Town Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening to everybody here. Welcome to tonight's council meeting. As your mayor and presiding officer, my role in the town charter in the town of Dumfries Rules Procedure is to ensure orderly processing of business and maintain the decorum so that all participants, council staff, and the public can be heard respectfully and fairly. To these ends, please note the following requirements which apply equally to council members and to the public. All comments must be directed through the mayor, who is the chair and the presiding officer of this meeting. No comments should be directed to an individual member, staff member, or a member of the public. We ask that you keep your crosstalk and your side conversations to a minimum. Any remarks from the dais should be made audible so that it becomes a part of the official record. Electronic devices, we ask that you silence them. Texting, emailing, messages related to public business matters up here is subject to FOIA and should be avoided. No one may speak when another person has the floor. Interruptions will be ruled out of order. Council members will be recognized by the mayor before speaking. Council members may speak up to two times on any item with a combined total of no more than 10 minutes. Members of the public are allowed three minutes to speak during citizen comment time and the sign-up sheet is outside unless otherwise changed by a majority vote by the council prior to this meeting. During citizen comment time, members will not respond directly to the speakers. Our response clarifications or follow-up remarks may be offered later or during the designated council time. Any member ruled out of order will yield the floor immediately unless the ruling is appealed by the council in accordance to Robert's rule. Disruptive behavior may result in the removal from the meeting and if necessary, expulsion for the remainder of the session. Speakers who exceed the allotted time or violate the quorum may have their microphones silenced. Council direction is given collectively. for the town manager. Any political commentary or attempts to draw staff into political matters are not appropriate. Staff are expected to remain neutral and professional. These rules are designed to protect the rights of all participants, ensure compliance with the law, and keep our meeting efficient, respectful, and productive. Thank you for your cooperation. With that, I now call this meeting to order. Offer the roll.

Councilman Fields.

Here.

Councilman Pete.

Here.

Councilman Young.

Here.

Councilwoman Peterson. Present. Chair Poston-Miles. Present. Vice Mayor Nickerson.

Mayor Wood. Here.

Thank you.

All right. We will now have our Pledge of Allegiance by Tiana and Aya. And please rise.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to our Republic, for which we stand, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

I went a little out of order, but that's okay. We'll have our open invocation, our prayer, by Pastor Frank Wesley River Life Church. So, thank you. Good evening, everyone.

Let us stand. Let us pray. Almighty God, we come before you with gratitude. We thank you for being a God of love who is with us now in this very room. You never leave us or forsake us. Your grace has brought us safe thus far and your grace will continue to lead us home, Lord. We thank you for making each of us in this room, every person we meet, every citizen of this city and every nation in your image with dignity and infinite worth. We thank you for the call you have given each and every one of us to be good stewards over your creation, to love our neighbors as ourselves. I thank you tonight, God, for these your servants, our mayor, our city manager, our city staff, our city council, and all the staff members. I give you thanks for the way of service they have chosen to take on behalf of all of us here. So God, in your word, you make clear your expectation for those who sit in places of authority. So we pray that you would be glorified tonight through the decisions of this council. We pray that you would have the eyes to see how our lives are all connected and how our common good is upheld when we listen and respond to your wisdom. We pray that your kingdom would come in the city of Dumfries as it is in heaven through your power working in each of these, your servants. In Jesus' name we pray and everyone said amen.

You two young ladies, I want you to come back to the middle. I'm going to read something for y'all. All right. To both our ambassadors, Ayanna and Tiana. I'm going to read Tiana's first. A grateful recognition for your leadership, your service in leading our Pledge of Allegiance as Girl Scout Ambassador with Troop 18003, a 12th grade student at Christ Chapel Academy. You've demonstrated confidence, civil pride, and commendable commitment to community service. Your participation helped open the meeting with dignity, respect while reflecting the values in leadership, citizenship, and service embodied by the Girl Scouts. On behalf of the town council, the town staff, and the residents of Dumfries, thank you for your service in helping making this meaningful. except for you're a 12th grade student at C.D. Hilton High School, and you also demonstrated confidence, civil pride, and commitment to community service. On behalf of the town council, the town staff, and the residents of town, thank you for your service. Catch your mom. All right, next on our agenda is the adoption of the agenda. I'm going to remove from the consent agenda the municipal boundary study, and I'll put that after the flock discussion at B.

Okay.

Any other changes or addendums to the agenda?

Oh, yes.

Yes.

Um, I did. You know what? No, I'm ahead of myself. We'll get back to it.

All right. Okay. Seeing none, I moved that we adopt the agenda with the amendments. Okay. So we moved in second in the discussion. All right. Seeing none, Madam Clerk, call for the question.

Councilman Fields.

Yes.

Councilman Pete.

Here.

Yes.

Councilman Young.

Yes.

Councilwoman Peterson. Aye. Chair Pro Tem Miles. Aye. Mayor Wood.

Yes.

The motion's passed.

All right. First on our agenda is a proclamation recognizing the month of September as African Diaspora Month. It says, whereas the African diaspora represents people of African descent whose histories, cultures, and contributions span nations and generations across the world. The African diaspora has made lasting contributions to history, culture, economy, civic life, arts, entertainment, entrepreneurship, and the progress of the United States and the Commonwealth of Virginia. Whereas the town of Dumfries is strengthened by residents, families, businesses, faith communities, and community leaders representing the rich diversity of the African diaspora, recognizing the diaspora provides an opportunity to honor, share their heritage while celebrating the distinct histories, language, traditions, and experiences that enrich our community. Whereas preserving cultural heritage and shaping the stories of past generations strengthens identity, fosters pride, and inspires future leaders. Whereas meaningful connections across the African diaspora create opportunities for cultural exchange, education, entrepreneurship, economic empowerment, civic engagement, and global partnership. Whereas the town of Dumfries remains committed to fostering a welcoming community where diversity strengthens unity and advances opportunity for the fall. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that the Town of Dumfries Town Council do hereby proclaim September 2026 as African Diaspora Month in the Town of Dumfries, and we encourage all our residents to celebrate the history, the culture, the contributions of people throughout the African Diaspora, and to continue building bridges across cultures and generations that strengthen our future. There are many roots, one community, and a stronger future. Signed, Mayor Derek R. Wood by order of the Town Council.

Some of y'all can come on this side, I'm not gonna. You're not gonna fight. I'm gonna take a bath.

You don't wanna be in the picture. Take it with you.

Thank you.

Hello, good evening, everyone. My name is Kamel Musa, and this is impromptu. I didn't know I was going to speak, so pardon me.

But we are a community of the African diaspora. We are all over the country, but especially in the Prince William County, we are very concentrated. In the town of Dumfries, some of us live here. We do business over here. I've been living here for 26 years. We run businesses, so we pay taxes, we contribute to the community.

And we also volunteer and help with donations back home. So we coordinate activities and make donations back home to support needy communities like hospitals and schools and stuff. So that's what I gotta say. I didn't know I was gonna speak, so pardon me, but yes. All right, next on our agenda is a proclamation for National Preparedness Month. Whereas emergencies rarely give us the time or warning we would like, and being prepared before something happens can protect lives, families, homes, businesses, and our community. Whereas the Town of Dumfries understands the importance of preparing for emergencies that can affect our community, including severe storms, flooding, power outages, fires, and other unexpected events. Whereas preparedness begins with simple actions, knowing how your family will communicate during an emergency, having essential supplies available, receiving local emergency alerts, knowing where to go if evacuation becomes necessary, and checking on neighbors who may need additional assistance. Whereas our responsibility extends beyond our individual households because a truly prepared community is one where neighbors look out for neighbors and no residents are forgotten during an emergency. Whereas the strength and resilience of Dumfries are supported every day by our law enforcement officers, our firefighters, Emergency medical personnel, our 911 dispatchers, emergency management professionals, town employees, volunteers, community organizers, and regional partners who prepare, respond, and help our community recover. And whereas national preparedness month reminds us that while we cannot prevent every emergency, we can determine how prepared we are when one occurs. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed by the town council, we do hereby proclaim the month of of September 2026 is national prepared this month in the town of Dumfries and we encourage every resident, family, business, school, faith, community, and organization to take at least one action this month to become better prepared, make a family emergency plan, Build or update an emergency kit, sign up for local emergency alerts, learn the risks facing our community, and make a plan to check on neighbors who may need help. Together, we can build a Dumfries that is informed, connected, prepared, and ready to take care of one another when it matters. Signed, Mayor Derek R. Wood by order of the Town Council.

And can we have Director Brian Misner, Director Katie Carroll, David Glinski, and Chief Galleons who come up forward for the picture?

1, 2, 3. Thank you.

Well, good evening Mayor Wooden and council members. Thank you very much for the proclamation. My name is Brian Meisner and I'm the emergency management coordinator for Prince William County. The proclamation really did a great job of hitting on all of what we call our pillars of preparedness that we like to remind the community to make sure that they have an emergency supply kit, a plan of where they'll go if they have to evacuate their neighborhood, a way to receive alerts and preferably more than one way to receive alerts, an opportunity to get involved, whether that's with a volunteer organization that's active in disaster, or as the proclamation said, even at your neighborhood level. This year's theme for Preparedness Month set by the Federal Emergency Management Agency is American Stand Ready. I really want to take a moment to reiterate that theme of neighbors helping neighbors. Because while we are very prepared as a county, as a community, we work very closely with the town with our emergency management plans and procedures. We are still at risk of having something like a rather impactful tropical storm or hurricane or a winter storm, which we certainly have not been shot away from here in the last couple of years with some of the winter weather. So that can impact emergency services, and that means it could take longer for help to get to you. So really take a couple of minutes this month to check with your neighbors, figure out the skill sets that you all have, the supplies that you might be able to kind of coordinate with each other to be able to shelter in place and ride out an event for at least three days while the system works on responding and getting us back to normal. So again, thank you very much for the proclamation. I do have some of our preparedness pamphlets that I'll leave, either with the clerk or I can leave out front. And we also have a website with all of our resources at the county level, and that's pwcva.gov slash ready. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

All right next on our agenda as we move along is the approval of the minutes from the August 5th 2026 town council meeting with some may I like to move that we approve the minutes from our last me.

Yes, actually had him had a motion to a man.

Okay, okay, like to withdraw that motion. Okay, simple too.

Yes, I like to make a motion to the meeting minutes from August. There was a statement in the minutes that affected that the council and staff had taken action on an event, and no action took place. I just wanted that corrected in the record. There was no official action taken.

Okay. Anything else? So your motion is to amend with that statement? Yes, correct. Okay. Councilman Peete, you want to?

Yes, Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make the motion to approve the amendments from our last meeting with the amendments to the motion as well. Second. Second.

Okay. Any other comments? All right. Seeing that, Madam Clerk, call for the question.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes.

All right.

Next on our agenda is our citizen comment period. Are there citizens signed up to speak tonight?

Yes. We have a total of eight speakers. The first one is Jeff.

And we're going to call you all so you all can line up against the wall. And we'll have a timer up here so you can see the timer and you'll know when your time expires from speaking.

Three. Jeff Falkerson. Don Panel. I'm sorry for the first name. Rosie or Ronnie. Azales, Anthony Fields, Derrick Henson, Ashley White, Martina Jackson-Green, and Angela Asimov.

All right, proceed and just restate your name for the record so they know who you are when you're speaking.

My name is Jeff Falkerson. I'm the fatherhood engagement coordinator with Prince William County Social Services, also with the Prince William County Fatherhood Initiative, and I'm here to share some information about our fatherhood initiative here in Prince William County. First off, I'd like to Appreciate the invitation to speak, extend that to Mayor Wood and also to council members and just a little bit about the Prince William County Fatherhood Initiative. It's been around since 2012. We have served fathers within this county since then and our whole goal is to strengthen or help fathers strengthen their connections with their children, and also to help them develop better co-parenting relationships with their children's mothers. some of the programming that we offer you know throughout the year one of the main stays of the program is our fatherhood workshops we call these 24 7 dad workshops and i do have some flyers here that i will place out on the table we're currently recruiting fathers to participate in that all of our sessions are virtual right now not in person but we do have in-person events So we're actually facilitating workshops in the community virtually, but we're also facilitating workshops at the Prince William County Manassas Adult Detention Center. We facilitate a program called Inside Out Dad. Every year, we have two events, our father and daughter dance. And we have over 200 people that show up at the Palazzo building dressed to the nines. And fathers with their daughters, and they have a great time. And we also have something called Dad's Pool Day, you know, where we rent out the Water Works water park and dads and their children and their wives, you know, get a chance to just enjoy some fun in the sun. And they also get some food, you know, and it's all paid for by the county. You know, so we're doing, you know, stuff like that, you know, within the county. And I do want to acknowledge my, you know, I have some of my facilitators. We call them fatherhood coaches. They're here in the audience as well. Darwin Barkus, William Jackson, and Will Maul. He is part of our steering committee. And we... We're always encouraging residents to actually help us out, serve as volunteers for some of our special events, but also if they want to join us for our workshops, they're also welcome. We welcome any man who has an adult child to serve as a fatherhood mentor. you know, so they can join our conversations. And that is something that we really appreciate. But again, I just want to thank you, Mayor Wood, and also the council members for just allowing us this opportunity to share a little bit about the fatherhood initiative. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Wood, Council. I'm Anthony Fields. I'm here representing the Friends of Dumfries Slave Cemetery. Two minutes. We just came to thank you for your financial contributions to the cemetery. Been doing the cemetery since 2011 when we found out about it. We've been cleaning it ever since. Thank you for helping us give our ancestors the dignity and death that they did not have in life. Our mission is to preserve, maintain, and restore the slave cemetery, promote and improve awareness of its history and the cemetery, and to honor and preserve the memory of the people that are buried there. Your grant helps us do that, and we thank you. Because of your grant, we've been able to buy rose bushes to place at the cemetery, mulch, bricks to line the cemetery, rose beds, and other items to maintain the grounds. We have volunteers that come out. We work every second Saturday from 8 to 10. And this second Saturday, which is the 12th of September, we were honored by our Boy Scout troop from Prince George's County, Maryland. They honored our cemetery by having one of the kids do an Eagle Scout project at the cemetery. What they did was prepared the grounds to lay a flat headstone commemorating our ancestors. Stone's gonna be dedicated on the 12th of September. That's our next cleanup. At about 9.45, we're gonna do our cleanup and then we're gonna dedicate the stone. Mayor Wood has so graciously said that he would grace us with his presence and offer remarks. And we really appreciate that, Mayor. Again, the Friends of Duncan Slave Cemetery Foundation, our members, and from the heart, from my heart, we thank you very, very much for your support. And we look forward to your continued support as we continue to preserve our ancestors' burial ground. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. One last thing, Mr. Mayor. My wife found out that your birthday was here. She told me I had to get it to you.

His wife went to church with my grandmother back in Norfolk. Shiloh Baptist Church across from Norfolk State.

Good evening members of council, I'm Reverend Dr. Derrick Henson. I'm asking you to do something very simple tonight, to stop normalizing mass surveillance of innocent people. These eight flock cameras that have been placed on private property throughout our city are paid for by government money and grants, and they create a record of where vehicles travel. Not because these people have committed a crime, but simply because they drove through our town. And before anyone says if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about, I want us to remember something about American history. Harriet Tubman was a fugitive under the laws of her time. She violated laws that the government considered legitimate. If an all-seeing surveillance system had existed then, it could have been used to track her movements and help enforce those laws. changing American history. The point isn't that flock cameras are slavery or that Dumfries is the government of the 1850s. The point is that the laws and government can be wrong. And it isn't ancient history. For years, the FBI operated COINTELPRO using surveillance and infiltration against American organizations involved in political and civil right activity. The government had surveillance powers, and those powers were eventually used in ways that went far beyond what many Americans consider legitimate law enforcement. So here's my question. Why should we build a system today that assumes the government will always use this information exactly as intended? You may trust the officials sitting on this council. I may trust them as well. But we're not building a system for our government. We're building a system for future. And we don't know what that entails. We don't know who will hold office next. The question isn't about whether Flock helps solve crime. The question is whether surveillance is what we need of innocent Americans. And once this database exists for flock, who gets access? We see all over the news now. Law enforcement is misusing the system. The state of Florida, Governor DeSantis has just banned it on government highways, or state highways, pardon me. How long is that information kept? Who gets to search it? Do they search it for innocent people? Do they search it because you refuse to take the COVID vaccine? Do they search it because heaven forbid you're African-American? Or do they search it because you're a Christian or a Jew? What do they do with it? Why do they need this? They don't need it is the answer. Freedom requires limits precisely because we don't know who will hold that power tomorrow. Council members, you have an opportunity to draw that line here tonight. Don't make Dumfries a town where surveillance of innocent citizens becomes the price of living here. Make it the town that Mayor Derrick Wood wants it to be, not just a drive-through town, but a hot town where people want to live and want to build their families. Take down the cameras. Pastor, where are you from again? I'm from Dumfries. Not a rich one.

Listen to the clerk out there.

uh good afternoon uh mayor wood i would also like to speak against the use of flock cameras in this area i'm very concerned that the town of dumfries is planning to use their taxpayer dollars to pay for a private company to collect and store data on the movements of its people both the people who live here and the people who come through this is also using a technology that has been proved to be faulty in many regards from the many security vulnerabilities that allow bad actors, not just law enforcement, but many, many people can use the multiple found security vulnerabilities to easily access this data, to follow people and just honestly stalk them. Also the stock technology has been proven to be inaccurate. Many times people are falsely arrested. because the technology believes one thing and makes a false conclusion. And also just the general detrimental impact of the data centers that are powering this technology that they had on our nearby communities, that the light pollution, the sound pollution, the increase on the strain of our water and electric infrastructure, There's too many other concerns to be able to speak to these today. I'm incredibly concerned that this is the direction of the town Dumfries where I live and plan to live for a very long time is seeking to pursue.

Your name again for the record? Your name?

Oh, sorry. Ashley White.

Okay. Thank you, Ashley.

Good evening. I am Martina Jackson-Green. I'm the Chief Advancement Officer at Birmingham Green, and I am with Angela Asamoah, who is our admissions liaison. So some of you may know about Birmingham Green. Many of you don't because we're neatly tucked away. We are a senior living campus. We've been serving the community for 99 years right here in Northern Virginia. We are the only affordable senior living community in Northern Virginia. We specifically serve people, seniors and those with disabilities who have income constraints. If you've tried to put a family member in assisted living, you know how expensive that can be. And so we are that lifeline for many of the residents here. So tonight we are coming to share that we are having our 99th celebration on September 17th. We'd like to invite you to all come. Hopefully you've seen this pop up on your social media. in the area that we've targeted, but we'd love for you to come and celebrate with us to honor the history that we've had and celebrate the work that we do. We currently have 300 beds in two assisted living buildings and a nursing home, and we serve our residents with great care and great pride. But also on our 54 acre campus, we are seeking to expand. We want to add buildings and add beds so that we can serve even more. part of that plan is also workforce housing as we know we all need that and so we'd love to have your support come and check us out in addition to that though we would love to have you come for a tour so many of our residents don't know that we're there they don't know how we serve and the quality of care that we provide It's not about do you want to age in place or do you want to go to a facility? We want people to age in place as much as you can. But what we know is sometimes we have family members and community members whose care level exceeds what their friends and family can provide and often what their finances can provide. so that we hope that you will come and check us out, come support us. I will leave some information on the table out there so that you can grab an invitation on your way out. Thank you so much for inviting us Mayor Wood and we sincerely hope that you all will not only look into Birmingham Green, volunteer with us, support our work. Thank you.

um you got to give them an address so they can find you in the oh what's on the floor yes everything is on here so you can grab it we're at 8605 centerville road 8605 centerville road in manassas thank you thank you all right what's there that's it okay all right seeing no more speakers i will now have our council comments all right uh councilman peterson you have any remarks tonight

Just saying, I see all the kids going back to school. Watch out for them. They're out here in these streets on these corners. Be careful. That's all.

All right.

Councilman Fields? Good evening, everyone. Yes, school has started. And, yes, be careful. Get your loved ones off to school and all that good stuff. And next thing you know, it's football season. Friday night footballs at the games, at the high schools. Go out and enjoy, support our local teams. Hot topic, hot topic. I wanna speak a little bit about the flock cameras. As being prior law enforcement, I am in much favor of the flock cameras. And many of you have heard me mention Something that goes along like this until it happens to you. Until it happens to you that you're affected by a crime, you're affected by a loved one lost, you're affected by a child missing, or a person of interest that police are looking for happens to come through our wonderful town of Dumfries. And our fly cameras can use this technology and information to track that person, again, until it happens to you. Two years ago, my 101-year-old grandmother went missing, and yes, she was still driving. In the county of Dinwiddie, where I used to work as a deputy, I teamed up with the sheriff's office and on a Saturday morning after she had been missing for going on two days, we got information from the flock camera that she was heading in a westward direction along with other witness statements that said that they saw her going in that direction. Before then Friday, I covered along with other friends covered maybe five known counties because we knew what grandmother liked to frequent. The County of Dinwiddie, the next county over is Brunswick County, Mecklenburg County. I even went all the way to Greenville County, Lawrenceville, Emporia, back to McKinney, Virginia. It wasn't until the next day where we concentrated and we had a press conference and I led a team out going westward. Also a good friend of the sheriff's took his plane up in the air and found my grandmother's vehicle because of the help of that flock camera. So again, I'll say until it happens to you, will it become beneficial? We're here tonight to discuss policy that we're gonna put in place. for our officers here in the town to have strict guidelines on what to do and what not to do. Yes, there have been many bad actors out there, but I'll tell you one thing, if a bad actor happens here, he's gonna be dealt with, he or she will be dealt with, with harsh penalties and harsh consequences. I do respect the concerns that people have raised about the policy and the Fourth Amendment. By saying that fly cameras are simply unconstitutional goes further than what the courts have actually held. The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable search and seizures. It does not prohibit law enforcement from observing, what is normally exposed to public view, including a vehicle and license plate traveling on a public roadway. That distinction is important. In 2005, the Virginia Court of Appeals addressed Norfolk's flock system directly in Commonwealth versus Church. The court concluded that because the system photographed the defendant's vehicle and license plate while he traveled on a public road, police did not need a search warrant to access those particular flock cameras. The court reversed the lower court's suppressing ruling. Even more significantly, in January, 2026, a federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia considered a direct Fourth Amendment challenge to Norfolk's broader ALPR program. The case specifically addressed whether widespread use of automatic license plate readers to photograph vehicles on public roadways violated the Fourth Amendment. That does not mean government should have unlimited surveillance authority. There is a legitimate conversation to be had about how long information is retained, who can access it, what agencies it can be shared with, auditing requirements, misuse by individual officers, and whether safeguards should be strengthened. Again, that's why we're here tonight. I support strong safeguards and accountability. again until it happens to you. But those policy concerns are different from declaring the technology itself is unconstitutional. There is also an important difference between a camera recording a vehicle at a particular location on a public roadway and the type of continuous comprehensive tracking the Supreme Court has examined in cases involving GPS or historical cell phone data collecting information. So my position remains straightforward. We can support effective tools that help law enforcement locate stolen vehicles, identify wanted persons, and investigate serious crimes while also demanding strict policies protecting citizens from misuse.

That's your time, Councilman Fields. We're going to move on. Councilman Pete.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just have a couple of comments this evening. Yes, our children are back at school. Please do watch them. Please do get out to our local football games or high school football games on the Fridays. And Potomac will be playing on Thursday this week, guys. So stay in tune to the schedules of our local football teams. Just have a couple of follow-up items. for the town manager. Town manager, we had several matters that the council previously discussed or asked staff to follow up on. I just want to make sure that we're keeping track of them and not falling through the cracks. Could you give us a brief status either tonight or on an upcoming meeting on the farmers market and flea market proposal, the EDA vacancies, the The trash matter for the second day update on discussion that we've had, the update on areas on main where we had in the latest on that and then also on our community center. If any of those have already been completed or resolved, that's fine. I'd like to know the final disposition. If anything, that's still outstanding. I would like to know when the council should expect it back. I also have one question regarding the Jeff Simpson building, and that is the, even though we know it's a historical building, I've already and already have several uh multi-purposes in our community building my question is specifically about the upstairs what are the town's plans for the upstairs portion of the jeff simpson building and as we move forward with the building assessments will that assessment help us determine what needs to be done to make the upstairs usable and what space um what what can we ultimately use the space for with that mr mayor I, oh, one more. On the September the 16th, we will be having our annual community versus the police department, our town of Dumfries versus the police department basketball tournament event game day. It starts at 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Again, it's on September 16th at Ginn Memorial Park. Mark it in your calendars. Bring the family out. Guys, this is not just a basketball game. I put this in place not just so we can have a day, but so our citizens can bridge the gap between the citizens and our police department. At one point in time, there was a, we don't like 12 volume going around here. I heard that. I didn't like it. What could I do as a leader to amend that measure? So what I did was come up with a basketball game to where our police department can engage with our citizens every day, and they can see and have some fun with them, learn their names and faces. So that triggers back to our everyday safety when it goes to, hey, I played a basketball game with Chief Galen. He met me. basketball player high school student Sean Pete and you know just bridging the comfortable comfortability of our citizens and our police department which has been a mechanism that has been working because for some years ago um there was a little little disturbance on our youth at that time we've been putting in measures and and uh things in place that can help um move that in a different direction and it's been working so please do it's an exciting event you'll have a great time uh it's an offset day uh on during the weekday i choose to use the weekday as it not on the weekend just for us but come on out there and have a good time with us please come support our community being united thank you mr mayor that's all i have for this

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First, again, I want to echo what the other council members have said as far as watching out for the kids. They're back in school. Please slow down when you see these buses. They had a couple of small yet minor incidents where cars just zoomed right past the bus stops as the flashing red lights were going. Prince William County Public School System is aware of it and they're gonna be doing some more to combat that or to help with that. Second, speaking of our kids, I don't know if many of you know, there is a extremist violent online networking group just targeting children and teenagers known as 764. And what they're using, they're using social platforms and gaming platforms to speak to these kids, pretty much having them to hurt themselves, harm others, to just do violent acts, and even to commit suicide. Had it been for one teenager in Maine who brought it to the attention of their parents who then contacted the FBI, this situation would have probably been unnoticed for a good little while, but it's out there now. So please, please watch the actions of your kids. Always checking on them. You're the parent, check in on them. You may be an auntie, you may be an uncle, check in on them. It's not intrusion, just making sure that they're safe. Third, light a note, it's Hispanic Heritage Month, celebrating the history and culture of the contributions to our town and community that our Hispanics and Latino community has had on our town and our community. And finally, Mr. Mayor and everyone here, I am so excited to announce that the town of Dumfries is proud to launch our Labor of Love Weekend. It's a community service initiative that helps eligible homeowners to complete minor home repairs, home improvements, and different projects they may have around the house at no labor cost whatsoever. This is to us. So if you're looking to volunteer, it's happening this Saturday. You can meet me here, meet me here, meet us here between 730 and 745. If you want to volunteer, and this we have a collection of our town staff, myself, along with other neighbors in the community. If you want to be able to volunteer, please email events at events I'm sorry, events at dumfries.com. I'm sorry, .gov, sorry. Events, that's how excited I am, I'm sorry. Events at dumfriesva.gov. If you're willing to volunteer, you can fill out the information from there and we'll get everything in. To do a small background check just to make sure that, you know, we will be going into people's property, not into their homes, but into their properties. We just want to make sure that everything is legit and everything is good. All right. And with that, Mr. Mayor, I thank you for your time. Thank you, sir. Chair Poteau.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us, whether you're here in person or if you're watching from home. Definitely appreciate your support and tuning in. Everyone has gone off to a great school year. I speak for many parents out there when I argue that this is the most wonderful time of the year. the kids are back in school and everything's well i do want to thank the chief and the dumfries police department because i have seen you when we talk about looking out for the kids i've seen the officers out monitoring routes where children are walking to school making sure they get there safely making sure things are running smoothly so i do want to thank the police department for their work on that I hope everyone is ready to enjoy the upcoming long weekend. Tonight, I do want to take a moment to share something that is both a tremendous honor and a deeply personal issue for me. I was recently appointed by Governor Spanberger to serve on the Commonwealth of Virginia's Board of Medical Assistance Services, which provides policy oversight and guidance to Virginia's Medicaid program. This is an opportunity to help give a voice to the families and communities whose lives are directly impacted by our healthcare system. As a mother of a son with a disability, I understand personally what it means for a family to have to depend on access for quality healthcare services and supports. Those experiences helped shape my commitment to public service and my belief that access to healthcare can determine whether a family simply survives or has the opportunity to thrive. Medicaid serves children, seniors, people with disabilities, pregnant women, working families, and some of our most vulnerable neighbors. I was actually really excited to hear from Birmingham Green tonight because a lot of people are unaware of Medicaid's role in caring for individuals who have those ailments. And, you know, we need to support organizations like yourself. And I'm really excited to hear from y'all, and I can't wait to tour your facility.

Thank you.

And the thing that I'm most proud of with this appointment is that Dumfries will have a voice at the table. I want our residents to know that wherever I serve, I take this community with me. I use every opportunity to advocate, to learn, and to influence policy to make sure Dumfries, as well as communities similar to Dumfries, are seen, heard, represented, and respected. So I'm excited to get to work, and I can't wait to give more report back. And with that, I will yield.

Thank you. Good evening, Dufferies. Here we are in September, and I want to start out by saying thank you. Thank you to our staff. Thank you to our police department. Thank you to Public Works, the Parks and Civic Engagement, our volunteers, our businesses, and our residents who continue to just show up. and to help move this town forward. A lot of things, we have a lot of moving parts happening in the town of Dumfries right now. But I want us all to remember that all of this work is tied back to the vision that this council adopted for our town. A well managed government, an engaged community and a thriving community a well-managed government means that we plan ahead we go after outside resources we protect our taxpayer dollars and we make sure that the work we do today puts the town of dumfries in a stronger position a well-managed government. And that's why I wanna recognize our police department for going out and securing the grant funding to bring additional public safety tools to our community. We should always encourage all of our departments to pursue those outside resources that can help us do more without putting the full burden on the taxpayers. It also means that we gotta stay willing to listen, We got to stay willing to adjust and to make sure that our public has confidence in how those tools are going to be used. That brings me to an engaged community, right? September, we gave out a few proclamations, African diaspora month, national preparedness month. We will celebrate sickle cell awareness and Hispanic month at the next meeting. These observations are more their recognition, their reminders to see one another, to learn from one another, to prepare together, and to make sure people know that their voices matters. Because engagement is not just about coming to a council meeting. It's about showing up for your neighbors, it's about asking questions, it's about being informed, and it's about helping shape the future of the place that we all call home. And then there's the thriving community. We recently celebrated our opening and the ribbon cutting of the first Tesla supercharging station here at the town of Dumfries at the Wawa. We did a zero emissions fleet. We had an intern come in. That's another small but meaningful sign of where the town of Dumfries is going. We are building not a place that simply people are gonna drive through, but a place that people are gonna drive to. So tonight we're gonna hear about how our history can become part of our economic future. Being Virginia's oldest continuously chartered town should not just be something we say, it should be something we can see, we can experience, support and invest in. And before September is over, we'll take another step towards building a thriving community through our economic mobility. On September 30th, we're going to kick off the Mayor's Legacy Initiative. This opportunity was made possible through the grant support from the African American Marriage Association and its work to build economic mobility in underserved communities. And for me, Legacy is not simply about what we leave behind. It's about what we help people build while we're here. It's about ownership. It's about preparation. It's about creating pathways for families to protect what they have worked for and build something they can reach the next generations. So I hope our residents will stay connected. We can share more information about the September 30th kickoff soon. We heard about the September 12th Eagle Scout Ceremony at our Dunphrey Slave Cemetery. As we move into the next season, I want us to keep the bigger picture in front of us. Remember, well managed, engaging, and thriving. Those are not just words on a strategic plan. They're the standard we should measure ourselves against. And before I close, let me leave you with a little food for thought. Growth is easy to celebrate when you see the ribbon cutting, but leadership usually happens long before the ribbon. It happens in the planning. It happens in the uncomfortable questions. It happens in the decisions that they don't make headlines. And it happens when we choose to build something that will outlast us. people see fruit they don't always see the roots so let us keep doing this root work up here let us keep building something strong enough for the next generation to stand on thank you and uh let's get to work with that said we'll have our first report and presentation and that'll come from the historical feasibility study by the national travel center team

Good evening, and I'm going to try to make this technology behave. I understand you have the presentation on screens in front of you. Yeah, okay. So let's see if this will actually work. Nope. There we go. OK. You're going to get well more than a study from here, because we've been studying the history. And I know I've got 10 minutes, so this has got to go pretty quickly. We've been studying the history since we started this project. You have absolutely fascinating history. and going all the way from 1690 to today. I mean, it's just amazing. And we work with a lot of historic small towns, and few of them have such a continuum that can be featured. So the feasibility study is actually going to result in a plan that's going to make Dumfries a destination. I'm a planner. I learned economic development at the World Bank and have been in tourism for about 30 years. It's foundational to economic development, absolutely foundational. And so what we're going to be doing is helping UB not just a place to pass through by making the town able to tell its history and building it into the to the town where we can do that so highlight of this one implementation of a robust uh tourism development plan a tourism marketing plan and a tourism effort will actualize and support all elements of the vision in the plan It's also a way to implement the residents' priorities. We read that residents expressed downtown Danbury should lean into its historic character, potential for economic growth through cultural and commercial development, focus on creating arts, Main Street. And so a portion of the plan will focus on ways in which to turn Main Street into a historic corridor that tells the story of Dumfries from 1690 forward. And more visitors attract more restaurants and boutique shopping and those are usually a benefit to the community residents as well. So what do visitors bring to Dumfries? Unencumbered tax revenues that you can use however you want to use them because you don't have to build hospitals and schools or anything else for visitors. They don't need increased services. So they're money that you can spend on helping your community, your residents, your children, or anything else that you choose to do. More meals and restaurants, shoppers, stores, hotel stays. And as I said, they're foundational to attracting new residents because nobody moves in or relocates without visiting. They don't bring a business without visiting first. And they look at what it's going to be like to live here and not just any business incentives, et cetera. So an attractive and thriving downtown may also attract new residents who visit but have never considered moving to Dumfries. And moving on. Visitor market for Dumfries is absolutely huge. You sit in the middle of 65 million people in the typical driving radius to a destination. is more than we normally find. But you're in the middle of a number of metropolitan areas. And 81% of those adults travel. This is the most educated and affluent visitor market in the United States. You could not be placed any better than you are. There's also 62 million heritage tourism visitors in the US. And they travel all over the place. Economic conditions don't stop these people from traveling. They need regular breaks to go somewhere, take leisure time, relax, and think about something other than work. And they engage in a story to engage their minds and disconnect from their work. So they're educated. They want to understand the history. They want to read about the history. They want to get involved in actually what the story is. The study will illustrate the potential impact of the visitors to Dumfries. And what we will do through it is we're going to be able, putting together an economic business case for you to be able to go to shops and restaurant owners and other investors in the town, and also try to help the residents understand that visitors are an economic asset. so that everybody can understand and be welcoming them. And what other usable and useful information will the study deliver? We don't just do studies and strategies. Some of us have been doing this kind of thing for over 30 years. We've been in the jobs. I've done this as an actual professional for three years in a town. we need to deliver you an actual implementable work product so that you have a roadmap to start with what you can and can do and then move on from there. So that's going to include targeting visitor markets, a tourism development plan, a marketing plan, a plan of how to organize and manage a tourism effort, and an action plan that tells what has to happen monthly, quarterly, and annually to accomplish the goals that we will help set together. So the town's going to receive all this specific information, plus more specific useful information. What we envision is you have a lot of historical markers and all that. And we've tracked that there are 26 around town. We've actually found that they all exist there. But you've only got six historic buildings still standing in various places. And so we're looking for locations around town where we can build the story into town so that it'll get visitors through. And things like a walking tour. We're actually going to lay one out the stops for a potential omniride bus tour descriptions of the locations on all of those for all of those places, potential locations for start trails links to the current trail and Greenway plans. And then. Today's visitors are busy, so basic itineraries and trails that will connect you with the surrounding in a 30 mile radius, because travelers will go 30 miles from a home base to explore something they want to. And so all trails can lead to Dumfries. Within that 30 mile radius, you all have 340 other historic sites. That is absolutely amazing. We don't generally get that kind of wealth. So the itineraries and such will connect all those other towns and then come through here so that we can have tourism coming in. And the historic district application, if we can find enough complying properties, because you have to have more complying properties than not if we do that. That's basically a preservation district. There are all kinds of other economic, financial types of arrangements that you also can do. And one of the things I want to make clear is that heritage and cultural tourism visitors aren't going to all of a sudden, there's not going to be this huge influx over running the town. This kind of builds and builds and builds. So you'll be able to create the capacity at the same time that tourism is growing. So our roll up the sleeves approach, as a B Corp, we spend the time necessary to get the work done. The spreadsheet indicates 512 hours. It'll probably be more than that. But because we're a B Corp, we will only build the not to exceed. There's 14 of us scattered around the United States. I happen to be the CEO of those wonderful people. And we involve other people with the expertise as we need them. Significant county or community engagement. Deb and I will be back on the 14th, 15th, and 16th and literally want to talk to people. That's how we find out what people's aspirations are and those are very, very important to any project. Those are important to success. And we're going to have to do considerable digging in historical records to make sure that we're able to unearth all the real history. Action plan that's feasible, doable, and implementable. And every client we help find money because a plan's only a plan until there's funding. So that's one of the things that we're pretty well known for. Whoops, there was a last one on there. This is your project. We bring the experience to help make it successful and we specialize in assisting small towns and communities increase their economic prospects. You all are way ahead of some of the situations we get involved in and have lots of opportunity and capacity to move forward. Any and all questions are okay.

All right, Council, any questions? Councilman Young. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Quick question. How many, you said that needed complying locations. How many locations are required for historic district application? Pardon me? You were saying that you needed complying locations.

If we do a formalized historic district.

Okay, so how many are required?

have a historic location any specific number you just have to have stage on the mic so they can hear you well i'm sorry you just have you have to have complying structures and then there has to be more of those than non-complying structures because every historic town has non-complying as well as complying right and that's what i'm asking is that how many are required for you to have it there's no there's no specific number okay you can have four complying and three not there just has to be the majority of complying okay all right thank you sorry mr mayor okay

So any other questions? Thank you for your presentation. I'm just, I'm curious. I guess at the end of a study like this, what are three things that you hope a community can do when they're finished with one of your studies? Specifically, Dumfries, what are the three things you hope for us at the end of this study?

Appreciate the whole scope of your history and have everybody embrace it and be proud of the continuum and the diversity and all the other things that this town has from a historic standpoint. Second of all, there's a sort of recognition that the more places you tell the story in town, the more story you can tell and the more people will actually get out, walk around, interact and such. And the third one, we want you to be successful in tourism. That's the whole point of all these, is that it's your town. And the economic prosperity that visitors can deliver is foundational to diversifying the tax base and all those other things that can happen.

So I guess with that being said, what... What should the public investment be versus what should the philanthropic, you know, what other, like, what's the mix of investment should there be?

I'm going to know that until we get way further into it. Yeah, but you want to get there. This is Virginia. They take pretty good care of historic resources and they also have a competent tourism department and so you want to tap their resources as much as possible. They've got funding programs and all kinds of major, major promotional effort that they're really good at.

No, I mean, we appreciate our history can't just be It has to be something t Absolutely. Dufferys was t know, so we have the site courthouse. We we had a ma used to rival baltimore

I'd love to help with some kind of reenactment on the new property. I mean, as Mr. Vine said earlier, there's so few of that kind of thing actually in the area, something that gets people involved in understanding what went on. You were a tobacco port that was as important as New York and Philadelphia. How do we show that in living history?

So thank you, I'm looking forward to your report and your study. Oh, sorry, you got another one. Councilman Pete, sorry. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

As I look at this report, when I was reviewing it a couple of days ago, it kind of upset me a little bit.

I'm sorry, can you speak up so I can hear you?

When I was looking at this report a couple of days ago, it kind of upset me a little bit. And when I listen to you historians come up here and speak on the history of the town of Dumfries, it always starts with a port. As I've dug into the history of the Dumfries, the history of Dumfries doesn't start with a port. The history of Dumfries started with the Dowie and the Potomac Indians that were here before. Can you agree? So it bothers me when I see stuff like this. It bothers me when I count 39 Carcassians on a presentation and I see one black lady here in a back picture with her back turned. That bothers me. I'll ask if there's a chance that you guys are able to present to us again that we have some diversity within our presentation.

Certainly so. Back to the mic, sorry.

With that, Mr. Mayor, I yield.

There was no offense whatsoever intended with that. Ray, can I be honest? My own family, we have five adopted non-Caucasian children.

That's fine, ma'am. But I'm speaking of when you guys, when you historians come up here and present to us, we don't know that you have five.

We understand that. And we're going all the way back to the Native Americans.

Can we please start at that? That we're here, yes. Because that's the start of this town.

When the first settlers moved in here, there was thriving African-American communities in this area.

Now we're talking. Yes, ma'am. Let's talk.

Yeah. So yes, that's part of the diversity. And your town is incredibly diverse. but we're incredibly cognizant of, somebody mentioned Harriet Tubman earlier. We put together the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad byway in Pennsylvania. And we're told basically that we were not allowed to tell all those stories. And we said, that's the story.

you guys were told that y'all couldn't tell those stories? Pardon me, yes.

Yeah, and we did. We put together 10 documents, stories that were incredibly impactful that told the real story. And they've been phenomenally well received.

Okay, well, like I said, if there's ever a chance to present, if you guys could please bring back the original beginning history. We will do that.

We will do that because that's part of the continuum that you need to tell in the town.

Thank you for coming. We look forward to seeing you. With that said, I'm going to take a five-minute stretch bathroom break and we'll come back. Recess. All right, next in the agenda, we'll have Prince William County Water come on up to the podium. The floor is yours. Let's hear about all of this good work you've done in our community. We saw the roads tore up. We saw them put back together. And now we're excited to hear an update on where we are.

Well, thank you, Mr. Mayor and members of the Council. Thanks for inviting us to share with you to introduce you or maybe remind you about Prince William Water. My name is Don Panel. I'm the deputy general manager and chief operations officer at Prince William Water. I want to acknowledge two of my really sharp colleagues, Michelle Miranda and Ronnie Avalos, who are here as well. So I'm just going to touch on a few things about Prince William Water and give you a few resources and certainly give you some some places you can connect with us because there's a lot we can talk about and I want to respect your time this evening. Our mission is a little bit unique. We are a water utility and we take a lot of pride in running a very professional organization. You want us to run a professional organization to make sure we deliver clean water to you and your citizens every day. You want to make sure we run a utility in a sustainable way. At the same time, we have a critical public health mission. We protect public health and the environment. So we're the only utility that delivers a product to your home that you ingest and it affects your health personally. So we take that responsibility very, very seriously. We'll leave you with these slides because I know there's a lot of small print on this slide. But what this slide illustrates is the immense investment in infrastructure that it takes to run a well-run water and wastewater utility. You see in the upper right corner $1.2 billion worth of assets. That's book value. Our replacement value for all those pipes and pumps and tanks is probably close to $3 billion. That's a significant amount of infrastructure that goes into delivering great service to you. The mayor had asked us to remind you where your water comes from in the town of Dumfries. So I want to take a minute and talk about it because it's a really interesting story and it's important. We like to use this phrase from source to tap and back again. If you track this graphic, Our water that we originally pull comes from the Potomac River up near Ashburn, actually. That water is treated, delivered to homes in western Prince William County. Then that wastewater is collected, treated at a state-of-the-art wastewater treatment facility in Centerville, returned to the Occoquan Reservoir. where that water is then withdrawn again at the Griffith Water Treatment Plant over in Lorton and delivered to eastern Prince William County here in Dumfries included. And then we treat that wastewater after it's used in homes at our Mooney advanced water reclamation facility on Ripon Boulevard and return it back to the Potomac River. So that same water makes a very long and crucial journey from the Potomac River to serve homes through the Occoquan and then back to the Potomac River. We've just come through the summer and you heard probably a lot of conversation about drought. So I wanted to, I know this is a really, this harkens you back to high school science, probably. So give me a little grace on that. But what I wanted to illustrate with this, and I probably don't have a pointer, but while we're sitting here and enjoying great drinki for us in terms of drought that falls in West Virgin and the western part in th of Virginia. So all that w feeds the Potomac River. So when we're concerned about drought, we're actually not concerned about how much rainfall is falling here in Prince William County. We're concerned about how much rainfall is falling far west in the headwaters of the Potomac River. I know that causes some confusion for people, but this is a regional system and you can see at the little note there, the Potomac Watershed covers over 11,000 square miles, primarily in the west, and that serves as our drinking water source primarily. I'll skip past this. This is a great resource for you to chew on in the future, but just emphasizes our key role in the health of the Chesapeake Bay. If you've tracked the amazing rebound of the health of the Chesapeake Bay, we're proud to have been a strong part of that for over 40 years. The work we've done at our advanced water reclamation facility just up the road here is absolutely phenomenal. We're very proud of our role. Again, protecting water quality is paramount. We put a ton of emphasis on drinking water quality and wastewater compliance. You can see there those top two bullets. We have 100% drinking water compliance and 100% wastewater permit compliance. I'll touch on that permit compliance a little bit more, but the other things I wanted to highlight on this slide are that we really rely on partnerships. Partnerships with you here in the town, partnerships with our regulators in Richmond and across the state, partnerships with Fairfax Water, who is just an absolutely essential partner for us. A couple of highlights in recent years. If you've tracked the news, there are emerging water quality challenges. As we learn more about water quality, that affords us the opportunity to face new challenges. One of those new challenges is called PFAS. If you've seen headlines about forever chemicals, I won't try to pronounce what PFAS stands for. It's an important constituent that is in many pharmaceuticals. It's in your mascara. It's in your fast food wrappers. And once it's in the environment, it persists, hence the name of Forever Chemical. We are taking real active steps with our partners to protect the Occoquan from PFAS contamination. And we're happy to say we got a House bill passed Two years ago, House Bill 2050, which takes steps far beyond what the EPA is implementing to make sure we protect the Occoquan as stewards of that essential resource. You've got a QR code there at the bottom. We invite you to hit that anytime you want. We publish a lot of great information about our water quality. And we're also, there's plenty of links on there. We're happy to talk to you. If you've got questions about our water quality, anything you've read in the headline and you want to know what's going on, we want to make sure you have the latest information. In addition to running a great water utility, which I'm proud to say we do, we take our role as environmental ambassadors really seriously as well. A couple of the campaigns that we're really promoting, Michelle and her team do an amazing job of getting the word out through social media, through school platforms. Don't flush the wipes. We are operating a lot of infrastructure. I talked about the dollars invested in the pipes and pumps. Those flushable wipes are not flushable. They create incredible maintenance problems for us. So we're trying to get the word out. We find this to be really effective to get the word to the kids and the kids influence the behavior of the parents. Another one of our standard campaigns when winter it comes, we don't want your pipes to freeze. We want you to know how to take care of your home premise plumbing. So we put a lot of emphasis on that. I wanted to spend a second talking about Salt Smart. One of the threats to freshwater all across the US and frankly across the world is salinization. The use of salts by humans releases salts into the environment. And once that salt is in drinking water, it stays. You can't make salty water unsalty. You can treat the water, but the Occoquan, as a prime example, has an increasing level of salts Um, it's not a problem to problem tomorrow, but 50 will be a problem if we behaviors. Um, one of the is winter de icing activi comes from road salting for winter deicing. So we've got to put some emphasis on some best practices and find some product substitutions. So this is a campaign you're gonna see us hit for many years to come. So we try to change some behaviors around salt. A lot of activity. I won't spend a lot of time, but I do want to hit the last bullet here. That advanced water reclamation facility on Rippon Boulevard is called the Mooney Plant. It's a state of the art plant. It has achieved perfect permit compliance for 17 straight years. Some of you are familiar when a child is born and you say, oh, that's a healthy baby that's in the 99th percentile. Well, our 17-year perfect permit compliance puts that plant in the 99.5th percent of top performing wastewater plants in the country. So we're super proud of what we're doing there. It's got a lot of work going on there right now, about $178 million investment to make sure that that plant is there for the next decades to come. Just a few pictures of some of the incredible work going on there, and just really proud of that work. All the while, we're still maintaining perfect permit compliance. If you've ever had renovations done at your house, you can know it's hard to run a home when the kitchen's torn up, but that's exactly what we're doing there at that plant. Here's some just ways you can connect with us. We're always there through various platforms. I see my time's about to run out. So please contact us whenever you've got questions. We're there for you. Certainly happy to answer any questions or touch on any topics that are of interest.

All right, Councilwoman Peterson. Hardwater.

I got a lot of people in my community talking about this water. Is this what we're drinking and do you have any solutions on what we can do to correct it or are you planning on correcting it or anything like that?

The water that we pull from the Occoquan is slightly hard. It's not considered extremely hard. If you've got some premise plumbing with some age, that could be contributing. We're happy to come down and do a sample and try to give you some advice. Water softening on the premise is an option for some people, but we'd caution that that's an expense, first of all. And if they're not maintained properly, they can actually cause a degradation of the water quality. So happy to speak with particular customers.

It's all of us and we're pretty new. I'm here in the Highland Park area. I think I've been here for maybe five years and it's been like this since I've been there. okay um when what kind of um uh symptoms are you seeing that i mean feel different i can clean that toilet three times and it's brown all the way around as soon as i come back up the water is very hard i just hope that's not what i'm drinking but i i think we'd need to investigate that is it a brown or is it a pink blue oh it's not pink okay I think brown and pink, yeah, no, it's not pink. It's like a rust color. It's bad in this area. I don't know if it's here, but I know in Highland Park, it's terrible. And it's like a community thing that we go outside and talk about.

So, I mean, I've tried every type of- We'll follow up on that, Highland Park. We'll follow up on that and send some technicians out to take a look and try to understand what's going on there. i don't know i don't think it's just highland park does anybody else have that problem yes yes councilwoman same thing over here okay so that's south col i mean i want you to come to highland park yes but sure i think it's the whole area okay yeah i'm not i'm not recalling complaints or concerns certainly we do our annual flushing program and don't note any any special concerns but certainly we want to investigate that

okay thank you councilman p fast yeah i remember reading up on this uh sometime last year it was a polio fluorides um soil the kyl that's how he does pretty much identified it but uh my take on it um is one thing and and it was always my concern because you did hit on it and you spoke on to the winterization right and when we're using the salt and my only question is have you heard or know of any other methods that has been uh or has been talked about or becoming addressed to uh counter what we're currently using now across the whole nation pretty much um so vdot

At the direction of the State General Assembly, VDOT prepared a pretty good study a handful of years ago to look at alternatives to traditional rock salt. You see the white lines on the roads during the winter that VDOT uses. VDOT really does take steps to try to minimize the excess salt that's used. But even the beet juice that they're using that causes those lines contains chlorides. So when that beet juice washes off, it's still adding to the salt content, not to the extent that the rock salt does, but still a concern.

My apology for cutting you right there, but you just threw another one in there, beet juice. And I remember, Tom and Angela, we spoke about this last year. Would you recommend beet juice or priming?

I am not the expert, but the best practice that VDOT is using is to use the bee juice in lieu of traditional rock salt. So I certainly, we follow those recommendations. The thing I'd highlight though is that about 50% of the pavement, sidewalks, parking lots are not VDOT streets, they're private streets. So we really gotta get those best practices to, you know, all the apartment complexes, the shopping centers. And just as me personally talking, I think we're gonna have to grapple with, do we have to have every road cleared within four hours of the storm or can we, Can we have a balance between how much salt we apply to the roads, you know, in whatever form versus, and certainly, you know, we're all about safety, but maybe there's, maybe in time there's, you know, a balance between staying home for a few hours versus applying those salts.

Okay. all right thank thank you very much for the presentation and also uh taking a uh a next step measure to look into what we're drinking around here yeah and then also as we're preparing uh for upcoming winter months as well so again thank you and with that mr mayor are you

Thank you for really taking the time to really come out. And I know, especially with my work in African-American mayors, I'm on the infrastructure and transportation. I know a lot of people don't look at water as infrastructure. Most of the people look at roads and buildings and stuff. One of the things I'm hearing from other mayors in other localities is they don't have the money to replace their infrastructure. And they're struggling to, I mean, we see what happened in Flint, Jackson, Mississippi, or some of those localities with their infrastructure. I mean, within the last 10 years, you all have went through and replaced all of those pipes and make sure that our PSI is great, make sure that our pipes are much better. And so we appreciate the money and investment. Yep, we have seen an increase in our water bills. But we understand that's the cost of doing business, right, of replacing that infrastructure and going out there. So it beats the alternative of what we've seen. So I just appreciate the proactive. work you're doing as I get to see kind of and hear from other localities so I and I hear some of their problems and I see how far ahead uh we are in doing the work so I just wanted to you know just give you that observation uh from serving on some of those committees to see I appreciate that appreciate that all right thank you very much all right next on our agenda is the uh the flat camera policy.

Sorry. I was pulling the policy up. You guys all have a copy of the recent policy? Do you guys want to cover everything or do you guys have questions about the new policy? So the first change that we did was change the policy number. It should have been 427 instead of 428. The audit trail obviously is the hot topic. How long stuff's in the... in the system for obviously i know you guys seen the news where flock had changed their policy to seven seven days that's for um moving forward um i think 21 days is still a good policy to have just because if you leave for vacation for seven to ten days uh you come back home you still want to have that that stuff or something was to happen at your house during that time period so i think it's important to stay with the 21 day policy for us um We took out probable calls for the number four upon receiving an LPR alert. That's a reasonable suspicion. Under E, any materially new or expanded products or capabilities may not be activated merely because they were offered by the vendor. They must be purchased or otherwise authored and undergo the appropriate administrative legal policy and when required town council review. Also given under access and queries, the town manager may be granted administrative oversight access after completing the required training. Such access should be limited to a program oversight, audit review, authorized user review, policy compliance, and system configuration review. Administrative access shall not authorize investigative searches unless the search is independently permitted by law and is conducted for a documented, legitimate law enforcement purpose. So there is three ways that you have to put in the system to view it. You have to put in a police report number as well as the reason. That was another thing that was added when I met with FLOC is you have to also put the reason as the third block for what you're going under first. You have to have a report number that's in there and the reason that you're also looking in there. Vendor personnel should not independently search, use, disclose, retain, sell, or otherwise process town LPR data for an unauthorized purpose and shall comply with applicable contractual confidentiality, cybersecurity retention, and data breach requirements. State network under data sharing statewide network access is currently disabled. No future activation may occur without documented administrative legal policy and figuration review and all approvals required by the policy or town council. uh under public records under b the final adopted lpr policy in the required annual report to the virginia department of state police shall be posted publicly excluding all personal and case identifying information and any other information protected under virginia law if any automated uh under d If any automated audit assistance features activated following the appropriate administrative and legal review, the supplementation does not replace the required monthly supervisory audit. Number seven under the program administration. the quarterly reporting to the chief of the police and town manager for distribution of town council including appropriate measures such as alerts stolen vehicle recoveries one of their missing persons located investigations assisted arrests or charges associated with the lpr assisted investigations unauthorized access incidents and other appropriate performance measures i'm going to ask a question here

Do we have that current data now without that? What prompted the, I guess the need for the grant to create this policy? Do we have an uptick in stolen vehicles in the town of Dumfries?

It was not necessarily an uptick in the town of Dumfries, but surrounding the town of Dumfries and also recovered. There was an uptick in recoveries inside the town of Dumfries. of the stolen vehicles.

Was there any public outreach done before we made this decision?

Yeah, so I met with HOAs, I met with churches, I met with citizens, I met with voters, I met with taxpayers, I met with businesses, I met with all those people beforehand. That's why all our LPRs are on private property. And all these people that I spoke with gave permission with me explaining how the system worked and what we would be using it for. And we also covered it in, I think, the town hall in February.

Councilman Fields, I'm glad you mentioned the use of private property and the extent that you went to have this access granted for us or for the police department, and I'm saying us because it's us, the town and the police department, to use and access. In the event that the person that owns this private property doesn't want this on their property anymore, what happens? What are the steps? They notify us and they're taken down immediately. Okay. So to satisfy the public and those questions, why aren't they on public property?

VDOT at this time has not given permission for any flock cameras to be put onto the right-of-ways. And that's statewide?

That's statewide.

Okay.

So how many flock cameras that you know of surround the town of Dumfries?

I think Prince William has 28. functional ones standalone. They have 10 flex ones or ones that can be deployed for a temporary, on a temporary basis. And they have LPRs on vehicles. I don't know that number. And LPRs is not a new technology now for 50 years. Like this was since 1976. So I know there's a lot of complaints now, but this is new. So for clarification, they got about 28 fixed in the county.

Correct. They got about 10 that they can move around. Correct. and who knows how many they have on cars driving around. And those cars driving around are usually law enforcement cars, or ticket enforcement, maybe. Just traffic enforcement. Police cars. Police cars, yes. Stafford County? I don't know Stafford. Okay, all right.

Any other counties that you can make? The state is pretty covered in cameras, LPRs in general, as well as slot cameras.

Yes, and as I was talking earlier, even the county where that incident happened with my grandmother, they have gotten more since then. I wish we had more at the time in that county. one thing i didn't get to finish earlier because the time ran out you know public safety and constitutional protections do not have to be mutually exclusive our responsibility is to make sure we have both i think everyone can agree with that that we can get along with public safety. We can get along with having these provisions. And like I said earlier, anyone that violates this is not a slap on the wrist. you get a suspension or you get written up and you're going about your day, I'm pretty sure that a violation of this will lead to termination charges and maybe federal charges.

In Virginia, it's a class one misdemeanor to misuse the technology. Okay. So there are charges. Right.

Thank you. All right, so before I make this motion, because I'm going to make a motion here, I want to acknowledge what you've done and what the police department have done. And I appreciate you pursuing the grant funding, looking for additional tools to keep Dunphreys safe. And we should always encourage our staff to continue to use outsourced resources to really strengthen the public safety. But acquiring a tool and then deciding how that tool should operate in our community, I think are two different questions, not just acquiring the tool, but talking about how this tool is to be used. I've heard from residents in almost three or four different neighborhoods that feel like they didn't have a seat at the table or opportunity to have a conversation. They didn't have opportunity to understand these cameras. They felt like they didn't have a chance to ask questions or to provide input. uh before they were installed so i i hear you say you talk to it but i've been out the last couple weeks i've stood at the cameras the revised policy before us tonight it is much stronger than than the original policy you produce and i appreciate the work that went into adding the privacy protections i appreciate the auditing the sharing the training with councils and even the council oversight that's in there but policy improvements they they don't erase the public process concern. And so there's a concern with the public process and technology should never move faster than public trust. And the public right now doesn't trust the technology because Public doesn't feel like they had a seat at the table or they had a participation to get that voice. I believe we can support our department, we can support public safety and still give residents a meaningful opportunity to participate in this decision. And so I'm gonna move that the town immediately deactivate the flock license plate readers to prohibit collection of any new LPR data and direct the town manager to conduct a public engagement process and then return to the council with options for removal, continued use, including all grant contractor legal fiscal so that the system shall not be reactivated without subsequent council approval. second um okay it's been motion and second now we'll have discussion councilman pete okay thank you mr mayor uh chief quick quick question does these you got to speak to the motion now there's a motion so we either vote the motion up or down and then you can ask the chief can i address it before him i have some light was on it was on but no there's a motion on the floor so you have to wait for the motion Okay. Any discussion to the motion? Chair Poulton?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you, Chief. I do want to echo the Mayor's sentiments and the work that has gone into this project. And I know that it is to enhance public safety. As a mother of a child with a disability who's nonverbal, I want every resource possible available to locate him if he is lost. With that said, I do know that we want our police department to have all the resources they need to be able to aid in public safety. But as with any other department in the town of Dumfries, if we don't have community buy-in, we're going to have a hard time with success. So it's for that motion. I just want to go on record and say that I do support the mayor's motion. And I do think that we could bring it back, but maybe that looks like broadening our communication target is maybe having town halls, things of that nature, but we have to have community buy-in before we move forward. And with that, I'll, you know.

Any other comments on the motion?

Councilman P. So the motion on the table is to deactivate and take them down.

and have the town manager conduct the public engagement process and return to council with options and have they been activated yet they're not they're they're up they're not activated we're not using the cameras so let's i'll get this okay

Any other discussion on the motion? Yes.

Okay.

So if they're not active now, what are we motioning? When are they supposed to go live?

The motion is to remove them and prohibit collection of any LPR data. They were supposed to go live soon. So that's why the motion is the way the motion is.

So removing meaning you would take them up out the ground and do what with them? Have a public input this process.

They'll be returned to FLOG. Is that a cost? It would be a cost to reinstall them.

So we've gotten a grant for this. And the chief has went out and did his due diligence in getting this. We had two people to come up here. that don't even live in the town of Dumfries in opposition to it. And we're gonna waste this money that we received or this. So what happens to those funds?

We'll see that when we get that. The motion is for the town manager to bring all that information back to the council. So you can vote the motion down or you can vote the motion up. But there's a motion on the floor. I know.

It's time for discussion. I'm discussing. Okay.

And so they'll be returned back at no fee? Right now we're under the pilot program. So if they've taken down, there's no fee to put them back up. Even within the 60 day limit would be an $8,000 fee for $1,000 for each camera.

And they're not live now? We're not using the cameras, no sir. Is it possible to leave them up and not go live? So we have to not incur that expense later? That is a possibility, yes, sir.

And there's no fee for that. There would be a fee to reinstall them at the location.

Well, as you know, the person that made the motion that we consider just leaving them up so they don't incur this expense if we want to put them up later, we're not having to have all this money wasted. If they're there, they're there. Whether they go live or not, that's a different thing. We could suspend going live for further input from the public and the due diligence of that. I'll support that. But taking it out the ground and wasting money to put them back in,

no i think it's a waste of taxpayer money okay seeing no further discussion madam clerk call for the question councilman fields no councilman pete no councilman young yes

Councilwoman Peterson? Aye. Chair Poulton-Miles? Aye. Mayor Wood?

Yes.

Motions passed.

All right. Next on the agenda is the discussion of the municipal boundary line. Okay. Ms. Ayanna?

Good evening, Mayor, council members. I come before you tonight to talk a little bit about the procurement on the municipal boundary line feasibility study. At this point, we are in the intent to award stage. We did go through a rigorous procurement process that began back in April. We had one proposal that came in from the Robert Bob group, and we negotiated that contract down. 23%. The original proposal cost was $414,300. And you see now we are sitting at $319,000 as the proposed cost. It does exceed the budgeted amount of $175,000. But town staff has identified cost savings within the identified capital projects that were passed via resolution in the amount of $263,784.99. This came from an identification that the emergency power system was both included in this project and our ARPA funds. So we will take the costs associated with the emergency power system from the ARPA funding instead of the bond anticipation note funding 2023A. In addition to that, we had cost savings in the Campbell property demolition in the amount of $51,865. We also had cost savings for the HDVI repairs in the amount of $6,900. And we had cost savings in the town hall security system in the amount of $3,775.49. And lastly, we had cost savings from the town hall conference room updates in the amount of $1,244.50. This came through rigorous procurement processes to produce these cost savings. In addition to that, I would also like to share that The solicitation for the municipal boundary line feasibility study was sent to 2,492 suppliers through EVA. That generates throughout any suppliers that are relevant to the commodity codes that we put in. The commodity codes essentially identify who is who is in the market to produce services such as this. So from that, we did have the one proposal which was included as the Robert and Bob group. And at this time, I stand ready to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you for that thorough presentation. I understand that the procurement, as you stated at the end, was broadly distributed through EVA and one proposal was received. Can we explain what we learned from the other qualified firms who chose not to respond and what steps maybe we can take on staff to ensure that proceeding with a single proposal still produce a fair, reasonable, and a competitive result for the town being that we only had one. So how do we know it's competitive? What do the other two say?

Absolutely. I'll share that this process was a little bit different than what is of the norm for a procurement process. And with that, it's one that the town size and budget typically is going to be a deterrent for larger firms. So that's One reason why we may have only received one proposal. In addition to that, the study is highly political and a lot of firms will not feel that they are prepared to carry out all of those due diligence that are involved with the process. And then again, as I mentioned, it's a highly complex project. This project engages multiple professionals, including legal, which is gonna be your primary driver for why it is so expensive. And we did talk through a lot of that throughout the process, essentially looking at ways in which we may be able to save on the amount of legal and offering ways in which we may be able to partner with the proposed contractor on ways that maybe we could utilize our council in situations and in addition to that engaging our police department which is also a component of the project and utilizing some of the resources that we have so we do feel confident that although we proceeded with the one proposal that this is the most beneficial for the town.

Was there like a written determination supporting I guess the decision to proceed with just one offer and can that be made part of the procurement record?

So we do have a record that anyone is able to come and view. Inside the record, we also include a memorandum that outlines the full process. In addition to that, we did have a thorough procurement process in which we involved evaluation committee members who weighed in, which is included in this file. It shows responses from the proposal.

um also responses from the oral presentation that was received throughout the process and then um of course final finalizing that within the file as well awesome the market produced only one proposal proposal so i just wanted the record to show how staff validated those qualifications i wanted the record to show the scope and the price in the absence of competing proposals. So I just wanted that all on the record as we make these decisions as we speak to this dollar amount. Anybody else have any questions for the staff report?

i just wanted to add also that we did um so let the solicit this um opportunity twice the first one was canceled due to non-response um and then we re-evaluated some of the language to ensure that it was more competitive on the next round okay question councilman yeah thank you sir um question do you feel as though that the with the 175 was too low Yes, sir. Now that we are more aware of all of the different components that align with the project, especially with the amount of that right now they have budgeted around 1600 hours dedicated just for legal presence throughout the project. So again, that's going to drive up your costs. But the proposed best and final offer also negotiated down a cap on those hours so that we don't initiate any change orders throughout that process.

Okay, is the applicant here that we can speak to that can come and we have some questions?

Yes, Mr. Robert Bob is here.

Mr. Robert, could you come to the podium? Ms. Bob, thank you for being here tonight. We just want to understand exactly what the town will own at the end of this engagement and how this work moves this study to a defensible decision.

Yes. Excuse me. Oh, yes.

And I was just curious, what did we lose by you reducing almost $100,000? We thought that...

We believe that we priced it correctly, but we also want to work with the city of Dumfries. And we're going to do our best to stay within the number of hours that's been dedicated to this work. I would say that one of the challenges that we may have is on the legal side of when We can do all of the analysis. We have a really strong team. But when it comes to the legal side, we wanna make sure that we're working with the city attorney and with others because the legal fees are the most, are the highest fees within our proposal. And that's what we're gonna have to address and deal with. I would say that The study reminds me a little bit of the history when I became city manager of Richmond, just as an aside. And the city attorney may be familiar with this as well. There was a Supreme Court case brought on by a local advocate in Richmond by the name of Curtis Holt. And Curtis Holt brought a case similar, not similar, but not dissimilar to what we're proposing here. And that case was to extend the boundaries for the city of Richmond. And the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. Curtis Holt won that case at the Supreme Court. The bottom line was that by winning that case, the city of Richmond gained 23 additional square miles of territory, as it were. It expanded the city of Richmond and it gained 47,000 new residents in Richmond. And when we look back on the history of that case and how it impacts Virginia, it says that no other municipality by the General Assembly can enter into a similar case. But towns are different. There's a whole different process for towns. And so the towns are not by that particular Supreme Court decision. The bottom line is that we have to work real closely with the city administrator, I mean with the city manager. I think that the legal component of it may become a challenge. We know that the team are all committed to working within the budget. That's where we are currently. They know. Otherwise, we would not have continued into the process.

Can you share, I guess, with this, the council and the people, what prior annexation, boundary line relocation, or any restructuring work that your firm or your team can talk to us about that they completed, and any lessons from that work that can apply directly to what we're doing here in the town of Dunfries?

And candidly, this is the first boundary study that we've done. I've been involved. in a different life, the boundary studies relating to school districts, which from my research are much more political. When you're taking kids from one area or part of town and you're creating new boundaries for school districts. You know, the former superintendent of a school district, that's been my experience with boundaries for schools. school district, but not for municipalities. But with the requirements for this study, we believe that we have all of the technical skills and expertise to address the areas upon which the city manager and the team outline in this particular study. I mean our team is very seasoned and very experienced in conducting analysis.

I guess probably the most important question for me tonight in trying to make a decision here is if the council votes to spend $319,000 on this work, what should we expect to have in our hands at the end of this? And will it have any type of lasting value if the council ultimately decides not to pursue a boundary change? I mean, looking at... The many things we got going on, as you know, we got small area plans working for redeveloping the waterfront. We're doing Main Street. We're doing a gateway. We got entertainment. And so, you know, we're trying to figure out if this is the best use of our resources right now in moving forward with this. And so I know that's kind of a loaded question for you, but it's, you know, if we spend it, what should we expect to have in our hands at the end that could have some type of lasting value?

the lesson value will be it's more political i mean we're doing all the we can we are confident that we can provide all of the technical analysis pursuant to the uh the requirements of the rfp or the rfq i mean we and our team can provide all of that analysis but at the end of the day moving forward is going to be a decision that the city council will have to make and whether or not the city council with its relationships with the county and ultimately with its relationship at the state level of the department. There's a committee that ultimately decides, makes the ultimate decision to go forward.

Okay. Councilman Young. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Quick question. I noticed that the contract was for one year. Exactly how long does a process like that really, really take? What is feasibility study?

Yes, so the contract currently is written for one year. I believe the scope of their bid is about 18 months. We have just learned that there aren't some restrictions around the funding, so we would have to make an amendment to the proposed contract if council approves it. Okay, thank you.

Okay. Council, any other questions on the contract and the proposal before you? Councilman Fields.

When I first came to this town 20 years ago, this was the talk of trying to expand. And I haven't heard much about it since then. So what brought this up now?

Upon my employment, this was one of the tasks that the council had expressed as an interest. And I had brought up in my last communication to council during my evaluations, the last task that I haven't achieved. So we were able to identify some funding that would allow us to move forward with the solicitation.

Okay, I got you. And it was a part of the strategic plan. um all right no no further questions thank you mr bob for um coming out thank you um i guess uh town manager based on the new information with the funds and uh what we're doing what is your recommendation to this council as we deliberate making the decision and emotion here tonight

My recommendation is for the council to approve the contract in the amount that was stated in the contract. I don't know it by heart. I don't want to misstate it. What is the amount?

It's $319,000.

$319,000, sir.

Councilman Pete.

What was the number on the reduction again, Town Manager?

So initially it began a little over 400,000. 413.

That was 413. That was original from, is that the previous time or is that just the first proposal for this time?

The first proposal from this time.

Okay. Is that 413 lower than our previous time?

So the previous time we solicited, we did not receive any responses. Okay. So this is the second time, sir.

Okay. All right. Sounds good then. Okay. So we got a reduction down to three, what was that again? 319. 319. So you guys went and put some work in to get us a reduction for this. Okay.

And if I may, Mayor Wood, the $175,000 was an estimate. We did not have any independent written cost estimate. We just did a ballpark figure, and that's how we came up with that number, sir.

I guess with the scope, you know, is it, can this be scoped in phases or this whole scope needs to be done at one time? Is that why the, the, the costs was so much and we didn't get the bids. Do you think we could have phased this out or this all need to be done at one time?

I mean, it's, it's a feasibility study. So you start with the feasibility study to see whether or not it's even feasible to move to the next phase. So, um, mean if council decides that that's not what they want it's not a priority at this moment we could we could delay it but you know it's completely up to the body sorry about that sir okay let's just transform it all right okay council any further on discussion questions on this and i pulled it from the consent agenda to just get this information chair pro tem so yeah i'm just

taking everything in after reading the packet and i know this is i know y'all are gonna be happy with me saying this but after hearing that only one firm bid after hearing that the depth is much longer than we thought after hearing that it's going to get very political Is this, I know when we said that we definitely did direct the town manager to pursue the boundary line adjustments, and that's been a big thing since I've been here. We talked about it even with previous town managers. But knowing what we know now, do we need to have a conversation about whether or not this remains a part of our strategic plan?

Yeah, I mean, we can table a discussion today and we can come back. How long is the bid? How much time do we have to respond?

So we have the intent to award phase is over. So right now we're in the contracting phase. If council needs to take some time to deliberate, we have time to do so, sir.

All right. So if we take no action today, can we bring it up on the further? Or do we need to take some sort of action? Madam Attorney?

I think it depends on a couple of things. I don't have that information immediately in front of me, but we do have the applicant here and you can kind of informally query if he has an objection to this being continued to the next to the next council meeting. If the council foresees that it will be able to make a decision by that particular date.

Okay, we want to try to hold off a meeting to deliberate, look at some more information. So we won't take any action unless somebody has a motion to make.

So the correct motion would just be to continue this matter over into the, I believe it's the September 15th council meeting.

councilman pete mr mayor like that we i would like to make a motion that we move this matter into our next uh previous uh continuing into the next meeting second okay it's been motioned and second any further discussion all right seeing none madam clerk call for the question councilman fields yes councilman pete

Yes.

Councilman Young.

Yes.

Councilwoman Peterson. Aye. Chair Proton-Miles. Aye. Mayor Wood.

Yes.

The motion is passed.

All right. The Town Council of Dumfries desires to go to a closed meeting pursuant to 2.23711 alpha one of the code of a jade to discuss and consider our personnel matters including but not limited appointment assignment performance of uh specific public officers and appointees so uh i make that motion a second All right. It's been motioned in second.

It's more. There's more to it.

Okay. Okay. I withdraw that. I read this one. The town council desires to go into closed session pursuant to 2.2-3711 alpha 1 and alpha 8 and alpha 4. to discuss to consider the assignments of the public office and consult with legal counsel regarding specifically the manager requiring legal advice and to the extent necessary to protect the privacy of individuals and personnel matters not related to public business matters. I'll second that motion, Mr. Mayor. All right. It's been motioned and seconded. Any discussion? Seeing none, Madam Clerk, call for the question.

Councilman Fields. Yes. Councilman Pete. Yes. Councilman Young.

Yes.

Councilwoman Peterson. Aye. Chair Pro Tem Miles. Aye. Mayor Wood. Yes. We are now in closed session.

Evan, can they hear us?

I make a motion that in accordance with the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2.2-3712 Dakota Virginia to the best of each member only public business matters lawfully exempt from open meeting were heard discussed or considered and that only public only business that were identified by the motion which we went in a closed session were discussed. Second. All right it's been motioned and seconded. Any discussion? Seeing none Madam Clerk please call for the questioner.

Councilman Fields? Yes. Councilman Peek?

Yes.

Councilman Young?

Yes.

Councilwoman Peterson? Aye. Chairperson Miles? Aye. Mayor Wood?

Yes.

We're now back in open session.

All right. Is there anything to report out?

Yes, Mr. Mayor, I do have a statement I'd like to read for the record. Yes. Council wants to address recent allegations that one of its members used public resources for personal purposes. Example, taking pictures in council chambers. Council has addressed this text of this code of ethics, but since we have not yet had training, the benefit of the doubt will be given to the offending member. We will like to go on record to say that after the training is conducted, we do not condone this behavior, and we will be enforcing the code of ethics more diligently in its entirety in the future, including punishment. And that's all I got.

Okay. All right. With that said, this meeting is now adjourned.