Coraggio Consulting
Prince William Board of County Supervisors Meeting, Tuesday, June 2, 2026

Date: Tuesday, June 2, 2026
Place: Prince William County Board of County Supervisors, Virginia
Length: 4h 9m (video)
Official meeting video (Prince William County, Granicus): https://pwcgov.granicus.com/player/clip/3842
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 2026-10-27. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:00] go ahead and close the doors. Don't get too cozy in your seats now. We are going to begin with a moment of silence. All right, thank you. I was telling people not to get too cozy because we are

[00:00:28] going to stand if we are able for the Pledge of Allegiance. All right, the first item today is the approval of minutes. Can I get a motion? So move, Madam Chair. Second. Any changes? Hearing none,

[00:01:00] let's go ahead and take our vote. Vote unanimous. Supervisor Gordy absent from meeting. Supervisor la croix absent from vote all right thank you so very much we are now going to go on to agenda item number four and that's accommodations and proclamations i have a request to pull for a is there anything else people want pulled all right so i first would like to get a motion to move for a forward so move second it's been moved and seconded any discussion all right let's go

[00:01:40] ahead and take our votes motion passes five to one supervisor vega voting nay supervisor gordy and LaCroix absent from vote.

[00:02:04] All right, thank you. Now can I get a motion for 4B through 4G? Move for approval, Madam Chair. Second. It's been moved and properly seconded in any discussion. All right, I'd like to go ahead and call for the vote. Vote unanimous.

[00:02:32] All right, thank you very much. If the people from the PWC Proud Employee Resource Group can meet me at the front.

[00:03:12] All right, 4A is a resolution to proclaim June 2026 as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, trans, queer, questioning intersex asexual or agender and more lgbtqia plus pride month members of the lgbtqia plus community are our neighbors friends family members co-workers and civic leaders who enrich prince william county and help make it a vibrant welcoming place for all pride month is a time to honor the courage resilience and joy of those who have worked tirelessly to build a more inclusive community for current and future generations. It is also a moment to celebrate the diversity that

[00:03:51] strengthens our county and to acknowledge the ongoing efforts of individuals and organizations advocating for equality. This month reminds us that our work is not finished. It is an opportunity for every resident to stand up for one another, reaffirmed our shared values, and ensure that dignity, respect, and belonging are not just ideals, but lived experiences for everyone in prince william county today therefore the prince william board of county supervisors proudly proclaims june 2026 as lgbtqia plus pride month and encourages all members of our community to

[00:04:27] celebrate the principles of equality inclusion freedom from discrimination and justice for all who reside and visit prince william county would you like to offer some remarks thank you madam chairperson thank you very much board of supervisors thank you very much for allowing us to be here and allowing us to create this employee resource group that gives us an opportunity to not only come together, but to show the diversity and strength of Prince William County.

[00:05:00] It makes me proud to be a Prince William County employee to know that I can come in every day and be exactly who I am. And I can do that with the support of not just the executive leadership, but it trickles on down into every area of our work. So I want to thank you very much and thank you again for allowing us to be here and allowing us to be who we are. Thank you so much. Good to

[00:05:29] you. All right. The next one, 4B, Men's Health Month. Unfortunately, they are not present, so my team

[00:06:31] and I will do an in-office presentation. So we're going to have 4C up next, and that's Elder Abuse Awareness Month. I'm Director Jennings Holt. If you and your team can come on down. Older adults deserve to be treated with dignity, respect, and care. They are the pillars of our families and our community, and their safety and well-being must remain a shared priority. Elder abuse, neglect,

[00:07:11] and exploitation continue to be serious concerns affecting individuals, families, and communities across the nation. Raising awareness is essential, but still is taking real action to protect vulnerable adults and ensure they are supported. This year's theme, Beyond Awareness, Making Elder abuse prevention work highlights the importance of moving from recognition to prevention.

[00:07:31] It calls on all of us, family members, neighbors, caregivers, and community partners to stay attentive, speak up, and help safeguard those who may not be able to protect themselves. The Prince William Board of County Supervisors hereby proclaims June 15, 2026, this Elder Abuse Awareness Day in Prince William County and encourages every resident to take part in protecting the safety and dignity of older adults in our community.

[00:07:56] And also, please remember, reporting elder abuse or neglect is only a phone call away at 888-832-3858. Director, would you like to offer us some remarks?

[00:08:19] Good afternoon, Madam Chair Jefferson, Vice Chair Angry, members of the board, CXO Mr. Shorter, and County Attorney Ms. Roble, Phyllis Jennings Hold Director of Social Services. Today, I have with me Deputy Director Holly Handy, Assistant Director of the App Division, Lena Purifoy, Human Service Program Manager, Brenda Nolan Patton, and Senior Human Services Caseworker, Sarita Edmonds.

[00:08:44] On behalf of Prince William County Social Services, thank you for this proclamation, and we are grateful for your continued support of the department for the work that we do to protect our vulnerable adults. Seniors are an essential part of our community, contributing a lifetime of knowledge, experience, service, and leadership that enriches the lives of all residents.

[00:09:05] It is important that they are treated with respect, dignity, and the protection they deserve. Elder abuse can take many forms, including physical, emotional, financial, and self-neglect. Promoting awareness, education, and community vigilance is critical in the prevention and intervention.

[00:09:26] As our population ages, protecting vulnerable adults becomes a shared responsibility. Together, we can help prevent abuse, support victims, and build a community where every older adult is valued and protected. Again, thank you for your support and is an important cause for recognizing illegal abuse awareness in Prince William County.

[00:09:49] Thank you. Thank you. Madam Chair, if I may, please. Right here. Right here. No, I just want to personally thank Phyllis and your team for the wonderful assistance and protection that you gave me when I was a caregiver for my mom.

[00:10:10] Though she is deceased, you made it easy for me and for her moving into the county and at her demise leaving the county by the direction that you gave. And so I personally want to thank you as a member of the board for the guidance that you gave me and not knowing to the point that I did understand.

[00:10:28] So thank you.

[00:11:15] Alright, we're now on to 4D, and that is to proclaim the week of June 17, 2026, National Waste and Recycling Workers Week, and to proclaim June 16 and 17 official recognition days at the landfill and compost facility.

[00:11:31] A lot of the important work that our public employees do often goes unseen, and this is especially true for our waste and recycling workers.

[00:12:00] Every day, these individuals go to work to keep our most essential services up and running, preserving not just public health, but also our environment. Every year, we recognize National Waste and Recycling Workers Week to ensure that these staff get the thanks and deserve that all they do. You know, and I know that we ask a lot of these jobs.

[00:12:19] Again, it's not glamorous. I personally appreciate whenever the professionalism I experience when I go to the landfill. So we cannot let, and I appreciate those of you who are taking time out of your day to actually come here to board chambers so that we can properly thank you.

[00:12:38] So today, the Prince William Board of County Supervisors recognizes the week of June 17th as National Waste and Recycling Workers Week, and we proclaim June 16th and 17th as official recognition days for our landfill and compost facility.

[00:12:54] Mr. Shamu, do you have anything you would like to say? Quickly. Well, thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, members of the board. Katab Shamut, your director of public works. Yes, it is definitely a week that we recognize our professionals for the hard work and for the dedication to really keep our community safe, clean, and sustainable.

[00:13:16] With that, I'm going to turn it over to Rinad Uri to talk a little bit about our recycling manager, to talk a little bit about our appreciation of the team. Thank you. Madam Chair, members of the board, on behalf of the Solid Waste Division, I would like to extend our sincere gratitude for proclaiming the week of June 17th as Waste and Recycling Workers Week. This recognition highlights the dedication of the men and women who work every day to keep our communities clean, safe, and healthy. From collection crews to landfill operators

[00:13:51] to our litter crews and support staff, these essential workers provide service that many of us rely on every day but often take for granted. Prince William County has long been a leader in recognizing the importance of this profession and your continued support sends a powerful message of appreciation to those who serve our residents and protect our environment. Thank you for honoring our waste and recycling workers and for recognizing the vital role they play in the quality of life we enjoy throughout Prince William County. Thank you. Since we have kind of a bigger group, let's take, how about you guys, if you have time, if you can wait a little bit, we'll take a

[00:14:31] photo outside i just want to get through the other ones so i will in here should we i'll give this to you to help for safekeeping all right all right i want to go on to 4e and that's emergency professional management emergency management professionals week all right safe and secure

[00:14:55] community all right all right emergency management professionals work year-round to help keep prince william county prepared resilient and safe from severe weather and public health emergencies to other unexpected events. They play a critical role in planning, response recovery, and community preparedness. Their leadership, coordination, and commitment

[00:15:34] help protect lives, strengthen our communities, and ensure we are ready when challenges arise. Emergency Management Professional Week takes place from June 1st to June 5th. Designated by the Virginia General Assembly, this annual week honors the dedication of our emergency managers, first responders and public safety officials across the commonwealth who plan for respond to and mitigate disaster the principal and board of county supervisors also wants to recognize this wants to recognize the important and often unseen work that these dedicated professionals do day in

[00:16:09] and day out to safeguard our community so we hereby proclaim june 7th through june 13 2026 is emergency management professionals week would anyone like to offer any remarks on behalf of this well thank you very much chair jefferson members of the board mr shorter i'm brian meisner the emergency management coordinator in fire rescue we very much appreciate the proclamation and as it noted a lot of the work that we do is in the background and we're very fortunate that we don't have a lot of events that rise to that major occasion but we are very happy to have majority

[00:16:44] of our team here with us today and appreciative of you recognizing the work that we do one of the things that the community can do to best help us as emergency management professionals is to make sure that every individual and household is prepared. And since it is the start of Atlantic hurricane season on June 1 here, just a quick reminder that it's time to dust off those emergency kits to make sure they're in good shape for summer months. If you don't have a plan, we've got a great resource that is on our website, pwcva.gov slash ready. And we're also very happy that we have it translated into the eight languages used by our school system with dedicated language access pages on the website as well.

[00:17:20] And we'll be at Riverfest and Occoquan this weekend with a table with these in hard print as well. So thank you very much.

[00:17:25] All right, next we have Domestic Workers' Day.

[00:18:18] Anyone associated with Domestic Workers' Day? Bye. Oh, I'm going to say this and then, all right.

[00:18:40] Domestic workers help care for our children, support older adults, assist individuals with disabilities, and make it possible for many families to balance work and caregiving responsibilities. but they have historically been excluded from many labor protections under federal and state laws, leaving them vulnerable to low wages, long hours, unsafe conditions, and little to no job security.

[00:19:01] As a result, domestic workers, which includes nannies, house cleaners, and home care workers, are three times as likely to live in poverty as other workers and face employment insecurity and retaliation too often. Domestic Workers' Day serves as a reminder that domestic work is real work and every domestic worker deserves to be valued, protected, and honored.

[00:19:24] Today, the Prince William Board of County Supervisors hereby proclaims June 16, 2026 as Domestic Workers' Day in Prince William County and encourages all residents to recognize and appreciate the dignity, labor, and humanity of domestic workers in our community. Would you like to offer some remarks?

[00:19:41] Yes. Come on up. Good afternoon, Chair Jefferson and members of the board. My name is Joyce Renee Bumbray Graves. I live right here in Woodbridge, and I have been a proud home care worker for over 20 years and a member of the home care chapter of my union, SEIU, Virginia 512.

[00:20:01] Thank you, Chair Jefferson and the Board of Supervisors, for officially declaring June 16th as Domestic Workers' Day in Prince William County. This historic recognition means the world to the thousands of domestic workers like me who keep our country running.

[00:20:17] This work is very personal to me. Every day I care for my adopted sister, Leah, who has spinal bifical and scoliosis. And I also take care of my great-niece, Lisa, who is profound, was born with a small brain, and has scoliosis. Both are in wheelchairs.

[00:20:32] Like so many home care workers, we are predominantly black, brown, and immigrant women. The care that we provide allows our loved ones to live with care and dignity at home and keeps them out of costly care facilities. Domestic workers make all of our work possible.

[00:20:49] But historically, our essential labor has been invisible and undervalued. Today, Princeton County is sending a clear message. We see you, we respect you, and your labor matters. This declaration is a beautiful recognition of the respect and dignity we deserve on the job.

[00:21:07] When workers like me stand together in our union, and when our county leaders stand with us, we can truly build a community where all working families can thrive, because the work we do is essential. Thank you, Chair, Justin, and the Board of Supervisors. We look forward to celebrating Domestic Workplace Day on June 16th.

[00:21:26] Thank you. We're going to do this and we're going to take a photo.

[00:21:49] Madam Chair, if the board is okay, I'd like to join you for this confirmation. If anyone wants to come on down, which I feel is probably most of the board. Or actually, wait, we should also, we're going to take this one outside and we're going to take the other one outside. So if you want to come down now, you can, but we're going to have to take the other one outside because that was a big group.

[00:22:11] And I honestly didn't get the memo about black today, okay? Why is that? Why is that? Victor didn't get it either. All right, 4G proclaimed June 19, 2026.

[00:22:27] It's Juneteenth. Juneteenth marks the event of June 19, 1865 in Galveston, Texas, when the last black slaves of the Confederacy were ordered free following the arrival of Union troops. This holiday commemorates the fulfillment of freedom for the last enslaved blacks and stands as one of the most significant milestones in our nation's history.

[00:22:49] As we mark the 160th anniversary of Juneteenth, we honor the courage, resilience, and contributions of black Americans whose perseverance has shaped a more just and inclusive nation. Today, the Prince William Board of County Supervisors hereby proclaims June 19, 2026 as Juneteenth and encourages residents to reflect on the enduring values of freedom, opportunity, and equality while celebrating the progress that generations have fought to achieve.

[00:23:15] princess would you like to offer a few remarks good afternoon chair jefferson members of the board of county supervisors county executive shorter county leadership hughes members community partners and residents of prince william county my name is princess clark wendell and i'm honored to stand before you as co-chair of hughes and as one of the organizers of the juneteenth and me festival i also want to acknowledge the members of hughes and the juneteenth and me planning team

[00:23:51] who are here today. Their presence reflects the unity, service, and shared commitment that have helped bring the celebration to life. This festival is possible because of a powerful public-private partnership made up of county employees, community members, civic leaders, sponsors, volunteers, and partners who believe in building something meaningful together.

[00:24:19] Juneteenth and me is truly our community festival. Today we receive this proclamation in recognition of the power of memory and the importance of public acknowledgement. As this document notes, this year marks the 160th anniversary of June 19th, 1865.

[00:24:41] Juneteenth reminds us that freedom delayed is still freedom worth celebrating. that day in Galveston, Texas. It did not instantly erase the pain of slavery or create perfect justice, but it became a sacred marker of resilience, remembrance, and recommitment.

[00:25:03] Here in Prince William County, we have spent the past few months doing more than just planning an event. We have been building a moment of belonging. Through our Road to Juneteenth series and through dedicated work of our Hughes members, volunteers, sponsors, community partners. We are creating spaces where history, representation, economic empowerment, wellness, and community joy truly matter. Our festival theme this year is Black Resilience, the Black Renaissance, leading

[00:25:36] the path forward. It is an invitation to honor the past while celebrating the brilliant enterprise, creativity, and resilience shaping our county today. We accept this proclamation today not just a reflection of where we have been, but as a mandate for where we are going.

[00:25:55] With that mandate in hand, we invite the entire community to join us on Friday, June 19, 2026 at Prince William County Fittsner Stadium for the second annual, you hear me, second annual Juneteenth and Me Festival.

[00:26:12] We invite you to come celebrate with us, come learn with us, come build with us. Because Juneteenth is not about the day freedom was announced, it is about how freedom continued to be lived, protected, celebrated, and expanded.

[00:26:29] Now to ground us in the true historical heartbeat of this day, I would now like to invite my co-chair, Willie Hardiman, to share what Juneteenth means to him personally. as a native of Texas, the very state where this history began.

[00:26:49] Yes, I am. Well, hello, everybody. Willie Hardiman. We were just talking about the cowboys over here. So, okay. Now, as Princess was saying, we want to thank everybody for this opportunity to share with the community and the committee that's done a lot of hard work.

[00:27:06] We started this back in January, and we've been pushing through. So it's important that we all get together as a community and understand what history is. So being a Texan, this was something that we celebrated. So it was big. I mean, 1865, it took two years for the news to travel down to Texas, but it did make it.

[00:27:25] So we want to celebrate, and Juneteenth is an important part of history in Texas. It's not just black history, but it's American history. So it's important that we all get out and understand what's going on. And so we have a lot of things planned on that day, and we welcome everybody, the entire community, as well as the board.

[00:27:41] So we look forward to seeing you all on the 19th to engage and have some good, fun times. Thank you so much. We're going to go outside and take a photo. I also have to take another photo. If anyone wants to come out and join, please do.

[00:27:58] But I mean it when I say this, y'all. Let's take the photos and come back. Because I know hurting the cats, some of y'all are harder to hurt than others. I'm a cat fan and a Cowboys fan. There you go.

[00:28:13] All right, let's go out.

[00:28:33] All right, and we are back. Thank you, everyone. We are moving on to agenda item, I'm sorry, item five, consent agenda. Does anyone have anything they would like to pull for further questions or consent?

[00:28:50] Supervisor Vega. 5-H, Madam Chair. All right. 5-H. Anything else? Anyone else? So I would like a motion for 5-A through 5-G, 5-I through 5-K.

[00:29:08] So moved. Second. All right. So any discussion on those items? All right, CNN, let's go ahead and take a vote. Vote unanimous.

[00:29:25] All right, 5-H, Supervisor Vega. Thank you, Madam Chair. I think I made my point very clear at the last meeting. I just want to reiterate that I don't think it's a good idea to enter into a national initiative when it's not going to be of any benefit to the county other than receiving an award.

[00:29:41] I do have a quick question. Mr. Shorter, if for whatever reason things do start to morph into something that we didn't anticipate, what would be the process for the county to be removed from this initiative?

[00:29:53] So I'm gonna. Oh, there we go. Yep, please. Thank you, Madam Chair, Mr. Vice-Chair, members of the board.

[00:30:25] Supervisor Vega, would you please restate the question? Sure. My question was, how will the county move forward in regards to removing ourselves from this national initiative, should we wish to in the future? I can find out. I believe it would be a matter of talking to the Stepping Up organization and telling them we no longer wanted to be part of it.

[00:30:46] I'm not sure if the board would have to vote to remove our name from it. I'll add because this is a board action that we would expect that the board would act collectively and direct staff on removal, and then at that point we would reach out to the national organization.

[00:31:07] I assume via resolution? Via resolution. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. All right. Anyone else? Supervisor Bailey? Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to thank the CSB board for the initiative in pursuing this award.

[00:31:24] I do understand my colleagues' concern, but I would assume that this will give us an opportunity as we're applying for additional grants to have this on our resume as we go forward, understanding that we have to be very strategic but careful as well.

[00:31:41] I can also understand going forward since mental health is one of the things that the governor is focused on, as well as Congress, with these grants, as soon as we get a budget, I appreciate the foresight in us going forward to add this to our resume.

[00:32:01] And if there aren't any other in the queue, I'd like to move it forward, Madam Chair. Second. All right. Any discussion? All right. Seeing none, let's go ahead and take our vote. Motion passes 5 to 1.

[00:32:24] Supervisor Vega voting nay. all right thank you very much we are now going on to agenda item number six and that is public comment time do we have anyone okay we have no one in person um do we have anyone online i will we're not sure i'll turn over nope no one on the person no one online all right well thank you so very much i'm sorry oh we do have someone all right you may i haven't seen you before so i want to give you a few instructions start by please stating your name the magisterial district

[00:33:00] where you reside you have three minutes you will see the timer up there and please adjust the microphone like you have to be on it because otherwise we don't hear you well and i'll stop you so you're not close enough honey come a little closer or just just raise it up yep all right you may begin hi my name is jessica switzer and i am a member of the haynes landing community and we just wanted to voice a concern with item 7m a special use permit 2026-0019 within the coals district for a rural home-based business for firearms gunsmithing buy sale transfer and

[00:33:39] manufacturing business we are actually excited to have this business nearby we have no objection objections to the business itself however we do have concerns with the discharge of firearms as land backs up to our community space with the biz while the business is for gunsmithing is there our questions were is there a plan for firearms testing or discharge if there are plans for the discharge um if there's a shooting range on the property you know is it safe because our children are back there in that community space and also we don't want to upset deer season so i just wanted

[00:34:16] to raise those concerns that we had with that permit and just the home business itself fine but the potential for excess firearms discharge we do have a concern with thank you all right thank you if we don't have anyone else so you actually got ahead of us so for um seven that's the public hearings 7m which is the international let me i want to make sure that i speak say the same name um the correct name international police apply that is actually going to be deferred until june 23rd so you have another bite at the apple come back in june public hearings or i mean you

[00:34:53] speak at any time but public hearings are separate but thank you for coming out today so with that um i am going to go ahead excluding 7m which has been deferred to june 23rd i'm going

[00:35:05] to go ahead and open the public hearing for item 7a through 7l and 7n all right i'm going to call everyone up and um i'm going to call everyone up and groups of five we actually don't have five so So I'm going to call everyone up.

[00:35:42] Please state, again, start by stating your name, the magisterial district where you reside. If you are with an organization, recognized organization, you have up to five minutes to speak. Up there on the screen is our timer. So I'd like to begin with Jeff Fleming, Jim Almond, Melody Miller, and Tricia Sutherland.

[00:36:17] All right, Mr. Fleming, you are up first. Good afternoon members of the board. My name is Jeff Fleming and I'm a resident of New Bristow Village in the Brentsville District. I'm here today to speak regarding the current site plan for the proposed 67-unit Bristow Point townhouse development. While I recognize and respect the realities of growth in Prince William County, I believe the current layout requires critical adjustments to protect the integrity of the existing neighborhood and ensure a harmonious transition between communities. Specifically, I asked the board to deny the requested 45-foot height variance and require a binding proffer to preserve the small adjacent clearing at Camp

[00:36:57] Jones Court in Bristow Station Drive. This small parcel of land is currently a clearing attached to my community, separated by a mere sidewalk, in fact. Geographically, future residents and visitors of Bristow Point will actually drive directly past our new Bristow Village neighborhood signage to access their new homes. Because these two communities will be so deeply intertwined, a dedicated buffer between them is essential to maintain their distinctive character. I ask that this clearing be preserved without housing. Instead, I propose to be dedicated as a permanent park area or utilized as a location for the new developments community amenities. Utilizing this space as a green buffer ensures that the residents looking out their front doors see a thoughtful

[00:37:35] transition rather than a dense wall of homes placed right against the edge of an established neighborhood. This buffer is also crucial to preserving the historic character of an area that was deliberately designed to reflect its surroundings. The Bristow Village sits adjacent to the Bristow Station Battlefield. My neighborhood was built with that heritage in mind from the architectural styling down to the street names. This sense of place was an intentional investment made by the families who live here. Finally, I request the board maintain the standard 35-foot building height restriction and deny the 45-foot variance. I understand that height restrictions exist for important reasons and that a variance is typically only granted when a genuine hardship

[00:38:13] is demonstrated. This raises the question of whether such a hardship actually exists in this case or if it's actually motivated more just by increasing profits. If it is the latter, is that the precedent we want to set for future developments in the county? Increasing the height by 10 feet allows for an intense vertical density that creates a walled-in effect, impacting the natural light, privacy, and overall quality of life for the immediate neighbors next to it. Managing the density horizontally while preserving the clearing as a buffer allows for a much more responsible, visually compatible project. I love my community and I want to ensure that the new development enhances prince william county instead of compromising existing neighborhoods i ask that

[00:38:53] you hold this project to the highest planning standards deny the 45 foot height variance and protect the clearing as a permanent buffer and given the serious impacts i just mentioned and because my supervisor is not here to address them today i would ask for deferred action on this issue if i can defer the vote on it thank you for your time and your continued commitment to responsible development in our county thank you no clapping i'm sorry y'all i know we get excited We have passions. We love things, but got to maintain some decorum. All right, next speaker,

[00:39:25] please. Good afternoon, members of the Board of Supervisors, Chair Jefferson and County Exec Shorter. My name is Jim Allman. I'm the Senior Vice President for Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Washington. I'm joined by Nadia Peterson, who will also have some brief remarks. We're here today in support of the Mappledale Plaza development, which will bring over 200 new homes into the backyard of the Hilton Boys and Girls Club. I have a home in that area in Dale City as well, right around the corner from Supervisor Angry, and I'm very excited about this project. This

[00:40:03] development provides a great opportunity for the Hilton Boys and Girls Club and the Prince William County as a whole. The addition of new families to the immediate neighborhood will strengthen the community that we serve and expand our ability to reach the young people who need us most. More families within walking distance means more children and teens with safe, convenient access to our programs, which produces productive, responsible, and caring citizens.

[00:40:30] As you may or may not know, our mission is to inspire and enable all young people, especially those that need us most, to reach their full potential as productive, responsible, and caring citizens. This initiative feeds right into what we do. As the neighborhood grows, so does the potential for greater community engagement and volunteerism.

[00:40:48] This, in turn, creates stronger local partnerships and a deeper investment in the well-being of our youth. We know this project will be a positive addition to the Woodbridge area and also to this outstanding county. I would now like to bring on Nadia Peterson, who is our Senior Regional Director of Operations for the Virginia region, but more importantly, a resident of Prince William County.

[00:41:14] Good afternoon, everyone. We are proud to stand in support of this rezoning application and look forward to welcoming our new neighbors to our community. Through this partnership, we are excited to provide meaningful opportunities for youth and families, including internships, workforce development programs, career exploration, leadership development, mentoring, and volunteer opportunities that help prepare young people for future success.

[00:41:38] In addition to these initiatives, we will offer new families access to our proven Boys and Girls Club programming, including after-school academic support, STEM education, arts and enrichment activities, health and wellness programs, character and leadership development, sports and recreation, summer programming, and family engagement opportunities.

[00:41:57] These programs have a long history of helping young people reach their full potential while providing a safe, supportive environment during our critical out-of-school hours. As someone who's been a resident of Prince William County for most of my life, I've had the privilege of watching our community grow and thrive.

[00:42:13] I'm proud to serve the families of this county, and I'm excited about the opportunities this development will bring to future residents. We are committed to ensuring these families feel welcome, supported, and connected to the many resources available throughout our community.

[00:42:29] Thank you. We look forward to many years of partnership ahead, just as we have enjoyed the incredible Board of Supervisors and the outstanding county we are honored to serve. And before you step away, because you weren't on my sign-up sheet, can you make sure, give your name again and your magisterial district? Sure. Nadia Peterson of Monassau City.

[00:42:47] So we love you, but, you know, that's not in the county, but that's okay. All right. Next speaker, please. Every time. Mic check. We hear you. Thank you.

[00:43:03] Excellent. Okay, cool. Good afternoon, guys. My name is Melody Miller. I am a resident of Neabsco, as you guys undoubtedly know by now. I am going to respectfully request that the board condition approval of the Mapledale 7L on two amendments.

[00:43:20] First, replacing or amending Proffer 10 E's language on a monocultural evergreen screen with a multi-layered native buffer. And second, amending Proffer 15 to provide greater flexibility for community-serving amenities. For approval, this board must find that public necessity, convenience, general welfare, and good zoning practice are served.

[00:43:39] And Proffer 10 E falls short of those standards. Proffer 15 disallows flexibility that could be used for greater community benefit. While I do agree with the proposal, I've had a lot of conversation with the developers, and they're great. The staff does identify major weakness of this project is that the site will be completely clear-cut with no forest preservation within the buffer.

[00:43:58] You've heard me speak before on preservation of forest land. But the proposed mitigation in 10E is simply a row of evergreens replacing a mature, diverse forest ecosystem. And it may provide screening, but it does not restore ecological function. It also has a lot of long-term detractors that we can go in another time.

[00:44:16] So the county's environmental plan emphasizes preservation of native vegetation and protection of water quality. A layered native buffer, including canopy trees, understory trees, shrubs, and native evergreens, would better support stormwater infiltration, wildlife habitat, noise attenuation, which there's actually another piece of their proposal that specifically addresses noise attenuation, and neighborhood character.

[00:44:36] By contrast, an evergreen wall provides far fewer environmental benefits and could, in fact, exacerbate or introduce other ecological challenges. This issue is particularly important because the applicant is already receiving a reduction to the standard buffer requirement, so staff specifically noted that greater natural resource preservation was expected in exchange, and a high-quality native buffer would help fulfill that expectation while still achieving the applicant's screening objectives, as well as enhancing noise attenuation.

[00:45:03] Substantial data has shown that native-layered buffers yield high stormwater bioretention versus moderate for evergreen screens. Our requested amendment does not require additional land or substantially greater expense. It simply improves the quality and function of the landscaping while aligning the project with county environment and design goals.

[00:45:21] We also request an amendment to Profer 15 so that the applicant may satisfy the requirements of Profer 15 through either the provision of the originally proposed private amenities or adding flexibility for an on-site or off-site amenity package intended to serve the residents of the property and where feasible the surrounding Dale City community.

[00:45:40] The aggregate value of such amenities should be substantially equivalent to or greater than the amenity package contemplated by the original zoning application. This would provide flexibility for future opportunities while ensuring that the public benefit promise through the rezoning is maintained or enhanced. So for these reasons, we respectfully request the board amend Prophers 10E and 15 before approving the rezoning request.

[00:46:01] And I actually have been in contact with Alex Venegas and the developer, so I leave that to your discretion. Thank you so much for your time. Next speaker, please. Can you hear me okay? Okay. You may begin. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Tricia Sutherland and I reside in the New Bristow Village community in the Brentsville District. I've been a registered nurse serving Prince William County in the DMV for 26 years. I, like you, serve my community. In fact, two other registered nurses are covering my shift so I could come here to speak to you today.

[00:46:39] So I do hope that from one community servant to another that this does not fall on deaf ears. I hope that you are here to serve your community and not dream builders at the community's expense. I attended the Planning Commission meeting about the rezoning of Bristow Point, and this was billed as a rezoning and height amendment proposal, and on the surface, the rezoning looked like mixed residential and commercial to residential only, and the height amendment to allow the townhouses to go from 35 to 45 feet.

[00:47:10] I spoke against the rezoning, stating my concerns for traffic and the additional strain on infrastructure, And the attorney from Walsh, Colucci, Loubley & Walsh, the same firm representing the incredibly unpopular Bristow Data Center Corridor, rebutted, citing a slide noting the minimal impact on traffic.

[00:47:27] The slide had one data point, not a before rezoning and after rezoning comparison, and the data was also from 2024, not taking into account a number of surrounding developments that were subsequently approved by this board. This commercial property will be desperately needed once all the new homes going up Bent Hill and around our neighborhood are built.

[00:47:48] Eliminating it for the short-term gain will hurt residents in the long term. I would hate to think that the developer bought the property with residential use only purposes all along. Because as one of my neighbors said, the property was purchased with a specific zoning and the price paid for it reflects that use.

[00:48:05] To leverage political power to change the zoning to maximize profit is the definition of crony capitalism. If the investor is unable to profit using the land for its intended use, it should fail. Allowing it to fail is capitalism, and if the politicians rezone it to bail out the investors, the end result is future investors will overpay for land and drive up housing costs, the exact opposite of what the politicians desire.

[00:48:33] Staff and the planning commission, planning staff find that the increased height may be inconsistent with adjacent residential developmental patterns, quote. The staff also notes that the applicant proposes requests modification for the requirement of the two unit types to one type of house.

[00:48:53] That's not a request for a modification. That's a waiver. So it looks like a rezoning and a height change, but we also know the devil is in the details. Asking for rows of townhouses containing nine units from six and not only going up by 10 feet, but setting the front setbacks and the side setbacks and the rear setbacks just bigger and bigger and bigger.

[00:49:12] they propose a 15 foot buffer when we the zoning ordinance requires a 50 foot buffer and they've already gotten a modification to a 30 foot buffer so give an inch they're taking a mile i have so many more points about the details i hope that you see i apologize your time is up okay thank you thank you i'm going to go to supervisor angry do we have anyone online uh we should have one let's get brian white nope okay all right thank you ma'am so i'm going to go ahead and close the

[00:49:48] public hearings for all the items listed under agenda item number seven. Supervisor Gordie unfortunately is unable to make it today so I'm going to go ahead and pull actually there are a couple items I'm going to just pull because I have questions and then we'll vote on everything at once. The first one is 7k. I would like to invite the applicant to come up and to respond to the comments that we've heard. Good evening or good afternoon to your Jefferson. My name is Jonelle

[00:50:23] Cameron with Walsh, Colucci, Lubelai, and Walsh, and just wanted to provide a couple of items. I may not need that, but just in case. The property was originally zoned in 2002 as part of the New Bristol Village development. This property is specifically designated as commercial, which is B1, that does allow for a maximum height of 45 feet. This maximum height that the applicant is seeking as part of the townhome modification is really based on how the county defines height.

[00:50:55] So from a visual perspective, this will actually look a very similar height to the existing townhomes, but these will include the option for rooftop terraces that are essentially inset into the roof.

[00:51:10] But when you add a rooftop terrace, what that does is that pushes up the midpoint of the roof. So the county's height definition is not from the bottom grade to the top of your roof point, but it's actually from the bottom grade to the midpoint of the roof.

[00:51:28] So from a visual perspective, it looks the same, but because of the way the county defines height, that's why we need that 45 feet because we're pushing up the midpoint to allow for those rooftop terraces. All right. Did anyone have any questions for the applicant?

[00:51:46] if not i am going to hold on don't go anywhere um because i believe that you're also 7l and we do have updated proffers for june 2nd if you would like to speak to that yes um so for 7l again for the record my name is jonelle cameron with walsh calici lubili and walsh for 7l we have added a proffer that would require the applicant subject to vdot and county approval to add additional landscaping within the medians on Dale Boulevard, in between Ridgefield and Mapledale and Queensdale,

[00:52:21] and then on Ridgefield between Dale Boulevard and Quell and Delaney. As far as the requests from Mrs. Miller, the applicant has proffered to 10E. That proffer is that 60% of the plantings within the buffers will be evergreen plantings, not necessarily evergreen trees. The county's DCSM takes into consideration and looks at plant units per linear feet. Those plant units per linear feet look at whether it's deciduous trees or evergreen trees, shrubs, and that allows for a mix in

[00:52:59] variety. The applicant is happy to work with county staff at Site Plan to take into consideration some of mrs miller's concerns and suggestions but we want to make sure that we do that in conjunction with the county and the county's arborist that they agree with that so we're happy to continue those conversations at the time of site plan all right unless anyone has any questions thank you very much miss cameron so i'm going to go ahead and ask for a motion i'm going to please be patient y'all because again 7m has been deferred to tuesday june 23rd and for um 7l

[00:53:36] i would like the motion for um for all of these but 7l it needs to reflect the updated proffers dated june 2nd 2026 yeah madam chair i'll make that motion with the amended proffers that were just handed to us of uh june 2nd 2026 correct um just that 7l yes and the rest of the package i guess as well second all right any discussion madam chair yes i'm just in discussion I do want to thank Mr. Allman for coming up and speaking.

[00:54:09] I didn't know that they were actually going to speak today, but he said something. I had some comments prepared, but he said something that really registered with me, and he brought up new families coming to Prince William County. My kids are grown now, so we still live in the house.

[00:54:26] We moved into our house in 2003, flourishing with kids. All the kids, as we just did today, attend a lot of graduations. And so many of these kids are all grown and graduated out. My street is a quiet street now. But there's this little girl, Charlie, two doors down.

[00:54:43] Her mother was one of the girls riding skates down my street as a kid. And now she's two doors down with her parents. And Charlie is now in my yard messing up my flower bed. But that's a good thing because I remember coming home from work and the kids would be chalking on the street and on my driveway and it was just a cool thing but there are no kids in my neighborhood but what I'm seeing is that where we are now in our society in Prince William County and definitely Neopsville District are lived in neighborhoods where there are no kids anymore and the change has come it's that turnaround

[00:55:21] now because we have a problem and and I will address this with my next door family as well that the one constant thing I continue to hear is that we have no affordable housing and that my children who grow up can no longer afford to live in the county and that we have to move out of the county because we're getting outpriced.

[00:55:43] And so something has to be done, which is what we are doing. Now, there is an inconvenience, the fact of, yeah, there's more houses, yeah, there's more traffic. But as I said before, we have a responsibility in that, and we've got to be better with ourselves. People need to slow down.

[00:55:58] People need to understand we have communities with children in them. People need to understand red lights are meant to stop at and yield. People need to understand that school zones are there for a reason, and you have to slow down. There's more that we can do for ourselves, and the issue can't be that we're building more housing because if you, in simple math, says we need more inventory, supply and demand is just that.

[00:56:22] Prices of homes are high because we don't have an inventory of homes. We don't have a selection of homes. The timing may seem rough that we're doing this now, but we probably should have done this 10 years ago, and it's better to get this out the way now because every home that we build sells.

[00:56:38] And until that stops, this board, this county has to invest in our investment in homes for the people. Thank you, Madam Chair. Supervisor Bailey, then voting. Thank you, Madam Chair. Appreciate it. I just wanted to, you know, just as an addendum to what my colleague just said, I'm going to be supporting item number 7L because it is the, I think it's an example of what we need to do when we talk about redevelopment and revitalization.

[00:57:09] And I think it's important as we bring the county along with older neighborhoods like the Dale City area. I remember when Dale City and Montclair was being built around the same time, and that was the place to live. And so now we are growing a different generation that we want to come back to our communities and thrive and live, work and play.

[00:57:32] And this is an example of what we're talking about when we talk about affordable, attainable housing in our community. So I'll be supporting this because it is the forward step, if you will, When we talk about a seasoned community like Neabsco, a district that is seasoned but still has something to offer to our communities and how we can revitalize it, breathe life into it, and make sure that our families have options when they come back to it.

[00:58:05] So, thank you, Madam Chair. Supervisor Brody. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to hopefully be brief here. So, first, thank you to the community who came out to speak. Everyone, regardless of your comments, they're welcome, and they're part of the dialogue. I also, though, want to sort of single out and appreciate the folks that presented, you know, sort of ideas and suggestions on how to make these projects better.

[00:58:30] Because I say that is oftentimes a lot of folks will come to chambers, and really it's just don't build it. And I get where that comes from. I understand that change. So I understand that, folks, since you've lived in your home for a couple decades, what have you, that change, seeing those trees, that clearing, whatever it is outside your house, suddenly change or change over three or four years can be difficult.

[00:58:52] At the same time, though, as my colleagues have said, we, and I just don't mean this board or this community, but we as a society in America have done a pretty poor job building out the housing that we need in order to facilitate the growth that we're seeing. It's not about if, it's about where.

[00:59:10] And if we don't build the housing here in Prince William County, near transit corridors, near groceries and amenities and what have you, they build farther out. And folks who care about traffic, who care about congestion, who care about the environment, greenhouse gas emissions, what have you, should care that if we are not building the things that we do, that we need to build here, they're going to go farther out.

[00:59:30] And that's more traffic, that's more congestion, that's more schools impact to everyone, not just here. Which leads me to really commend both projects that we're sort of discussed with, especially, as was said before, 7L, because, frankly, we've been talking about redevelopment of these legacy corridors, these legacy shopping centers for a long time, and we're finally doing it, right?

[00:59:51] We have these 1970s-style shopping centers that are just sort of islands. The nearest home is several hundred feet away. There's no walkability there. People have to drive, what have you. And more importantly, there's not a lot of housing for the people that work there. But by providing opportunities, especially with these workforce units, affordable dwelling units, what have you, you give people an opportunity so that that shopping clerk, that eye doctor resident, what have you, who works in that shopping center, doesn't have to drive in from Culpeper, Fredericksburg, Stafford, wherever they're coming from because there's no place to live here near where they work.

[01:00:23] So it's just an opportunity I see to continue this conversation because at the end of the day, the growth is going to come anyway, but we have an opportunity and an obligation as a board to work with the development community, work with our partners in planning, and the broader advocates and those who come before these chambers to do it the right way and know isn't the right way.

[01:00:44] it's how frankly so again just wanted to commend everyone that came out to speak today commend the the residents who had constructive comments and really commend uh the applicants and my my fellow board members who really worked on these projects thank you madam chair supervisor angry thank you madam chair i just um i'd be remiss if i didn't thank rock creek uh man was for investing in princeton county in neapso district and really taking on this project so i just want to thank you guys for the work you've put in and working with the citizens and the community to find this win-win so thank you all right thank you very much um before we vote i did want to touch on 7l

[01:01:22] um the maple delt residential because this really is the perfect place for that development and we talk about walkable communities we talk about clustering development this is exactly what it is we need to see and i do appreciate the updated proffers and i appreciate i don't know if i still see melody i appreciate you coming out you've been more involved more engaged that's what i want to see from people. I want to hear from the residents. I'm going to jump backwards to 7K since Supervisor Gordy is not here. I've met with the applicant to discuss this project. My team and I have asked questions. We've walked through it. I do think that it is a good fit, and I've driven

[01:02:00] through the community. I think that this is a good fit for the area. I don't think it is going to be markedly different. I know there's always concerns about growth and adding to an existing neighborhood. we are going to have a case later today about Belmont Bay where we're adding to an existing neighborhood and that always causes tension and conflict but I do think that this project will be in keeping and fitting with the neighborhood and that is why I'm supporting it but I want to thank everyone if you don't mind if you're here for that item would you mind standing I just want to see everyone who's here for that if you're here from Bristol Point I guess not all right everyone thank

[01:02:39] you thank you for coming out today you know we haven't heard from you before it's always nice and I know it's tough for people it's been a while okay you could sit all right I apologize we have a lot of people come out but I do I appreciate when people do come to us and speak and voice their concerns about the community certainly if you want to have further discussions I can you know I don't know how long you want to be here but I can meet with you between meetings just to talk and have that kind of dialogue and I especially feel it's important because unfortunately Supervisor Gordy wasn't able to make it here today but I want you to know you know

[01:03:14] While there may be disagreements, you know, certainly my team will partner with Supervisor Gordy's team to work with you, work with the community, and address your concerns as the development is happening. But I'm excited about some of the projects we have. Growth is inevitable. It's how do you guide it?

[01:03:31] How does it make sense? And how do we work with the community and developers and other stakeholders to make sure that everything is in harmony? So I don't see anyone else in queue, so I'd like to go ahead and call for the vote. Vote unanimous.

[01:03:52] All right, thank you very much. We're going to move on to agenda item number eight, and that is county executive time. Mr. Shorter, the floor is yours. No way. I'm going to let people clear up first.

[01:04:02] All right, Madam Chair, members of the board.

[01:05:14] So there were three new directives issued during our last meeting. You may recall that the county staff was directed to temporarily stop work on the data center opportunity zone overlay district zoning text amendment. This directive was assigned to our planning office.

[01:05:32] Staff was also directed to review the Dominion Energy's application for the Morrisville Wishing Star Project. This directive was assigned to our Office of Planning as well. And third, the county was directed to, by resolution, to review whether the board has the legal authority and the ability to create, establish, and implement a household energy rebate fund.

[01:05:57] And this directive was assigned to the Office of Sustainability and our Finance Department. There were two directives closed since our last meeting, the response to the directive for staff to identify any boards, committees, commissions, advisory bodies, or working groups that are not legally required and that have been inactive and that they have not met in the last year.

[01:06:21] Two resolutions were provided for your review and consideration, and the response to the directive to have staff prepare and present an update on the deer management program here in the county and the status of tick-borne diseases in Prince William County.

[01:06:38] A memo was sent to the board on June 1st. We also sent a memo this morning to share that the Transportation Planning Board, TPB, recently announced that the Prince William County Transportation Department will receive technical assistance to launch two key planning studies this year, a countywide parking demand study and the Maplewood Neighborhood Traffic Study.

[01:07:05] This is, as always, I want to just give a big recognition and shout out to the transportation team. They do a really good job at applying for these grants and using money outside the county for very important projects. So a press release went out on this and just wanted to make sure I made mention.

[01:07:26] I held our standing quarterly meeting with our town managers on May 22nd and reviewed regional updates and events. We talked about the county's budget and the budget process, and we also talked about the 26 point-in-time count during that meeting.

[01:07:46] I also provided the board notice and wanted to also take a moment just to congratulate our county teams for receiving the following 2026 VACO Achievement Awards. Receiving the Best Large County Achievement Award was our Crisis Receiving Center Complex.

[01:08:05] Receiving the VACO Achievement Award, we had three programs that were honored as part of the Achievement Awards, and that is our PwC 311 Transformation Public Service Delivery, which we'll hear about an update next week during our work session.

[01:08:25] We also received an Achievement Award for Marketing PwC's internship program. Our interns will be here with us at the end of this month. And then finally received an Achievement Award for our Sheriff's Office Senior Safety or Senior Safe Program.

[01:08:42] So very, very proud of the work that they do. And as always, I believe VACO will come to provide those awards to the county. I want to thank PWC Proud and all the departments that presented and supported the event today.

[01:09:02] We are certainly proud of the work that they have done as an employee group and certainly of the successful event that they held in the Quad area earlier today. And I also want to congratulate our Department of Social Services for being recognized by the Town of Dumfries for Fatherhood Empowerment and Engagement Month for their efforts in the Fatherhood Initiative and empowering fathers through education, support, family engagement, and relationship-building initiatives.

[01:09:35] And that is all for me, Madam Chair. All right, thank you. I don't see anyone accused, so I'm going to go ahead and move on to agenda item number nine, and that is commonwealth attorney time. County attorney. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board.

[01:09:51] It's an attorney, okay? Someone with a law degree. All right, there you go. County attorney time. Thank you, Madam Chair. 9A is to authorize closed session this afternoon, and we will have a personnel discussion relating to the appointment or designation of the voting delegate for the 2026 National Association of Counties NACO Annual Conference and Business Meeting.

[01:10:10] This item is appropriate for closed session pursuant to 2.2-3711A1 of the Code of Virginia. Move for acceptance, Madam Chair. Second. It's been properly moved and seconded. Let's go ahead and take our vote.

[01:10:32] Unanimous. Madam Chair, 9B, earlier in the public hearings, you adopted the changes to the county code from the result of the General Assembly session. These are the items for the zoning ordinance amendments that need to be initiated first and go to planning.

[01:10:49] process it then it goes to planning commission then to the board all of these except for one are mandatory the one discretionary is house bill 594 so you can pass it as is you can remove that one if you'd like with the initiation it's just authorizing staff to move forward and bring this forward so i would recommend approval all right any discussion all right making a motion so moved second but properly moved and seconded any discussion survivor voting yeah thank you madam Thank you, Madam County Attorney, for briefing us on that.

[01:11:24] I would love, and I'm going to make a request, is at some point we have some kind of briefing on all of those bills, frankly, in partners with maybe the Planning Office, Housing, and Glenn Lupe and his team. So we know the full breadth of what these will do.

[01:11:40] I know, as Madam County Attorney said, all of them are mandatory to save one, but they all have implications, especially the housing-related ones and what have you. So I would love to hear about what those are. and also, frankly, how they might synergize with our existing policies, if I could. Supervisor Bailey.

[01:11:58] Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for that recommendation. That might be an opportunity that our Chair for the Legislative Committee might want to entertain. We can talk about that because I think it would be excellent if we could have discussion about that. We're just kind of waiting to see how things are going to roll out with our state delegation and the General Assembly.

[01:12:19] But I think, County Attorney, we really appreciate you bringing that forth because oftentimes it takes us a little bit of time to get this through and get them passed. So thank you for bringing that to our attention. We really appreciate it in the series that you've, you know, because we do watch online.

[01:12:38] But to bring it forward so that our citizens will know that we're moving along with the General Assembly is absolutely apropos. So thank you so much for that. And the other thing is I think that it is also an opportunity as we are putting together our legislative committee, as I said, for us to be in concert with Glenn Lupe and with Nikki as well as we go forward to make sure that we are abreast to assure that we are appropriately passing things.

[01:13:13] So thank you very much. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Madam Chair. If I may, I'm remiss. The team in my office did an exceptional job again this year. Rob Robbins is in this, Assistant County Attorney is in the audience, but Paralegal Erica Hilton, Deputy County Attorney Deborah Siegel, Senior Assistant County Attorney Tara Mooney, and of course, Chief Deputy County Attorney Alan Smith did the bulk of the work on this, and I want to thank them for all the time and effort.

[01:13:40] All right, thank you so very much. And yes, we had a motion and a second. Let's go ahead and take our vote. Vote unanimous. All right, thank you, Mr. Shorter.

[01:13:57] I'm going to turn to you for agenda item number 10, agency time. All right, thank you very much, Madam Chair, members of the board. I want to invite Eric Olson, director of our Office of Elections, down. We're going to hear for item 10A from Eric on early voting and early voting locations by way of presentation.

[01:14:28] Eric, I'll turn it to you. All right. Thank you so much, Madam Chair, members of the board. Nice to be here with you all. We are going to talk about the early voting ordinance update for 2026 once it comes up.

[01:14:43] Okay. This is a fairly short presentation today and a fairly small change to the existing ordinance. So the current ordinance has done really well. Early voting popularity continues to increase. We've had little to no lines waiting to vote, so we have not only seen an increase in popularity of early voting, but we've also been able to get people through without them having to wait or be delayed at polling places at the early voting sites.

[01:15:09] We've had great feedback from our voters, a 94% satisfaction rating, and we're using our tax dollars more effectively in how we are running things. This is a comparison. We haven't had a lot of data over time to be able to see. This is a comparison of 2021 to 2025, two similar elections, two elections with very similar turnout.

[01:15:27] You can see that even though we went from three locations for the entirety of the 45 days down to one, early and mail voting basically kept pace over those first three or four weeks, and then we saw a greater increase, And this sort of goes back to what we suggested, the Prince William County Electoral Board and the Office of Elections suggested a couple years ago when we changed the ordinance, which is that most voters want to vote close to Election Day, but they want more locations.

[01:15:51] And we're seeing that reflected in the data that has been effective. That said, we are requesting the ordinance have a slight change that we update to open the DMV for the full 45 days of early voting for all countywide elections. The reason for this is basically just convenience for the voters.

[01:16:09] uh the current drive time if you live in haymarket gainesville bristow or the manassas area is about 10 to 20 minutes to get to an early voting site to the office if you're driving to that office from woodbridge or dumfries or dale city it is a pretty good haul so it's somewhere between 25 and 35 minutes to get up there because you've got to go through the more dense part of the county at the eastern end and then you still have to go a good distance to get up into manassas there. So the average travel time is about 15 minutes more for residents of Akkwan, Yabsco, Woodbridge, and Potomac districts right now generally. With this new change that we're

[01:16:48] suggesting, this would mean basically about even drive times for any part of the county that you live in. So residents would have about 10 or 15 minutes to get to an early voting site from just about every major area around the county, and that would sort of equalize it. I think when we're looking at the office you can see geographically it's similar it's kind of in the middle of the county but when you know the density of the county and where the population line is which is demonstrated here we know that really that eastern third even the eastern quarter has really a good has half the population of the county so the dmv would give balanced access to the county in that

[01:17:27] early part of early voting it is an office controlled site as well so it's not something that we have to have programs interrupted like we do at maybe a library or community center it also has limited space so trying to get all the voters through there in the last couple weeks can be challenging it's our one site where we do worry about lines potentially becoming a problem and the cost here is about forty thousand dollars a year so there's no need for any change to our budget we can absorb that for the upcoming fiscal year we would just need to consider that as we go forward for fiscal 28 and beyond. In terms of feedback at the office we get calls from voters

[01:18:05] asking why isn't this site open a lot and we've been tracking which sites they're asking for seven out of ten times it's a request for the DMV. Haymark and Ferlaza were also requested some but overwhelmingly the DMV is the site that people are asking why isn't it open. I think there's also an element to a lot of people go to the DMV on a regular basis so it's not even always that They were intending to go out and vote, just that they were going there anyway, and so it's a convenience that they have that they can also, you know, cast a ballot while they are taking care of some kind of business that they have at the DMV.

[01:18:41] In the future, and this is something for you guys to consider and think about and perhaps communicate to the electoral board, we would like to see more early voting satellite sites overall, maybe somewhere between one and three. I think that as early voting continues to get popular, we want to make sure that we don't get to a point where we are seeing long lines or where we're not able to meet the demands that the public has to use early voting.

[01:19:05] And we have looked at a few potential sites, and where we're really thinking about is something in the Bristow area. We do have the Brentsville Courthouse there, but it's a little bit off the beaten path. And it is also, if you've ever been there, it's an extremely small room. so we'd have no capacity to get through more voters than the small number that show up there at present so something in bristow would be great we don't have a site picked out because there's not a great location there in terms of a public building uh that's going to be available for something like early early voting so that remains a little bit of a of a mystery to solve um we also

[01:19:39] think that the kelly leadership center or mccourt building uh are both mid-county good locations right now we are very clustered along the 95 route one corridor which is great because it's really populous down there but we're really kind of lacking a mid-county location we also don't have anything along route 234 which is the busiest thoroughfare through the middle of the county so kelly leadership would cover that obviously mccourt here is along the prince william parkway so those are things for the future we think this is something that would be good to resolve by the 2028 presidential election uh which is something for you all to think about since we're talking

[01:20:14] about early voting today so those possible sites would take pressure off our existing sites they would help us to have more geographic proximity which we've seen in the data is what people really want they want an early voting location that's somewhat close to where they live to use it so in regards to authorizing the public hearing today over this matter we're simply seeking what the Prince William County Electoral Board unanimously decided, which is to expand the DMV, to recommend expanding to the DMV for the full 45 days of early voting.

[01:20:53] That's it for me. All right. Thank you so very much. Before we jump in, I just had a couple questions, and I do agree. It would be great to have additional satellite locations because it makes it easier for people. And in Prince William County, you know, we saw the first – we were lagging, what I understand with the last election with early vote um is that not correct that we were what lagging at the beginning when other counties you know the first couple weeks of voting we had low early voting numbers correct yeah and it was towards the end when we opened more locations or we saw the bigger increase correct we saw it come back the turnout ended up being pretty similar

[01:21:32] to the counties around us um so what we found over the years is that most people want to vote in the last couple weeks before an election which is why we changed the ordinance and recommended Did the ordinance be changed to have fewer locations in the beginning and more towards election day?

[01:21:49] And this is sort of a Goldilocks situation where maybe three was too much, maybe one was too little, and maybe two is just the right number for those 45 days. Well, I appreciate you and your team, you know, like looking into this and deciding, like, okay, maybe, you know, the changes didn't quite have the impact that we intended.

[01:22:10] coming back and talking about revising it because i do think you know having more locations is better and it makes democracy more accessible but with that you were talking about the other locations that you would eventually like to open and you said ahead of um 2028 what would you need to maybe make that available for 2027 i know it's relate for the midterms um but what would you you think for next election cycle i mean it would take an a passage of an ordinance by you all to change the ordinance to include those as satellite locations. I think when you're talking about Bristow area, it's finding a location that would work. Schools are not good early voting

[01:22:50] locations because early voting is open for an extended period and creates public safety issues for the kids at those schools when the schools are in session. We don't have a lot of community centers and recreation centers in Prince William County like we might see in some of our neighboring counties like fairfax or in dc and maryland um so we don't have those as options uh so we're left with what public buildings we do have that are that that have space available so that's why we identified kelly leadership center which has a lot of meeting rooms uh available there and then mccourt which i know space is tight here uh it's not like there's an abundance of space but there

[01:23:28] are meeting rooms available um to accommodate that for a few weeks out of the year should you all decide um you know so i think it's up to you all as to which of those locations you all think is most critical uh to voters uh and what's convenient i do think some kind of mid-county location would be good either mccourt or kelly leadership center and then you know you all could expand all three uh it each basically involves an additional expense um we'd have to run the numbers exactly but something like for a satellite probably about 15 to 20 000 which is almost

[01:24:04] entirely just labor uh just paying the election officers to be out there you need five six seven election officers to run each site for a day for a couple weeks um and that's the only barrier well thank you actually um answer one of my questions i'm sure other people would you know be asking questions about cost so thank you for you know preempting that has any thought been given to weekend hours you know because weekends are a very popular time to vote perhaps that first weekend or two of early voting maybe extending the hours as that you know for weekend voting has that been a discussion so we have so prince william county was the first county in virginia

[01:24:41] i'm pretty sure to have sunday voting in their ordinance um saturday voting is mandated by the state and sunday voting actually just passed um so the state following uh prince william county's lead on that and now mandating it for um the two sundays prior to not the sunday right two days before election day but the two sundays before that so nine days and 16 days will be required we already had that for general elections in prince william county and while it's not required in the ordinance we do have voting hours extended on wednesdays and those have been those have been

[01:25:17] popular the wednesday evenings have been successful and i think that was something that was suggested by the board as well that we offer some kind of evening hours so we do have in any given election multiple you're going to have three or four weekend days in any given election if it's a presidential you actually have five um and uh we do have evening voting i'm going to sneak in with my few seconds left but i'm saying um you know and i understand what's monday but us maybe going above and you know for that first weekend perhaps adding yet another additional saturday because we see high demand with weekend voting it's very popular so i just want to see if that

[01:25:56] as a consideration or something that you guys can look into, just adding yet another Saturday. With that, I'm going to the next person accused, Supervisor Vega. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Eric, for the presentation. I'm not opposed to the Chair's request. One of the things that I like about what you've done since taking over is that you come to us with data, right?

[01:26:16] And the data backs the request, whether it's a financial request or a request for additional locations to be considered. And so I say, let's go to the data. what is the data say for current Saturday day votings and or extending the time before we just go ahead and make a recommendation, which I'm sure you'll do, but I just had to make that plug in.

[01:26:34] On slide 14, when we talk about requests, do you have a total call count? A total what count? Total call count. We just passed it. It was the one that talks about voter calls requesting. Oh, how many calls total? I don't have an exact number. Hundreds of calls during any given election. Well, we'll get thousands of calls. A couple hundred of them will be, hey, how come voting's not available at this site?

[01:26:59] We actually set up on the final, actually election day, we sent staff over to the DMV to tell people that it's not, early voting sites are generally not election day sites. There are a couple of precincts that are at an early voting site, but early voting sites are not in and of themselves.

[01:27:18] So the DMV and the office are not open on election day. They are not the precincts, a polling place for any of the precincts that we have. But we actually sent staff over to the DMV because we had so many people kind of showing up there because people are so used to voting there now.

[01:27:35] Gotcha. But in regards to this particular, we're just going to guess a couple hundred? Probably somewhere in the 200 to 400 range. 200 to 400 range. I don't have an exact number. Thank you. And what type of considerations are given when we decide to consider other locations?

[01:27:54] So I know that you mentioned the possibility of looking at McCord or the Kelly Leadership Building, I assume distance, what other? I think the density of the neighborhoods around that, the location off of major thoroughfares, you know, the DMV is partly successful because it's a location where people are already going to and the Brentsville Historic Courthouse is not hugely popular, partly because it's tucked a little bit back and it's not on a major thoroughfare there.

[01:28:22] So what parking do they have available? How much parking do they have? What is the room size that they have available? So, you know, in terms of these, obviously we don't have a good one for Bristow. We're talking about Bristow. We don't have a location yet. So I'd love our office and the board would love help from the supervisors if you all have suggestions for that.

[01:28:44] Kelly Leadership Center, I think, is a really good one because they have very large meeting space. They have a lot of parking. They're on 234. They're near the landfill where people go, you know, a lot anyway. So it has kind of a lot of the elements that you see at DMV. And McCourt, similar. It's on the parkway.

[01:28:59] It's near a lot of really dense housing here. It is a place where people are going for business and meetings already. So I think those are all locations that kind of don't check all those boxes necessarily, but at least check, you know, four or five of the six things that we're looking at when we're thinking about early voting sites.

[01:29:19] And hypothetically speaking, if we were to give the green light for McCourt and KLC, could your current budget absorb the $15,000, $20,000 for those two locations? It wouldn't be huge. I think one additional site, probably.

[01:29:36] If we're getting towards three, then it's getting a little more expensive, especially if we're already talking about the DMV addition of time. Gotcha. Thank you. Supervisor Bailey. Thank you, Madam Chair. Eric, thanks for, I agree with my colleague about your data.

[01:29:54] You came in, and that's what, everything that you do is data-driven, and we really appreciate it, and it's easy to understand, too. It's not too complicated. So I really do appreciate that. Are there any plans from the last election, the redistricting election, are there any plans to provide updates to level set the community about what's next?

[01:30:19] You know, because I get a lot of questions from my constituents, like this voting thing is so confusing. You know, I know that's a marketing piece, and I know that's expensive, but are there any plans to just level set the community? I mean, in terms of getting word out about districts and elections coming up, we do do voter guides before the general elections.

[01:30:41] And we did do one before the special. So we don't do them for primaries because it's our party-driven affairs, and it really varies. I do think that one note related to that is there is a primary coming up on August 4th now, the one that you normally would have been in June, is going to be in August.

[01:30:57] And presently there will be Republican primaries in Prince William County, but there's not going to be a Democratic primary. So you all know if you get calls from your constituents about why there isn't a Democratic primary, it's because those are incumbent candidates and they don't have challengers. So I'm sure that's a question we're going to get a lot over the next couple months.

[01:31:17] And then we do send those voter guides out, which have mostly location and date, the when, where, when, how, and why. You know, what the deadline is to mail in your ballot, where the location is to go vote, if you're going to early vote, where to go on election day.

[01:31:32] We try to give people that basic information, and we try to do it in a cost-effective way. We send out those voter guides. We get nonprofit postage rate, and we do it to households. So we're not sending multiple things to every household. You know, we find that that saves us a lot of money and we're able to reach, you know, 165,000 plus households in Prince William County for less than $70,000.

[01:31:56] So, you know, rather than trying to send one to every voter, which would be more than twice as expensive. So those are the kind of things we're doing. We're trying to, you know, we're continuing to build our social media following and putting information out there. and the County Communications Office is really good about, you know, helping us amplify messages over the really important stuff, and we do talk with them regularly about, hey, we've got to, you know, this is a big one.

[01:32:22] People are going to want to know more about this. So we do, you know, what we can on that. But it's, you know, I'm sure, just like you all know, it's hard to cut through the noise sometimes to get some of these messages, you know, across to people.

[01:32:37] I want to thank you. You mentioned social media. I just want to thank you for how you are doing that as well. That's a new thing for Prince William County, and it just keeps getting gooder and gooder. So that's just a little feedback for you. Thank you to your staff and to the Board of Elections for how you continue to focus to make things in this voting process fair.

[01:33:01] And I think that speaks to also the intentionality of making sure that everyone has the opportunity to participate. And just as immediate feedback, I think your recommendation about mid-county accessibility is spot on.

[01:33:17] So thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Supervisor Booty. Thank you, Madam Chair. Eric, thank you for the presentation. You continue to work, as my colleagues have said. Just go off of a slightly different bead as Supervisor Bailey's question.

[01:33:34] I know that all we're doing right now is authorize a public hearing to then amend the ordinance at a later date. So once we do that, if the board, you know, authorized public hearing today, then actually amends the ordinance in the future, how will you communicate specifically to the voters that DMV is going to be open from here on out for those general elections countywide?

[01:33:57] Well, we'd include it in the voter guide, which we have. And, you know, to Supervisor Bailey's comments, you know, thank you all for providing the funding for some of these things because we have a communications person now, which we did not have before. that was something we recommended, you all approved. And it's, it's amazing how just one additional staff person sometimes we're a small office, we're a team of 18 people. And we're handling, you know, I've been here five years, and we've had something close to, I don't know, probably just shy of a million voters at this point over that span. So providing the communications

[01:34:31] position really helps us to build social media, to have good materials, to make things that are easy for people to understand at least as easy as we can um so we will continue to put the voter guide out and it'll probably feature something uh you know noting that for people drawing attention to that and then we'll try to do some social media stuff around that as well to you know amplify that message and um you know we invite you all to to follow us and help us to amplify those things when the when you think the message is important or when it's helpful for your for your voters and

[01:35:07] your your citizens appreciate that that's all last thing i say thank you for that because you know as you said the proof is the pudding the dmv is probably one of the most popular early voting locations probably in the region if not at least the county we see that we see it's utilized very well and i every time there it isn't open for early voting i get phone calls because it's mostly in my district i know sirs are uh angry and i sort of share it but a lot of the folks that go there are some of the Ococontras from the Lake Ridge area and what have you. So really, really support that. I guess as it pertains to something that Chair Jefferson said, you know, you're right,

[01:35:45] you know, you guys added that extra hour or two to Wednesday, which has been also really popular as we continue to move forward with making these amendments and changes, continue to gather that data. And I would say that calls is great, but if we could find some way at some point to survey voters themselves as they're voting say hey what would make this easier for you what hours are you think is missing what we're doing was this inconvenient at all did you have to move things around to do it i think actual direct voter surveying i don't know how how able we're able to do that but i think getting like proactive voters serving as they're doing it i think is really helpful because i think it will help you capture even more granular and structured data

[01:36:23] to bring us even better recommendations in the future thank you i mean i think the community survey does a great job of cap it captures voting amongst other things it doesn't get us specifically to early voting versus election day necessarily but it does provide some good data that people are happy with the voting options that they do have in the county thank you all right thank you very much i don't see any additional questions and i am sorry because with all the good conversation did we we didn't get a motion so let's go ahead so move second all right it's been probably moved

[01:37:00] seconded any further discussion. All right, let's go ahead and take our votes. Vote unanimous. All right, thank you very much, and thank you everyone for coming in. Mr. Shorter.

[01:37:16] Yep. All right, thank you, Madam Chair, and Eric, and team. Thank you all very much for the work. Madam Chair, with item 10B, we were asking the board appropriate funding to support the automated enforcement program. I'm going to turn it over to Rick Canazales, who is the director of Transportation Department to get us kicked off. Thank you, Mr. Shorter. Good afternoon, Madam Chair. Members of the Board, Rick Canazales here, Director of Transportation. Here today to talk about automated enforcement and our automated

[01:37:52] enforcement program, where we're at, what we're doing. First of all, we'll talk a little bit about the current status of the program and where we're at, and then we'll talk about future locations of where the program is moving to in the future locations that we are looking at, some of the challenges that we are facing, because we are facing challenges with the three different programs. And the reason we're here with you today in June, since we, you know, we passed the program back in July, we made a permit back in July, but there has been a lot of regulatory changes, a lot of code changes that we had to wait through the

[01:38:29] General Assembly to see where we were at to come back to you to talk this through. We'll talk a little bit about the staffing necessary to make this program work, the transportation safety fund we want to set up, as well as some of the next steps that the program entails. Current status, I think we're doing really well. Again, FY24 was a partial year when we started the pilot program. We had four school zones up, and we had paid fines of $234,000. In our next year, FY25, where we've had a full year, we collected out of the six zones that we had at that time, $1.2 million.

[01:39:05] And in FY26, with those same six zones, we collected 927. Again, that's up to March of this year. We haven't gotten to the end of the fiscal year. We will have those numbers by August. With that said, you see the schools at the top.

[01:39:21] Those are the six locations that we currently have. And as you notice through that is that the program is working out and doing its job. future locations we are looking to do two work zones this summer and fall we're looking to do one over at the Devlin job that we have out west and then here at the Minneville Parkway job here in the east end we're finding the Parkway job a little a little bit harder to enforce and we're doing some issues there because it's a little more compact a little less area that you have to enforce but we're talking through it with VDOT and making sure that works we're also as you know

[01:39:59] starting the red light camera program and we'll talk a little bit about the challenges we face there. We're going to come back here in future meetings to extend the pilot program again because of the regulatory changes and the standardizing of this through VDOT that has been an issue. But we are coming with the nine locations with the Linton Hall 28 one coming in first at the same time abouts with the Minnieville and Dale Boulevard. So those will be our first two locations. The school zones are coming in the fall of 2026. Those are the two additional authorized school zones that you authorized back when you made the program permanent.

[01:40:38] And then we're looking at 12 additional locations in school zones. We're actually actively studying them to bring them back to you for recommendations as we make the program permanent and as we start staffing up and being able to do some of the additional things that the program allows us to do. This is just those mentioned locations all mapped out.

[01:40:57] As you can see, they're very geographically diverse. There are major corridors. You see that we have existing locations in the yellow where the school zones are. And then we have the construction zone locations that we're looking at in green. In blue, we have the red light locations that will be coming online in the next few months.

[01:41:16] And then in red, you see the future two schools that we're looking to do in Benton Middle School and Patty and Washington Reed Elementary. And then the 12 locations in purple that we are currently studying. Some of the challenges that we talked about, first of all, like I mentioned, there's been a lot of change in state code, and I'll get a little more into depth in what that means for us.

[01:41:39] Permitting reviews and approvals, that has been our biggest challenge in the red light program, getting those approvals from VDOT, as we are going to be touching their equipment. This is equipment that VDOT owns, and they're very particular about, so us getting into that equipment has been a major issue. Major agreements have to be put in place.

[01:41:56] Major standards have to be set up, and we will be the first county that does not own our roads to be able to put this program up after standardizing it with VDOT. Some of the changes in equipment that have been made through the code changes, you see those little robot camera-looking things.

[01:42:13] We're not going to be able to use those anymore. We're going to have to move the pole-mounted cameras, and that's because of the code change. We do have a continued volume of tickets remaining high, so we do have some strains on the existing police staff right now.

[01:42:29] We have some technology issues with the flashers and how the flashers communicate with the system, with the schools and what's happening electrically with the schools and how they're running their system. And then we have equipment damages and failures that we have. I mean, we've even had them vandalized and sprayed over the camera, and we've had to go out there and clean those up.

[01:42:48] We make sure that the vendor, as well as the schools, are informed when these things happen to make sure we're coordinating and getting those back online. And then finally, the last thing I like to mention is the weather. These are school zones, so weather affects it, right? So we try not to do it whenever there's a delayed day or schools are out or there's any kind of early closings.

[01:43:08] Those kind of delays or reductions in school hours, we take those days out. We do not use the enforcement system on those days just because we want to make sure that when we're doing it, we're capturing the correct data. As I said, we were going to talk a little bit about the changes in state code.

[01:43:28] HB 1220 kind of did a few things. It standardized the violations. This is just the summons that you're trying to get standardized statewide. The work zone restrictions, just talking about how there has to be work going on at a work site in order to put those cameras up.

[01:43:44] Strict compliance guardrails is trying to make sure that we're following the code and making sure that we have all the appropriate signage up, all the appropriate technology, we have it in the right location, all that stuff to make sure that we're doing it legally. If not, those citations are not valid.

[01:44:00] And then the operational and financial accountability where it's oversight and it's kind of making sure that we use the monies appropriately. And that's part of setting up the transportation safety fund that we're going to be talking about a little later. And then finally below, you see Senate Bill 2021. That's the school crossing zone times. What that did is increase the amount of time we can have the cameras on from 60 minutes before school and after school instead of the 30 minutes before school and after school.

[01:44:28] Now, we are just making a point of showing you that we are not proposing that we change our hours. Our hours will remain 30 minutes before, 30 minutes after. We may look at shifting the hours in those hours, but not adding to it as the code is allowing at this time.

[01:44:46] A little bit about the staffing. We are requesting four staffing positions. Two of them will be in the Department of Transportation, and we will be asking for a program manager to run the program to actually make sure that the locations deal with the vendor, deal with the police, be the coordinating factor behind that.

[01:45:03] And then we're asking for a traffic safety engineer which would be responsible for the planning, the studying, the looking into the locations, analyzing the different areas, changing locations, keeping track of the data, that kind of stuff. We've got two police officers. One would be a sergeant, which would be dedicated and would be in immediate need that's responsible for making sure that the tickets are complied with, that they are certified, connecting with the courts, making sure we got the court dates appropriately and having those tickets enforced.

[01:45:32] The second officer will be getting later on in FY27, possibly FY28, and they will be assisting and responsible for validating and certifying the tickets or summons, the violations. The Transportation Safety Fund. Now, this is something that we want to fund because right now the program, as you saw from our financials, the program is paying for itself.

[01:45:52] It's actually not only paying for itself, it's creating additional funding. This additional funding, we are proposing, and per the code that I talked about, we're proposing to put into straight transportation safety fund activity. This would provide a dedicated funding stream for some safety projects. It would utilize the program funds and not ask for any additional general fund or additional tax revenue.

[01:46:16] It would be data-driven, and by that I mean it would be compliant with our comprehensive traffic safety action plan that you have adopted. All projects and initiatives that will be funded through this fund will be brought to the board for authorization, and any future locations of expansion of the program as well will be brought to this board for authorization.

[01:46:42] The eligible projects will follow our comprehensive safety plans and the categories that we've talked about and that you adopted, which are infrastructure and engineering, technology and data, Outreach, education, and engagement, enhanced enforcement initiatives, emergency response and post-crash care improvements, safe mobility alternatives, and smart growth and connectivity safety upgrades.

[01:47:04] The next steps, again, the resolution is asking the board to authorize and budget the $1.2 million in FY27 to establish the operating budget for the program to move forward. We're also asking the board to authorize the four positions that we discussed and we talked about and also establish the separate transportation safety fund that would use the surplus funds from the program to do traffic safety work.

[01:47:32] The other things that we have to do is we'll have to come back to the board with a public hearing that is required to make the ordinance amendments that we have to make based on the new legislation. We'll be working with a vendor in the schools as well as VDOT in making sure we implement the state code appropriately and we will continue to implement the program as it's continuing to grow.

[01:47:54] Once that Transportation Safety Fund is established, we will come back to the board and to authorize any projects and, again, any future locations that are needed. With that, that is our ask of the board, and I can take any questions. All right, Supervisor Angry. Thank you. Supervisor Angry.

[01:48:12] Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks, Rick. This was, I guess, this is about a year, right? So I'm loving this because I really want to see more of this. Really quick question, just one. You've got some new schools lined up.

[01:48:29] Freedom High School, do you foresee that being? Will there be a point in time where every, I'm just going to use high school, 13 high schools. Will all 13 high schools have a speed camera at some point in front of them? And I'm specifically asking for Freedom because you've got NVCC, Northern Virginia College, across the street.

[01:48:50] What I'm seeing really on that road, and that's just a short little gap that says slow down because kids walk across that road. I'm seeing really students. It's students. They park at Freedom. They park at the college. And they're flying right past that sign, but there's no camera there right now.

[01:49:09] Yes, sir. Will that ever be a point where a camera could be located? Thank you for your question, Supervisor Ang. Just before I answer that question, I'd just like to introduce the dream team behind me that has been doing a lot of the work here regarding this automated enforcement program, and that's Richard Weinman, our traffic safety engineer.

[01:49:29] I think you all know him and worked with him, as well as Lieutenant Sean Peake, who's been a wealth of knowledge in working with us through this program. Paolo Belita has been kind of leading the effort with them too, so I just want to make sure that they're here. I'm going to let Richard get up and speak to the questions about not only about Freedom High School, but about at a point in time maybe having all the high schools under the program.

[01:49:52] Thank you, Supervisor. Richard Wyman, Traffic Safety Engineering Section Manager. Ideally, we would like to have no enforcement at any of these schools because ideally everyone would comply. Yes. You're not supposed to laugh at it.

[01:50:09] Anyway, so we will continue to grow the program in a way. We've identified the next schools that we want to look at. We can add freedom to that list, definitely. And, yes, we will expand the program as big as it needs to right-fit it incrementally every year.

[01:50:25] So, yes, we can add freedom to that. Yeah, and because my concern, and thank you, thank you, Richard, for that, because my concern is just, you know, youth today, and as you see them, they just walk. The sidewalk doesn't matter. They're in the road. They just walk. And now many of them are driving.

[01:50:41] And Freedom has a lot of drivers, and so does the college. And they really don't look twice. And maybe they're just not experienced in season to understand that. But then again, I have adults who are experienced in season do the same thing. So it's just a problem.

[01:50:56] So I would just really like for Freedom to take a peek. We will add it to the list, sir. And the other question I have, because this is one that I knew this was going to be an issue. When you talked about vandalizing of cameras, and I know this is a money question, but do we have cameras over those two so we can identify who's doing this?

[01:51:16] I just sometimes think if we put visibility up there, then at least, you know, we can either deter that or we can catch those folks who are doing that because that's a serious crime, and we need to be looking at that. Madam Chair, members of the board, Sean Peake with Special Operations, there are no cameras overlooking the speed cameras itself.

[01:51:36] Sometimes if a car is coming through the zone, it'll capture people in it, but it doesn't capture the things that happened prior to it after. We've had one where it was somebody ripped the top off it, and they called it in, thought it was a crash or anything.

[01:51:51] But it's basically the unit can be manipulated. It's pretty hard and heavy. But that's where the state code is saying that we need to switch from the portable carrier units to the pole mounting units, and that is taking a lot of work to do. and I would just add on the previous question when we're doing the reviews sometimes what we see in the pictures which is great is actually when we're doing the reviews you see it captures students walking through it captures them so it shows it's viable for the program also with the school buses making turns up ahead Dale Boulevard for example we see that quite a bit Patriot

[01:52:30] High School you'll see students walking so it shows that we can't be at every school zone and force in those locations so the cameras do help yeah thank you all right supervisor booty thank you madam chair thank you rick lieutenant peak richard team for all your work on this um really really appreciate how far we've come i know there's been challenges that are mostly out of your control um so i appreciate you guys persevering i guess my my couple questions are um as we hopefully finally get the red light cameras up and running later this year how will that be communicated to residents that those are going

[01:53:09] up. Thank you, Supervisor. Again, Richard Wyman, Traffic Safety and Injuring. As part of the rollout, we will be doing press releases because we're essentially, the work zones and the red light cameras, we're treating as essentially separate, parallel programs, even though they are part of the same program. So, yeah, we're working with Nikki and the communications team to do that. There will be social media.

[01:53:33] As well, every single new location, when we switch it on, we will have a variable message board out there for at least a week saying automated enforcement coming on these dates so yes we will be engaging by social media press releases for the for those new add-on programs as well as variable message words at locations appreciate that and I'll just add on supervisor Bodhi what we there's also a 30-day grace period right there's also a 30-day period where you don't the violation is not a violation it's a warning letting you know that you violated this camera that's up and running for the first 30 days once that 30-day period grace periods over violation will have a fine attached to it appreciate that and

[01:54:12] my second question um is ricky you mentioned as part of the fund um it's mostly going to look at projects that are sort of within the scope of the comprehensive traffic safety action plan um are they going to be looking at anything outside that because i know for example we have a bunch of uh adopted small area plans in the county and some of those in part of those implementation matrices might have some safety improvements in them some of those smaller plans have been around for almost a decade at this point, but we haven't really looked at them and how they jive with the traffic action plan.

[01:54:43] So could you talk about that a little bit? Sure, and I think you'll see by the wide variety of action that we're looking to be able to do with the action plan. We're not limiting it to infrastructure projects or what's identified in them. We're limiting it to the type of project that the action plan calls for. So that would be my response to you.

[01:55:00] So I think that the answer would be yes. We would consider it as part of how it met the principles of the action plan. Appreciate that. Thank you. Supervisor Bailey. Thank you, Madam Chair. Rick, thank you to you and your team, your dream team, for what you're doing.

[01:55:21] Supervisor Angry said about a year. Supervisor Angry, I think it's been longer than that, that we've really been preparing for this very moment, particularly with the temporary cameras that we have and then transitioning. I remember back in 2020-21, you said we're going to transition to this very moment.

[01:55:41] And so I'm very excited about this very moment. My question is, one of the things that we did talk about back in the day was addressing the behavioral problems with running red lights. Will this kind of help us with the education piece and help us kind of curtail that?

[01:56:02] I know it's, it may not, but, you know, because we had a lot of, when we were talking about initially, we talked about people running red lights and the fatalities thereof. So I kind of see, is this kind of a preparedness, if you will? I think what you're seeing here, ma'am, and once we start this pilot program, is you start seeing hopefully what we hope for and what this program is about is the change of behavior.

[01:56:25] So as you see these red light cameras coming up and being activated and people going through them and seeing those violations, we hope, and that's what this program looks at, is changing the behavior of those individuals. And maybe those behaviors are even changed when they get the warning, not necessarily a violation, right?

[01:56:45] And we saw a lot of changes when we first came up with the school zones. We saw a lot of change after the warning period. We saw that people weren't running or speeding as much. We hope to see that as well with the red light cameras, and that's what we're doing to pilot for you. We'll bring back the data to show you whether it's working or not.

[01:57:03] Like I said, we hope it does in changing behavior, and we'll bring that to you for permanency most likely next year. Okay, that's great news. So could you just kind of iron out a little bit more for me, what does paying for itself mean? In other words, this program, with the funds that are generated from the program and the violations and the citations, there's no cost to county general coffers.

[01:57:31] The cost is all borne by the violations. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. All right. Thank you so very much. Since there are no more people in queue for questions, I'd like to go ahead and entertain a motion. So move, Madam Chair.

[01:57:47] Second. It's been properly moved and seconded in a discussion on this point. Supervisor Stewart. So I have concerns about this as it relates to the argument that's been going on nationwide about these type of traffic cameras and violations to the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 14th amendments of the United States.

[01:58:14] First of all, just to go through each one. So due process, the 5th and 14th amendment. So many ordinances do cite registered owners of the vehicle, assuming that they were the ones driving. And it's been argued by constitutional professors that this improperly shifts the burden of proof, making owners prove that they weren't driving.

[01:58:36] Simply put, these cameras violate due process protections guaranteed under the United States Constitution. Also, the right to confront one's accuser, which is the Sixth Amendment. Defendants in these cases have the right to face their accusers in court.

[01:58:52] Again, constitutional professors argue that an automated camera cannot be cross-examined. Fourth Amendment, search and seizure. Mass warrantless recordings of drivers have sparked debates among legal scholars over legal surveillance and expectation of privacy on public roads.

[01:59:16] So as somebody who has several times in life a former military and joining this board, for instance um i have taken an oath to uphold the constitution of the united states and i also just fundamentally don't want to fund a program that's going to have the county surveil its residents so i'll be voting against supervisor angry thank you madam chair and and i appreciate

[01:59:50] that uh supervisor stewart and i go back to that same oath i took um but i support i all we also supported to defend mankind and life and so i asked how much is their life worth because you can tell that to miss talbot's family all day or the young family that lost their son out in gainesville crossing the school or the many deaths we've had or the t intersection of the gentleman on 234 like at some point people have to be held responsible for their behaviors behind vehicles

[02:00:25] which are the number one weapon in the world which we don't acknowledge and it is a problem so whatever we have to do i'm willing to do to protect the life especially a young life as we talk about these school zones so there's much to be debated about these cameras and how we can do this i would simply suggest to the people that you be law abiding law abiding says do the speed limit law abiding says don't run these red lights you know they're red they're red for at least 10 seconds how many times this morning have you been at that intersection coming anywhere and people

[02:01:02] have blown through that light right now today it's a problem i'm simply saying we have technology at our fingertips that can help our officers out because unless we're willing to hire 100 more officers that simply sit outside of schools and every red light we have in this county we have a problem that technology can help us address and I'm willing to figure the rest of that out if we cross those roads because my number one priority is life and I think right now we have a huge problem with life in this county and in this nation but I'll speak specifically for Prince William County. Thank you Madam Chair. I'm going to jump in before I know Supervisor

[02:01:39] Sure you want to jump say something else. So I'm ashamed to admit I actually got caught by a camera I was coming home from my, with my son. He had a colonoscopy and I paid the ticket. I paid the ticket even though I, you know, was only a little bit over, but I paid the ticket because I should have been paying more attention. It's on me. And I proudly voted for this and I'm going to vote for this again because while some people may slip up every once in a while, there are people who are repeat offenders. And one of the areas that you were looking at was waterway. And I can tell you

[02:02:17] Years ago, well, before I was on this board, my neighbors and I championed speed calming measures along waterway, because I like to call it speedway. We have a lot of people who are zooming up and down, and that's a real problem. It's a habit for some people. It's a habit. And I am very concerned about traffic-related fatalities, because we've had quite a few. One is too many. But I do want to go to the constitutional argument i am not an attorney i don't claim to be one i make mistakes

[02:02:53] between county calling our county attorney commonwealth attorney but what have you but red light cameras have been generally upheld as constitutional by most courts across the united states and although we have a motion you know i do just want to speak to that because i don't you know and again we can agree this is a major legal debate but i don't want the public to feel that we're doing something untoward, that we're doing something that is not in keeping with the United States Constitution, because we are a public body, and nothing supersedes the U.S.

[02:03:31] Constitution. So if you don't mind, I'm just going to break protocol a bit and speak to that. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to get to a few of the questions that were brought up, or a few of the statements that were brought up, I do want to explain this is part of Virginia State Code.

[02:03:48] It has been codified and signed by the governor. We do have things and guards that get to some of the issues that you have brought up, including that we can only take rear-facing photos of the vehicle. We can only grab the license plate of the vehicle, and we have to get rid of the data once that citation is paid.

[02:04:11] So there's no keeping of data of any kind of the vehicles. The owner of the vehicle or the person cited does have a day in court. It does have a court date that is established through the summons, and the court does receive summons, and the officers do attend those to be able to discuss what they see in the camera and certify the citation.

[02:04:40] There's also no liability, sir, so there's no liability attached to these at all. you can actually in the back of the ticket it says if you were not in your vehicle at the time if you can show us proof you can write us and tell us what happened and I've actually done this in the past because it was one of my vehicles my children were driving through the city of Manassas and I had to write it was not me driving the vehicle and and the ticket is not then cited there's no record of it either it doesn't go against you and your driving record and it does not get does not go against your insurance cost so there's no liability in that issue as well so that's some of the things that the safeguards that have been put into the code to deal with some of those

[02:05:18] issues that you mentioned, constitutional issues that you mentioned. Thank you. Madam Chair. Yes. If I may, Madam Chair, members of the board, Mr. Gonzalez is correct. This bill went through the General Assembly. The Attorney General reviewed it. The governor has signed it. And the Supreme Court, as Mr. Gonzalez noted, the Supreme Court of Virginia is going to be the one that is developing the summons for the purpose of these cases. The penalties are civil in nature and it's up to the court to determine whether or not there's proper due process in each individual case. So each individual that receives a summons can go to court and contest it. It's up to the judge to determine

[02:05:57] whether or not it's constitutional based upon the facts in that case. But as proposed, I believe that the statute that has been passed and signed by the governor meets the constitutional requirements. All right, thank you very much. Before I get back to you, Supervisor Stewart, I just want to go to Bailey because you might want to respond to all of us at once.

[02:06:16] And Madam Chair, if I can, I just want to have the director answer one more question. Could you, there's a validation that occurs after. I wonder if you could just explain that officer. I don't mean to steal Rick's thunder, but every violation notice that gets in the system, a vehicle comes through a school zone, a camera captures a violation, It would have to be 11 miles per hour or more.

[02:06:48] It has to come to, goes to the vendor for a review. They review the tag, the make and model of the vehicle, the location, the time frame that we capture those violations. It comes over to the police department for a review, and we have to review every violation that comes through.

[02:07:03] We, once again, go through making sure it's through the same time frame. We verify the tag, make, model, and color of the vehicle that's there. that it's in the correct lane of travel that it's showing, and then we basically either prove it or reject it.

[02:07:19] There's several things that we can reject it for. Maybe it's too close to another vehicle, and the trapezoid that it captures and puts on the back of the vehicle is also on the back of another vehicle, so we would reject that. Whether it's just right at the threshold, it came in at just under 36 miles or 11 miles an hour or under, so we would reject those.

[02:07:42] But anything that is approved then goes back to the vendor, then it goes out to the registered owner of the vehicle. That then goes to the registered owner of the vehicle, and they have the right to request a court date. If they choose the request a court date, whoever reviewed it, each month we go to court, and we get, I would just say generally between 5 and 15 a court date.

[02:08:07] The judge will hear our testimony of what occurred, the audits that we do, We have a system in place because of the one-house bill that required as of July 1. There's a communication device that is inside the Wink-O-Matics, which is the flashing school zone lights, that shows that those lights came on and went off when they're supposed to.

[02:08:28] Plus, we do on-site visits to make sure that those lights have come on and gone off during that time frame so that we have to track this, make sure there's no trees or anything blocking the line of sight, things like that. So they can come to court, we give the testimony, the person will give their testimony to the judge.

[02:08:46] And depending on what judge, as the county attorney mentioned, it's up to the judge whether they find it, that we proved it beyond a reasonable doubt, or they dismiss it. And I can tell you just from whatever court date, some will be all guilty.

[02:09:02] Some, the judges will find them not guilty. Really, we don't hold that against anybody. That's their choice to come to court, and that's their right for that. So I hope that clarifies some things for you. We could also meet afterwards, and we could come present.

[02:09:19] I know, Mr. Storr, you're new to the board as well. I'm not trying to sway you in any way, but Rick and I were talking outside just before the meeting, and some of the other board members were afforded an opportunity about a year and a half ago. I would say that we went and briefed the prior presentation to them, and probably we should have done that as well, to go over some of these processes.

[02:09:43] with you. And I think Supervisor LaCroix might have missed out on that as well since she's new to the board as well. So that's something that we did talk about that we can do that as well if you'd like an overview of the program. I mean, I kind of explained some of that in a nutshell today. I'd be happy to answer any other questions.

[02:10:00] All right. Anything else? I'm going to go over to Bailey, then Stuart. Thank you, Madam Chair. And Sean, thank you so much. I would encourage you to do just that, you know, um, um, in all fairness. So appreciate that recommendation. And, and, and also just want to respect my colleagues, um, views and decision, not again, not trying to sway your vote in whatever way you vote is. I respect that. But I also wanted to say back to something that Madam chair has said, uh, in terms of, uh, waterway in terms of

[02:10:38] into not just Madam chair, but, uh, supervisor, vice chair angry also said, uh, Cardinal Drive, we've had fatalities, and it was due to behavioral coming out of COVID. And, you know, we're not mental health therapists.

[02:10:54] We are not policemen. We are not transportation authorities or experts. But we knew that we had to do something about the concerns that the community were having, especially our senior community.

[02:11:10] We had a senior citizen die at Waterway. And so I just want to offer that as a reminder. That's why I went back when I said jokingly to Vice Chair Angry in reference to, was it a year? Actually, it wasn't because this really started right after COVID in 2021 when those types of things started happening.

[02:11:30] And we had to start looking at that and collaborating with our General Assembly, our state delegation, to assure that the protectiveness was in place for our citizens to hopefully monitor the behavior. So I just want to offer that in terms of history, in terms of the foundation of where this is coming from, but also respecting our constitutional rights as well, as the county attorney had just said, in terms of the process that we will go through in terms of this.

[02:12:01] So thank you, Madam Chair, just for that opportunity. All right. Thank you. Supervisor Stewart? Thank you, Madam Chair. So, yeah, some of the things that I want to address is, you know, yeah, safety is paramount, right, as people are out on the road.

[02:12:22] I know visiting down in this area before my wife and I moved here and just looking around and seeing people drive like this, you know, and thinking to myself, you know, I could be a part-time cop here. I don't even need a gun just give me like a Tim Hortons credit card and a box full of pens and I'll make this place some money right only to find out when I moved here and I had to switch my license from New York to Virginia I almost failed the test because I answered all the questions assuming that you could not be on your phone while you're driving because that's in New

[02:12:57] York if you think about thinking about your phone that's like 40 points on your license and a kidney right so you know but at the time when i moved here it was still legal as long as you were over 18 to kind of fuss with your phone while you were driving luckily those laws have kind of caught up all right um so yeah you know i do believe in people being safe on the road and i say that myself as a spirited driver right um you know new york city born and raised spirited i'll put it that way, right? You know, to address the issue of technology, you know, there was a point where

[02:13:36] we used to ride horse and buggy. Now, why did we switch from horse and buggy to cars, right? Well, because pollution, dog poop everywhere, not dog, but horse poop everywhere, right? Only to end up with a technology that now we're dealing with pollution, right? So it's not always the tech that's that that's going to have us do it nyu uh stern school of law um it's not stern but um but

[02:14:10] nyu law school um their their studies show that you know the proliferation of cell phones and people distracted driving there are are thousands of hours of unfortunate video on youtube where you can see with traffic cameras, catching people going through red lights, right? And lots of times it's because of these things. It's because people don't hook up their Bluetooth. They don't do the

[02:14:40] thing, right? My concern is also how we start these meetings with the last six words of our Pledge of Allegiance with liberty and justice for all. You know, liberty is a funny thing,

[02:15:01] And we give it up piece by piece, brick by brick, inch by inch in the name of safety and security to the point where this thing that we conceive as liberty is no longer present.

[02:15:22] I, again, I, you know, and I'd love to have that conversation, but I remember being in this space last year when, when, when the, the, the talk of cameras came up. I was sitting out this way, though. But, yeah, it just, it leaves me, and again, everybody's had compelling arguments, but, you know, I can't, I just can't get there at the moment.

[02:15:57] It just, it leaves serious concerns, again, about just one of the bricks of civil society's, and I use that term loosely, notion of liberty being trampled upon.

[02:16:15] Thank you, Madam Chair. All right, thank you so very much. And, you know, it takes courage to go against a grain, but we all need to stand by our convictions. So with that, I would like to, again, I got kind of lost in discussion. Do we have a motion?

[02:16:31] yes we do i think we do let me check we do not we do not all right that's why we had discussions what no so yes because i that's why i'm double checking because what we did was unusual and then i invited someone up to speak so i'll ask questions so let's go ahead and vote motion passes five to one supervisor stewart voting name all right thank you everyone thank you rick and thank you team for coming up here and being you know so willing to work with us on this complex issue

[02:17:08] We are now going to go on to supervisor's time. So I'd like to get a motion for 11A through 11N. So moved. Second. Yeah, all right. Let's go ahead and take our vote. Vote unanimous.

[02:17:34] All right. I'm going to mix things up a little bit. Oh, you. All right. I was going to mix it up. You. All right. Vega. I have nothing. You could have done that while I mixed things up. Yeah, no, we're not.

[02:17:50] All right, Bodie. I'm going to go with you. I will just do a notice of intent to reappoint Rob Perry to the BZA. and that's all I have thank you all right Stuart I'm gonna keep it short and sweet went to a couple of um events some graduations congratulations class of 2026 it's been 40 years since I walked across the high school stage and boy that went fast um um and all right let's keep charging all right Bailey thank you madam chair where's uh supervisor Baker uh supervisor Baker uh no

[02:18:30] Just want to thank 520-21 for our vice chair for a grand time with Vaco. We had a great meeting. It was excellent. Thank you so much. On 521, participating in Memorial Day service, it was beautiful as per usual.

[02:18:46] Thanks, county exec. On the 21st, had the opportunity of supporting Chair Randall and Chair of Loudoun County for her state of address. Then on the 23rd, I was guest speaker at Mother's Day Tea for one of our small business owners hosted by Denise Green, a small business child care center that is impeccable.

[02:19:08] And then on the 26th, I had an opportunity to participate in COG's Land Use and Economic Forum, which is quite informative for our citizens. On the 27th, I had a maternal health care podcast. My guests were Mike Barkema from UVA, the senior vice president there, Frances Robin for Women and Family Support Center, and D'Anya Pickett for joining me on my podcast to talk about maternal health.

[02:19:36] And then I joined my colleague, Supervisor Stewart, at the Granule Pharmaceutical, Inc. in his district. It was very interesting, as well as participating in the DRPT draft FY 2027 six-year improvement program session.

[02:19:54] And then congratulations to my mayor, Mayor Derek Wood, in the town of Quantico for his state of town address. And then I had an opportunity on the 30th to tour the Barnes House Museum with the African-American Historical Society in Northern Virginia that we gave a proclamation to a month ago.

[02:20:16] And then on 6-1, I had a meeting with the Manassas Regional Airport with Juan Rivera, the airport director, and Ron Hall, who is the chair of the Manassas Regional Airport Board. Today in participating, Your Voice Matters, with our own PWC Pride community, it was exciting.

[02:20:38] I'd like to offer a directive that I had shared with you months ago. Finally, a directive on a community benefits agreement. And there's been a lot of discussion on development and growth in Prince William County, growth helps our schools, our community, but it brings benefits to our community.

[02:20:59] So I would like for us to do a better job in highlighting that by asking Madam Chair without objections, I'd like to direct the county exec to work on with the staff the county's legal authority to enhance community benefits as it pertains to land use applications, the ability to enter into community benefits agreements between residents and applicants and requesters whether a project is in the application or pre-application phases to investigate ways the board may express the enhanced expectations of land use applications

[02:21:33] and to work with existing businesses of specific industries already located in the county, beginning with but not including data centers, hospital systems, as well as related local associations, including the Chamber of Commerce, to develop and bring back to the board opportunities for industry support of county efforts, initiatives, and projects, and to develop a message campaign that highlights industry partners providing community support in the form of local goods or services as well as the positive impacts of a selection of projects as they are approved by the board.

[02:22:12] The county executive is directed to bring back any appropriate recommendations for the board's consideration. Such recommendations should, where applicable, include timelines, fiscal impacts, and other pertinent impacts for board consideration. The county attorney's office is directed to review the information and recommendations for any legal issues.

[02:22:33] When the research and work is completed, the county exec should report back to the board with his analysis and recommendations during the board's meeting or by memorandum as it determines appropriate. So I'm not going to object.

[02:22:48] I'm just going to say this because this is to have staff look into this and I unfortunately we weren't able to talk before today's meeting but I do have a few concerns about using county staff for some of these projects you know are we blurring the line with public part private partnerships are we creating an expectation of us more or less maybe doing PR on behalf of some of these industries like data centers you know obviously there are benefits that they bring to the county you know enhanced revenue. However, there are a lot of strong considerations and there's a lot of

[02:23:23] contentious applications that we have. And so I'm just expressing my concern about this and I just want to go on the record to do that today. Again, I will not object, but I do want to say that I have strong reservations about this. Madam Chair, I appreciate your reservations and your concerns and And I'm sure the county attorney will take those into consideration as he brings back the information that we need to make a decision.

[02:23:52] I swore, as a county attorney, I was looking at Michelle, the county exec. That's why Chris looked at me like, what are you talking about? The county exec will take your concerns into consideration as we go forth as to whether we look at the community benefits. And it's not necessarily private industry.

[02:24:08] I just want them to look at the whole platform, if you will, or the whole thing as we bring new businesses, commercial entities in here, because that's something that we've not done in the past. And I think it's an open door for us to build partnerships with industry of any kind, not just data centers, but specifically data centers, because we've not been very forward-thinking about that.

[02:24:33] I'm sorry. Can you give me a little bit more you mean by not being forward? Because I know that. Well, yeah, I can. Okay. Yeah. What I mean by that is, as you know, data centers has been a bone of contention with us here in this community. And so what we, on this board and in the community, and so what I think we need to do is offer our constituents, our community, a little more opportunity to have input as it relates to community benefits with any industry as we go forward.

[02:25:01] And I think in respect of that, we need to explore it a little more deeper. And I think that's what the county exec will do. So we can have more of this offline because I guess I'm a little confused about things. I mean, obviously, benefits, I guess you're thinking about what more they can do, like community partnerships.

[02:25:21] Is that what you're getting at? No, what I would like to do is for the county exec to explore those opportunities for us and bring it back to us so that we can understand in a more deeper way before we make a vote on a project or anything and having meetings with industry.

[02:25:36] Okay. All right. All right, then, Supervisor Angry. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm just going to wrap up a few things. First of all, thank you, Mr. Shorty and the county, for the poppies for Patriots Memorial Day ceremony we had.

[02:25:52] We always put on a great one, and that was just another display of that. I also attended a Virginia Transit Association annual conference. They actually honored me with the outstanding contributions by a public official award in recognition of my services chair of the PRTC.

[02:26:08] See, that award is on display at OmniRide because it's OmniRide that did that. I just got to be in the seat to make sure that leadership, that team is doing what they're doing, and they're doing it well. So that award sits in that office where it rightfully belongs for those folks who continue to do great things in our OmniRide bus system throughout the county.

[02:26:28] Now, let's get to the good stuff. So I do want to thank Chris Schroeder, you again, Michelle Robo, our attorney, and just the amazing economic development and the staff that helped us host our VACO Spring Conference. You know, I currently president that for now this year, which is a huge honor we were able to put on our spring conference.

[02:26:50] We began it at the Two Salos Campus. So I want to thank Marcus Silva and his entire team over there for hosting us and putting that together. It was flawless. It was a great few days, and so I just want to thank everybody. We ended that with a tour, a Nexus 234 tour that formerly known as Innovation District, I'll put that out there, that Christina Wynn and her team put on just an immaculate show.

[02:27:15] We visited the ATCC building facility where just a lot of biological stuff is happening over there. It's just amazing. First time in that building. It's just an amazing thing to know that Princeton County is doing that. that district that nexus 234 is amazing but back to the vaco piece just want to thank the county and everyone that attended uh for that event it was a great event so can't thank you enough for that uh we did our spring dumpster day this was probably one of our more successful events we we included a donation drop-off in partnership with project b green that went very well we had

[02:27:52] over 100 residents participating and i want to thank my staff and the volunteers that came out uh to make that a hit i was able to attend four um high school graduations it's been a real busy time but i just want to congratulate all the graduates uh this year including miss gessie vegas nisi she graduated so she's out and uh so i just want to congratulate everybody all our graduates for that and lastly i want to give my notice of intent to appoint edwin gonzalez to the sustainability commission his resume should be unfiled to clerk thank you madam chair All right, Supervisor Stewart, you had a couple things you want to add real quick?

[02:28:31] Yes, real quick. Number one, I want to wish fellow board member and fellow United States military veteran Victor Angry happy birthday. Right, 21 years old with a couple bonus wishes.

[02:28:47] And so happy birthday to that, right? Yeah, so fellow board members and Madam Chair, without objection, I'd like to amend Directive 2612, which we issued on May 19th to clarify that the county staff comments and or evidence submitted to the SCC should include the county's understanding that the preferred Dominion route is the least impactful of the proposed routes.

[02:29:22] If the SEC determines that the proposed electric transmission line improvements are needed and should encourage Dominion Energy and the State Corporation Commission to underground the proposed new transmission lines in Prince William County, particularly the segment in the right-of-way closest to the Manassas National Battlefield, if feasible.

[02:29:47] No. Directive. All right. I'm going to go real slow now. All right. So I want to begin with a notice of intent and to reappoint Samantha Muir to the Animal Advisory Committee.

[02:30:05] And a notice of intent to appoint Carolyn Hayes to the Tourism Advisory Board as the history slash culture representative. And I will say for the 2026 graduates, including my son, we had a few people.

[02:30:21] You know, we had Supervisor Bodie. He had two. So he wins. Supervisor Vega had one. I had one. We also, I cannot remember, I know Senator McPike had one.

[02:30:39] Dufferese Town Council woman, Katrina Peterson, she had one. And I feel like I keep missing. Erica Tredinik. Oh, yeah. County Executive, you had one. School board member Erica Tredinik had one.

[02:30:55] I just, 2026, I guess, is the year. So congratulations to all the graduates. I've attended nine graduations this year, and I really would like to thank, you know, obviously I'm biased, you know, Forest Park. Thank you so very much.

[02:31:12] You know, also Osborne Park, my son's best friend, graduated from there. I know that staff takes a lot of effort, and they put a lot into these graduations. So I really wanted to acknowledge Prince William County Schools, Superintendent McDade, her team and all of our 13 high schools and you know especially programs like governor school i also that's not in my nine um so i wanted to thank everyone for the wonderful job that you do for our students day in and day out and graduation really is a true celebration and a culmination

[02:31:47] of everyone's hard work and with that we are going to go into recess until our seven o'clock meeting thank you so very much i'm sorry close session yep sorry i knew that oh all right breeds of inspiration blows. It's a reminder that sometimes some of the best rewards in life come from a little wandering. 2005 has been a year of tremendous growth for our parks and recreation system in a form of adding more parkland, improving the quality of existing assets, introducing new amenities, forging new partnerships, and launching new programs.

[02:32:24] I'm proud to say that our parks are strong and as essential as ever. Our agency's mission is to create recreational and cultural experiences for a more vibrant community. We do this by hiring the best people who are passionate about serving others, building relationships, planning new spaces and programs that exude creativity and welcomeness, embracing new trends, and experimenting with new offerings. Prince William County is one of the growing number of communities across the

[02:32:54] United States. All right, thank you so very much. We're back. If I can get a motion to certify closed session. Moved. Certified. Second. I've been moved. Practically seconded. Let's take our votes.

[02:33:18] Vote unanimous. All right. We have something to report out. Motion. Okay. Move. Madam Chair, I'd like to move that Vice Chair Angry is our delegate for the NACO conference happening in July. Second. I'd like to amend that he is our voting delegate. So with that. Second. All right.

[02:33:48] Thank you so very much. Let's go ahead and take our votes. Vote unanimous. Supervisor Angry.

[02:34:10] all right whatever all right so i just want to say quickly um just on the public record if we can go ahead and notice that because i know we have at least three members of vaco and there are others who may want to attend so with that we are in recess until seven o'clock thank you see it's seven i ask that people please find a seat it is seven o'clock and we are going to get started again we are actually going to start with a quick um i'm going to allow supervisor

[02:34:46] Jeannie LaCroix to do supervisor's time since she missed our earlier meeting due to attending the graduation of Freedom. So thank you for representing us at Freedom. Thank you. Okay, so thank you for listening. I just wanted to mention that this week I went to Project Razor Roof where a widow of a Vietnam vet had the opportunity to have a new roof and gutters put on by Project Razor Roof. And these are the kinds of organizations that are springing up all over Prince William County, and I'm proud to be a part of it. The other thing I wanted to mention is in

[02:35:24] Veterans Park, we have a couple of things going on. We're putting lights on the pickleball courts. We're putting lights on the basketball courts. And also they have suggested putting a camera out on the basketball courts to deter any bad behavior.

[02:35:45] And finally, I have asked the park rangers to double their efforts out there to make sure everyone stays safe, and they tripled their efforts, so that's very good for us all. We also went to keep Prince William Beautiful on Saturday where a group of wonderful people went out on Route 1 and we picked up garbage and um it actually was really fun so next time i expect you all to be there it was a blast um then i did want to do a shout out one of the things everyone knows that

[02:36:22] i'm doing is trying to correct some of the blighted areas or the the areas that are unkempt on route one and i'm happy to say that the staff um led by katab and kathy have adopted some of the medians that I think need more attention, so I wanted to thank them for that.

[02:36:44] I went to Unity Church on Featherstone Road, and it doesn't matter what denomination you are, if you really want to feel God in the house, you should really go, because it's awesome, and I actually cried while they were singing, because it was so touching, and finally, oh two things we had our first HOA roundtable discussion last night and we had a lot of people attended it was like 21 people but the chief came with a few of his officers and talked with us all

[02:37:20] for a minute and they were wonderful and hope to see you next next month because what we're doing is we're trying to get the citizens more power so that they'll know how to, you know, what services are available from the county so that they can guide and assist their residents.

[02:37:41] And finally, I went to three graduations, and I have to tell you the kids in Prince William County are so supportive of each other, and I think I still don't have hearing in the right ear. But anyways, that's my supervisor's statement.

[02:37:58] Thank you, Chair, for letting me go ahead and give it. Your FOIA statement. And my FOIA statement, as you all know, I am a resident of Belmont Bay. So, Madam Chair, before the board holds the public hearing, considers and votes on the Belmont Bay Proffer Amendment and Special Use Permit Amendment, I need to declare a personal interest in these matters.

[02:38:21] As most of you know, I live in the Belmont Bay community in proximity to the area that is subject to the proffer amendment and special use permit amendment. As the owner of a home in proximity to the area subject to these applications, I am a member of a group which is affected by these matters.

[02:38:41] I will be participating in these matters because I am able to do so fairly, objectively, and in the public's best interest. All right. Thank you very much. I hear them talking because they're like, we get a break tonight.

[02:38:56] Yeah. They're usually the Coya Statement Reader. So I just want to give everyone an overview of what we're going to do. We are going to start, and I'm going to ask the applicant to do 13A and 13B combined. After they do their presentation, staff and supervisors will ask questions, and then we will allow staff to do their presentation.

[02:39:18] We'll have additional questions. After that, I will open the public hearing. We will hear from people who are signed up to speak in person, and we will hear from people who are remote. After that point, I will close the public hearings. I will give the applicant, the county, if there's anything that they want to clarify that they've heard.

[02:39:35] And then, you know, we will have a motion and additional discussion around this issue. I see a lot of unfamiliar faces, so I just want to, again, give those ground rules. And also, when we go into the public hearing, for those of you who are signed up, please, please, please state your name, where you generally, the Magisterial District where you generally reside.

[02:39:54] You don't have to give your address unless you want me to show up, you know, for dinner. just let me know what you're fixing. And if I need to bring anything. And with that, I'm going to go ahead and get us started. And after that, we will have a public comment time, which is different. You can speak at both. But the public comment time is you can talk about anything generally.

[02:40:13] It's, again, another three minutes. It's not a debate. It's just you being able to say what you want to get off your chest. So with that, I'd like to invite the applicant to come up and to present for 13A and 13B. Good evening, Chair Jefferson and members of the board. My name is Jonelle Cameron with Walsh, Colucci, Lubelai, and Walsh here tonight on behalf of the applicant, Miller and Smith. With me tonight, I have the civil engineering team, the traffic consultant team, and the environmental consultant team. So we are able to answer any questions that you all

[02:40:50] may have when it's our time. The property subject to this proffer amendment application is 159 acres. As part of the special use permit amendment, the applicant is seeking a special use permit amendment on 16 acres and to remove approximately 13 acres from the existing town center special use permit for orientation here is route one here is the woodbridge vre this slide here shows the

[02:41:26] proffer amendment area and the special use permit amendment area so everything you see on this screen and red and orange is subject to the proffer amendment the areas here and here are subject to the special use permit amendment and the areas here in orange here and here are being removed from the existing special use permit when belmont bay was zoned in 1999 a special use permit for a town center was approved with that belmont bay is currently zoned pmd plan mixed district the

[02:41:59] comprehensive plan designations are mixed use for residential neighborhood three which is rn3 rn2 parks in open space, and we'll walk through with you how these designations are applicable to each land bay. This slide here shows the original approved master zoning plan for Belmont Bay.

[02:42:21] Again, it was approved in 1999 for a maximum of 1,873 residential units, of which no more than 1,723 could be market rate. It also allowed for 2.2 million square feet of non-residential uses, of which a maximum of 300,000 square feet could be retail. Until the Route 1 interchange was built, which was proposed for this area here, that non-residential use was limited to 550,000

[02:42:54] square feet. And this slide here shows the 1999 special use permit plan. The overall proposal is for 348 homes. No more than 74 of those will be non-age restricted or market rate units. The proposal is within the existing maximum density within Belmont Bay, so we are not seeking additional residential units over what was otherwise approved, and this aligns with the comprehensive plan. For non-residential, we are seeking 20,500 square feet as the maximum.

[02:43:33] The applicant is providing 124 acres of open space, which is about 78 percent of the entire proposal. Of this open space, a little less than 100 acres is being dedicated to the county for parks and recreation purposes. And a little less than 7 acres, 6.84 acres, is being dedicated to the HOA. We are also proposing reforestation in several of the land bays that will exceed the requirements of six plant units per 400 square feet. I'm going to go through each land bay,

[02:44:08] land bay by land bay, and we'll talk about the maximum density, the open space and amenities, and the buildings that are being proposed within each land bay. So the first land bay we are going to discuss is Marina Overlook, and that land bay is located in this area here. Marina Overlook is approximately 16 acres. This will be the non-age restricted area, so there will be 74 market rate homes proposed for this area. There's about 15.74% of open space that is being proposed,

[02:44:44] and then we're proposing a mixed-use amenity building in this area here. The existing Harbormaster building is in this area here, and I'll walk through the plans, and then there's also commercial that is proposed for this area here, which is about 20,500 square feet. This slide here shows the architecture that's proposed within the design guidelines. These townhomes are anticipated to be 22 feet in width. This architecture has been reviewed by the Belmont Bay HOA Covenant Committee.

[02:45:23] This slide here shows the existing Harbormaster building. The Harbormaster building will be relocated to the mixed-use amenity building and converted into a restaurant or retail space. And then this slide here shows the mixed-use amenity building.

[02:45:40] It's 13,600 square feet, and it will have a maximum height of 45 feet. As previously mentioned, the uses proposed within this mixed-use amenity building will include HOA offices, a clubhouse area meeting space, and retail.

[02:45:57] The clubhouse is designed to be open to both the Belmont Bay and Conservancy. The goal is that these HOAs will mix, and they have been active conversations to merge the two HOAs into one. And working with the HOA, the applicant actually expanded the area, working with both the HOA and Supervisor LaCroix.

[02:46:20] So what you see on this screen is a floor plan. This floor plan is not set in stone. An ad hoc committee has been created within Belmont Bay to talk about and walk through what amenities they would want to see in this building. And we've already received feedback that maybe these offices here should go to the basement level and the gym area should go to the first floor.

[02:46:45] So all of those items are in discussion. Between the planning commission and board, this county office space here, which is about 1,350 square feet, that was planned to go to the police for a field office here. In discussions with the police department, Supervisor LaCroix noticed and was told that it's really not needed.

[02:47:06] So that 1,350 square feet is now also going back to the HOA for their use. And in the next few slides, I will walk through with you the amenities that are being proposed within the Marina Overlook District.

[02:47:24] This slide here shows the existing pavilion that's there today, and there will be an outdoor lawn area. This slide here, so in this area here, there's proposed to be an outdoor amphitheater. This area here is the only area that will be private, so that will be for the residents within the Belmont Bay development, but the other areas will be open to the public.

[02:47:49] And finally, this is the GMU garden area that was developed in collaboration with George Mason University for study of plant species. The goal is that the plants would have QR codes and it would be a learning opportunity for the students at GMU.

[02:48:07] GMU has also provided a letter of support of this project to the county. Within Marina Overlook, there will be revegetation that's about half an acre in size. The applicant has proffered in addition to this to have double silted fences.

[02:48:24] around this area during construction. The next area that we will review is Taylor Point. Taylor Point is 15.23 acres in size and it's proposed to have 102 active adult units and a little over 51 percent of the site will be open space. To address feedback from the community between the Planning Commission and board, Taylor Point has an additional six units. So at the Planning Commission, it was 96 units. It's now 102. And Belmont Landing, which is the next area

[02:48:59] that we will review, has six less units. In addition, the applicant increased the buffer adjacent to the wildlife refuge, so the buffer in this area and here, from 50 feet to 75 feet. This slide here shows the Taylor Point architecture. These homes will be a maximum of 50 feet in height. And within Taylor Point, there are three townhome widths that are being proposed. These are the 20-foot width units. These are the 22-foot units here that are rear-loaded,

[02:49:35] and then these are the 24-foot front-loaded units. Within Taylor Point, the amenities include a central park and scenic overlook park near the water. Both amenity areas will be landscaped with a bench, sidewalk, and central open space areas, and the amenities will be constructed in connection with the Taylor Point homes at the time that they are constructed.

[02:50:01] Within Taylor Point, there's 1.3 acres of revegetation, which will exceed the county's requirements for revegetation and plantings. The final residential land bay is Belmont Landing. Belmont Landing is 21.69 acres, and it will have a maximum of 172 age-restricted units.

[02:50:25] A little less than 38% of the site is open space, And the applicant, again, increased the buffer adjacent to the wildlife refuge, so this area here, from 50 feet to 75 feet. At the Planning Commission public hearing, a lot of the discussion surrounded Belmont Landing and the buffer that was between the Belmont Landing and Taylor Point property and the wildlife refuge.

[02:50:55] So I thought it would be helpful just to walk through some of the changes that were made to address the feedback that we heard from the community. So the slide you see here is from the Planning Commission, and this was a 50-foot buffer. It is now a 75-foot buffer.

[02:51:11] In addition, we heard concerns from the people that live in Beacon Park regarding this access road here, and the concern really was that this road here was directly parallel to their alleyway.

[02:51:27] The applicant redesigned the site and eliminated that road altogether. So they redesigned the site. that road no longer exists. And there's an open space amenity area in this area here now. That is a treat amenity area as well. So it provides additional distance between these residences and the ones in Beacon Park. The other comment that we heard specifically at the planning commission pertain to Street A. And it is a long street and there was concerns about speeding.

[02:51:59] So there is a proffer that the applicant at the time of site plan will coordinate with Prince William County Department of Transportation to determine the appropriate traffic calming measures along this street. There are also three townhome widths within Belmont Landing that are being proposed. This is the 20-foot front rear load elevations. This is the 22-foot rear load elevations and then the 24-foot rear load elevation, sorry, front load elevations. And this slide here shows the Belmont Landing amenities that will include a promenade park and a central

[02:52:38] Park. 2.65 acres of reforestation will be provided within and near Belmont Landing. This reforestation will allow for contiguous connection to existing vegetation within the open space areas. And as previously mentioned, a little more than 124 acres will be open space. That greatly exceeds the county's requirement of 20% open space by almost four times. So we're providing

[02:53:09] 78% open space throughout the entire proposal. Open space areas one, three, and four will be dedicated to the county. These areas are a little less than 100 acres in size. And then open space areas two, five, and six are going to be dedicated to the Belmont Bay HOA. In open space area three, so in this area here there is an existing park the applicant has proffered as part of this area

[02:53:46] that they will upgrade this park so there will be new play equipment that's provided within this park area although not proffered we thought it was important to mention again that the applicant has been working with the belmont bay hoa and determining how the two hoas can merge and in doing so they have also signed a memorandum of understanding for upgrades to the existing belmont Bay Pool Facility that includes adding a new pool here, relocating the existing park that's on the

[02:54:22] site, and then also updating the bathhouse. And we've heard a lot of discussions regarding the buffer along and adjacent to the wildlife refuge and the general areas that are shown on the screen.

[02:54:37] The area that you see is both on the Belmont Bay side as well as the wildlife refuge side. And as previously mentioned, the applicant has proffered to provide a 75-foot buffer along the property line and remove invasive species.

[02:54:55] In addition, the applicant has also proffered to remove invasive species on the wildlife refuge property adjacent to the buffer and replant in those areas. Along this property line, about 25 to 30 percent of the species are invasive.

[02:55:11] The applicant has had several meetings with the wildlife refuge in the county to review the proposed buffer. In addition to the replantings adjacent to the wildlife refuge, the applicant has proffered that all external exterior lighting fixtures shall be dark sky or an equivalent standard within Taylor Point and Belmont Landing.

[02:55:31] And we thought it would be helpful to show a depiction of what this would look like. So this red line here is the property line. This is the wildlife refuge property here. And then this is the Belmont Bay side here. So depending on where you are in the property, it will depend on whether this is more landscaping or grass on the wildlife refuge side.

[02:55:54] But if we start on the wildlife refuge side, they have a fence here, they have the scenic trail here, there's a swale, there's Taylor Point Road, there's landscaping, and then we have the property line.

[02:56:11] We then have the proposed 75-foot buffer. This space here will be open space that is owned by the HOA. And then this line here represents the rear property line of one of the proposed townhome units. So from the back of the deck to where the National Refuge fence is, that is 147 feet.

[02:56:34] And then from the back of the lot line to where the Wildlife Refuge fence is in this area here, that is 135 feet. Many of the plantings within this 75-foot buffer do not exist today because it's the existing golf cart path.

[02:56:52] So I thought it would be helpful to also show you all this. So this is what it looks like today on the wildlife refuge side. So this is Taylor Point Road. Here's the swale. Here's the scenic trail. And then here is that fence.

[02:57:10] And this is a view from a little further up. And then this is on the Belmont Bay side. So this is where the existing cart path is that will be ripped up and replanted. And then this is the wildlife refuge side. So again, if I go back to this screen here, we'll be adding significantly more plantings within this area that do not exist today.

[02:57:35] As part of the proposal, the applicant was required to provide a transportation memorandum and to confirm that the levels of service would not be negatively impacted. The proposal is a reduction in trips from the original approved rezoning application.

[02:57:51] It's 811 less a.m. trips, 1,446 less p.m. trips, and 17,433 less daily trips. And this slide here shows the pedestrian connectivity, and that concludes my presentation.

[02:58:11] I can answer any questions that you all may have. All right, thank you very much. Does anyone have any questions for the applicant? All right, then I am going to invite the county to come up to present.

[02:58:42] Good evening, Chair Jefferson and board members. My name is Alex Venegas from the planning office, and I'm here tonight with Vanessa Watson, who's a case planner. I'll be presenting this application to you for your consideration.

[02:58:57] So, this project is a request for both a proffer amendment to modify the land base associated with rezoning 1999-0022, as well as a special use permit amendment associated with SUP 99-0014 to amend areas that are no longer part of the town center and reduce the remaining commercial use associated with that area to

[02:59:27] 20,500 square feet. In addition, the applicant is requesting some height modifications for some of the units to be considered as part of this application, as well as additional waivers and modifications. The subject site for both proposals is approximately 159.49 acres. The property is currently zoned PMD, which is planned mixed development. It's designated MU-4, mixed use,

[03:00:01] with a transect 4, RN-2, which is residential neighborhood 2 and 3, and then it also contains portions that are parks and open space. In this map here, you can see the areas that are associated with the proffer amendment in blue, and the areas that's in the pink is associated with the SUP amendment. Staff is recommending approval for this, both applications. So this is an overview

[03:00:35] of the comprehensive plan long-range land use map. As you can see, the area here that's MU4 is part the SUP amendment as well as this area that's RN3 all the way down and then the part that's in the blue is part of the proffer amendment and it does have both RN2 designation as well as parks and open space again as I mentioned before all of this development is planned mixed development

[03:01:11] And then a better overview of the SUP area, this is the Marina Overlook, Taylor Point here, and then Belmont Landing down through this area.

[03:01:30] This is illustrative of the Marina Overlook, and I'm not going to go into the details. I think Janelle did a good job, but this area here is the mixed-use amenity building. she went through what it could potentially look like this this area right here is the existing marina building and then they do have amenities throughout this area there's going to be 74 market rate single-family attached

[03:02:06] units within this development at the marina overlook the applicant did provide a lot of illustratives and elevations to show us what these potential units would look like this is there on the marina overlook area it's a four-story rear-loaded townhomes this is what it would look like in the marina

[03:02:31] overlook oops I'm sorry and three-story rear-loaded townhomes Taylor Point this is the front loaded and then this is the rear loaded for that area and Belmont Landing this is the rear loaded units and what they would look like the

[03:03:10] applicant did work with this supervisor LaCroix office as well as staff and the community to address a lot of the concerns this was the the one of the big concerns was the buffering between the proposed development and the wildlife refuge the applicant did move some townhomes around to increase the buffer at the Planning Commission it was 50 feet and as Janelle went through it in

[03:03:42] more detail they did agree to a 75 foot minimum buffer width which staff and the supervisor's office was in support of so this really provided that additional buffering that the community had requested this is an aerial view of the access road and walking path there is a 50 foot distance between the fence and property line the applicant did commit to evasive species removal as well as dark sky lightning which are two things that the Planning Commission had asked

[03:04:20] for this is an overview of the open space associated with the project and staff is recommending that the Board of County Supervisors approve both the special use permit SUP 2025-0036 subject to conditions dated May 8th with the MZP dated May 8th the design guidelines dated April 17th and the The conditions statement and SUP plan dated May 8th for the following reasons.

[03:04:58] The surrounding use and land use designations are compatible with the requested proffer amendment and special use permit. Both applications provide consistency with the zoning district. Both applications provide consistency with previous rezoning and proffer amendments regarding the property with retail and retail services uses.

[03:05:18] While the application does not achieve what we envisioned in the small area plan, the guidance that was provided, a hotel and conference center is no longer desirable at that location based on feedback from the community and from the supervisors as well as staff.

[03:05:37] So this is a much better project, and the applicant has addressed the planning commission recommendations that were provided with explanations and included in the last submission documents. So staff is recommending that the board support this application.

[03:05:57] All right. Thank you. Before I go on any questions, sir, if you don't mind, we don't allow standing in the board chambers, so thank you very much. Does anyone have any questions for county staff? All right. Seeing none, I am... I'm sorry. Hold on.

[03:06:19] What we're going to do now is we are going to open the public hearings. If you are signed up to speak, you will have an opportunity to speak. But we, I will be honest, I was an adjunct college professor, but this isn't like a question and answer. There is no dialogue. So if you are signed up to speak, you will have the opportunity to do so, and I'm going to provide additional instructions.

[03:06:42] So I am going ahead and I'm opening the public hearings on both, and I'm combining them, 13A and 13B. That means that people have up to six minutes to speak. Again, the timer is up there. I'm going to call people in groups of five.

[03:06:58] Please make sure that you're listening so that you have the opportunity to speak. I'm sorry. Hold on. I would appreciate, you know, I know people want to talk and they have questions, but I want to make sure that we have proper decorum in board chambers.

[03:07:16] So first, I'm going to call up K.P. Lau, James Wagoner, Jack Camujan, Judy Gallagher, Wendy Joy, I'm sorry, I cannot make out the last part, Kevin Parker. So each of you may go up to speak.

[03:07:33] If you are representing an organization like Jack, for example, is a frequent flyer, as I like to call him. He represents Local Pelt. He will have up to 10 minutes. That means five minutes for each topic. And if you're with such an organization, please let us know at the outset so that we can give you the appropriate time.

[03:07:53] So with that, Mr. Lau. Thank you, Madam Chair, Supervisor LaCroix, members of the board. My name is KP Lau, and I'm president of Belmont Bay Homeowners Association.

[03:08:10] I guess I get 10 minutes. Thank you. All right. Yes. It is an honor and privilege to be here to represent all 1123 homes and over 2,000 residents of Belmont Bay at this public hearing concerning Miller Smith's rezoning application, including both the SUP and the Profit Amendment.

[03:08:35] The board members are Jim Barrett, Renny Hightower, and Ron Maggiota, and Jim and Ron are both here tonight. The Board of Belmont Bay Homeowner Association fully endorsed the rezoning application by Millen Smith.

[03:08:57] Over the past several years, I have addressed this board frequently to advocate for a balanced approach to development in Belmont Bay. The new request submitted by Millen Smith will build 384-48 homes.

[03:09:18] They have since worked diligently with the Belmont Bay Homeowner Association to address all the community's needs and concerns. BBHOA board and Millie Smith signed an MOU that binds both parties to several key commitments.

[03:09:36] The first one and the most important one, and I think I have talked to this board many, many times, is to merge the two HOAs together. so that we will have one Balmong Bay Owners Association that not only will govern both residential associations but also the commercial interests as a truly town-centered development.

[03:10:01] The second most important thing to us is Miller-Smith and County will enter into a conservation easement agreement with the Northern Virginia Conservation Trust to permanently preserve the remaining 100 acres of golf course as a green space for Balmung Bay residents and the citizens of Woodbridge.

[03:10:29] Millian Smith will convey the land bay for Balmung Bay to have a community farm. This is right next door to the Balmung Bay Elementary Schools. We intend to support the children for the STEM program and also provide food for charitable food banks and also for the residents to get their hands dirty.

[03:10:54] Mill and Smith will convey the marina pavilion to the residents because this is the focal point. If you've been to Belmont Bay, you know we have a concert and other things. Mill and Smith agreed to build a new pool to serve the new residents.

[03:11:16] Of course, they also built a community center. We believe the agreement reached strike a careful balance between the conservation and development for Belmont Bay, ensuring that our community remain a valued gym on the shore of Occoquan River.

[03:11:38] I thank you for the opportunity to present our board's position today, and we appreciate your attention and consideration. Since I got so many minutes left, I would like to address you on a personal note.

[03:11:54] Supervisor Ingrid, you remember last year we talked about when my wife and I pulled out 15 tires off the Occoquan River, that the bridge needed a camera so people wouldn't dump tires in. This year, we found five tires.

[03:12:09] You see, I'm walking with a cane because I reached over, tried to reach, tried to grab 80-pound tires, and it did a number on my back. So I have a sciatica. I thought that's bad enough.

[03:12:27] I got a root canal, and then I had a colonoscopy. Then my roof leaked. I thought all the bad things had gone over. My brother-in-law died in North Carolina.

[03:12:43] My wife and I just came back. But today I got my tooth fixed. And then I hope the board would approve of this rezoning so I know I have turned the corners. And I hope this is the last time I will address this board.

[03:13:06] I thank you for your service, and I wish you all well. Thank you. Thank you. Before we have the next speaker, I just want to say for people who are not residents of the county, if you can wait until we hear from residents, just out of respect. for people who are not residents of the county we generally have a non-resident sign up so if you are not a resident of the county we'll still hear for you but if i can call on other people first who live in the county and to the lady in the white i don't know did you want to go up and did you want to go up and speak no all right so i'm going to go ahead i'm sorry i'm going to change

[03:13:40] the order jack camujan if you can go next good evening madam chair and members of the board jack cream jim president of loca i'd like the the 10 minutes if i could um can you also make sure you speak into the mic, adjust a little bit. Oh, yes. Okay. Is that better? I'm here in support of the rezoning in SUP because of the balance achieved. I want to thank KP Lau for his commentary,

[03:14:14] but I also want to say that there were many members of our civic association and the broader community as well that were not comfortable with anything less than 100 feet. However, in the spirit of compromise, when LOCA has worked, we were founded in 1970. This is our 56th year of civic involvement. And when the rezoning first occurred, what was being considered

[03:14:48] by Preston Carruthers. We were invited by the predecessor of the WPCCA, that is the Weld Committee, Linda Silverstrand chaired it back in those decades. And as I recall, it may have been Don Kidwell as a supervisor, but what we did was we worked to have a showpiece development for Belmont Bay and for the future residents and people enjoy, they love Belmont Bay and there's a

[03:15:22] lot of quality of life, a lot of attention and I have to say that a developer, we're dealing with a quality developer. I have to say that every meeting that we've asked Mr. Ehlers and the staff and supporting you know the engineers, the attorneys and whatever to please come and talk with us, they said, yes, we'll be there. And they've never, ever turned us down. We've had wonderful dialogue. And that continues. And I want to say on a personal note that I'm looking

[03:15:59] forward to courtesy reviews that we might have in the future with the community and with the applicant to make this an even better product. There's still a discomfort regarding the buffer, but I think the applicant has done every reasonable thing to make this as a functional a buffer as possible. What I would like to ask our Woodbridge supervisor to work with the

[03:16:32] applicant, and the applicant is, I'm sure, would work this out, is for the covenants, conditions and restrictions to maintain the buffer after the developer leaves, whose responsibility might that be? One of those would be the HOA. And if an escrow account were to be set up to handle removal of invasives, replanting those plantings that die over the

[03:17:09] years and such. I think that might be very helpful. Again, the dark skies compliance was proffered, and we've had a lot of discussion on that. And what we would like to see, too, that that also appears in the HO Covenants Conditions and Restrictions so that the HOA, as well as the proffer administrator for the county, can engage in partnership to make sure that that is respected.

[03:17:39] because we do know there are two nocturnal species of bat that have been documented on that buffer area, and it's really important that dark skies are genuinely implemented, not violated.

[03:17:55] We don't want people stringing up Christmas lights or making noise. When you look at the wildlife refuges around the country, there's a 2,000-foot distance for aircraft to reduce noise.

[03:18:10] It's a general rule of thumb. And then, of course, the county is trying to be respectful in the land use decisions, and things are not perfect. But we do have the note from Amanda Daisy that when she talked about what the rules of thumbs were for buffers and she talked about the 300-foot buffer and the 100-foot buffer and such.

[03:18:41] But I think we've had sincere conversations with that. I do want to say, in reference to our concerns about hazards, the applicant also has looked at measurements and to be sure that things are stable there.

[03:19:00] In our February 26th LOCAPELT meeting, we got a mini-tutorial from Jim Wagner, who is a former LOCAPELP member and was very much engaged in the refuge becoming transferred to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

[03:19:20] Well, the Fish and Wildlife Service was very fussy to get ownership of that from the Defense Department. They insisted on the highest levels of cleanup attainable. So the Restoration Advisory Board was formed, and the chairman of that was, I think, Dr. Cynthia Pruitt, a retired director of IBM, who was an exceptionally dedicated person that provided public service from the private sector.

[03:19:56] The Fish and Wildlife insisted on the highest level of cleanup attainable. Some of the waste was in the center of the parking lot. And when we were talking about this, Jim said there may have been over 100 tons of material that were removed from the site.

[03:20:15] But in subsequent discussions, Jim and I went back to his notes, and we found it was more like 1,300 tons that were removed from the site. So other places were filled and capped and stabilized under a 15-year testing regime.

[03:20:33] So that testing occurred in 1995, 2005, and 2015. And to the developer's credit, they went back and did some additional environmental testing, as far as I know.

[03:20:49] And in every instance, the property has remained in compliance without any hazardous leakage located. And the standards for the people that will be living there should have a high standard. We want to protect public health, and we also want to protect the creatures in the refuge, and we want the public to have a wildlife experience.

[03:21:13] In refuges, you don't allow camping and a lot of human activity out of respect for the wildlife, and that's the kind of environment we have there. It's a profound environment. When you look at the, it's part of the Atlantic Flyway.

[03:21:30] You've got the system of Mason Neck Wildlife Refuge, the Aquaman Bay Wildlife Refuge, Featherstone Shores, Neabsco Shores, Veterans Park, Quantico. All of that creates a profoundly effective flyway for nature's creatures.

[03:21:49] And we need to be respectful, and I think we are in this particular project. So, again, and also the Taylor Point, the things that were done with Taylor Point, I want to compliment the applicant. While it's not perfect, I know we increased the units, but there was a tradeoff.

[03:22:09] And then we also got the upgrading of the open amenity area near Beacon Homes because the applicant redesigned the road. So the applicant was listening to our concerns, and the current uses on all the transportation issues are less for all the AM and PM trips in all the categories.

[03:22:36] So with that, I just want to say thank you to the board. I know it's a difficult decision that you have to make. It's not perfect, and we have citizens that would like to see more buffers, but we're in a reasonably good place right now to be comfortable that we have a quality product.

[03:23:00] Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Next speaker, Judy Gallagher. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity to speak.

[03:23:15] If you can apologize, adjust the mic, bring it closer to you so that we can hear you. Is that better? A little more. Okay. Yes, we've got it. And just again, state your name, Magisterial District, where you reside. I'm Judy Gallagher, and I've lived in Prince William County since 1978.

[03:23:33] I was originally in the Coles District, but in 1984, I moved to the Woodbridge District, and I still reside there. And when I moved there, there weren't very many opportunities for getting out in nature, and I love nature.

[03:23:49] But in the 1990s, Jim Wagner, who's right here, organized a lot of people, and National Wildlife was created largely due to his and other people's efforts. And it's a wonderful place. It's only about a square mile, but it's home to more than 200 bird species, more than 70 butterfly species, more than 800 plants, and as Jack Kamujin just said, it's part of the Atlantic Flyway, and it's a fabulous place.

[03:24:23] The refuge is really well known in the nature community, and it's regularly visited by people from throughout the DMV and also people from further away. When they come, they go birding, and then they go to lunch somewhere in Woodbridge, and they get gas, and they go to Ikea, and so on.

[03:24:43] So it is a tourist attraction, but it's also a wonderful natural place. And natural places need buffers to protect them from harmful effects like pesticide and fertilizer runoff, and especially from light pollution.

[03:25:02] And Jack mentioned the bats. And I think I'm really happy the developer agreed to the dark sky standards. I think that's wonderful. But these townhomes are higher than a lot of the trees, and I think that when they have their lights on at night, this is still going to cause quite a lot of light pollution.

[03:25:22] So I'd really like to beg for a 100-foot buffer. And I failed to mention this to begin with, but I'm representing both myself and the Northern Virginia Bird Alliance. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. The next person I have is Wendy Joy. I'm sorry, I don't have your last name.

[03:25:39] But you'll give it to me when you introduce yourself. Prince William Board Chair and Supervisors, thank you very much for this opportunity to convey the Beacon Park towns at Belmont Bay HOAs' thoughts.

[03:26:06] So I'm representing an organization, please. Thank you. I'm sorry, did you want the 10 minutes? Yes, please. And just say your name fully for the record. Yes, I'm Wendy Joy Majumdar, the president of Beacon Park Towns at Belmont Bay HOA. Thank you.

[03:26:22] Yeah, you're welcome. So, first of all, I'd like to really thank the applicant, the Planning Commission, and Supervisor LaCroix, and others who heard us when we spoke at the Planning Commission about many of our concerns.

[03:26:42] And many of those have been addressed. One of those was the dark skies. We also noted that in the new layout for Belmont Landing that the way the roads and the homes are, that you're not going to have the cars driving on the roads and going directly into the refuge.

[03:27:05] So we really appreciate that because before it was the car lights at night were just going to go directly into the refuge. So we appreciate that. We also really appreciate that you removed the road behind angelfish homes. That was a very important issue for us, and so we really appreciate that as well.

[03:27:26] The other thing that we appreciate is the widening of the buffer zone. Even though we, of course, love to have 100 feet, the 75 feet is a good compromise, I think, at this point. And certainly our HOA will work as a sub-association to the new merged HOA will be ready to help with keeping that area without invasives and things like that.

[03:27:55] So we're supportive of the proffer and the special use permit given these changes. And there is one last item that we'd like to address. We are working with the ad hoc group.

[03:28:12] Thank you, KP Lau, for the mixed-use building, so-called community center by some. The Beacon Park towns at Belmont Bay is an active adult 55-plus community, and we respectfully request an elevator be a requirement.

[03:28:31] We understand about the ADA that if you're less than three stories or you're less than 3,000 square feet as far as having people live there, that it's not a strict requirement because it's an exception. However, this would enable safe and easy access for the community wellness and for social events for our adult 55 homeowners.

[03:28:57] As you heard, that community space has been enlarged, and so now we're going to have gym and social area on the lower floor, as well as social and large areas on the upper floor. The Belmont community is planned to have a total of 354, 55-plus units, which are all elevator-equipped.

[03:29:22] And there are many other community members that regularly require the use of an elevator. Many of our sub-associations in the Belmont Bay community are in condos, which necessarily have elevators. So people are used to having elevator access.

[03:29:40] And you may have heard in the past that we had residents that were like 100 years old. So we have a wide variety of elderly. They're not just in our 55-plus, but are throughout the community. We estimate at a minimum 25% of the community is 55-plus or older, and that's probably very conservative.

[03:30:05] And we would really benefit from having a required elevator. That interior elevator would be between the lower and upper floor, and it would make the building fully elder-friendly for community events.

[03:30:22] The upper level is approximately 7,900 square feet, which is more than 3,000. The lower level is more than 3,000 of community space. So the total community space is approximately 11,000 square feet.

[03:30:39] The currently proposed layout will require community members to walk over .13 miles to go from the lower level to the upper level through all weather, rain, snow, wind, hot, cold, icy sidewalks, et cetera.

[03:31:00] And if you're somebody like me, I may not have a handicap sticker because I don't want to get one, but I regularly fall, and that's why I move to an elevator. We have many of our members that have back issues that we help out with snow removal and things like that.

[03:31:18] They don't have handicap stickers. There is three handicap spaces on the lower part that is like over 250 feet from where the door would be to get to the lower level.

[03:31:37] So even if there's stairs provided, this is not a solution to the problem. Falls are a leading cause of injury to the elderly. Injuries from falls are common, costly, and preventable. According to the CDC, one in four older adults report falling every year.

[03:31:59] And many of them actually are, you know, can't recover from these injuries. Surely a building that is intended to last for decades, and a community that is intended to be elderly-friendly would provide an elevator in its central social center.

[03:32:19] So I know we're part of, and I am part of, the ad hoc committee. I've heard a lot of concerns about costs, but the cost to the community not being able to go to the community center and easily go between the upper and lower levels, to me, is an unacceptable outcome.

[03:32:39] So our request at Beacon Park Towns at Belmont Bay HOA is to please require an elevator between the upper and lower levels of the mixed-use community center building thank you all right thank you so very much kevin parker and then james wagner hello my name is kevin parker i'm

[03:33:09] from the neabsco district happy birthday supervisor angry um i am disappointed that uh it did go down to uh 75 foot buffer but i am also heartened that it went up from a 50 foot buffer and at least we the environmental community will be able to tell the people that live there this is what we were able to get and hopefully they will value the wildlife refuge and in my talk which I wrote out

[03:33:49] which I was not able to do tonight at the planning commission meeting I talked about how we have either choose to live with wildlife or we don't choose to live with wildlife and I have you know, these examples of birds that we see now that we could have lost. We see great blue herons, we see ospreys, we see eagles now. And we chose to take actions to keep those birds around.

[03:34:21] We do not see passenger pigeons, which we did have in Prince William County. We don't see heath hens. We don't see Carolina parrots. So in other places, we chose not to live with these creatures. So that is what the Wildlife Refuge is about. It's about us choosing to live with other animals and plants. The dark sky, I hope that this is an example that can go

[03:34:55] and be applied to other developments. I heard a lot of people talking about dark skies at the Vint Hill rezonings. And it's not just for wildlife. Having less light pollution allows us to have this cultural connection to the night sky, and it allows for our own human health.

[03:35:23] We are sensitive now to having blue light on our phones and stuff, but not with the lighting of the community. Another issue that I want to talk about is the issue of town centers and the promises that happen with town centers. And as Alex said, this was envisioned to be a walkable

[03:35:58] place that's mixed use, that has a town center. And over time, the developer came back and said, no, we want to have more houses. And this happens over and over again. Just recently, this April, there was the Blackburn development on the corner of Ashton and Balls Ford, and they did a similar thing. They said, well, we're going to have mixed use in this place. And then they came back and said, no, we want a proffer amendment, and we want to have just more houses. And I was most familiar

[03:36:36] with this pattern in the east part of the county. But I was at a meeting for the Sweet Spire development. It was right across the street here that Kenny Bode was at. And Bob Weir, he said, this happens a lot on the west side too. And I didn't even realize it. They come in and they say, well, we're going to have this mixed use walkable place, but we have to build the houses first.

[03:37:01] And then on down, years later, they say, well, we really can't do that, so we have to actually have more houses, and we don't have the places that were sold at the start. And we really want to give people the chance to have good, dense, walkable spaces.

[03:37:21] And that's one reason I was so passionate about the bridge over Route 1 that I've come here and talked to you about, is we want to give people a choice. to have this style of living for our environment, for people's health, for the rural area, and all of that. So next time you hear something like that come up, think about that. One area that might come up like that is the future landing development, which they want to probably just put all houses

[03:37:54] there. When it seems to me that we have a place at Tackett's Mill that is already retail and is already a center and it makes sense to develop more there rather than a whole new town center. This phrase town center, nothing should be a town center unless you can say I'm going to town and people say oh okay I know exactly where you're going. Unless you could do that it's not a town

[03:38:23] center. Another thing that's sad about this is the whole golf course thing and the you know the original plan of having it be a buffer in between the refuge and the community and this is this is something that everyone should be concerned about who lives by a golf course that you know you were said you're going to live by a golf course and this is what's going to happen you know maybe not okay so it's uh it's a lot less bad um than it was and um i can live with it but i hope you listen

[03:39:02] to the points that i had thank you thank you james wagoneer if you can come up please can you hear me first bring it a little closer if you can all right that's better uh good evening i'm jim wagoner and i reside in alexandria although for many years my home was in the

[03:39:42] occoquan district of prince william county and i often spoke to the board at that time

[03:39:49] Most often about the then new Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge and the issues surrounding its origin and its preservation and the care with which the county would extend to make sure that that gift from the Army to the Fish and Wildlife Service to us as citizens of this county then had received and appreciated.

[03:40:22] I have a lifelong interest in the environment and the various elements and relationships involved in creating successful natural preserves that are relatable to the public.

[03:40:46] I became aware of this particular site while I was working as a Fish and Wildlife Service volunteer putting together an annotated bird list for the Marumsco Creek Veterans Park area of the county.

[03:41:06] It was obvious that the nature in that area was on the side of this Army property, which no one seemed to know anything about. It took me several months of persuasion before the Army would give me access, but when I was able to go aboard, finally, under armed escort, what I discovered was their practices over many years, they'd owned the property in various forms since 1949. Their activities had resulted in

[03:41:45] something being, I believe, as I'm representing an organization that spans two counties, that I probably could extend that time. I'm sorry, you have to ask for that up front. Thank you. You would have to have asked for that up front. May I have that time, please? No, I'm sorry, because we already started the timer. We're not sure how much. I'm sorry, ma'am. We've already started the timer. So when organizations want the additional time, they need to ask for it up front.

[03:42:13] You're not giving me the extra time. I am not. I'm sorry, sir. I believe that is an inhospitable gesture on your part, Madam Chair.

[03:42:27] I'm probably whistling into the wind at this point to try to point out the dangers that the development, even in its very attractive and appealing form, as presented tonight, is having on this refuge will be negative in the extreme over the long term.

[03:42:58] I have to support Kevin Parker's views that the games have been played, the rules have been changed repeatedly, and the idea that a proper appreciation by the county of this gift of nature would be to develop four- and five-story buildings within 75 feet of a refuge that had already been built.

[03:43:34] modified and reduced by the addition of the Potomac Heritage Trail. I find it to be very, not a credit to the county. More care should have been given to the buffer. More care should have been given to the selection of the homes and other structures that are built as overhanging

[03:44:12] the property. There's an extraordinary wildlife community on that property, and it deserves your attention, your constant care, if it's to succeed. The one square mile that is so filled with nature is just one square mile, effectively an island under pressures that

[03:44:46] only humans can exert and only humans can divert and prevent. So I would have wished entirely for something else in this regard. I would have hoped for earlier intervention by the county in creating a more hospitable development for the nature that lies so precariously next door.

[03:45:22] I thank you for your kind attention, diminished as it was. All right, thank you so very much. I'm going to turn to Supervisor Angry. Do we have anyone online? Let us check, Madam Chair. No online.

[03:45:41] All right, no one online. Thank you, Madam Chair. We do not have anyone online, so what we're going to do, I'm going to go ahead and close. Wait, did you want to sign? Oh, she's just checking. All right. Sorry. I'm going to go ahead and close the public hearings for 13A and 13B. I am looking at the applicant. The county, do you have anything else you want to add or you want to respond to that you've heard during the public hearings?

[03:46:03] I just wanted to respond to a couple of things that I heard, and I broke it up into specific topics. So environment, just quickly wanted to hit. We do have, as KP mentioned, a conservation easement for the properties that are going to the county.

[03:46:27] So that is proffer 16B for the dark sky lighting that would be included within the covenants. And then I just wanted to mention, so Taylor Point, which is the area that currently has the old golf clubhouse, that actually was supposed to be a conference center and hotel.

[03:46:51] So that would have actually been closer to the wildlife refuge and it would have been able to be higher up. in height as well. So I just wanted to mention that. And then there was a specific question regarding the elevator. The applicant is willing to include the elevator into the proffer and I can amend the proffer and I can give you that exact proffer number. Proffer 19 currently reads the applicant shall construct a mixed use amenity building within Marina Overlook and the approximate location shown on the mzp said it mixed-use amenity building shall be a minimum of approximately

[03:47:30] 13 000 square feet and we can add and shall include an elevator period and then the next sentence would start with the mixed-use amenity building and it would complete that sentence which then says may include but shall not be limited to retail recreation uses and the uses listed in proper eight etc so can we have that written out yes all right so we will work to get that um supervisor bodie did you have questions wait don't leap too far supervisor bodie has questions sorry i i know you have to walk run off janelle to work quickly but um uh going on the same bead

[03:48:10] and one thank you for for listening to the the constituents about elevators i know that um that was discussed earlier but um on the beat of the dark sky i know that one of the constituents mentioned you know especially the homes that are going to be completely that are adjacent to the wildlife refuge, people not hanging, like, large lights, things like that.

[03:48:29] I know that's not really a proper thing, but you mentioned covenants. Is there a way to at least have some kind of encouragement of working with folks in the HOA to make sure that if you have folks who, especially those that live right adjacent to the wildlife refuge, that are not doing large LED lights or large, you know, sort of searchlights, things like that?

[03:48:46] Internal to the house or external? External to the house. So the proper specifically reads all external lighting. So proffer 26 specifically reads, all exterior lighting fixtures shall be dark sky or an equivalent standard within Taylor Point and Belmont Bay Landing, or Belmont Landing.

[03:49:03] So that gets to your exact point that all the exterior lightings have to be dark sky compliant. I appreciate the clarity. Thank you. You're welcome. All right. Thank you very much. I am going to, I know that our attorney is going to have to look at the revised proffer.

[03:49:21] I'm going to go ahead and have Supervisor LaCroix, if you want to say anything and move forward with the motion, then we can have some discussion, and we'll see how long the process takes. I may have to call for a very brief recess, but Supervisor LaCroix. Well, first and foremost, I'd like to say that I thank every single person for being here, and everybody out here that knows me knows that I have worn two different hats.

[03:49:47] And my hat has been of the neighborhood, and I was at that speaker contesting with KP and with the other people that were fighting against this development. This has come together because we have a great HOA president in KP Lau.

[03:50:09] We have a great HOA president in Wendy Joy. We have a great builder that's willing to work with and listen to the people just like he did with Jonelle right now. I think an elevator would be a nominal expense, and it's not unreasonable.

[03:50:28] And just the fact that he threw that in at the last minute, it just shows that he's trying to listen and trying to hear what's going on. And I really, truly believe that this is going to be a really good, it's a good compromise.

[03:50:49] Being on this board doesn't always mean that you get your way, but it does mean that you look at something in a big way and make sure that it's good for the community or you think it's the best for the community, and I truly do. And I'm excited to see how it goes.

[03:51:06] even in the areas where Beacon Park was feeling like they were losing the most, from what I understood. And the applicant made sure he listened to every word that they had to say and did the revisions that they thought would be necessary, along with KP Lau and Wendy Joy. So I just want to thank everybody who took the time to come out here. And I know that it's a big deal right now.

[03:51:34] And I just feel like we've made a good choice here, or at least I think we're going to make a good choice here. And this has been at least six or seven years in the making. And I think we're going to have a good product afterwards, and we can have a neighborhood we're still very proud of.

[03:51:51] I'd like to make a motion for both 13A and 13B to be approved. Second. Hold on. Wait, I'm sorry. And the proffer is dated June 2nd.

[03:52:10] Could be one. Okay, so we're good. All right, and then you've moved. Who's the seconder? Second. Supervisor Bailey, and it looks like the proffers are good. Is there any discussion? Supervisor Bowdy. Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. I'll just say a few words here and commend all the folks that have worked on this in some way, shape, or form over the years.

[03:52:31] I know that there's members of planning staff that worked on this even before the North Woodbridge Small Area Plan on the initial rezoning. Then you have the North Woodbridge Small Area Plan. Then during the comp plan, I know that the board back then when we adopted the comp plan back in 2022 made some changes to that area.

[03:52:49] Then we have the Crothers application. Now we have the Miller and Smith application. So I wanted to say that to highlight and reinforce that this area and this part of the county has gone through a lot of sort of long-range planning, but also a lot of different zoning and land use, extensive sort of inspection and changes over the past half decade plus.

[03:53:11] So I wanted to acknowledge that and all the folks that, whether you're community members, planning staff, supervisors, both current and past, what have you, it's come a long way and there's been a lot of different conversations here. I will sort of do the sort of the feedback sandwich here.

[03:53:26] I will start with, after a thank you, sort of talk about what's good, how we got here, and sort of the good that's happened. The 75-foot buffer. I will be the first to say I was one of the folks that had a lot of concerns about this project back when it was gone before us, before it got deferred, because I thought that 50 feet was not enough.

[03:53:44] Again, the wildlife refuge is a keynote hallmark conservation area for the county, and that can't be understated or overstated enough. And so having an idea that we would have homes back up to that, even if they are sort of lower dense than some of the initial visioning around Belmont Bay, was troubling to me that there would be only 50 feet between those doorsteps and the wildlife refuge.

[03:54:11] So I appreciate the applicant working with our offices to get that 75 feet in and to do so in a way that you didn't lose a lot of the financial viability of the project overall in the long run. I will also say I appreciate the dark sky, and Ms. Cameron, I appreciate the clarity around the fact that all external lights, no matter if you're going to be a homeowner or someone doing something on the premise, all lights will sort of be, especially adjacent to the wildlife refuge, sort of cognizant and sensitive to the wildlife there.

[03:54:42] And the fact that there is basically a wildlife corridor that goes along the exterior of the area, just on their side of the fence. I will also say that I appreciate how much the applicant was able to do to finally get the community and the developer interests together in the same room.

[03:54:58] Because I know for a good while, that was a complete disalignment. I won't go too far into that, but it's rare to have a project of this scope finally have a lot of the community and the developer and, frankly, the planning staff all read from the same sheet of music.

[03:55:14] So I appreciate that as well. Now, I will say there are some things that I felt like were a missed opportunity here, and it goes back to that initial vision that staff talked about. I know that, for example, in the staff report, our economic development folks have concerns about how this turned out because there was a much different vision of economic development for this area.

[03:55:34] So this would be more of a mixed-use wharf-type area where you could have a lot more members of the public coming in and be able to visit a lot more robust shops, dining options, what have you. And while I understand why the current community that exists there now felt like that was too intense, there's a lot of daylight between what was presented, especially on the Caruthers plan, and where we ended up.

[03:55:54] Now, I understand, per the proffers, the limit on commercial is not an upper limit. It's not a ceiling. It's a floor. So we could eventually maybe, as things develop and we do more intense market study, find more creative and keynote ways to activate that waterfront in a way that's not too intensive to the community.

[03:56:14] But I felt like I'd be remiss if I didn't say that one of the initial visions of this area would be a lot more like a mosaic or a harbor and have that as part of the conversation. But that's not where we are now. But I do appreciate the work that was done by the supervisor's office, by planning, by the community to find something that's going to be right size for the community, at least as it exists now.

[03:56:36] The last sort of thing that I have concerns about regarding this is it was a good blend where we landed, but I'm always concerned with my last 40 seconds here before I can take my next five minutes or so, is when we have so many developments coming up where there are 55 plus and over. Now, there's a blend here. There are market rate units, as mentioned by the developer, that are going to be non-age restricted, but there's a lot of units that will be built out in an area that already has a lot of age restricted units. What concerns me about that is

[03:57:09] On the same side as we are supposed to be able to have a community where we want the aging population and our retirees have a good, vibrant place to live, we also have to make room in these communities for younger families, too. There are a lot of communities, parts of this community in the county, where young families don't have a lot of housing options.

[03:57:29] Do you want your second batch of time? yes thank you um we're younger families younger people people coming into the workforce people that just graduated from high school or college don't have many housing options it'd be really great and we're providing it here but i would love to see us discover explore it more a keynote landmark community like belmont bay has great waterfront amenities a great existing community that has been vocal and active this this conversation but we have to make sure that as we continue to look at impacts of the community that in the rush to make sure that we're reducing impacts like schools and traffic that we're not crowding out younger folks who want to live in

[03:58:06] this community just like you all already do. So I just say that as a point of caution as we continue to work through projects. We had Klein just two weeks ago. We have this one, larger elements of 55 plus and over, where we have to have a balance there. And finally is the fact that this is one of the last large publicly accessible uh um water fixtures and water access in the county you know economic development has this ongoing almost finished uh maritime study is also called a waterfront activation study which looks at things like ferry uh service things like uh paddle boards

[03:58:45] kayaks maritime marina type businesses things like that and we don't especially on the the um this part of the Potomac, we don't have a lot of areas where we can open it up for those kinds of things. We have Lee Sylvania, we have Possum Point, we have a lot of area of this water that will never be able to be opened up for things like that. So while I appreciate the work the developer has done with the community to really unlock some of it, I know that we had a conversation with Brother LaCroix, you, me, and my chief of staff about making sure that there is at least some ability for the public to access the water here. I just want us to continue to have caution around making

[03:59:22] sure that we have a very unique ecosystem here in Prince William County where we go from the shore all the way to the mountains. And if you live and work and visit Prince William County, you should be able to have access to all those things in some way, shape, or form, especially if you want to visit a great community like this. So again, I'm really looking forward to what could come after this application. I want to commend everyone that's done work on it. Supervisor LaCroix, congratulations to your very first land use case in your district since being seated.

[03:59:52] But I'm really happy that we landed in a much better place than where we started. I'm happy to hear that the community and developer are largely aligned on this with planning staff, but I do think there are some cautionary tales here as we continue to think about land use policy in this county.

[04:00:07] Thank you, Madam Chair. All right, thank you. Before I go back to Supervisor LaCroix, Supervisor Bailey, did you want to speak? Okay. All right, Supervisor LaCroix. The last thing, thank you everybody for this consideration and each of you for listening to everything I had to say.

[04:00:25] It's been a pleasure with my first applicant to work with all of you. I did want to mention that not only did Belmont Bay approve of this applicant, but River Bend sent me a letter that said that they approve of it, as well as the concerned citizens of Belmont Bay approve of this application, the Belmont Bay HOA, and Beacon Park, we heard, also approves this application.

[04:00:53] And there have been a number of environmentalists who have written me, and I've listened to every word they said, but on the most part, they are also in support of this application. So even though I did hear a couple stragglers that really weren't on board with what was going on, I still really appreciate hearing their concerns, too, because this is, you know, a neighborhood where everybody, you know, nobody's going to think the same, and I'm just happy that we have an applicant who is wanting to work with the community in such

[04:01:29] a way, and we saw it tonight. It was incredible, so I thank everybody, and the fact that everybody's out here tonight, you know, this is a really good showing, and I appreciate everybody coming. Thank you. I'm just going to say a few things before we take our vote. I want to talk about mixed-use communities, and I can't see the gentleman who was talking about that.

[04:01:51] We always get promised for commercial, but it never seems to materialize. Often it does materialize, but I'll be honest, one of the hardest things is when you have an established community like Belmont Bay, which I think is a real gem, I think it's a wonderful community, even though we may have something in the plans, people get used to their community.

[04:02:11] They get used to what they have. And having new development come in is very hard. Also, this is an area, again, I agree, it's a beautiful waterfront, but it really couldn't support the commercial. It's already having problems with some of the small shops in that area.

[04:02:30] And there were a lot of people in the community who didn't want the commercial because they liked having a community that's tucked away. And so with a lot of these projects, you're developing, you're balancing what is good land use, what makes sense for that area, and also what the community wants.

[04:02:48] We've had developments that were quite contentious. We've had developments that the community was all in favor of. It's a hard thing to balance. Before Supervisor LaCroix was here, I've done town halls in the community.

[04:03:04] I know you had a town hall in the community. I've spoken to a lot of people in the community. I know that 75 feet for some people wasn't ideal, but it took work. And I appreciate the developer for listening and wanting to work with us to get that extra 25 feet and the concessions they have made.

[04:03:22] It was also mentioned Sweet Spire. Sweet Spire was another project that, you know, this is an area that could have density. But again, there was intense community opposition to that project. And quite frankly, it was based on minster information and scare tactics.

[04:03:40] Now a town center, okay, maybe technically we're not going into town, but a town center is meant to be a place that is walkable, that has housing, that has retail, that has opportunities for work. Stonebridge is a good example of that. It's a great town center. We have housing there and more had come. You know, it is a walkable area. And that's something that we are trying to move to towards in this community, in this county. Courts district, for example. The only bad thing about courts is now everyone

[04:04:16] wants a mini courts in their district and that's not possible, okay? It's just not happening. But that's something that we are really trying to work towards and some projects get it right and some projects don't get it right and to be quite honest before you can even have a good commercial in some areas you need that walkability you need the rooftops to guarantee that the retail will succeed so while i know that there are some people who look at this project it may not have checked all the boxes but this has been a journey this has been over two years journey and we've had

[04:04:47] people who six i said over two all right so that is over two guys um but we've had people such as supervisor la croix who was on the other side who was pushing to make this a better project so you know i would like to finally put this to rest i know that everyone here would like to finally put this to rest i will go on record saying you know this is the last time i promise i'll say it's janelle i do wish this was a gentler project but i understand the reasons why it couldn't happen And I respect the community for saying that that is not something they wanted and felt would work in their backyard.

[04:05:23] So with that, oh, Supervisor Ingrid snuck in. Thank you, Madam Chair. I feel I should get in here just really for two points. I mean, thank you, Supervisor LaCroix, and the team, and all of you for getting us here. I heard said that, you know, it's a better product, but it's not the best product.

[04:05:44] Unfortunately, from this experience in my last seven years on this board, there's no such thing as a best product. Somebody's always going to not like it. I think you've gotten to a place where you know it's palatable. And I say that because you just saw earlier that until the conversation stops about folks saying that their kids can't live in this county and when they're being forced out of this county, then we need more housing.

[04:06:08] So I'm always looking for more housing opportunities for Prince William County. but we have a solution here which is good but i want to remind us how we got here there was a failed golf course that happened inside of belmont bay that literally changed the discussion and we've been going down this road for a while so uh i'm happy we're here i want to say these because this happens and mr kp uh i'm i'm sorry for all of your injuries i wish you a speedy recovery but i do know projects like this put people against each other and we got to stop that like we can't you

[04:06:45] know have fused and lose friendships over land use and development and housing i want to say also dr jack you um are a pillar in this community and your health and you being here tonight i am so thankful and you had a lot of prayers going your way so it's so good to see you back in there standing at that mic so this you're you've been a part of all these discussions and they're never some go very decently well some don't go so well um thank you for being here for all of those and i just wish i want us to really work out work better with each other because we can't lose

[04:07:23] relationships over this or our health and so i just you know want us to focus on that so just thank you for the process want to get that out there look not a sermon just a message okay so so so thank you amen all right so i would like to go ahead and call for the vote unanimous all

[04:08:01] right thank you i'm going to move on now to agenda item number 14 and that is public comment time we do not have anyone signed up in person anyone online all right so then hold on guys let's not let people clear out no there's two cases i'm sorry for both i don't know if you want to present

[04:08:31] anything else Janelle but I would just say take this as a win and leave all right I would like to go ahead all right I'd like to go ahead and get a motion to adjourn so moved second all right

[04:09:02] I'll give it to Stuart Bailey do you want us to sing no happy birthday in honor of Victor Angry's birthday it is 8 35 and we out

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