or we have to start turning some of those things off.

[02:02:24] Those are things we don't want to turn off, okay? And I'll touch on a couple of them. The Iron Mountain Data Center, that is our Tier 4 data center. That's where our cloud service lives. That's where major infrastructure investment was made. Comcast had some pricing increases. We have to meet those. The ESRI, that's where everybody gets their GIS.

[02:02:41] That's an enterprise agreement. We're finally fully funding that one. Motorola, that was a staff escalation. Help desk was a staff escalation on the hourly rate of a few of the help desk staff. And the juvenile case management system, that is an increase in the, what is the name, but that's the kinship project.

[02:02:58] There was an increase on that project. And that could be a contractual, well, it is a contractual obligation. That's the top third of that table. We go to the middle, and now we're talking about doing some, maybe some operational upgrades to some of the things that we have.

[02:03:16] You see 311 there? We started 311 with a $700,000 budget. The true cost per year of that program is 2.3, and that's the difference between 700. The 1.6 that you see there is the difference between 700K and 2.3, okay? The soft tech upgrade, that is a result of an audit finding on youth services and a case management application for youth services that cannot do what it really needs to do for a variety of reasons.

[02:03:41] I won't get into the details. That needs to be replaced, and we're replacing it, and I'm happy to see that. Public safety records management, as you know, we're replacing all the 911 centers technology. starting this year. We haven't awarded that contract yet. When we do that, the timing's good here. Your RMS system that police and fire use, that has to tie to your call handling system, your 911 technology. So we'll begin looking at the type of products we want to consider based upon what we're going to be operating in our new 911 center technology. That's what that's for.

[02:04:15] That's a study. The rest of those, the next two, those are really what I call enhancements to existing body camera for police and sheriff okay they've been asking for those for a couple years i'm glad to see that in there let's go to the bottom section this is where we we do some enrichment of the environment for the constituent and in some case this is an enrichment for the workforce too the mass appraisal system for the way we appraise a property in the county we need to replace that system i'm thrilled to see this happen i don't know what it's really going to cost we haven't selected that product yet but we have a pretty good idea what it's going to cost us

[02:04:53] right that's an important one they've been asking for that for a couple of years i believe michelle um that's going to do a lot of good for the county and i think we'll have a very successful implementation with that one we know how to do that one pretty well the other one is radio frequency id how do you track an inmate through um the adc i think they need some better technology and they're about to get it we're looking forward to working with them on that one those are the things these things on this slide right here are the things that you'll see in my part of the budget They are agency initiatives, and we will help them implement them.

[02:05:26] But that's why they're sitting in my budget. I didn't ask for all of these things, but I sure do support them. And I'll say this much. I won't belabor this point. This is a fraction of the technology need I see from my colleagues and other agency directors who have a lot of technology needs. We just can't fund them all.

[02:05:41] There are upwards of 80 to 100 technology initiatives that we see every year. It's kind of hard to make that list. But I think the county executive is getting us there, right? So again, these are the things that you saw in my budget, different from the things that were just for me in that replacement and refresh.

[02:06:03] Let's go past this one. We talked about that one. Now we're going to have some fun talking about 3.1.1. I can tell you that Nikki's team has done some really good work. This is the middle of that screen there shows you the web page. Nikki's done some really good work making that look better.

[02:06:19] I'm sorry you can't see it, but I had to get this presentation in before some of that work was done. As you know, we're laboring away at that thing. The website looks good. There are really nice icons on all of these service requests that you see here. The thing you see in the middle of the screen is the web presentation.

[02:06:34] If someone wants to go to the 311 page, they can do that. On the left side of the screen here is the app. And if you want to see what other people have reported, if you're going to report a downed tree, you can go see if somebody's already reported it. But that's what the mobile app will do, and that'll work on any device.

[02:06:51] That gives you an idea of what the website for 311 will look like. I can't show you the chat bot, and I can't show you the call center, but they're there. Okay? This right here, I think last time I was here, I told you this is an accountable government, an example of accountable government.

[02:07:09] This is an example, and you can see some of the test data in here, of the type of reports you're going to get from this system. By magisterial district, this was done for you, so you could get an idea. What's in it for you? What do I get? This will kind of show you. If you want to see on a day-by-day basis, you can also look at it on the app.

[02:07:26] I'm sure Chris is going to have a lot of fun, and so will his directors, seeing how quick our turnaround times are on these tickets, right? But I think if I were to say one thing for my partners in this project, the agencies who are really delivering service requests, we're going to have to give them 30 to 60 days to get good at this, everybody, realistically, in fairness to them.

[02:07:45] It will be hard for them at first because it's a new system, and you have to, where did that ticket go? Did we assign it to the right agency? So there will be some smoothing going on for the first month or two, okay? You're having fun with something over there, Supervisor. No, you're not an actual reporter.

[02:08:02] In the Bacaquan district, I currently have massive amounts of overdue requests. Yeah, a lot of tests going on in your district. I see that. There's also a QA test SR up there, too. We left it in there just so you could see. Okay. That gives you an idea of what's coming.

[02:08:19] So let's talk about some of the things I couldn't tell you last time I was here. You know we're laboring away, continuing to test, developing technology, working with the departments, making sure everything's working, getting all of the 1,200 knowledge articles to work well in the service request system and with the bots that we're using.

[02:08:38] Last time I was here, I said Chris wasn't going to let me skate too long on a date, and I really don't know exactly the date, but I think if I had to pick one, I'd say May 15th, not March 31. We need the time. We need the time to get it right. If we can make it earlier than May 15th, we will.

[02:08:54] I know Tighenny's watching here. He's running that project for me. He doesn't want me to promise too soon, but I think May 15th is pretty reasonable. I think you're really going to like what you see. And I'm going to point to some of the partners that we have in this project. AWS is Amazon. We're using Amazon for quite a few things in this project.

[02:09:12] Salesforce and Accenture slash Encapsulate. Those are two or actually three companies. That's really Accenture and Salesforce now because Salesforce, I mean, Accenture bought Encapsulate. 80% of the 311 in this country is done with Salesforce and Encapsulate.

[02:09:29] And we're doing something Encapsulate's never done in this project. And I will tell you about that as you get closer to GoLive. I'm not going to give it away yet. It might scare some people because it has to do with AI. But it's going to be pretty cool, and it works really well. I know, Chris, you saw it recently. You liked what you saw.

[02:09:47] Later this month, we're going to bring in more testers. Your chiefs of staff will be involved. You probably haven't heard from us yet, but you will. And you'll get your chance to test that. And if I could say one thing to all of your chiefs of staff, it would be this. This is phase one. We're getting the workforce ready to do this.

[02:10:05] Your time to actually use this system and get some of your service requests in there will come. But we have to start with a low-hanging fruit. And if you're wondering why you don't have service requests in here yet, that's why. It's coming. But let's get through phase one. And if Michelle and Chris are happy and you all are happy, we'll go to phase two and keep going.

[02:10:25] One thing I was reminded of when I looked at you just now, Mr. Gordy. On September 10th, I stood here and you asked me if I was worried about anything related to cyber, if I had any needs. And I remember not answering your question because I didn't think it would be appropriate to advocate before budget.

[02:10:40] And I told you, you'll see it in the budget process. So if you look at this presentation, you'll see it in the budget process. Okay? Didn't want to fail to answer that. Some other updates I wanted to give you before I turn it over for questions. Last time I was here, we had about 275 addresses done for that fiber project.

[02:11:03] 470 of the 474 addresses are now lit for service. That's four months early. So I got you the answer on that one. I'm giving you the date on 3-1-1. What was the other one? Oh, the other one was miles of fiber. I can't remember who asked me.

[02:11:18] It might have been Supervisor Vega. How many miles? I think it's 37 miles of fiber in that project, in case you're wondering. I know that's not related to this presentation, but that was a lingering question. I wanted to answer it. And so I think this is my questions slide, and I'll be happy to take any questions that you have.

[02:11:36] If I can, Madam Chair, I did have an opportunity to sit with Rob, Michelle, and I. was it last week or the week before, and Rob and his team and Accenture, they all sort of walked us through the demo of what will be the bot or AI that helps to sort of source our 311 system.

[02:12:03] It is very exciting technology, and I think we are the first jurisdiction in the country to test this technology. Just very exciting. Our residents will be very much better served because of it, so I'm looking forward to the tests and certainly looking forward to the feedback from your chiefs of staff and others who continue to participate in the testing phase.

[02:12:29] Rob, I just want to give a big thank you to you and the team. It's phenomenal to see. I left that meeting very excited about what we have coming. I'm sure they're happy to hear that. Thank you. All right, I'm going to kick it off. I have a couple questions, and I apologize. I missed a number.

[02:12:45] When you were talking about technology refreshes, how often were we supposed to, should we be doing it within a five-year mark? It's usually a best practice, five years to do a refresh, especially on your core infrastructure. We're at the five- to six-year mark for most all of this, so it's time.

[02:13:02] And, you know, I was looking at slide number four. You don't have to go there, but I was just talking about security, I'm sorry, cyber attacks continue to increase significantly. Do we know what's behind that? Are there any concerns because of what's going on with the federal government and downsizing some of their agencies that we might be more vulnerable? You're always more vulnerable when there are more attacks being launched, for sure.

[02:13:22] I think AI is part of it. I also think that is an environment that just doesn't rest. As more and more folks learn about IT and test their skills, you just have definitely a vertical trajectory for cyber attacks.

[02:13:39] At the end of last year, it just seemed to be exponential. That might be due to AI. It might have been due to the political climate in the country. right but we see that increase it is a real one and it takes a lot more out of your team when you've got to evaluate you get a lot more alarms you have to look into and you start finding that way we have to have a vulnerability here we've got to find a way to fix it and we do it on a regular basis it's just a constant thing supervisor or chair i'm sorry i'll forgive you um supervisor

[02:14:09] thank you madam chair um motorola contract are we still tied to the motorola rep for prince william county or are we able to afford ourselves of what fairfax has available to them because i know in the past there's been a distinction between the two reps and a significant cost differential between the two are we still in that where we're paying more than fairfax is for equipment and service i think we probably are um we're about to conclude that contract and to the extent that that goes to motorola we'll have an opportunity to fix that to the extent it doesn't

[02:14:46] go to motorola that problem is gone well my understanding was we couldn't We couldn't contract with the Fairfax Motorola rep because we were outside of his district, and we were at the mercy of the rep assigned to Prince William County, who would not give us the deals that the other counties were getting.

[02:15:06] Yeah, that may be true, Supervisor, where I don't know. That was, I think, a 2014 award. I know that rep. I've worked with that rep. Did we get better, as good a pricing as we could have in 2014? I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe we weren't, you know, the Fairfax level of discount qualified as maybe we could have been.

[02:15:28] Well, I know some end runs were tried, personally know of some end runs that were done to try and get around the Prince William rep to take advantage of the Fairfax contract of the Fairfax rep, and that got shut down because he wouldn't go out of his service territory.

[02:15:44] But I know the cost differential was significant, food for thought. I'll tell you this, Supervisor Weir. I've had issues like that with Cisco and Microsoft and Dell. I go straight to the top. I don't deal with that stuff. I don't put up with that either. And I've never signed a contract in this county that didn't give the county as good or better pricing than I could get when I was in D.C.

[02:16:04] I'm glad to hear that because that was not the case, and you're right. It was actually prior to 2014, to be honest with you, or a lot of it was. Second question is probably for you and Michelle. With respect to the mass appraisal system, somewhat jokingly say anything's better than what we've got.

[02:16:24] but do you see, Michelle, do you see any potential for increased appeals if this is computer algorithm-based? I mean, is this uncharted territory in terms of real estate appraisal, and where do we see this going near term? I'll take the first step, and I'll give it to Michelle if she'd like to answer it. I would expect that to get a lot better, and that we would have fewer appeals in that regard. It's one of the reasons we would like a new system. So I would expect that to get better. I don't know that it's a problem. Michelle, you can address that if you want.

[02:17:02] I was going to say just that having more modern technology at our disposal, I think will help our assessment process rather than hinder it. You know, some of the things too, today, for example, when our appraisers have to go out and do field visits, they have to take that information back, write it down, take notes, then go key it in, right?

[02:17:27] So it's written twice now, written once, keyed once. In a system, a more modern system, you would be keying it right there on the field. It's only one time it goes in. So we're not essentially reducing the human element of the assessment process. We're just changing the information recordation and data processing.

[02:17:46] We're not, the system isn't going to do the assessment. Okay, because that's the way the slide sort of kind of reads. And that's what I've, you've alleviated my concern. Yeah, no, we still have assessment methodology, assessment standards through the Assessing Institute.

[02:18:01] I just didn't want AI doing our real estate assessments. So, yeah, thank you. All right, Supervisor Angry. First of all, always good presentation. Rob, the only thing I fail at is those emails your team sends and it's those fake emails.

[02:18:18] I keep failing at that. So good job. Just thank them, thank them, thank them for that because they do a good job in keeping me fresh. But I always fail at it. Okay, just a quick question. I had this written down.

[02:18:35] How do you come up with the estimates for the broadband improvements? How are those estimates? Like, do we do bids for, like, do you bid that out? Or how do we come up with the whole process of this, the whole broadband? Okay, on the fiber infrastructure project?

[02:18:52] Yeah, that was an RFP. We go into that knowing that different vendors are going to give us different pricing because of wherever their infrastructure is supervisor angry so if they're not very close to some of these addresses it's it's naturally going to be more expensive for them we did get the best price for sure by far got the best price but we also looked at the services that those providers would be offering to our residents and the prices and the speeds and all the other things they're going to be selling through that infrastructure and I can guarantee I haven't lost a wink of sleep over the vendor that we chose and how well they've performed I it's one

[02:19:28] of the reasons I had extra money in that ARPA project to actually do 3-1-1. I expected to spend a lot more money than that. Yeah, you're welcome. Okay, let's go there. Was it this one? Yes, it's okay. Sheriff Axon Technology Enhancement Tagers and Body One Cameras. How many Tagers did you guys order? I'm happy to say I don't know. I can't answer that, even if I wanted to. Thank you,

[02:20:04] thank you okay all right yeah he done um wait hold on we went um i have bailey i feel like i'm missing someone no franklin were you in the queue you good okay all right supervisor bailey speaking of the tasers no i'm just kidding no i'm kidding i'm kidding um the first thing i want to say rob is um i appreciate you just bringing us along tongue-in-cheek with the system because whenever

[02:20:43] you do something new you train us on what you've done new to make sure that you're bringing us along so that's real important for those of us that don't do technology well so we appreciate that but the other thing that um question that i wanted to ask what well that was a statement but the question i wanted to ask was you mentioned on page six at the bottom you talked about um the uh radio frequency id with with the adc so i know that they're doing a lot of different programming for the residents, for the inmates. Is that kind of the synergy there, or is that just

[02:21:21] monitoring the residents? I think that's more about monitoring folks who are there in ways that make it easier for them to track them, and I think they've probably had some issues with what they're using now, and they'd like to modernize that and know where people are. Yeah, yeah, and so the other thing just as feedback to you just just bringing us into the 21st century is valuable because we we are the second largest county in the state and 10th in the country but we have to techno from a technological standpoint we have to be able to function that way so i you know i just

[02:21:59] appreciate that and then when i came to visit your home where you live you know it's so evident about how you are protecting us and the security piece was something that was always very interesting and you know for me to make sure as we're transitioning that security places and is in place so we appreciate that thank you thank you um i'll tell you this much the uh this is a private sector quality infrastructure that we've given to the county and it deserves it it needs it and uh it's innovating because of it and i'm very proud of that for the what my team

[02:22:39] did for the county we couldn't have done it without your help and the board supported it the staff is consuming the you know what out of that infrastructure uh police and fire don't go into the field anymore wondering what's going to happen to them supervisor bode thank you madam chair thank you rob for the presentation for breaking down uh some of what i i had asked about like you said back in february just have two questions for you and it's not just for you it's more of a broad question um going to that slide seven for a second and understanding again that some of these things

[02:23:16] as was asked a couple times are sort of five-year cyclical things that we kind of just need to do as matter of course um has there been any discussion of buildings into frankly part of the cip knowing that that's sort of just a cyclical thing these are capital investments in most cases obviously we know that some of the stuff is programmatic licensure things like that that are ongoing costs but some of this stuff frankly are just in the very same way we look at capital costs for physical things parks mobility projects things like that some of these things are things

[02:23:53] that are sort of capital assets like you say in one of your slides that we look at every single year so is there any conversation around that we did discuss that i'm sure me and david will have plenty of conversations about it but the rule of thumb there supervisor bode is once you make the capital investment that we made in 2018 when you refresh that equipment that is usually done with operating funds and that's why interesting okay and i see dave back there sure absolutely um i do want to uh emphasize for the board that this five-year cost that you see in this table is

[02:24:30] programmed in the proposed five-year budget plan um that was the county executive presented to the board in february and so when you sort of hit on the head on why i asked about that because knowing in the past that this has not been emphasized and knowing that because if we don't emphasize it, those costs exacerbate. And to implement IT infrastructure and then to allow it to go awry is catastrophic, frankly. So I want to make sure that whether it's the five-year plan

[02:25:06] or whatever it is, there's a good rhythm of having that included in. So it's not a surprise but frankly, it continues to make sure that the board is kept up to speed on those cycles as they come versus being suddenly the shock in your, let's say, the out year of that is in that five year and suddenly we're at the beginning of that and it begins to ramp up more and more if that makes sense. You're absolutely correct, Supervisor Bode. That's why this is establishing a cadence in terms of an annual investment so that we don't have that shock to the system five or six years from now again. Appreciate that. And my last question, sort of globally, I know that we have

[02:25:45] agencies that every so often come in and presents what they're doing. We have the quadrant meetings and work sessions every so often. I don't think to my knowledge we've ever looked at your guys' IT done right strategic plan as a board. I think that's been presented to us directly. It's linked and presented to us sort of peripherally through other documents such as even the budget document this year. Would love at some point to have you come in and explain that to us. I know it gets really nerdy, really granular, but frankly with a lot of this stuff going on and knowing how in vogue some of these things are at this moment.

[02:26:16] I think having that be part of the regular cadence of bringing to us your regular strategic plan and what your folks are looking at, what the horizon looks like, I think would benefit us a lot. Thank you for saying that. It's a great opener. I couldn't have set it. You couldn't have set me up better. We're about to replace that strategic document.

[02:26:34] You can get a preview of it if you go on our website and look for GovX strategy. That's what we're going to call IT next level. We do IT right first and we can go next level. That's what GovX is about. You can get a preview of the next one, and we're going to update that this spring.

[02:26:50] Thank you. And, Rob, by GovX, you want to explain with that? Yes. Thank you, Chris. I should have done that. GovX stands for government experience. Everything we do in government is delivering an experience. And so IT is going to orient its strategy based upon experiences.

[02:27:08] And we will be bringing you some very interesting additional information on GovX in the future. I'll leave that to Chris. We're having some fun with it already. All right. That looks like I said, thank you so very much for this informative presentation. Thank you. Good to see everybody.

[02:27:24] Good to see you. Okay, we are going on to Supervisor's time. I don't think we don't have anything to vote on, so I'm going to start with Supervisor Vega. I have nothing. Follow my lead. Supervisor Franklin.

[02:27:40] I just have a few things. So on March 5th, I attended the Prince William County Water Arts Invitational Award program at Unity Reed High School. The grand prize was given in honor of Joyce Eagles, a long-time serving board member of the Prince William Service Authority, now known as Prince William Water.

[02:28:03] And I just also want to thank two members of the Woodbridge District, B.B. Nia Zai from Freedom High School, and so congratulations to her. A couple of upcoming events, very quickly, I'll be at the Prince William County Green Business Council 2025 Spring Conference.

[02:28:21] This year's theme is Turning the Tide, Sustainable Business, Healthy Watershed. And so this will be at the George Mason Potomac Science Center in Woodbridge in Belmont Bay from 8 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. this Thursday. Later that evening, I will be at Dar al-Nor for the annual IFTAR dinner.

[02:28:37] And so looking forward to convening with them, and thank you for that special invitation. And later this week, I'll be participating in the commemoration of life of Patriot William Grayson, who was one of our first U.S. Senators. Then lastly, on March 17th, I will be participating in the 60th anniversary celebration of the Woodbridge Women's Club.

[02:29:00] And so always looking forward to being with them. And actually, lastly, last, I'll be with Supervisor Bailey for our Women's History Program at the Filazzo Building on March 25th, where we will be honoring several trailblazing women. I believe this is our third annual.

[02:29:17] With that, I yield. There ain't no yielding. Supervisor Gordy. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just have three things. First of all, I want to thank the planning staff and the ULI's technical assistant panel for all their hard work last week to offer a vision for the redevelopment of the Sudley Corridor.

[02:29:43] They offered a lot of many ideas and for us to consider and look forward to further discussion on those with my colleagues and with our planning staff and the community in the coming days and months. Also last week, I participated in the Innovation District Leaders Dinner and Breakfast.

[02:30:03] I want to thank Amy Adams and the Innovation District team for hosting the event called Meds and Eds to help us understand the commonalities of successful innovation districts. And I was joined at the breakfast by Supervisors Bodie and Angry, and it was a great discussion to hear what success looks like and the opportunities that we have and the fact that we are already well on our way based on what was shared with us.

[02:30:30] And lastly, I want to congratulate Nina and Andrew Fleischauer, the owners of Sunshine Honey Farm in Noakesville, on being awarded an agricultural grant by Governor Youngkin as part of his initiative to support local food production in Virginia. They received a $49,000, almost $50,000 grant in partnership with Prince William County Economic Development And my staff, we were able to connect Nina and Andrew with the resources to help them achieve their goal of expanding their farm and look forward to seeing the great things that they are going to be able to do

[02:31:07] to continue to offer fresh food to our community. And with that, I'm done. Supervisor Angry. I have nothing, Madam Chair. Thank you, Supervisor Angry. Supervisor Bodie.

[02:31:23] everyone mentioned all the events so i'm not going to mention those i'll just remind the public that next week uh at our 7 p.m session is our first uh public hearing on the budget so just want to remind folks to come out 7 p.m next week for the budget thank you supervisor we're thank you madam chair a couple of notices to reappoint uh actually one notice to reappoint jen cole to the animal advisory board notice to appoint larry zilliox to the veterans board and margarita moylan to the BOE and I'd like to express my gratitude to both Sarah Moser for her time on the Board of Equalization and Josh Quill for his time on the Veterans Committee. Unfortunately circumstances are such that

[02:32:03] they cannot continue their service for the residents of the Gainesville District or any other district that wants to come and drive all the way out to Battlefield High School. March 19th we're going to be having another town hall. Principal focus will be everybody's favorite topic this time of year.

[02:32:19] The budget. There'll be some stuff posted on the website here in the next day or so. And last but not least, I met with Dominion Power last week. They've given me the preliminary maps and routing of the Wishing Star to Morrisville transmission line. They're not doing a wreck and rebuild, at least not in whole. They're actually adding another line and requiring additional right-of-way and easements, literally from Loudoun County into Falkir. As that line and those

[02:32:54] increased easement widths will cross amongst other things the public safety training center bull run linear park and kid harpin park and will have significant impact uh on on county-owned property and potentially on county provided services at some of the parks and even the training center um when the case is filed in the coming months probably sometime between may and July. I will be coming to the board and asking that we sign on as a respondent party in the SCC case.

[02:33:31] Thank you, Madam Chair. All right, Supervisor Bailey. Thank you, Madam Chair. And for my colleagues on my right side, I only have three things and two upcoming events, so they can count. On the 6th of March, I I attended the Virginia Black Chamber Innovation District networking breakfast, and it was great.

[02:33:52] A lot of networking, a lot of training, a lot of outreach to the community. And then also on the 6th, I had the opportunity to attend Seth Hindler Voss' State of the Parks event, and it was great.

[02:34:08] And bless you. And we had a great showing from all across the county, and so we thank you to the citizens for participating. Thank you to Wade Hugh for his presentation on the noise ordinance. It was not as clear as mud.

[02:34:23] It really made sense to me, Wade. I appreciate that because it addresses some concerns that our constituents had as we go through this data center journey. So we really appreciate that. On the 17th, I've been asked to stand up a Veterans Roundtable by Senator Cain to talk to our citizens in reference to their employment and their services and what is needed going forward for our county.

[02:34:53] And then on the 25th, again, as my colleague has said, I'm looking forward to celebrating Women's History Month again for our fourth opportunity with Supervisor Franklin. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm sorry.

[02:35:08] Mr. Short, did you have something real quick? Just really quickly, I wanted to follow up with Supervisor Vega, the question that was asked about the landfill. So that we did not pilot the technology, I understand, from the team. We do have the ability, and they plan to, if we, the way that the technology works, if the, we can turn it off.

[02:35:28] If the line begins to back up, if for whatever reason it's taking more time than we expected it would, we have the ability to revert right back to the manual process so that we can speed up the line. So hopefully that answers the question or the concern about the backup. All right, I'm going to be real quick.

[02:35:46] I'd like to announce my notice of intent to appoint Nazman Nasir to the Architectural Review Board. And I would like to reappoint Anthony Koslecki as an alternate to the jail board. I have local government day on Saturday, March 15th at 3 o'clock p.m. here in the board chambers.

[02:36:05] You can check out my Facebook page or my newsletter for more information. And with that, let's go to adjourn this meeting. Move to adjourn. Second. All right, let's vote. Oh, we actually get to vote today? This is non-debatable. No songs.

[02:36:33] Who always makes the motion? You know who. Thank you. You're doing this intentionally. There goes her raise for the year.

[02:36:55] Supervisor Vega has to stay here all night.

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