Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Mic check. One, two.

Good afternoon, everyone.

It's lovely to see all of you here with us this afternoon. I would like to formally call the broadband authority meeting to order today, Tuesday, August 18th, twenty twenty six at two p.m.. The meeting is formally called to order. Our first order of business, gentlemen, is the approval of our minutes from the June 16th meeting. If you do, you have any changes, additions or deletions that you would like to make to the minutes. Hearing none, I'll entertain a motion to approve the minutes as submitted.

Approve the minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Meredith. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. Tatum. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And that carries unanimously. Mr. Sandy, project updates.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Really, today's time is going to be devoted to primarily Zytel talking about their body 2024 project in the county. But as you recall, maybe from some previous conversations, they are also a bead participant in the county as well. So I asked Rodney to share information on that. And then kind of the bigger one is kind of what the new direction we're headed on the project for the southern portion of the county that previously was with River Street. There's some news which, you know, some information have been sent to you. You've probably seen some news articles as well. The change of the ISP for that project from River Street to Zytel. So for us, as I tells working in the county really under three different projects maybe even maybe even more than three but at least three different funding mechanisms that they'll they'll be providing services to citizens in the county and Rodney does have some some slides to kind of show pictorially and kind of what that means as far as number of households that they will reach when they finish the various aspects of this project now the way it's kind of working is that all these different projects are going to kind of blend together and so they're going to be performing the work and i guess from a paperwork perspective they'll be doing some households under this and some under this but really from a work perspective it's really kind of all coming together and i'm sure rodney will speak to that as that's kind of one big project that that they're working on but for us just for clarity's sake we have it listed on the agenda kind of as the three different topics and so we'll try to do that but i think a lot of it is going to going to blend over into different things i think the big thing for us is that the good thing is that we've got an isp who's working actively in the county providing fiber services to a number of residents already and continuing to to reach others and we'll reach more through this this this new project agreement with west piedmont and with the state dhcd so I'll make a couple introductions, and like I said, we'll kind of go through the different aspects. If you recall, going back to the River Street project, that was a regional project that was really a West Piedmont Planning District Commission project that was Franklin County, Henry County, and Patrick County were all participants in that. And so Michael Armbruster is here from the PDC, and he'll share a little bit of context on that regional project. then Chandler Vaughn is here he's Chandler I hope I get your title right the new director of broadband broadband manager broadband czar I think there's a couple different terms czar but Chandler recent recently recently put into that position I've personally been working with Chandler for a number of years on the broadband initiative and so he's been a great partner And I just appreciate him coming down today to join us and give kind of an update from the state's perspective on this transition for the River Street project. And the state has approved most if not all aspects of that project being transitioned over to ZYTEL. So we'll give him an opportunity as well to speak to some of that. So maybe first we'll start with Rodney. And Rodney, an update maybe on the 2024 project. And then we'll move into kind of the regional project updates, if you would.

Good afternoon, Rodney. It's nice to have you back with us. Thank you.

I'll bring my punch card over for frequent speaking.

We'll hold you to that.

So we're moving right along and we have had me. We've had good progress for the 2024 grant in since and I think it's been two months since I've been here.

I think so.

So it's been two months since my last update. We've had really good progress in Franklin County, but the big change has just been in all the other stuff that we've had going on since we met last. I've kind of my slides kind of reference and we're just kind of show you. So. This is what we have built in entirety right now in Franklin County. What we categorize as POPS 1, 2, 3, and 4. 4 is still under construction. I think there's some little laterals going on, neighborhood roads, private roads that we're pulling off of it. But in a sense, we've got about 118 miles fiber of the entire project completed. We've got about 965 passings total that we can provide service to. And we've got 102 subscribers installed throughout Franklin County as of right now. this yellow line that we've added to the map that shows the remainder of the body 2024 project that we have to build it's about another hundred miles of fiber that goes straight south out of um the words area towards um and then through rocky mount and down into i guess the basset type area um in southern franklin county um this the project completion is still estimated to be around january 2027 which is the um the deadline for body um We still hope to have that as the completion for the body 2024. But with the changes and everything else that we've got, we don't know what we're doing. Because we have now a humongous project that we have a very short amount of time to get done. And the body 2024, correct me if I'm wrong, Chandler, does not have the same federal government ARPA U.S. Treasury deadlines hanging on top of it, does it?

Correct. But all those projects, as you know, are so intermingled where projects that you guys are building about time. Yes.

Yes. So the other projects have deadlines that have federal government, U.S. Treasury stuff, the RSN projects that were taken over. So those have hard deadlines that we have to get to or we're afraid the feds are going to start pulling money back from the state, which then takes away from the projects that you guys have approved. So we don't want that to happen. right so those have to become the priority those rsn um body 2022 and 2023 projects have to become the priority for us which if these other projects are going to suffer a little bit but they're all going to be co-mingled together so and you'll see when we start putting this stuff up here so when we add in this is this next slide shows your green route maps of what our engineering team is working on for the rsn assumption of the the assumption of their build for body 2022 and body 2020 23. um right now we are working with both river street and aep to obtain a status basically they've still got to give us the status of what they have completed we had a meeting with aep last week um They're sitting right at what, about 360, 350 miles. They only think they've got about 25 miles of fiber left to complete. Yeah, for their backbone.

Rodney, if I could interrupt, maybe this would be a good opportunity for Michael and Chandler to kind of set the stage for the regional project and then have you come back then and speak to kind of the timeline and the process that you guys are looking to follow, if that's okay?

Of course, whatever you guys need me to do.

Okay, great. Thank you. He's the maestro.

Stay awake.

Hello, Michael.

How are you?

I'm well. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the board. Happy to be here with some good news, as we've already kind of heard what's happened. I know we've been here many months with River Street and didn't hear much progress other than AEP. So I'm excited about the path we have moving forward. We worked through the corrective action process with DHCD and River Street, came to the conclusion that there was no corrective action. So we, Zytel worked with River Street on a term sheet. So now we're able to just move Zytel into the project. DHCD has amended the contract with us. So we're able to work with Zytel and just move the projects forward. Very happy about that. They're ready to move. So Excited to see the project start moving forward. We are finishing up the change of scope documentation. We just have two documents left based on the budget, so we're just working out those final budget numbers with ZYTEL and DHCD. Then the full change of scope should be submitted and hopefully ready to approve. uh i don't want to talk too much because we do have mr vaughn here and and as you mentioned he's the broadband czar so he can probably provide better updates than me but again happy to see the project now in a good spot ready to move forward and move quickly and if there's any questions throughout the day that i can help answer i'll be happy to do that thank you any questions from the authority members okay thank you

Mr. Vaughn, hello. Good afternoon. Nice to have you with us.

Thank you for having me. And I've been referred to as the broadband czar, so I guess I'll have to live up to that title.

That's all I'm going to see when I see you from now on.

Here we go. I appreciate the invite. Growing up, I listened to my dad tell stories about hitchhiking to Ferrum College for his junior college years. So it's good to be here in the neighborhood and see some of the stories that he was telling and talking about. In terms of broadband progress in Franklin County, I don't know if we have a graph that we can shift over to away from the ZYTAL presentation. Just wanted to jump in from a more holistic standpoint that progress across Franklin County has been good in the last three years. Obviously, we're shifting into high gear now, taking River Street out of the project and putting Zytel in, and we're confident in the progress that'll make to close the gap. But here's a representation of the coverage growth you've seen in Franklin County over the last three years. In the northeastern areas, a lot of that has been infill from Shentel, as you all know with that body partnership. And the same thing in the corridor of 220 going back up to Roanoke of a lot of infill to make sure there are no gaps left out in the Shentail coverage area. Of course, you can see there in the southeast and western portions of the county where we're going to be subbing in Zytel to take over and finish the job of what River Street did not. And I'm really confident in that project being set up for success, mainly on the backbone of Appalachian Powers Fiber that has already been run in that area. I feel good about the position Franklin County's in to be able to finish that project out. Quite frankly, I think you're in a really competitive position ahead of other counties that we're working with to find a new company to fill in the shoes of River Street after we've terminated those agreements. So just wanted to speak from a high level there, show you the progress that's been made, and then I believe we're in good position to finish the job in Franklin and then throughout the rest of the region as we go about. Happy to answer any questions and talk process, answer any questions you may have.

Mr. Vaughn, I have one if I may. Of course. I'm interested in the transition from River Street to Zytel. Are there hardline deadlines for transition purposes of closeouts? I don't know if closeout is the right terminology under the circumstance, but basically ensuring that Zytel has everything that they need in that transitionary phase. and in a timely manner.

There is. The hard deadline for this project is now set by the federal government. So to get into the details, this project that was under River Street, now Zytel, is funded by something called the Capital Project Funds. That has a hard deadline now of June 30, 2027 for project completion. So based on Appalachian Power's backbone already being run in these areas, I feel good about that. Of course, Zytel is going to be stepping up to the plate and delivering there. That is the hard and fast deadline now for the project is June 30th, 2027.

Okay. So that deadline was moved from what it was originally?

That's right. Originally, the federal government had a deadline of December 31st, 2026. So the Department of Treasury at the federal level who oversees those dollars, they were the ones that offered up the six-month extension. We applied for it and were successful in getting that six-month extension.

Okay.

Any other questions? Go ahead.

And so you all are confident that that deadline will be met? Yes. That's the B dollars and the other.

VATI.

The VATI 2020. I get confused.

Right. And there are four different initiatives now that we're all balancing, right? And the reason there's four different initiatives is that the maps tend to get better after every year and you find homes that may have been left out of previous projects and you fund those and The BEAD program is the kind of the once and for all project where we've identified at an address by address level finally what homes do and don't have service. And I was speaking when Rodney was up here presenting previously that a lot of these projects are gonna have to be done in tandem with each other because all these addresses are intermingled along a road, right? You may have three houses that are funded by one project and the next three houses funded by another. And that's just because the maps have gotten better over the years. So when it comes to meeting that June 30th, 2027 deadline, there will be some degree of prioritization by Zytel, right? If there is a one road that has all of the addresses funded by this capital project fund dollars, there's going to be some degree of prioritization to pick up those roads. But naturally speaking, to get to that road, there's going to probably have to be three others built, right? So you're going to see a lot of this progress happen in tandem. You may see some, I don't want to call it awkward, right? But you may see some kind of, well, why did Zytale make a dogleg there to get those addresses done? If they make an awkward dogleg in construction that you all see, it's probably because they're picking up the addresses that have been funded with this June 30th, 2027 deadline. Gotcha.

Are you good? Any other members of the authority have any questions, comments? Thank you, Mr. Vaughn. We appreciate it very much. Glad to be here. Thanks.

June 30th, 2027.

Do you want to switch back to the other one? Yeah.

that's a great map by the way we'll probably have chandler come back talk more about bead too after after rodney goes through that's the next slide i don't i don't do big long slide presentations with all kinds of information i just um what this map shows you is this is we have started our low level engineering and this shows you the green route maps of where the rsn 2022 and 2023 body projects lie Like I said, we're currently working with both RSN and AEP to get a list of what they've built. We had to go through the NDA process with AEP. They're going to give us the shape files, the GIS files to show us where they've built fiber. We've got to take that and we've got to, and really the only place this affects is the Franklin County project because we've already got fiber here. We've already got a footprint here. We've got to see, does that AEP fiber run that they designed for River Street, does it still fit with what we've already got? Because they designed it for a River Street network that's coming from North Carolina up into Franklin County, whereas we build out of Bedford County north to south into Franklin County. So the design may need to be tweaked a little bit. It's not going to change what AEP did. We're not going to add work to anything. It just may change. Well, this 20 mile section of fiber, you were originally going to let River Street use it. We don't really need it because we've already got fiber in the ground. There's no reason for us to lease it from you when we've already got it in the ground. So we've got to adjust that, negotiate on that contract. And I've already started talking to them about it. They're they're they're ready to move.

Good. I was worried about that.

We've already met with some of the delays. No, they're not. You didn't get any impression from AEP that they had any delays whatsoever. They're going to have their project completely done before the end of this year. They're part of the project.

Okay.

Oh, very good. Very good. I just think just sheerly moving it from River Street to Zotel just on that basis alone and knowing the bureaucratic nature of AEP, things like that can put a big hiccup in things from a timing perspective sometimes. But it sounds like everything is weekly set up for meetings. That's a good sign.

And then we have a meeting with River Street tomorrow morning, 9 o'clock. Meeting with River Street tomorrow morning with their engineering department. We've got to get a list of deliverables from them, things that they already have. What materials do they own? What engineering have they done? What permits do they have in place? What do they have for deliverables that they have to transfer to us? We still haven't seen that list to know whether what they have fits our model of how we design and build a network. We've got to make sure that it does and that the deliverables they have fit with what we want and we can take possession of that and have that transfer to us. We have not waited on them to get their engineering. You know that we we have already started our own engineering and design for this area all the way down through Patrick and through Henry County. So we're doing it as one continuous project. We are finishing up a project in South Carolina right now in the Spartanburg area. We actually have our close out lunch launch and learn event on saturday down in spartanburg at one of the local volunteer fire departments and that closes out the project the governor's office and everybody's coming in for south carolina for that event we have 10 construction crews down there working right now to finish the last little bit of that project up they're all being diverted to this river street networks project, if we can have the engineering. We're trying to time it so that we have engineering and permitting. And in fact, we had a bead construction kickoff call yesterday with our project manager, Kevin, with the ACD. He lined it all up so that we had a meeting with Abe or with 811 uh vdot all the teams were there and i took kind of took control of the meeting a little bit to try to talk about this river street and say listen we've got this coming up this is going to be the priority and we're going to need your help getting permits you know this was vdot in richmond you know so we were talking to them about we're going to need your help to get these permits fast tracked we're going to need 811's help to make sure that there are no delays because so and so won't come and mark and timely manner and delays construction by a couple days and then the rains hit and delay it a couple more weeks we cannot have any delays in this project because we've got 10 months to get two years worth of work built so um

So you don't want rain, but we want rain.

I don't want any rain. I don't care that I can't get my boat out of the dock and that the shoreline looks like a beach now. I don't care. I don't want any rain. I understand. Stay in this drought for the next 10 months. Sorry, that's horrible for everybody to hear, but from my perspective, I need no rain any. Understood. I need no snow this winter. I want a warm winter. You have to keep mowing your grass until December. I need to be out there working.

We hear you, Rodney. We'll be watching.

If we do get that and the lake drops another 10 feet, you can blame it all on me.

Now, don't say that out loud. You're going to be killed.

I know. I'm sorry. The next slide. Now this shows our bead. We don't have any engineering level, low level engineering for me to give you any route line route work on here. But this shows you the seven 1705 eligible addresses that we have to serve within Franklin County for bead.

That's the purple dots.

That's the purple dots. So that shows you how much we've got to build. It's an additional 535 miles of extensions off of our existing fiber that we're going to have when the green, yellow and blue all gets completely built. We'll work on that now. Does that mean some of this bead will probably get done once we get the NEPA approvals to begin construction, which are coming any day now? Right, Tim? Any day, any day, any day now we can we can start working on that project completion. It's a 36 month project. I think it's a 35 month project. So we're expecting Our completion, if we start construction around January, then we're expecting a January 2030 timeline for Franklin County. Franklin County and Bedford County, just because it's our existing footprint, we've just got to build this neighborhood road and this neighborhood road. It's not going to be nearly that long. It's just little extension roads. There's a little bit of main line, little middle mile to build for the B project, but it's not nearly as much as we have in some counties where we don't have a specific footprint. Once we get done with this project, once all these different colors are just one color, just blue lines of what Zytel has in Franklin County, so at the end of this tunnel, which hopefully we'll be able to see the light at the end of that tunnel soon, Zytel will have total serviceable addresses in Franklin County that will exceed 10,000. Once all three projects are completed, we're gonna have over 1,100 miles of distribution fiber throughout Franklin County, which by my estimations will make us the largest ISP in franklin county wow so between franklin county and bedford county we're going to have well over 3 000 miles of fiber and over 40 30 35 000 passings that we can have and it'll put us the biggest provider in the area for these so the smith mountain lake area will be the largest provider especially when we get down in henry county on the south side of lake down around leesville lake so We're super excited about where we're going as a company. We've got 68 employees now, most of which live in Bedford and Franklin County. We expect to probably have grown to 150 to 200 employees by the time we get to this at the end of 2020.

20 20 28 20 29 somewhere that's one thing I was going to ask Rodney about capacity once you all moved into the River Street uh footprint you know about Zytel's capacity um are you at a good place right now are you going to have to hire up we're going to have to hire up oh that's that's that's that's guaranteed I mean Ted already talks to me about the three people he wants me to hire in engineering right now and I'm like nope not yet Are you worried about that? No, we've got pretty good results.

I mean, we do really well in the industry. I mean, when we put out jobs, people want to come work for us. I think we're a great company to work for. I think we're in a great area that people like to work. You've got to realize, for the other providers, the people that work for Shentel that live here, the people that work for River Street that live here, the people that work at Comcast or Cox that live here, They've got to go to Roanoke. They've got to go to Lynchburg. They've got to go to South Boston where those companies are headquartered. There's a lot of talent here right here in Bedford and Franklin that work for Verizon. That's where Ted came from. You know, that work for Shentail, that work for the other providers that are going into Roanoke and Lynchburg that don't want to anymore. They want to stay here. So we've had pretty good luck. We get plenty of, you know, we haven't seen a loss of interest in coming to work for us.

Well, good. Good luck with all of that, certainly.

So, like I said, we're super excited about where we're at and where we're going to be. There will be a lot of sleepless nights on my part over the next 10 months trying to get this River Street thing built. But we asked for it. We stepped into this. And we're not going to let you guys down. We're going to attack this wholeheartedly and get it completed.

Well, I can say, Rodney, I believe I speak on behalf of the board. We're very, very grateful for ZYTAL stepping up and filling this gap. And our citizens are going to be the benefactors of this. And it's hugely important to all of our citizens and this board that we get this done and we're very proud of where we are. Seeing that map just a few minutes ago and then being able to fulfill that with the work you're doing is gonna be a day to celebrate. So thank you very much.

It's one of the things that Bedford County and Franklin County can both tell. And I lump you guys together because from our perspective, it's our home. It's the Smith Mountain Lake area that we're the home community. But we go all the way out to Boonesboro and Bedford County, and then we're going all the way to Callaway and all the way to the other side of the county with you guys. But when you look at the services that we offer and the services available, we have the ability for Bedford and Franklin County residents to get 5-gig home internet service i don't know of any provider in roanoke and lynchburg that's providing that really not at all comcast can come nowhere close cox can come nowhere close and glow fiber is not even doing it because they still have all of the chantal coax cable that's in their back hall feeding that glow fiber we're the only all fiber provider in the area so we can provide five gig residential service which we are Nobody has taken – I mean, it's $400 a month, so nobody in Bedford and Franklin County have signed up for it. But in the Spartanburg area, we have two subscribers that have a 5-gig circuit. And we can offer up to 10-gig circuits for small businesses. So I don't think there's any provider in southwest Virginia. You're going to have to go into Hampton Roads and northern Virginia to find speeds like that. to get that type of service. So it's something that this community, your economic development departments here should really tout about what's available in this area.

Yeah, do any of the authority members have any questions? Yes, Mr. Mitchell.

Rodney, I'm sure you sat in on some of our meetings with River Street over the last, where they were here speaking. And you already answered this question, but thank you all for stepping up. And you were 100% confident that y'all would be able to take this to the finish line, right? We would not have went after the project if we didn't think we could. So when you all get by my house here on this map, what's that internet going to cost me a month? Are you a purple dot? I'm assuming I'm a purple dot because I don't have a green or a yellow line.

You can get the basic residential starter package, which we just changed.

$59.95 a month?

$59.95 a month for the basic starter package, which is a 250 meg over 250 meg. So it's double the FCC's broadband, more than double the FCC's broadband standard. And then you can go all the way up to, we have the most popular package we had is 129.99, which is a two gig download and 1.2 gig upload. And that's unlimited. We don't cap your data or charge you extra if you're gonna download the entire contents to the Library of Congress. If you have four kids that are watching Netflix 24 hours a day, seven days a week, we don't care. We don't track your data caps or your high-end speeds or anything like that. So you're not going to get a nasty letter from us telling us that you've downloaded three terabytes for the month. And then, you know, you can get up to, like I said, the five gig package, which is close to $400 a month. But, you know, it's five years from now, the five, you know, five, 10 years from now, who knows, five gig or 10 gig is going to be the standard that's $69 a month. It changes as the internet changes, as we are streaming 3D holographic images into our home, whatever it is that we're doing, who knows what we're going to be doing. I mean, everybody that's just it everybody wants every single show i mean my dad was watching a show called emergency from 1977 streaming off of hulu who in the world decided to take that yeah boy huh yeah every show every tv show you've ever thought of that ever that's ever been made everybody wants it on demand instantaneous at their fingertips stored in the cloud that you can stream so it's just an enormous amount of data out there that

know that we have to facilitate getting into people's homes they want to see it they want to have it so well we're very appreciative um just one more round any comments questions i think you are a purple dot just yeah i look like a purple dot um and hopefully that's not a 2035 dot so i think a 2035 dot yeah i'm hanging in there with bright speed but i'm this close to going to starling

Y'all better hurry up, man.

Starlink. All right.

So just I think this map is really good and telling. And just to recap, I mean, the blue and the yellow is really the body 2024 project that the county has with Zytel. The green really represents what they're taking over from River Street, that service area.

Yep, which is I'd enter the green is body 2022 and which one's. Yeah, I don't either really. We're long. It's kind of all in there. We're not. We're not. The city is going to have that segregated and the planning district will have that segregated from from our perspective for a construction standpoint. We're just building it all as one contiguous product.

Right. And then the purple represents the BEAD, the remaining federal funding. And then I would like, if Chandler wouldn't mind, maybe to just come back and speak more generally about the BEAD program and process in the state. I think would be helpful contextually to just to kind of understand where that's where that's gone, where it's headed, and kind of where we are in that process. But I think this map is good just to kind of show. Oh, yes, absolutely. And it also shows the complexity that we've kind of shared for years, and Chandler kind of alluded to it, too. It's just as mapping has progressed and changes in technology and various things, it's been very much a spider web of kind of getting broadband out, but I think With this picture, we can really see the future is close. The end, hopefully, is close within the next year or two of getting really most of this done by that time.

Where is your purple dot?

He's going to make sure.

Look at the Franklin County Parks and Rec there on Sontag. Yeah, in that general area.

The only other address that I definitely know where it's on here is Bill Stanley's. I've been reminded many times where his address is.

I'm sure he's got you starring it. Thank you, Rodney.

Thank you, Rodney. Thank you very much.

It's impossible to shift control over to this one. I've got a couple of maps online that would be helpful to show and share here.

And I put Chandler on the spot there, by the way. That's all right. We didn't plan that, but I thought it might be helpful.

He was highly capable. This is what the broadband czar does. That's right. You pull up maps. There you go. All right. Let's see here.

And I will, as that's being pulled up, he didn't hesitate about coming here. So I appreciate that. And, you know, spending is a little time with us. And I think this project and just the transition of this project is important. And I think they also understand that. And I think that's one question I did have, Chandler, for you and for Michael. Is there anything you need from Franklin County as far as any board approval or any kind of thing? I don't think so, but if that's something that's needed, let us know. I think the other thing, we touched on American Electric Power. That is another partner to all this that critical and so I think you know certainly in future meetings we'll invite them back like they've been here before as a partner and if we can help in any way with VDOT or APCO in that effort we're certainly you know willing to help as much as we can to keep the project on track and on schedule because we know how important it is to meet that deadline. So if there is anything else you can think of that you do need from Franklin County, please let us know.

We certainly will on the state's behalf. Likely need to defer to the Planning District Commission on some of those questions. But in terms of executing agreements to formalize the transition from River Street to Zytel, we've done those with the Planning District Commission. So I don't have anything on my list in particular for the county, but we'll certainly keep you all posted on that front if we do.

Thank you.

Working on working on pulling up a map here and working on pulling up what broadband coverage looks like three years ago in Franklin County. Sometimes it takes this layer to load a lot because it's got a process through about three million address points across the state. So we'll see if it pulls up a red coverage layer here. But, you know, we work in this alphabet soup of broadband programs and acronyms. So this just really breaks down. the work of Franklin County over the last several years. So the red areas that are now coming up on this map represent what broadband coverage was in June of 2024. That's on this map. That's as far back as we can. Of course, if we went back to 2021, it would be less coverage. And these last areas are popping up here now. So just bear with me. Franklin County now has participated in several years of state broadband investment grant programs. In 2021, that project evolved into a Shentel partnership where you built out and extended their cable and fiber network in the county. 2022 was a large investment year, and it's a combination of two different grants, one with Shentel with the county to build out service there, and then the other one was the one we're talking about now, formerly with River Street Networks, now with Zytel. Franklin County, forgive me not knowing, but also participated in the 2023 grant program. That was also formerly a West Piedmont PDC and River Street project, but we've also transitioned that over. So this is technically two different grants, formerly River Street, now Zytel. You can see I'm just going to toggle these on and off so you see where those 2023 areas are. And then 2024 funding, you can see there as well, that's the Zytel project in 2024. And I'll toggle on and off there so you can see where that came in. And that represents those blue and yellow lines that Rodney was showing earlier. I said at the beginning that, you know, broadband grants and the number of broadband grants can be explained by the maps getting better and better and better. So, you know, back in 2021, maybe it looked like wireless company served the entirety of the county right and over time through either deactivating service coverage or us getting better data about whether or not the coverage is available we find additional homes that need investment we've gone out and invested in those areas The BEAD program is the final stake in the ground on broadband access, and you can see here those purple dots across the county. The reason BEAD looks like TV static is because that was the first time we had address level maps to know whether or not to the individual home if there's broadband coverage available at that address or not. So you're seeing in the BEAD funded area, there's a lot of infill. You know, there's a lot of infill in Zytel's existing footprint and several grant programs leading up to today. There's also a lot of infill in the Shentail cable footprint up against the lake. And a lot of those are explained and maybe you hear from constituents over there. If your district is over along the lake, right, where if somebody's got a thousand foot driveway or a 2000 foot driveway, Maybe the existing carrier there has declined running an extension down their driveway because it's cost prohibitive for them to have any ROI on that address. Well, we've picked those up finally under the BEAD program and Zytel has been funded to come in and build that address. It's not our intention to offer two forms of service under the BEAD program, but that's in some cases what's naturally going to happen, especially in these areas where you see a lot of purple dots in places of red, existing coverage, and then green, VATI funding, where the net result will be constituents and folks having choice of what internet service to offer. And that's not our goal going into it, right? We want to be good stewards of public dollars and make sure we're offering at least one service but I think it's a good outcome right competition being a good thing in the private market and folks having choice of what service to subscribe to let me briefly briefly show in closing who are the bead winners at each address as I tell of course is the predominant awardee in Franklin County I apologize they're going to be gray on this map so it's best if I zoom out a little bit so you can see the footprint but that's what Rodney shared earlier in terms of the purple dots you could also see the river street awards in franklin county this is about 80 no excuse me i think it's about 50 addresses we've recently terminated those bead agreements and we'll proceed with the re-bidding process for those 50 addresses in franklin county and keep you all posted on where those land I'm not trying to read the tea leaves or go ahead of myself, but those 50 addresses are going to predominantly be in the area that Zytel is now building out off of the Appalachian Power backbone. I'm not going to tell you Zytel is going to win those addresses because we've got to go through the competitive process, but in general, I'd imagine they'd be able to submit a pretty competitive proposal because they're already going to be building in those neighborhoods. A couple other things we want to say in terms of the bead program. Heard Starlink mentioned previously. Starlink won some infill addresses in the western portion of the county in the Farram area and then north up against Floyd County. You can see about 100 of those addresses where Starlink is the provider. We have signed our bead agreement with Starlink and I understand they're moving quickly to offer service to those addresses. That'll come to them in the form of a mailer to say you're eligible for Starlink coverage under the BEAD program, and then folks can sign up for service from there on. There are a couple, meaning two or three or four addresses in the county that are a part of Amazon Leo's BEAD award. Amazon Leo is going to offer a similar service to Starlink. And they're in the process of launching their satellite capacity now and will activate service in the middle of 2027 for their low Earth orbit satellite coverage service, shortened to LEO is the fun acronym there. So glad to answer any questions you may have, but the bulk of it is ZYTEL, which you have the details on now through Rodney.

Thank you.

One question on the SpaceX. If someone already has that service and they're now eligible, do you know how that will work?

We're working on that now. When it comes to federal compliance for these awards, there's a lot of service provision requirements. We're making sure all of those apply to these locations, even if they already have a terminal at those addresses.

Any authority members have any questions, comments? OK. Are you good, Mr. Sandy? OK. Thank you so much.

Can I say one more thing?

Certainly. Certainly.

You had asked if there was anything the county could do, and I can.

I know you want us to make it make it not rain, right? You make that clear.

I don't want you guys to have that looming over your head. You have a proposal in front of you that I get that we put together with Jeff and I'm going to butcher his last name and rock with emergency management services. I think you're going to see that soon. There's got to be some public hearings, full transparency of the government. But it's a it's the co-location shared agreement between us and emergency paid emergency management services so that we can, A, backhaul your radio links between all your towers, B, utilize the co-location of all the existing communications buildings that they have throughout the county, one being in Burnt Chimney, which is part of the body 2024, but there's 10 other locations that we could potentially use throughout this project that we have an agreement with, and you guys I'm sure will get a copy of that agreement. You can read through it. I just ask that you, We need to just like I asked VDOT and 811 to put an emphasis on everything, not having any delays on this. I know you have to have your public hearing. It has to be advertised for so many days. But if we could just set that to to happen as quickly as possible, because all of that builds on every single mile of fiber that we have to put in the ground, we can't really finalize any design plans until we know that we have the secured locations for those pops and stuff in place. So

That's a point well taken. Thank you, Rodney. Thank you. Mr. Sandy?

I have nothing further.

Okay. I would like to thank our guests for being with us today. Is there anything that you all, in closing, would like to speak to the board about? Anything at all?

I'll just say briefly, Steve has been a strong advocate, I think, of the board when it comes to cellular coverage in Franklin County. We are trying to incubate a program around cellular coverage, but a lot of it hinges on whether or not the federal guidance that comes out for the remaining funding It allows for investment in cell towers, but just want to let you know you got a strong advocate here with the administrator when it comes to expanding cell coverage. And we work together a lot at first part of last year until the federal government paused that planning process, hoping things pick back up this late summer, early fall when it comes to cell service. It will certainly keep you all posted through Steve when it comes to that work. But I just wanted to say that briefly because we've worked on it in the past with Franklin County and know that's a concern as well, especially when it comes to emergency services. Yes.

Thank you, Mr. Vaughn.

Glad to.

Okay. I will move on on the agenda. Are there any other matters or comments that the authority members would like to make at this time? Anything? Anything. OK, I will entertain a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

And second?

Second.

Thank you. And all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. OK, very good. We are formally adjourned. Thank you, gentlemen. Good afternoon, everyone. On behalf of the board, we're very appreciative to have you with us this afternoon. I'm officially calling the meeting to order today, Tuesday, August 18, at 3 PM. We will have our invocation offered by Supervisor Mitchell, followed by our Pledge of Allegiance by Supervisor Quinn. So if you would all stand, please.

Good afternoon, everyone. Glad to have you with us. Let us pray. Dear Lord, thanks for bringing us all together here. Thanks to this good group of people who leads the county. Lord, please be with us. Help us make wise decisions, and thanks to move this county forward. In a reading from Proverbs 10, 19, when words are many, sin is unavoidable, but he who restrains his lips is wise. Amen.

Amen. All right, thank you all very, very much. The next thing on the agenda is actually approval of the agenda. And at the will of the board, I'd like to defer briefly to Mr. Sandy. He's got a couple. changes that he would like to suggest for the consent agenda. Mr. Sandy.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So what we would request is remove item number 12 from the consent agenda from consideration. That's the item relative to contract with Zytel regarding use of some county property at the burnt chimney collection site where the water tank is. And what we would propose as well is that we amend number five to add two additional parcels to that list to have a public hearing in September. So those would be parcel 0280013201 and 0280013100. And that's after consulting with legal counsel. about just making sure we're following the right steps. There were previous public hearings held on that parcel, but they date back to about 2014. So it's council's advice that we go ahead and hold an additional public hearing on that. So we would ask that those changes be made to the agenda if it's the will of the board.

Thank you, Mr. Sandy. Are there any other items that the supervisors you would wish to pull?

Just for further discussion, please.

Okay. Yes, sir. Anyone else?

I'd like some discussion on item number 10.

Okay. All right. So we've got four and ten for further discussion. Anything else? OK, what I will do at this juncture is to ask for approval of the consent agenda with the exception of items four and 10, noting the amendments that Mr. Sandy has made. And removing 12. Thank you. Thank you. So is there a motion to approve the consent agenda with those considerations?

I make a motion. Second.

Thank you. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And that carries unanimously. OK. Let's begin with number four. Mr. Quinn?

sure so i understand what we're getting and reading through the write-up but i just like to have a better feeling that what we'll get will be actionable that we'll do something with it because i know we had a similar program back in 2023 and i'm not sure what happened with that and so i i would just like to hear more around what what we'll do with the results from the consult consulting study and feel better that it's going to produce something actionable for the county okay mr sandy

Yeah, I'll look to maybe Danny can provide some additional insight on this request for proposal.

Good afternoon, Danny. Good afternoon. So to answer your question, yes, there is a data pool in 2023. While we would look to get new data and information from this consultant or partner, the real outcome we're looking for is the contacts and connections so we can build relationships with retailers. and that at the end of a contract, we're able to carry those forward. So as conditions within the county would change, we would be able to reach out, have Touchpoint say X, Y, and Z has changed, would we be a better fit for your retailer to come in and open up here in Franklin County? So that's part of it, but in addition, A stack of papers with data is wonderful, but what are we doing with it? What is it the information that the retailers want to know? How do we shape that narrative? We understand what's important to us, rooftops, household income, what have you, but each retailer is looking for something different. And so these consultants understand and know what the retailers are looking for, and they would be able to advise us so we could shape that information. into a relationship and be able to carry it forward and utilize it so we could have an outcome that is visible to the community.

OK, do you have any questions?

Mr just one follow up question. So I I saw a lot of the 2023 presentation and one of the interesting features of that was there now using cell data to count people rather than road strips like they used to. And I I wondered will some of this cell data where they can understand what's going on with the population in Franklin County due to the cell. Beeps that they get. Will that be part of this also? Do you know?

It should be, and we can ensure that that would be in the RFP. What's in the packet is really just a request to put out the RFP. So if there's specific information that we would like added to that scope of work or deliverables, we can ensure that we include it.

I think that would help a lot, because I think that in certain cases, the developers, they don't have that. They're counting rooftops or even the old road strips. And it's just not the best way to do it. And some of the cell data, I think, could really bolster what we have. We can be sure to include it.

Thank you, Danny. So Danny, would that require an adjustment to the RFP scope?

Yes, we would need to add that in. There's several bullet points in there. I don't have it in front of me, but we can make sure we put it in there.

Okay. Mr. Quinn, does that satisfy? Okay. Thank you, Dean. We appreciate it.

I got a question.

I'm sorry.

Sure.

You know, I know we're part of a partnership with the area. Is this something that they don't, I mean, do they have the research or data stuff with our partnership? I'm just kind of concerned, not concerned, just curious. If we're paying for a partnership that's supposed to help with economic development and all that, why would this be separate from what they could provide to us?

Absolutely. They cover a lot of the industry, larger industry, not so much on the retail side. Retail is a whole different beast. And there's different categories of it. You can do big box, you could do coffee shops. And what we're looking for really is intentional development in the designated growth areas around the county for what fits best here. We're not looking for the large scale industry in this realm. And so while the partnership is a wonderful asset and can absolutely pull data for us, they're not gonna have the contacts and connections that some of these retail consultants have.

Okay, and what is, I didn't see a budget.

It's in her budget.

It is. I'm just. I'm not asking for dollars at this point. I'm really just asking to go out to get proposals and we would evaluate those and bring back any budget requests for your all's approval. OK, I just.

Yeah, I think.

I didn't know where they was.

No, that's a great question, Mr. Meredith. And I think when she comes back, it'll be denoted that the dollars are already appropriated in her budget. But we'll have to see what those amounts come back. Correct. On the RFPs themselves as to whether that amount needs to be adjusted. Is that fair enough? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Meredith, does that satisfy your question? Okay. Very good. All right. Number 10, Mr. Carter.

Thank you, Madam Chair. That concerns Constitution Solar Project. And I fielded several phone calls about this. And for the audience, this is due to a court order. And from our book, the county shall not unreasonably withhold, condition, or delay this approval. And I would like for the county attorney to comment on that for the record before we vote on it.

Thank you. Mr. Gwynn.

The long and short of it is the judge found that we made an error when we decided that it did not comply with our comprehensive plan on a 2232 review. And because of the way that land use laws work in Virginia, the judge himself can't order the approval, but he can order us to approve it. And so that's what that order did and that's what we're doing today. And I will say this. The Constitution Solar also agreed to enter into the development agreement that we had posited initially as being required. It's not clear under the court's order that it would have been, but they did. And we're appreciative of that. But we really are in a position where we don't have a whole lot of choice because all of the factors that fit with the comprehensive plan, they met. Under the circumstances, court found that our denial violated the law, long and short of it.

Does that satisfy your question? Very good. Thank you. Mr. Tatum.

Do we have a copy of that signed court order? Mm-hmm. OK.

I would just like to add that I find that we're extremely fortunate that they've agreed to enter back into the original agreement with the upfront money and the things like that. That didn't have to happen. And I would ask, we'll talk about it at a later date, We've got some work that's got to be done down at Fort Mountain for the paid staff at that building. So I would like to see. We'll have this conversation when that comes up. Maybe some of that money coming from this would be a great benefit to that community.

OK. OK. Thank you. OK.

In that regard, Mr. Mitchell, I'd be remiss if I didn't commend my partner, Chris for doing the negotiating with me. He did a heck of a job to get Constitution to agree to do that.

And please convey our gratitude to Mr. Dadak. And I would just reaffirm the fact that this project is in one of our non-zoned areas. And as such, Utility Solar Farm going into these areas, they do not have to comply with our zoning ordinances. They do have to comply with the comprehensive plan. And they have to demonstrate alignment with the comprehensive plan, and they have done so. So I think that this will bring finality to this matter. We have in our hands the signed order of the court. So Mr. Tatum.

One more question. Sure. Does this acreage come off of the total acreage that we have? OK. So this acreage comes off the? what we previously passed as a county ordinance dealing with solar farms, I think, what did we say, 1,500 acres countywide?

There is a top of 1,500 acres, yes.

And so this comes off of that? Correct. Okay.

So meaning when we reach a point in the county, the entire county, that our solar farm acreage reaches 1,500, then we're done. And we will not be approving or being asked to approve any further utility solar farms.

Can we look at that possibility of lowering that number?

We can do whatever is at the will of the board. If you'd like to make a formal request, Mr. Tatum, that the board take that discussion up. Mr. Gwynn, do you have a problem with that?

No. I think that we probably are going to have to do a little looking and see what other folks have done and see what courts have approved as far as minimums.

OK. Yeah.

I mean, I think it's the will of the board.

So Mr. Tatum, does anybody on the board have objection to us taking some next steps for investigation with potential this issue coming back before the board for discussion and or action? Anybody object to that? Okay, Mr. Tatum, consider it done.

Thank you.

Sir. And Mr. Glynn, if you would assist us with that, that would be great. Sure. And Mr. Sandy.

Yes, I would recommend it.

Oh, yes. Absolutely. On these two items? Yes, sir. OK. So at this juncture, we will entertain item 4 and 10 separately for approval. I would ask for a motion to approve item 4 of the consent agenda.

I'll make a motion.

Thank you, Mr. Quinn. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Mr. Tatum. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. That carries. I would also like to entertain a motion to approve item 10 of the consent agenda.

I'll make a motion.

Well, Mr. Quinn, did you make that motion? And Mr. Jamieson, second. OK. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those like sign. OK. All right. Thank you all for this great discussion. We are going to jump back to a fun portion of our agenda. I got a little bit ahead of myself. We want to take an opportunity this afternoon to honor our wonderful public safety chiefs, and the first one beginning Callaway. So Mr. Jamison, if you would like to, we'd like to call forward our Callaway Fire Department to come to the front, if you would be so kind. And Mr. Jamison and I will present. a resolution.

We're going to start with the Calvary Fire Department.

Yes. We recently celebrated 60 years for the Callaway Fire Department. That's amazing. This resolution appreciation, it says, whereas the Callaway Volunteer Fire Department proudly celebrates 60 years of dedicated service to Franklin County, and whereas since the founding in 1966, the department has faithfully served its community through emergency response, public education, leadership, and volunteerism. And whereas, through six decades of service, its members have embodied the values and honors, sacrifice, and commitment, and defined the volunteers of our service. And whereas, the department's 60th anniversary represents a remarkable milestone and serves as a testament to the generations of volunteers who have devoted themselves to protecting neighbors and strengthening their community. And be it therefore resolved that Franklin County Board of Supervisors hereby express deep appreciation and respect for Callaway Volunteer Fire Department's lasting contributions and enduring legacy of services and congratulate you on your 60 years of outstanding service. Retired from Callaway Volunteer Fire Department. Not retired. You ain't leaving, are you? Webb is a founding member of Callaway Volunteer Fire Department and has faithfully served Franklin County for 60 years, 42 of which were served as chief of the department. That's amazing. Chief Webb has dedicated his entire volunteer service career to a single mission, serving the citizens of Franklin County and helping build Franklin County Volunteer Fire Department to the organization that is today. And whereas his leadership has spanned generations of firefighters and community members, mentoring, countless volunteers while preserving the traditions and values of the Volunteer Fire Service. And whereas Chief Webb's longtime service represents an unparalleled commitment to public safety and leaves an enduring legacy that will continue to benefit Franklin County for generations to come. Be it therefore resolved that Franklin County Board of Supervisors hereby express deep appreciation respect for James Webb and his service and his lifetime commitment to Franklin County and its residents you know there's a saying behind or beside every good man There's a better woman, I think. And I want to recognize Dot. For 30 years, James says. But I tell you one thing, Dot. God bless you for putting up with James. We really appreciate it. You know, she goes on calls, all these people do, and they're neighbors. Where are you going to? And sometimes it's tragedy. But, Doc, thank you. They're neighbors. Just a hug. Anything, give them. I know. But thank you so much.

okay it's my honor to call up Dempsey Moore captain Dempsey fire chief I should say I was going to demote you Dempsey goodness gracious Dempsey, it is our pleasure to present you with a resolution of appreciation, and I'd like to read it. Whereas Fire Chief Dempsey Moore of the Scruggs Volunteer Fire Department retired on June 30th, 2026, which he wasn't really allowed to do, whereas Chief Dempsey Moore faithfully served the Scruggs Volunteer Fire Department for 29 years, including 14 years as chief. And whereas his distinguished service reflects a steadfast commitment to leadership, public safety, and the continued success of the volunteer fire service within Franklin County. And whereas throughout his tenure, Chief Moore demonstrated an unwavering dedication to protecting his community while helping strengthen his department through service and leadership. And whereas his contributions exemplify the spirit of volunteerism that has long defined Franklin County's emergency services system. and be it therefore resolved that the Franklin County Board of Supervisors hereby expresses their deep gratitude and admiration of Chief Moore for his years of service to Franklin County.

So if you all join.

I just want to say I'm nothing without these people right here. My success has been because of them. My wife, 50 years, she's been with me. She's put up with a whole lot of me being a chief. And James, I'll tell you, we're... We're nothing without the community and the people that's there with us. We're nothing. They deserve the credit too. I appreciate this. And I just retired as chief. I'm still helping out our new chief, which is a great man. I'm still going to do what I can. I've had some health problems, and that was my reason for stepping back. I'd have liked to have been there another 20, but... I got a good man there. He's going to do it. Thank you.

Madam Chair. Yes, sir. I'd like to comment if I could, please. Please, please. I have the opportunity to serve at the Henry Fire Department as a very young chief years ago. Chief Webb was one that any time I had a question, I could always go to him and ask him. And also Slim Crawford, who's no longer with us, was also another chief that I could go to. as well as Rodney Cundiff at Callaway. Those were three men that, as a young chief in a young department, I depended a great deal on. And it gives me great pleasure to see Jane here today. I served for many years on the dive team at the Sheriff's Department, and any time we got a call to Smith Mountain Lake for a body recovery, and those are not pleasant. uh events but anytime i got there and i saw jane was there on the pontoon boat i knew i was going to be okay because she had our back if we started she kept up with our times and our pressures and if we started getting close she'd start beating on the side of that pontoon boat and when we hear that clang and we knew it was time to come to the top so jane thank you for looking after us all those years

Thank you, Mr. Tatum. Words well spoken. Mr. Meredith. Yes, sir. So Mr. Meredith is going to present for his district. And if we is Captain Peters. Captain is Chief Peters here. I apologize. Okay. If you would read the resolution on the board's behalf, that would be wonderful. Thank you.

Whereas Chief Riley Peters of the Boones Mill Volunteer Fire Department retired on June 30th, 2026, and whereas Chief Riley Peters dedicated 25 years of volunteer service to the Boones Mill Volunteer Fire Department, including 14 years as chief. And whereas throughout his distinguished service, Chief Peters exemplified leadership, professionalism, and commitment that defines volunteer fire service. And whereas Chief Peters' years of service strengthened his department and positively impacted the citizens he faithfully served. And whereas through his leadership, Chief Peters demonstrated extraordinary sacrifices willingly made by volunteer firefighters in service to their communities and leaves a lasting legacy of dedication and public service. And be it therefore resolved that the Franklin County Board of Supervisors hereby express their deep appreciation and admiration of Chief Riley Peters and his years of service to Franklin County.

like to call up our fire chief to, I'm going to spit these words out if it kills me, to present this to Riley on our behalf. Thank you. Okay, we would like to, again, Riley, what a great service and a career for Franklin County. Our chiefs are excellent advocates. When I think about all of our chiefs advocating for their districts and for their stations, we stand above anybody else in the state. And we are very blessed to have our volunteers providing the services that are so critical to each and every family in Franklin County. And folks like Chief Moore, Chief Peters, and so forth, we are very blessed that they have the careers that they've had with us. And we remain very grateful moving forward. So thank you.

as madam chair is coming back up i'll just let the board know too that we are chief fowler and his staff are working with the volunteer association to do some additional kind of recognitions of other public safety personnel as well so we want to make sure we have a kind of a program in place and and we'll bring that back to you and at a future meeting so just wanted to point that out but Certainly with the Callaway celebrating a significant anniversary this year and three long-serving Chiefs retired, we wanted to make sure we acknowledged that as well. So thank you so much.

Thank you all. Okay, we will move on our agenda. Our next item is to call Lisa Lewis up from VDOT. Lisa, we're so pleased to have you with us this afternoon.

Thank you. good afternoon madam chair members of the board and mr. sandy happy to be here today to talk about our report it should be in front of you so I'll just hit some of the highlights on it first off the previous 30 days we did finish a pipe on Green Level Road that was closer to the end of Bethlehem Road so that's all finished next 60 days uh madcap road route 736 that actually has been completed that was a low water structure replacement and we finished that last week and it's open we're actively working on birds mill road which is closed it's a loop road on route 40 that's in the union hall district so that's in progress and it should be completed by september 4th still doing secondary mowing route 40 franklin street the paving operations that were happening there that is complete and then we're patching in preparation for next year's schedule if you go to sheet page two um land development we just finished reviewing a pretty significant housing development in the west lake area so we've provided comments back on that and we have of course the ongoing vetty grant permits and from what i understand from zytel we have several miles coming for us so we're going to be very busy or i'm going to be very busy um moving on to our traffic studies Route 623, Ingramville Road. We sent in a work order for a traffic study on that. Completed safety study, Brooks Mill Road. We had a crash, so we reviewed that area due to the crash, and they recommended just additional double sided chevrons. It's a sweeping curve there near 1129 Ponderosa. It's in the union hall district. And then this isn't on there, but recently we added a stop bar at the intersection of Scruggs and Guilford. You may be familiar with that. Uh, we added a stop bar there cause we've got quite a bit of pavement there. We have a few concerns about the site distance and we didn't have a stop bar and I think they were stopping at the stop sign, which was a little farther back. So we added a stop bar. And that should have been done last week. Project status. The only change, nothing has changed on these two, but I have moved some things to our construction. If you'll go to page three. So a couple things to point out, 220 and 919 Grassy Hill, that project is actually in progress. They are working at night. And you should see notice a temporary reduced speed limit there, a 45 that should be in place now. And during phase two of that project, they will be closing the crossover, which will be a significant impact. we will have there will be message boards up like they they did for bomb brook meal when phase two is going to start i'm not exactly sure but we'll keep you all informed but that's a pretty significant impact there are several ways to get through that burgess green level brick church we won't be signing a detour like we did for bomb brook and you can also just come out go southbound and do a u-turn if you're going to roanoke but again that's pretty significant impact The other one that was added for construction is 220 and Naff Road. So that will start early September. We're getting ready to have the pre-construction meeting on Thursday. Moving down, the business park. The poles are actually going up for the flashers for the signal. So it should be on target to be completed by the end of August.

Lisa, could you make a comment about that? I've fielded a lot of questions from people that think that's gonna be a stoplight there. Can you just say for the public what that actually is gonna be?

Yeah, so actually, initially it's going to be flashers, so it's just going to be flashing. And Mr. Sandy may know more than I do, but right now the signal isn't warranted, so it won't be functional. It'll just be flashing and in place. I don't know if you have anything you want to add. That's where we are right now.

Right. Yeah, the flashers will go up first, and then as traffic increases within the park to warrant the signalization, the signals will then be converted into more traditional signals.

Yeah, and I don't think we've really taken a look at it since the old brick church has closed. So that may be, hopefully that will help. But yeah, as of right now, it'll just be flashers. So we'll all probably get a lot of questions about that. Yeah. Also, we have the two rural rustics, Red Valley and Novella, that are in progress. Novella should be done by early September. And then Red Valley should be mid-October. So those are, like I said, they're active and they're not too far from being done. So do you all have any questions?

Thank you, Lisa. Are there any questions from supervisors? Anybody?

No question. I just wanted to reiterate a comment that she had made about the broadband projects and Lisa has been tremendous from all of our ISPs that have worked with VDOT on getting permits. She's been wonderful, but as she noted and as we heard earlier in the broadband meeting, There's going to be several more permit requests for the Zytel project. So we appreciate you always efficiently reviewing those and approving those and keeping that project going. They indicated to us they do have a deadline of June 30th of next year for finishing that project. So they're going to be looking for those permits really fast. So we appreciate you, and you always turn them around real quickly. I've heard so many positive things about the review process here compared to some other districts, and I won't name names, but she's been great. So we appreciate that, and it's helped a lot in those projects.

Well, thank you. Yeah, my mantra, we're here to help them, not hinder them. So I always try to do my best, but thank you.

No other questions, comments from supervisors? Lisa, thank you so much for being here and continue to convey our gratitude to staff and Salem office for all the support we get from you guys. It's really exemplary. I definitely will. Thank you all. Okay, next on deck we have Mr. Carter for our financial, monthly financial report.

All right.

Madam Chair, thank you, members of the board. So you have in front of you as well as on the screen a presentation for a finance report. And so we are really one month into the fiscal year. And so we're only talking about about eight and a third percent of the budget. And so what we're looking at is one month into the year doesn't provide a lot of trend data for you. One thing we have done this month is we're trying to, for the sake of maybe being a little more efficient, won't have every slide in the presentation because I feel like sometimes it's a little repetitive. I'll speak to some things, but I won't have detailed graphs on everything. And then we'll see how that goes, because I know there was some additional information requested at the last meeting. So the general fund Presentation you can see the percentage of budget to the right. This is the far right. This is typically what we look at So the first month of the year again, we want to be at around 8% You can see most of our revenue categories are at that 8% some are above depending on your property taxes are below We would anticipate that there are twice a year collection. They're not a monthly collection One thing I'll note Under other local taxes, because I do not have those detail slides later, sales tax is up a little bit year over year. I know we have discussed transient occupancy and meals tax, especially with drought conditions at the lake. They're down slightly, but roughly they're relatively the same on par with where we were with July collections in the prior year. So not a concern for meals and occupancy tax at this point in time. So glad to hear that. So as far as expenditures you can see for the most part the two categories that always at the first month or two of the fiscal year Specifically are a little above that benchmark your general and financial administration and your community development categories And those are the categories where we process a lot of your annual payments the county insurance monthly dues maintenance service agreements contracts out of information technology for our various partners and those tend to get processed July, first check run or two of the year. So it will run a little ahead and then that will equalize as we go throughout the year and that's just because it's an upfront lump sum payment. So the graph revenues you can really see just for the first month that one blue dot, we're really relatively the same. I'll break that down a little for you in the next slide. So you can see we're down a little bit in the current year compared to prior year in property taxes. Other local and state revenues roughly the same. Property taxes really don't see any fluctuation other than if you'll remember prior year we had a delayed due date to June 23rd instead of June 5th. And we had quite a big adjustment at the end of the year with prepaid taxes and then really having to pull taxes back for what was really the June due date because of that. So what we likely are seeing is a lot of those were just made by June 30th this year because we had a June 5th due date and not a June 23rd that didn't spill over into July. It's not a concern as far as collection. So expenditures, we'll go over to that. You see that blue dot is below. Most of that reason is because of the school transfer. So on a positive side, we received a lot of revenue during the month that will likely go back to prior year. And so that's one reason we don't have a school finance update in the sense of Ms. Shalva here, because all of those year-end entries are being made. And really, we need another month to clean all of that up and have it ready for preparation. So last year we had to transfer $2.9 million to the school system in July, the local county money, to cover their cash deficit. We only needed to transfer $475,000 this year for the month of July. So that'll be for prior year. So as all that works out, it will eventually catch back up. Those operations won't continue into August, September. The county will need to transfer its local. But that's why you see quite a big difference in the reduction in expenditures for July compared to last year. So categorically, on the county side of categories, you can see slight increases. Your public safety sheriff are down a little bit. Usually in July and August, when you see this, that's typically a timing, certain invoices, some years are paid in August, some are paid in July, depending on the timing of the the pay cycle and the invoice receipt no real concerns or fluctuation health and welfare up a little bit go to the next slide most of that is driven by CSA we some of that is going to be timing some of that is increased costs and I have a little bit more information I know that was requested last month So what we want to provide you a little bit, and certainly take feedback. I know there was a request for additional information on CSA. So if this is meeting the requirement or the expectations of the board, there's different information you would like, certainly take that feedback and provide that for you next month. This is a dashboard that is presented to the CPMT, the Community Policy Management Team, that really is the multi-agency body that votes on funding for CSA. Staff really do not manage the funding. It's the CPMT, that appointed board, that does so. And so this dashboard is presented by staff to them at the monthly meetings. And so at the top box, you'll see a comparison for prior year, I want to say prior fiscal year 2026 that just ended in 2025. as far as approved budget and projected expenditures and so you can see we are projected to be over budget by about six percent by the time we pay all the invoices we have through the end of september to pay invoices for for the state guidelines for reimbursement and so we will attempt to do that usually by the end of august most of those invoices are in but it is open through september and we do keep it open for our purposes of state reimbursement The box below provides a little bit of the explanation as to why some of that comparison may be a little different. To the left, you have projected cost and the amount change year over year. And so the categories down the side, I know some of those can be very specific too. That's either usually foster care, parental placements, residential education, therapeutic foster care, CB is community-based services. So I wanted to draw your attention. And these have various reimbursement rates from the locality perspective. So there are certain categories we pay more attention to than others because it costs the county more money when they go up, when they increase. Parental placements is up 84% year over year. That really is just the way categorically it is broken down. That's a matter of who has custody of the child. At the end of the day, it's either foster care or residential. And so if it wasn't in the parental placement category, it would be either under foster care, TFC, or residential. And so what we are seeing is more children needing, whether that's through the parent or the custody, is through the court or Department of Social Services, foster parent. So they're just needing services, and so it's costing money to have to deliver those. same thing that the community-based i want to draw your attention to that because that's increased 27 year-over-year our match starting july 1st increased the local match increased per state that was a state requirement have a little bit more on the numbers on that in the slide but that's going to be an emphasis moving forward into the new fiscal year because of the increased local match ila is independent living arrangements And so this is one category where we are not necessarily required to fund. However, CPMT typically believes this is a better transition. What this is, is typically those children who have reached the age of 18, they're to the point of they're no longer in foster care, they're on adults. And so there is a period of about nine months, 12 if it's extended, where the locality can pay. And usually that's essentially what you would think of as an apartment in a more controlled environment for them to learn budgeting, for them to learn to stay on their own. And so CPMT has historically determined that that is a very valuable service to try and make them help that transition into just the community after their services are after residential. So the unduplicated child count, I wanted to point that out, compare for you year over year. We have fiscal 25 and 26. The main thing I want you to notice is, for the most part, in several of these categories, the child count has gone down, but the cost has gone up. And so some of that is the nature of the services that the children are needing in the program. Some of it is a nature of just general inflationary increases, and it's costing us more. I know we've spoken to that several times in finance updates. And so we are, usually what we do is CPMT. We have an annual look, as I mentioned, invoices are paid through September. So that look where we can do a comparison with other localities in the state typically occurs in October or November at the CPMT meeting once that fiscal year, the fiscal year data can be finalized. And so we at a CPMT level are gonna be reviewing and assessing where we might be able to impact some change on that just to manage the program, make sure we're efficient with the money that we are spending.

Brian, I understand you guys are up to about five FAP meetings a month. Is that?

We are. And so I think there's a couple of things. So Ms. Smith, I appreciate you bringing that up. So we are at a breaking point in capacity for CSA. And it's not because the staff or even CPMT have really decided to go in a direction. Realistically, so we just completed in the last year a state audit. And so the state audit have the state office of children's services and certain requirements that they want localities to adhere to. And one of them was that our FAP needed to function better. And so in the FAP meetings, we had to have more discussion with our cases. And so we lengthened the time we spent on each child in order to meet those state requirements. recommendations or corrective action plan even. But because of that, it has greatly increased the need for more FAP meetings. So we went from three FAP meetings in the last year or two to five FAP meetings during the month. And keep in mind that each of those meetings, just like your board packet and your meeting, has to have staff put together a packet with all the cases that has to get distributed to the team members and they have to review. And then we still have one CPMT meeting during the month. And so that's six meetings that CSA staff are putting together. We recently had our CSA program manager resign and find other employment so very happy for her so it's a good opportunity we've promoted mr. Zach clay from the the CSA office to that role but we are down a person and so realistically for an office the size that CSA has we should have four people in that office and right now we have one and a half so I just want the board to be aware there will be a period of transition we are advertising right now and but right now we're just at staff is going to be processing and making sure we just keep keep cases moving there's not going to be a lot of analysis there's not going to necessarily be a lot of capacity for staff to do a deep dive in some of these things until we can get staff back up and and create that capacity so just want the board to be aware of that it's something that of course we're monitoring but just part of the nature of general staff turnover especially when you're as thinly staffed as we are here at the county especially in the csa office so but we do plan we still have analysis we'll work through that but that's kind of an update in the csa world and it really is a stretch for us to meet those state recommendations and so we're doing the best we can

Well, we're continuing to hammer this very hard at the state level. These continued annual increases are unsustainable. We say that every year. And it just, you know, the vendors have unfettered ability to charge what they want. And we need that capped. And so I just want you and Zach to know that we're continuing to highlight this on our legislative agenda. and in the discussions that I'm having with FACO and the legislators.

We appreciate that. It's a state requirement. We talk about unfunded mandates. It is a state program. It is locally administered. There are sometimes very little leeway we have in administering the program from a local level. The state provides no administrative support. They provide $13,000 to the county to staff the program. So clearly not nearly enough. And so and in addition to that, the state has put additional caps in what their reimbursement will be. And so that puts more burden on the localities. And it is a limitation in the negotiation that localities have just by the nature of there's just not enough capacity in the system. And so we're usually competing with other localities for beds in a sense or spots.

Well, I appreciate this more in-depth information this month. Yes, ma'am.

Brian, I have a question, too, back on that slide. So I was just looking at two of the categories, the SPED. Yes. So that's the biggest expenditure is $3.6 million. And that's for 63 kids. And that's about, I guess, $37,000 per kid. And then the category right below that, the 417, that's just for five kids. So that's $80,000 a kid. So I'm reading this right, right? That's correct.

okay that that would be the average math that we would do mr quinn yes thank you and that that sped that special education that is the private day school that uh that goes through the school system and so and then we invoice the school system the share of the local match that runs through the csa program but that category is is what that references so i know we've had some of those discussions in budget and so i wanted you to be aware that that is of course the biggest line item in the csa program That is driven through what's called an IEP process, Individualized Education Plan. And that is at the school staff level. We really, at the CSA level, do nothing more than basically approve the funding at that. But that is that category. So when you see that, that is what that is referencing. And that would be the math we would do, Mr. Quinn.

Anybody else have questions on the CSA piece?

So I won't read this, but this talks a little bit about what we talked about. It'll be in your printed copy. You can see the cost. One of the big increases is sponsored residential. That was an initiative of Governor Youngkin. These are high need kids, usually need a one-on-one. Sometimes their autism on the spectrum could be a disability, intellectual or otherwise. And so a lot of times they're declined for most in-state placements. So the options are we have to put them in a sponsored residential, which is more one-on-one care, or we have to send them out of state. The sponsored residentials are expensive. You can see on average it's $68,000 a month for the four youth that we have right now. That's just for four. per month, and we have a 35% match rate on that. But the alternative was they either sit in the social services offices, and sometimes for weeks or months on end, or they go out of state. And so CPMT has historically felt like keeping them in state is the best. It helps the DSS staff or any case worker be able to monitor the child, do the site visits more appropriately. But also, it is cheaper. When you go out of state, it increases the cost exponentially. and so with one of the items we're going to be working on is this increased length of stay the last bullet you can see that the the increase in these various uh types of placements residential mostly and so uh that there's obviously what we like to do is compare with other localities so is it specific to franklin county does it be something we need to do different in how we're administering or is this statewide and it's a lack of capacity, and so there's very little that we can do there. So that's something we at CPMT will take up in the coming months.

And I think, Brian, just for everybody's information, those five FAP meetings a month are meant to drill down very specifically on each case and referrals for level of services that ends up coming to CPMT. Is that fair enough?

Yes, ma'am. Yeah, that's accurate. The FAP team is really the planning and the treatment team. They design the service plan, and CPMT does the review and ultimately approves the funding. Yes, ma'am.

Thank you. I might say just real quick.

Sure, sure.

Of course, I sit in these meetings every month with Brian, but there's been a tremendous amount of work in the past two or three months of looking at all this. I think communication is getting better between the FAP teams, CPMT teams. We've talked about different things. It's getting better. But these things here has stuck out to the group, and especially the length of stay. Seeing with my own eyes, the staff and these committees are working extremely hard. And then, like I said, I know we got transition going up being a little understaffed, but that kind of goes back to where I was mentioned before about an extra member there maybe to help out. Because when you don't have enough staff to oversee it correctly, sometimes expenses will... go up on you. And it's no fault to nobody's other than just having some time in the staff to correctly monitor. So I just want to express that to the board, that this is a big issue that the CPMT, in fact, and everybody together is working on.

And we appreciate your service on the CPMT, Mr. Meredith.

All right. Fund balance slide, typical update, and so we're roughly $49.5 million as of the end of July. We have backed out our restricted funds for opioids. We have our 20% policy minimum, so that leaves us at about $23.7 million in unassigned fund balance over policy minimum. We typically like to keep that flexible. That is a very important number for our rating agencies for any of our debt capacity. The budget stabilization capital reserve, those numbers are there, but there are some obligations. I won't read the bullets there, but we have some of those depending on the final amounts that those will take down a little bit. They've been obligated for various projects through previous board action. Economic update so inflation came in for July similar trend. We're not seeing a lot of difference It's up about three point four percent year-over-year from July last year Really when you look at core inflation that subset bullet Take out food and energy energy being the particular being gas prices It's increased two and a half percent if you remember the Federal Reserve benchmark rate is two percent so it really is an energy market volatility that is driving inflation right now and And so as soon as that corrects itself, I think the economy is actually doing fairly well outside of that sector, and you're getting close to that 2% Federal Reserve benchmark rate. Unemployment rate actually dropped a little bit, 4.1% compared to last month. It was 4.2% for the June comparison. Federal Reserve did leave the rates unchanged at the July meeting for the benchmark rates, 3.5%, 3.75%. Based on that, they don't meet again until the middle of September. And so we will see then whether there's a rate change. So from our budget standpoint, We have anticipated rate reductions. There have been a talk from a few Federal Reserve members of going up and increasing. But I think budgetarily, we're thinking between now and the end of next fiscal year, June 30th, that there will be some rate reductions that we anticipate that impact the budget. Real quick school update. I know Dr. Sears has several items. Really for us, it's just continuing through year-end. It's working with Ms. Owens as the consultants, working with school staff, cleaning up year-end, getting all those entries done by the end of the month. That's really what we want for that September meeting. We will provide also, just to keep on the board's radar, the quarterly appropriation. So the quarterly appropriation for October through December will need to be appropriated by the board at the September meeting. So there will be information for the board on financial analysis for how prior fiscal year ended, but also how the current fiscal year is going. Keep in mind, we'll really only have two months worth of data at that point. And so it'll be a new process as we work through it. And basically, that is the finance report, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Carter. Are there any questions from supervisors for Mr. Carter? I think you're in the clear. Thank you so much. OK, we will move on. The next item on our agenda is to invite Dr. Sears to come up. I'm sorry, Mr. Sanders.

I was just going to interject while he's coming that we've talked about the school CIP in June and July. And I think we said we would bring it back for adoption by the board. And so we've just asked Dr. Sears to be available to answer any questions the board may have relative to the school CIP. before that action and then the other items are really kind of update in nature so there was discussion about the additional cost for the four percent cola for school employees and so we've asked dr sears to come back and address that with you as to what that amount may be looking like as well as an update on the the progress of the activity for the school that was worked on this summer the the lee wade school Just as kind of a recap of the funding that was approved to do some of those renovations So just looking for an update there and then the final item again just as an update in nature of some town hall meetings that the school system and and dr. Sears has put together and County staff will also be a part of so we just asked them to share some some updates on that as well. So I Welcome, Dr. Stewart.

Good afternoon, sir. Thank you. Madam Chair, members of the board, Mr. Sandy, thank you for allowing me to speak here today. There are a variety of school-related issues that we're going to be covering in this month's update. And first on your agenda is the capital improvement plan that was presented in June. At this time, I would ask Mark Law to come up and join me just in case there are any questions before the board takes action on that plan.

Good afternoon, Mr. Law. Good afternoon. Welcome.

Are there any questions on the CIP?

Any supervisors have questions on the CIP? I know there was a slight adjustment, Mr. Sandy and Dr. Sears.

I think the adjustments that were made back earlier in the summer were relative to the elementary schools and some revised figures that they had looked at for Rocky Mount, Snow Creek, and Callaway.

Correct.

And we did forward the digital version of that because I know previously you were given a larger paper copy and then the digital copy with the packet is a little smaller. We did send out a digital version to each of you as well. So we just wanted to make sure there were no lingering questions or anything before we do want the board to take action on this item to have that as the approved school CIP. That way they can move forward with funding applications and grant applications and so forth, referencing the approved document.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Sandy. And this is a very important process for the schools and the county CIPs to be duly adopted for purposes of grant submissions. So we are very grateful to the school board and your office, Dr. Sears and Mr. Law, for presenting your CIP. I think it's sitting at about $91 million at this juncture. Do I have that right? For a five-year term. For a five-year term. Yeah, yeah. So I know that we'll continue to be working through the other three schools coming next summer. And there's no, you know, we're going to, by the way, we'll be putting, the board voted to put the 1% potential on the referendum next for our citizens to weigh in on. So we look forward to those results as well to help offset the significant renovations needed in our schools. So I don't think, Mr. Jamison.

about these project three HVAC projects and I was asking you if it's any possibility in the upcoming years of closing any of the three and you said you're studying on it you thought about it and it was a question but you need to do more setting on it can you come up or do you have any

I mean, currently there are no plans to shut another elementary school in the foreseeable future. But if our enrollment continues to decline, I think that is one of the options that would have to be considered to deal with the declining enrollment. So I can't say that it won't happen. I can say it won't happen within the next year or two, but if our enrollment continues to decline by more than 100 students a year, logic would say we have to look at which buildings and which programs we can cut out of our budget in order to meet the reduced funding that comes when those reductions happen.

How in history, I mean say in the past four years as far as ADM, what's the average drop per year?

It has been over a hundred a year or around a hundred a year since I've been here. I think it was more than that during the COVID pandemic. But, I mean, it's a steady decline, and a big reason is just the birth rate. I think our homeschool numbers have stabilized since COVID. They are right around 900 students, and it might be a few over 900 one year, a few under 900 next year, but there haven't been any big swings there. The number of students leaving for private school just about equals the number of students returning from private school every year. So it is the decline is the declining birth rate and just families moving out for other opportunities. And the people who are moving in are typically retirees who who have had their families and they're off raising them somewhere else. So it's just I mean, there are a number of issues that that are affecting our enrollment but each year we graduate a higher graduating class than the kindergarten class that comes in and that's where the biggest part of the difference is coming from.

Do you have a breaking point as far as enrollment drop before you start considering a school closure?

You know, when we lose 100 students a year, that is happening across 12 schools and 13 grade levels. So you can't automatically say 100 students equals four teachers that we're going to cut for next year because it just doesn't work that way. It typically takes three or four years for you to be able to accumulate enough that you can make a lot of staffing adjustments. And that is what we've been doing since I've been here. and we can get into that probably at another time because that is a big part of our budget issue is the fact that during COVID we lost 500 kids but increased the number of employees and that really started the daisy chain that has led us to all the discussions we've been having but you know since I've been here we have cut around 180 full-time positions and closed two schools And it's still questionable as to whether or not that's enough to keep up with the the reduction in state funding and the decline in enrollment that we're experiencing.

Well, my point is, please stay on it. I mean, I don't see pulling money into up fits on these schools and they're going to close within a year or two years. You know, so please keep an eye on it. And I know it's that's a tough call. I know it is, but

you know more yeah absolutely i think it's a good point and we've had that discussion and and you know there were two schools that were in the discussion when we closed uh burnt chimney and henry there were two other schools because the recommendation was to close three and looking back at uh our budget situation and what we experienced in fy25 That was the right recommendation. We should have closed three schools and eliminated our staff even more because then we would not have had the budget issue that we had in FY25. But all that is very difficult to predict when you're losing federal funding with the ESSER money that was drying up and the all-in funding, which can only be used for specific purposes. But anyway, looking back, we probably should have done more in FY25 to reduce expenses and should have considered closing another school, but I'm getting sidetracked now. Just because those two schools were in the discussion then does not mean that those are the two schools that rise to the top now. Circumstances change. Some buildings have greater needs than others. uh you know with their uh capital needs uh some buildings are being more successful than others with their instructional programs i mean all of those things would have to be considered so you know if we get to the point we have to have that conversation we would do an analysis of every elementary school and see which one uh makes the most sense to try to uh to consolidate into other programs.

I would assume if these up fits go forth, that would be a big factor as far as Your choice in your closing school, do you have to be taking into consideration?

Yes. Yes, I think if we have an increased funding stream, like could be provided with the 1% sales tax, that takes one of the variables off the table in the facility needs because we would have a funding stream to actually address those needs, whereas currently we do not. We're not enough to address our needs. All right, thank you. Thank you.

Any other questions on this matter? I know Dr. Sears has other things, but on the CIP, and if there are no further questions, I would entertain a motion to approve Franklin County Public Schools CIP.

I make a motion to approve the fiscal year 2027 through 2031 Franklin County Public Schools capital improvement plan.

Thank you, Mr. Meredith. Is there a second? Second. Thank you. Roll call vote, please, Madam Clerk.

Supervisor Patterson?

Yes.

Supervisor Mitchell? Yes. Supervisor Carter? Yes. Supervisor Meredith? Yes. Supervisor Quinn? Yes. Supervisor Tatum? Yes. And Chair Smith? Yes. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr. Law, thank you for being with us this afternoon. All right, Dr. Sears, you may continue, sir.

The next item to discuss is the 4% raise that was included in the final approved state budget. I provided each of you with a hard copy of the presentation that was made to the school board last week, and it can be found on our website attached to last week's agenda for anyone in the audience who might want to take a look at it. We have been looking at what it will take to achieve the 4% average raise for all employees through a partial implementation of phase three of the compensation study. That has remained the school board's top priorities to get phase three fully funded since I've been here. And that is what we're trying to or that is how we're trying to approach these conversations about getting to the 4% average raise. It seemed like a better approach than to try to just do a 4% across the board raise because that does not get us any closer to achieving phase three. So if we can get enough, if we can do enough steps for the employees who've had their salaries frozen and get to an average 4% raise, then that unlocks the available state funding for those raises. We determined that a 4% average raise can occur by providing one additional step increase to the 134 employees who are one step behind and two additional step increases to the 336 employees who are two or more steps behind. If we can get to that point, we would have the 4% average raise. The total cost of that is $1,371,668. If accomplished, all that's left to fully implement Phase 3 would be addressing the 85 employees who would still be one step behind and the 144 employees who would still be two steps behind. So this gets us more than halfway to Phase 3. is my plan to i'm sorry given the fact that the deficit projection seems to be trending down more than it was last month we are confident that that the expected savings from position cuts for for the current year that we're in uh can fund an additional step increase for all the employees who are one step behind so the 797 000 We feel like the projected cost savings from cutting the close to 60 positions this year would be more than enough to pay for that and cover whatever the deficit from FY26 ends up being. And it's my plan to recommend to the school board in September that we adopt that into our budget and make it retroactive for all those employees to give them an additional step this year. This leaves us $573,793 short of being able to offer the additional step increase to the 336 employees who are two or more steps behind, which is needed to get us the 4% average raise. There's a chance that we might be able to do this if additional savings are realized from the position cuts, but I'm not confident enough to make that recommendation yet. So our plan currently without any additional local funding is to wait to mid-year to assess it to see if we can do more than the one step for everybody who was behind at least a step. However, if you all are willing to fund the additional $573,000 to get us to the average 4% raise, that would allow us to access an additional $345,000 in state funding that must be requested and local matching funding verified before October 31, 2026. So if you're willing to consider this, we will certainly make a formal request to Mr. Sandy and Mr. Carter prior to the September meeting for you all to consider. Are there any questions about the 4% average raise for all school employees?

Thank you, Dr. Sears. Any questions, Mr. Meredith?

Yeah, just so I could have this. If you just do the 4%, was that five, how much from the county, 500 and? About $570,000. Let's see. $573,793.

And that will unlock the state money? Yes. Okay, I didn't see that number anywhere, and I want to make sure I saw that. Thank you.

Questions, comments?

I would just say that I would be interested in him giving that stay for us to consider in September.

OK. All right. Is there consensus from the board? Mr. Tatum?

My question is for Mr. Carter rather than Dr. Sears. Where would we find that money?

You know, you would have a one time. likely pot of money from your end surplus for this year. I don't have an identified recurring funding stream for that yet. And so that's something we could look at in the next month, 30, 45 days. But I do think there's probably going to be some portion where the board would have to feel comfortable using some one time money for this fiscal year and then knowing that that has to be accounted for in the new budget for 2028 start in the fall. Okay. Thank you. Yes. Okay.

Mr. Jamison.

I may have missed it a while ago when you were talking, but where does the school stand as far as the projected deficit for this year?

The last unofficial numbers that we have were somewhere between $500,000 and $600,000, and $100,000 of that was built in as contingency that has not been allocated to anything yet, so that could come off of the final number.

Any other questions on the 4%? Is the board in consensus to have some information sent to Mr. Sandy, as Mr. Mitchell has requested? OK, very good. Thank you, Mr. Mitchell, for that request. Mr. Sandy, if you'd be. Ready for that. That would be great. Okay, Dr. Sexton.

Thank you all. The next item for discussion is an update on the work that was done by ABM at Liam Wade this summer. And I've asked the school's principal, Ms. Cindy Woodridge, to join me today so you can hear from someone who has been part of the discussions every day since the project started. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Hi. Good afternoon, members of the board. On behalf of Liam White Elementary School community, I would like to express our sincere appreciation for your support of the HVAC and LED lighting renovations throughout our school. These improvements have made a meaningful difference in the learning environment for our students and the working environment for our staff. The new LED classroom lighting has provided improved visibility while also giving teachers the ability to adjust the lighting within the classrooms through dimmers and better meet the needs of our students. Additionally, the installation of water-saving aerators on our sinks will help us conserve water and operate our facilities more effectively. We are also grateful for the wraparound services provided by ABM throughout this project. Their support helped ensure that the work was coordinated effectively and that our schools had the assistance needed throughout the renovation process. A special thank you to our onsite supervisor for his responsiveness, professionalism, and willingness to serve as a liaison between our school and the project team. He was readily available to address questions and concerns and helped make the process as smooth as possible. These renovations represent a significant investment in our school, and we are grateful to the Board of Supervisors' commitment to providing safe, comfortable, and efficient learning environments for our students. Thank you for your continued support for our school and for investing in the future of our students.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

You want to have any questions for Ms. Wooldridge? I will say I went through the first day of school and it was wonderful in there compared to how it's been in the past, especially the gym. You know, we still have a lot of gyms without air conditioning and it's been a struggle in these hot August days to hold PE in the gym. But you go in at Liam Wade and the kids are running wild in every direction and nobody's sweating.

Well, we appreciate your leadership there. I know you've got a challenging job, but at the end of the day, seeing the smiles on those kids' faces and all the successes that you all are having, we really appreciate your leadership there.

I'd like to thank Mark Law. He met me over there this morning and we walked through the project. It looked good and I was concerned about any change orders that might be or any changes coming up. And Mark said that I think ABM took care of it and they had enough contingency in the project that they could. So thank you. Thank you, Mark. Thank you.

Okay. In preparation for the 1% sales tax referendum, Franklin County Public Schools has started the process of holding informational meetings with each school's parent-teacher organization, and we've scheduled four town hall-style meetings to occur in September and October. I provided each of you with a copy of the handout that was reviewed with the PTO at Callaway Elementary, so you can see what we've been discussing. First, we cover a little of the background information about the 1% sales tax referendum to include the fact that it can only be used for school capital projects. It cannot be used for personnel. It cannot be used for programs. It can't be used for technology, just school capital projects. It is not applicable to groceries or personal hygiene products. and it has a sunset date at 20 years. So if approved, that would be the longest it could be in place without going to another referendum if there's an opportunity to do a referendum to extend it. Those seem like the points that most folks had questions about. We then do an overview of the school division's capital needs, followed by a discussion about the identified capital needs at that specific school. And as you can see with Callaway, I think it is over $4 million of identified capital needs currently. Information is presented on Franklin County's projected numbers should the referendum pass and we discuss the fact that a little bit or a little over one-third of our sales tax revenue is estimated to come from tourism. So this is a way to to spread the cost of our school construction and school capital projects with the visitors to the county and not put the entire burden on the county's taxpayers and I think that's an important point to bring up in these discussions. And I will say all these numbers and percentages were generated using Google AI, so I can't swear they are accurate. We would need to vet them a little more before the town hall meetings, but I think they're pretty close to being correct from the numbers that I've heard previously. A list of town hall and meeting dates, times, and locations were also provided. At the town hall meetings, we're planning to present our current capital needs list, information about the proposed CTE center, funding projections if the 1% sales tax passes, and then hold a panel discussion with administrators and elected officials. We currently have two school board members scheduled to participate on the panel at each of the four events and would like to have two board of supervisor members and someone from county administration if possible. The purpose of these meetings is to engage with the public about our identified needs, provide factual information about the referendum, and answer questions they have about how the funding will be utilized if the referendum is approved. We're not there to tell people how to vote, but instead help them to understand what they are voting for or against in November. Through PTO meetings, we have been asked to provide more information about our budget issues to help folks better understand what happened and what we're doing to prevent it again, as well as to better explain how the money will be tracked to ensure that it only goes towards school capital projects. So we will work on having those elements included in the presentation and the discussions as well. Hopefully we can structure the meetings in a way that they remain focused on the referendum and don't get off track with discussions about other important but unrelated issues. In closing, there are two other items I would like to address, if you'll allow me a few extra minutes. First, everyone is aware of the parking situation at Franklin County High School this year. And we have had a number of requests to explore the possibility of doing a lot on the Purdue property. And I know the Board of Supervisors was considering selling that a few years ago. I don't know the current status of it. But if the board still owns it, I would like to request that you consider letting us assess the property and possibly cutting out part of that to expand the parking lot. And if so, we can do a study and try to come up with some expected cost and some estimates for doing that. It has been a challenge this year, an unexpected challenge for Dr. Johnson as the new incoming principal to be dealing with so many parking-related issues. But, you know, that's what we do. That's why we have administrators to work through that. But if you still have the property and will consider letting us do that, we would appreciate it. But if not, if there are other plans for it, we certainly understand that, too, and we'll just continue to try to look for solutions in the space that we have. The last item pertains to the proposed CTE Center. I've seen Mr. Quinn's proposal, which I believe he'll be sharing later this week, to create a project executive or manager position who could oversee the work being done on the Moducraft side, and I think it's a great idea. I'm not sure that Franklin County Public Schools or the Franklin County Administration have the personnel or expertise to manage a project of this size and scope. If we can get the right person in a position like this, it would make all of our lives easier, help keep the public better informed about the progress occurring at the site, and ensure that we deliver as close to possible a final product that has been promised to our citizens. The information about this proposal has been shared with the school board, who has not yet had an opportunity to discuss it, so I'm currently only speaking on behalf of myself, but I think that it's an idea with a tremendous amount of potential that would get us across the finish line in regard to the county and school projects. Thank you again for allowing me to speak here today. Are there any other questions?

Thank you, Dr. Sears. Any questions? Mr. Quinn.

I'll start. So thank you very much for that update. A couple of comments. You mentioned the other counties that were successful with the 1% tax, Henry, Danville, Patrick, and Pennsylvania. And my sense here is it's gonna be a tough sell. And so I'm wondering if you have been able to talk to those counties about what they did, what kind of outreach they did that made it successful, because we might be able to duplicate some of those processes here to make it successful, because I think without a significant effort, it's not gonna succeed.

we did have a meeting with the former superintendent from pitsylvania uh mr sandy coordinated that and uh it failed the first time in pitsylvania so they sent us all of their information as to how they approached it you know to get it past the second time we are members of the small and rural schools coalition and participated in a webinar last week and so we're trying to learn from other school divisions and what they are doing and look at some of the ideas that have been generated there. I think the feedback from the PTOs has been very helpful, and I think that that is a good avenue for getting the word out about what exactly the the referendum means, the fact that it doesn't, you know, it doesn't go toward food taxes. You know, there are a lot of there'll be a lot of misinformation. So we're trying to get the correct information out as early as we can so that folks can help us refute the misinformation as it starts to make the rounds on social media. But, you know, I mean, I agree. We're looking at all avenues. And, you know, between the 10 PTO meetings and the four Town hall style meetings, you know, we're meeting several times a week currently from between now and election day to try to get the word out and answer folks' questions. And we certainly would welcome any other suggestions to try to make it successful the first go around.

OK, thank you. Secondly, so this 37% of this number is tourism related. And I understand how Virginia counts tourists, right? Somebody here that owns land that just comes on the weekend is a tourist. And to me, it's a bit misleading. So it and so it's not a criticism of the numbers they're right but it's just it's kind of misleading to say that 37% are tourists because I I consider somebody that owns property here that comes here every weekend is is part of our County They're they're not a tourist. So it's just a side point. Yeah the benefit of the people here and then the third point is around the town hall meetings and so I think about I think back to the town hall that you and Curtis and I did in Union Hall and we laid out the vision and the strategy for the CTE and all the excitement from the constituents about this new school and about the possibility and about what this is gonna do to Franklin County. And then I look at these town halls and I think about talking about the capital improvements for these three schools. They're kind of boring, if you will, compared to the CTE is a sexy thing. It's out in the future. It's going to just be a breakthrough for our county. Whereas Fixing the HVAC, it's not going to really move the needle for these people. And so it just makes me think the more that we could make these meetings, well, you can still do the HVAC if you want, but to do a repeat of what we did, with the CTE I think will really excite people about the possibility and make them feel like oh my money's going to something really exciting not to just fix an HVAC so I along those lines I'd be willing to help with any of these schools to do that little front end piece you know I kind of laughed when we started and I said I'll do the vision and the strategy and and you and Curtis will answer the hard questions but that's how it was you did the whole meeting and it was It was awesome. We got a lot of questions out. You got a lot of feedback. And I just think that combination of fixing the HVAC, which is kind of boring but necessary, but the excitement of the CTE in this county, I think that will really help build some support for the 1%.

Yes, and we do plan to have presentations on both of those issues at those town hall meetings, and I agree. I think the town hall that was held in your district was incredibly productive because there were people who showed up there a little bit angry and opposed to supporting it who left thinking, well, maybe this is a good idea, or at least not, you know, adamantly opposed to it any longer. So I think the more information we can get out and the more we can engage with folks about what this means for our kids and what it means for the future of the county will only serve us well in the end.

Good. And then the last comments on the parking. So I really like your idea of using some of that property, and I hope we can do that because if we were to sell that property and then we have to go back and buy something else, it's going to be a very difficult sale, right? But to be able to carve out a little piece, you probably wouldn't need more than two or three acres at the most to expand that parking and solve a big problem they have at the high school. So I really like that idea. Thank you.

Is that only Mr. Quinn? Thank you. Mr. Meredith?

Yes, ma'am. I agree with Supervisor Quinn. If we own this land, and if you're willing, the school board's willing to look at it and bring something back. I'm going to say this. When I taught there, parking was the issue back then in 2000s. Unfortunately, we didn't adjust as we went through time. Now, property owners have kind of forced our hand. But I think if it's only two or three acres, we still own the land. Is this feasible? It's not costing us anything to do this. So I would suggest to the board that we go ahead and let them at least bring something back to us. And that's just my opinion on it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Meredith. Any other comments, questions?

We add to the CIP.

Are we adding to the CIP, Mr?

This was just a what it would cost come back to us. I'm not asking to add to anything because we don't know. Knowing me, I go up there and put some fabric down, some number threes on it, say there's use of parking spots. That's me. It's a temporary fix.

We would agree with that if you'd like to.

Let me ask this, too. I think this would be something to consider, and you can bring this back to us. I know you all charge for parking permits at the high school. We come up with 100 parking spots. They're paying $55. Is there some way that that could go back to maybe reimbursing or paying off? I don't know. That's something you can consider. I do not expect to answer. But it's just a way of saying there's a way of recouping through the student park permit. Yes.

So what I would ask, is the board into some level of consensus to bring the Purdue property back up for discussion with respect to potential use for high school parking? Are you all just open to having information brought back for further discussion?

It's a piece, Lori, not the whole thing. No, I understand. I understand, yeah.

Are you okay with that, Mr. Jamison?

How many parking permits do you have? How many kids are driving?

I think we have around 271 spaces. They have opened up the gravel lot this year, so it's probably increased by another 30, so probably around 300. I think it is... maybe two thirds of what we need for the number of students who drive. But we also recognize we might have to rethink how we prioritize who gets those passes and give seniors first priority and then juniors. We'll have to change our practices based on the number of slots that we have next year. We were already into this year before it became known that there weren't other parking options for our students.

So I think in fairness to the broader conversation of the Purdue property, which we haven't discussed in some time, I think the willingness has to be to maybe, I don't know if we want to have the broader discussion on the Purdue property or whether we want to just get some general numbers from Dr. Sears and his staff as to what it is they need, what are the requirements, what is the space required, and maybe throw some

some uh indirect estimates of that um does that sound adequate to the board mr mitchell for me i we we've got enough things to look at that's going to cost enough money for on my plate today okay i would assume that when you know parking extra parking is on my back burner

OK. OK. Are you receptive to getting some information?

If it doesn't cost any money.

OK. I guess where we are is we've got consensus to get some information brought to the board. And information is very, very helpful. So Mr. Sandy, between you and Dr. Sears, if you two would be kind enough to address that issue, that would be very helpful to the board.

OK. Thank you all.

Dr. Sears, thank you for being here, and thank you for the presentation copies. You've given us a very full and robust report, and we really appreciate that.

Thank you. Y'all have a good evening.

You do the same. OK, we are at a time that the board will adjourn into closed meeting. Mr. Mitchell, if you'd be so kind.

Franklin County Board of Supervisors moves to enter into a closed meeting in accordance with 2.2-3711 discussion of the disposition of real property at parcel number 0290001401 discussion concerning a prospective business or industry or the expansion of an existing business or industry in Summit View Business Park AA consultation with legal counsel employed or retained by a public body regarding specific privileged legal matters requiring the provision of legal advice by such counsel of the Code of Virginia as amended.

Thank you. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Mr. Tatum.

Roll call vote, please, Madam Clerk. Supervisor Mitchell? Yes. Supervisor Carter? Yes. Supervisor Meredith? Yes. Supervisor Quinn? Yes. Supervisor Tatum? Yes. Supervisor Jamison? Yes. And Chair Smith? Yes.

OK, we will adjourn to closed session in the ACR. Good evening, everyone. It's nice to see you all this evening, and we appreciate you being here with us. I am going to ask Mr. Mitchell if he will certify our closed session.

I certify that only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed session to which this certification applies, and only such business matters as were identified in the motion by which this closed session was convened were heard, discussed, or considered in the meeting to which this certification applies.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Mr. Quinn.

Madam Clerk, if you do a roll call, please. Supervisor Carter? Yes. Supervisor Tatum? Yes. Supervisor Quinn? Yes. Supervisor Jamison?

Yes.

Supervisor Mitchell?

Yes.

Supervisor Meredith?

Yes.

And Chair Smith? Yes.

OK. We'll move right into our agenda. We have just one public hearing this evening. Miss Cooper, if you'd like to come up. We've got an applicant, Paulette, if I say this correctly, Bikinko? Yes. Am I am I saying that okay? Okay. Okay. So Miss Cooper, if you would introduce this, I'd appreciate it.

Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. We are here to hear a special use permit for a second dwelling. I think you're used to these. We have quite a few. So I'll get started. Basically, the application is for a proposed second dwelling to be occupied by immediate family member to the owner. The proposed construction of the second dwelling is 16 by 66, which is a little over 1,000 square feet. The proposed second dwelling will use the existing well that the main single-family dwelling is using, but this second dwelling will have its own septic system, and it will be between the second dwelling and the major state-maintained road, Major Holland Road. You also in your packet have the PERC test that was done by an AOSE that allows for a maximum of three bedrooms. As I stated before, Major Holland Road is a state maintained secondary road. If you've been out to the property, the property on both sides is wooded. The parcel consists of a single family dwelling right now and an accessory structure and then if it is approved this proposed second dwelling is to be set up in front of the main house with access to the driveway. We did receive one phone call inquiring about the application and there were no citizens to make any comments at the Planning Commission public hearing. We always like to give you a vicinity map to show you where it's located. We also like to give you an aerial. It is highlighted in the blue. We also like to give you your zoning map. This property happens to be zoned RC1, which is your residential combined subdivision. We also like to give you the future land use map. So your future land use map from your comprehensive plan is low density residential county, and also lake influence area, which is that .5 mile buffer. We also like to give you a conceptual plan so this shows you the existing house. This shows you where the new dwelling if approved will go and I have another one that shows you the septic system. This is the main state maintained road. This is the septic system. This is the proposed dwelling. Just a little bit of analysis on the property. The proposed second dwelling on this property is allowed by a special use permit and this particular use would not be in substantial detriment to adjacent properties due to the length of the property and the surrounding area being constructed with a mix of single family dwellings and manufactured housing. and what other houses that will be in the future. The second dwelling will generate similar amounts of noise and traffic like any other single residence. Your comprehensive plan supports all types of housing in the low density residential county and in the lake influence area designation. The comp plan also is in support of your ADUs, which is your accessory dwelling units that we've talked about before. as a housing type per your preliminary land use types that's in your future land use designation of your comprehensive plan. One of the plan's objective objectives is wanting to ensure adequate and affordable housing options for residents. And the second dwelling is one of those. We've talked about the accessory dwelling units. What this is is supportive of the comp plan. in a way for seniors to age in place and supports affordable housing options for them and others the second dwelling will have minimum impact as i said on the surrounding area or neighborhood granting the special use permit will not change the character in the rc1 zoning district because of the use of the second dwelling goes along with the purpose of the rc1 district which is mainly made of single family dwellings and manufactured housing types Your RC1 district is one of the districts that allows single family dwelling and manufactured housing by right. Um, the planning commission did hold their public hearing and they did, um, make a recommendation for approval with four conditions. However, I will tell you the night of the planning commission meeting, um, the planning commission decided to remove two of the conditions instead of having six. And what they decided to remove was the applicant of the second dwelling shall only be for immediate family, including siblings, grandparents, parent, children, spouse is in accordance with Section 25268 of the Franklin County Code. The reason why they wanted to remove this, if you look at the zoning ordinance, the Section 25268 does reference Section 25274, which tells you it's under other regulations that this is for immediate family and describes what an immediate family is. Also, the one that they removed, too, was in reference to condition two, which is the one that I just stated. The applicant owner shall reflect this use and the occupancy in an affidavit approved by the Planning and Community Development Department and recorded in the Clerk of Circuit Court Office. with the property. The Planning Commission thought this was an added expense to the applicant and that it should be removed. So what they decided on was the four conditions that were left, and that is that the special use permit authorized only the one single family dwelling on this parcel. The second dwelling shall have its own address. and will be visible displayed for 911 emergency services. The applicant and property owner will have to adhere to all the permits in the building and the planning department. And the applicant and property owner shall comply with regulations per the Virginia Department of Health. And I would be glad to answer any questions. And the applicant is also here.

yes thank you madam chair Lisa I had marked in here about those conditions typically in the past with this type of special use permit didn't did we not haven't we always included those two conditions they've eliminated from this yes sir here recently probably in the last

four or five years we've included them we have two new planning commission members and they spoke up that they thought that these two conditions might should be able to be removed for those reasons and there were some other planning commission members that agreed with them two voted to to leave it with the six congestion conditions so we could put those back in if we oh yes sir if you would like to put those back in yes sir you can do that

Okay.

That's why I wanted to read them so you would know. Thank you, Lisa.

All right, thank you.

Any other questions for Lisa?

Lisa, could you go back to this slide you had? It's the foundation. just for a second. Oops.

This one or this one?

No, that one. OK. Right there. So you put your cursor over where the new unit's going in that box, and it says single wide. But when I look at the dimensions of the proposed unit, it's 66 by 16. That's a double wide, which is correct. Is it a double wide or a single wide? This is single wide, and the dimensions indicate a double wide.

I think it is a double wide, but I will let that. As an applicant answered, she says it is a single wide. I'm sure she can talk to it when she gets up here. She can talk now if you want. Sure. We'll just wait. We'll just wait. OK.

So we'll hold that question then, right?

OK. Any other questions for Ms. Cooper? OK, thank you so much, Ms. Cooper. Thank you. I will now open the public hearing on this application. Madam Clerk, are there any individuals signed up? Oh, that's right. Excuse me. Thank you, Mr. Sandy. The applicant, if you would like to address the board, you're more than welcome to do so. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to overlook you.

No, no, that's OK. My name's Suzanne Volkanko. I'm the owner of 570 Major Holland Road. And Ms. Cooper pretty much explained everything that why we're here. And to answer your question, it is a single wide and the dimensions are 66 by 15 six. Can you use the microphone, please?

Thank you. You can feel free to pull it closer to you.

Yeah, I have a plan of the actual single wide with the dimensions, and it does list it as 66 by 15 to 6, which is a single wide. I just wanted to re-emphasize that we're really doing this just so that my mother-in-law can be close to us and live an independent rest of her golden years while we can also take care of her and both be independent while doing that. So I appreciate your consideration. And if you have any questions, I can answer them.

Thank you. Anybody have any questions for the applicant? Comments? Okay. Thank you very much. We appreciate you being here. Okay, now, Madam Clerk, do we have anyone signed up to speak? Dawn King-Greer. Hello. Hello. Dawn Kingrear, Ferrum, Virginia.

With the new SUPs coming down from the state, with an individual, why are we still filling out and wasting our tax sellers' times going through an SUP? to add another home onto a property for a family member? Why is any of our citizens, if state law has changed and went into effect, why is anybody continuing to pay you money to regulate and policy out the law? You do not supersede state law.

Thank you. There's no one else signed up. OK, very good. OK, I will close this public hearing. And I will defer to the discretion of the board as to what you would like to do and any decision with regard to this application or any further questions, concerns. Floor is open. OK, sure.

So do you want to just say a little bit more about those, Mike?

Well, I was just curious. We've always included those in the past of why they took them out. And I think Ms. Cooper explained it was two new members on the planning board didn't feel like they were necessary. Lisa, do you? Is the law going to change on this? Is there a reason for us to leave that out at this point? Or what are your thoughts on that?

The law will be changing, but it's been delayed until 2027.

It was not.

Ms. Greer, if you would sit down, please.

Go ahead, Lisa. I'm sorry.

No. So that's why we're still here in these second dwellings is because in our opinion, and I guess the county attorney can speak to it, it has been delayed and we do not have anything in the ordinance that deals with 80 years at this time, except for what we have now where we have to come before you for the special use permit and then placing conditions on that.

Okay.

that's what we have in place now all right and another reason too as i forgot i mean the two new members knew about the new law being delayed in 27. that was another plus the reasons that i gave so it's really up to you all if you'd like to see them back okay so mr quinn i'll defer to you i know so i'm thinking with um with the new law if those two new conditions weren't required maybe we should not require them i don't really know i don't know i mean

Well, we don't. It's the law. It's not in effect. You're positive it's delayed?

The law is delayed until 27, and I'm sure Mr. Gwynn can speak to that. I think he's.

I can say just to kind of look at past practices, the boards historically have placed some conditions from time to time on applications, even though they may be repetitive from state code, to re-emphasize an individual application. So I don't think we're, unless Mr. Gwynn says otherwise, I don't think we're prohibited from repeating those. Are we, Mr. Gwynn?

And if we put them back in, Mr. Gwynn, and the law goes into effect, then basically they're null and void anyway, correct?

That's correct. Well, and plus, if you do put these back, they would have already done that affidavit because I'm sure they're not going to wait.

So what are your desires, Mr. Carter?

I don't want to muddy the waters. If the rest of the board's OK with going with the four conditions as presented, I'm fine with that.

OK. Mr. Quinn, do you concur?

I'm OK with the four conditions. I was just trying to seek out whether there was good justification to add those two from anybody, not just you, Mike. Right. I don't really see it. But I'd be OK if there's good justification to put them in.

Is there any other supervisors that would like to weigh in on this? OK. All right. So given that discussion, Mr. Carter, I'm hearing from you and Mr. Quinn that you do not desire to add those two conditions, correct? And if there's no further comment, I'll entertain a motion on this applicant's permit.

i'll make a motion i find that the use will not be of substantial detriment to adjacent properties that the character of the zoning district will not be changed thereby and that such use will be in harmony with the uses permitted by right in the zoning district and with the public health safety and general where fell welfare to the community therefore i move to recommend approval of the applicant's request for a special use permit for the purpose of a home A second single-family detached dwelling on a lot in accordance with section 25-268 of the zoning ordinance with the four conditions recommended by the Planning Commission.

OK. Thank you, Mr. Quinn. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Mr. Tatum. Madam Clerk, if you'd be so kind.

Supervisor Meredith?

Yes.

Supervisor Quinn? Yes. Supervisor Tatum? Yes. Supervisor Carter? Yes. Supervisor Jamison? Yes. Supervisor Mitchell? Yes. And Chair Smith? Yes.

Okay. Thank you. I'm going to say your name correctly. I'm afraid I'm going to mess your name up. Ms. Bikinko, correct? We appreciate you being here, and we wish you well with your mother-in-law. Okay. Next on the agenda is our county administrator report, Mr. Sandy.

yes thank you madam chair really just a couple of events that i was going to mention for the good of the group and some of those we heard earlier from our school superintendent as well but really coming up in the near future obviously we have the agricultural fair our county agricultural fair which is september 2nd through the 5th But prior to that, there's a Ferrum Park Bicycle Rodeo and Chalk the Park event on August 22nd, and Franklin County Parks and Recreation Field to Form on August 28th, Healing Strides Apple Festival September 12th, and Rocky Mount Fest on September 19th. So there's a number of events. coming up and you know the late last part of summer is always a busy time for various events also just wanted to note what we heard earlier from the school superintendent some of the school town halls that are going to be held you know and they're going to be at various schools rocky mount elementary on september 21st the snow creek elementary on october 5th and callaway on october 19th are some of the scheduled events for that as well so wanted to share that for the benefit of the board for those events but also you know for the benefit of the the audience as well and I really don't have any other updates other than with those school events we are prepared to provide administrative support to those events to the school board talking about the budgeting and all relative to that 1% sales tax initiative you know making it clear of how this board and our finance office will maintain those funds and they can only be used for capital projects for schools so we'll be there to kind of lend some information on that that regard as far as the the borrowing and the budgeting for all those funds that that would be part of that proposal

Mr. Sandy, would it be okay, could we get these dates put up on our website, the county website? I'm sure they're on the school's website. Yes. But as a matter of information for our citizens, if we could put that up, that would be helpful.

And certainly those are not joint meetings. I'll just note that they're not joint school board meetings. board of supervisor meetings but certainly board of supervisor members certainly are more than welcome to attend any any of those events but just to be clear that it's not a joint meeting that we'll be holding for those events right thank you for those clarifications okay uh we will move down to mr gwin the county attorney report sir do you have anything uh you would like to share with the board

OK, thank you. OK, we have other matters by supervisors. We will start on this end. Mr. Jamison, would you like to begin?

Mr. Sandy, somewhere along the line, have they started at Smith Farm? Have they started at Nutrient Harvesting?

They've started the permitting. You're talking about Smith Farm Mitigation Bank? Yes. Yes, sir. They've started the permitting and actually I'm working with them to come into the board and give an update in an upcoming meeting just to talk about that progress. So they have had the evaluation team, which is DEQ and the Corps of Engineers and some others have actually been to the property and evaluated And they submitted the plan. So it's in process. They don't have all the approvals yet that they need for that process, but it is moving forward.

Thank you.

That's all I got.

Thank you, Mr. Johnson.

Mr. Tatum. OK, just a couple of things. One thing. Each board member up here, one of the biggest complaints that we get from citizens, and I know Mr. Jamison will back me up on this, is from our contractor's building. It's starting to go back up. I hear it from our contractors. They say, you know, I live in Franklin County, but I can't build in Franklin County. The codes are too strict, they're too stringent, whatever. I just want to make sure that what we're enforcing is by state code Prime example, gentleman told me the other day he just moved into a new house. He was required to put smart switches and smart receptacles in the new house. Instead of paying $3, $4 a switch, it was $138 a switch that he was required to put into this new house. Also, he had to put up a grass bond because they cleared his yard and there's no grass on it. He had to put up a $1,500 bond that would be held until he can prove that he has grass on it. Another issue that came up was a retaining wall. He moved here from Henry County. In Henry County, if a retaining wall is under four feet, you don't have to have it engineered. But in Franklin County, if it's under If it's over three feet and 10 inches, you have to have it engineered. My thinking is what the difference is two inches and who made that decision and why is it there? If it's coming to us from Richmond, our hands are tied. But if that's something that we're doing arbitrarily, we need to get it straight and need to get that fixed. Like I said, I've heard it ever since I've been on the board from contractors. Franklin County says they want to be a build-friendly county, but we make it harder and harder and harder on people to build a house. And I have a problem with that. And we discuss it, but we never do anything about it. So if you could, could you get me a copy of those codes that make those requirements? You can put them in my box or whatever. I'd like to see them so that I can Explain to this property owner why he was required to pay so much to put smart switches and smart receptacles in his house Now granted it is probably a six hundred thousand dollar house But that's still a pretty big expense that in my opinion shouldn't have been put on him Another thing representing the Blue Ridge District being a non zoned area I've lost a lot of sleep over the lack of protections that we have in my district against solar farms, data centers, or any other big industry that could possibly come and build in my district. I want us to really take a serious look. We need to educate ourselves. I think all of us probably know enough about these things to be dangerous. I'd like for us to take time and collect some facts, educate ourselves, get community input, and we need to put together some provisions for protection if it's possible. i mean we don't want zoning in the blue ridge district but we don't want solar farms and data centers either and so i want you know i want to know my options i want to be able to make good solid educated decisions and that will include public input when I make my decision. But I just feel like my district is kind of sitting there with our pants down with no protections when this comes to bear. And I want to make sure that I'm doing everything that I can to protect my district. and the people that live in my district and so if I would like to see us moving forward and gathering some facts and educating ourselves to make some good solid protective provisions that's all I have thank you mr. Tatum mr. Carter yeah thank you madam chair I just have one quick item

Eric Schmidt who's our GIS guy here at the county recently he had some work sessions where you could go and learn about the new GIS system and I got all nerded out as my granddaughter says and I went and that is quite a useful tool for the general public and for us as well and I would encourage the rest of you all to take a look at that the new systems great and it has a lot of aerial photography on it but uh for mr sandy i want you to know eric did a real nice job uh teaching people about it he's quite an asset to the county thank you that's all i had thank you mr carter mr mr sandy i'm gonna go back i caught what you were saying about the snow creek town hall and i believe you said the wrong date okay

I want to make sure everyone knows that is on the 21st of September.

Okay.

Maybe you just mixed up one.

I probably did. Yeah, I appreciate that. So we'll make sure we get the right dates on the website.

The town hall meeting for Snow Creek will be on 921 to discuss the 1% sales tax referendum. So I hope it'll be a good turnout for people to get really informed as to what that is, what it can be used for, and what it really means for our school system. And also, they finished the manned compactor site in Snow Creek the other day, finally got the other compactor in, and I threw my trash away for the first time. at a manned site in Franklin County and it was a rather enjoyable experience.

That's a wonderful step in the right direction.

Paved parking lot. I didn't hit a pothole, so it was nice.

Well, congratulations. That's awesome.

There's still a rooster running around at the Sontag site if anybody wants to go get it.

Mr. Quinn.

So I had a couple items I wanted to mention. Earlier this year, I talked about developing a strategic plan for the economic development group. And I know that we talked about a couple day off-site meeting that would include that, which is no longer on the schedule. but i'd like to for us to reconsider putting that like in a work session on a thursday i don't think we would need more than two hours and if we did we could go on to the next um thursday but just to really focus on economic development in in the county and you know when i say strategic plan for example it's what kind of businesses do we want here and what's our plan to go get those businesses so i think there are a lot a strategic plan means a lot of things to a lot of people but i think that's an issue that we should start working and it would benefit all of us and the second thing i wanted to mention last february a group approached me about trying to do travel soccer in the county and i've just seen travel soccer programs do so much for a county so i'm supportive of this and it's come up again and they're looking for 15 to 20 acres and so i brought it to brandy's attention because i thought maybe the smith farm might offer That kind of property and I thought it could be a really interesting kind of private public Development project because they're willing to work on building the fields, you know almost like we we got the group building the dog park and so maybe we get a Private investment to build these fields and it doesn't have to be all the fields at one time But just to have a starting point and I just think a travel Program for the area would just do so much for the kids and so much for the community So I would love to see that happen

OK, is that all you have, Mr. Quinn? Thank you very much. Mr. Meredith.

Yes, ma'am. I know as we become Board of Supervisors, our hearts are into making this county the best that it can be. Unfortunately, I have broke a trust that I think I am not living up to my reasons. It's 100% me. I have broke a trust that I don't think I could take a long time, and I think I don't want to be a reason that this county is not to move forward in the right direction, as moving economics and everything like that. This is 100% my fault. It's my trust. And it's not only as I look at this board, this board does a wonderful job up here for this community in developing it, and so does the constituents. And I do not want to be a reason this county does not move forward and progress. So with that in mind, I ask the citizens, everybody up here, be supportive. We're going to work together. But I'm officially resigning at this moment. Thank you. Please, please, out of respect, as an honor or whatever, this is my decision and everything. Nobody up here was responsible for this. I did this myself. I broke trust. And we all know that trust is very important for anything to be successful, whether it's at our homes, in our local schools, everywhere. So I do ask out of respect, as this night continues, be respectful. None of these people sitting up here have done this. It was my decision, my decision only. And just please keep that in mind. Be honorable and respectful as we move forward. And that's all I ask from y'all. OK? That's all I ask. Thank y'all so much.

Yeah, let's have recess for five minutes, please.

Yeah, that's good.

Thank you for your patience. We appreciate it. We are now at the portion of our agenda to move into public comment. We're at this part of our agenda. It's imperative that as we move through public comment that we keep order during our meeting. In that regard, we recognize that everyone has a First Amendment right to speak and be heard at this meeting. However, no one has the right to disrupt this meeting either while they are speaking or while others are speaking. The First Amendment does not protect disruption. Therefore, we ask that you respect each speaker's right to be heard. It is disruptive to interrupt the presentation of others. We are going to call two speakers at a time this evening so that one can be on deck, if you will, and there'll be a seat up here at the front, so to speak, while the other is speaking, so we can keep things moving. And we hope that it will move the meeting along and that it will allow everyone to get home at a reasonable time. With that, I believe that Mr. Mitchell is going to do the honor of calling our speakers to speak this evening, Mr. Mitchell.

Ms. Reba Dillon, would you come up to speak, please? And Theresa Tyree, would you please come up to the reserved seat in the front for the next speaker?

Good evening, Reba. Good afternoon. My name is Reba Dillon. I live at 6051 Chimley Road in Works. Y'all bear with me because you know my voice is being repaired from cancer, so my voice is very hard for me to talk. want to share a story with you all i was in a meeting a couple years back and during the meeting there was a frank the topic of franklin county citizens came up and a very well-dressed woman was sitting there and she made the comment if you want to get along with these franklin county people you act like you have no education Well, needless to say, I spoke up and I corrected her. I told her that we are a proud community and we work hard for what we have and that even though I am much further south than Franklin County, we would gladly stack our education against her any day. I would like to address the board and the citizens of Franklin County that are here tonight. Thank you for listening to the residents and removing the data center from the Summit View. I feel like there was not a need for the data center to be in the Summit View. However, there is a need for us to have data centers because one day other countries will get ahead of us And if they ever figure out how to shut down our infrastructure, you will have no electricity, no water, no internet, and you'll be cut off from the outside world and from each other. But we don't want the data center to be here in our neighborhood. Regarding the rezoning proposal, I believe that once the zoning board removes the sections concerning bees, chickens, takes out that 10 acre requirement, the board and the citizens of Franklin County will reach a mutual agreement and work together. Third, I want to make a comment on the nature of this feedback. I deeply respect the citizens who attend these board meetings month after month and they share their opinion in a calm and respectful manner. However, when an individual comes up here and starts screaming and shouting, I lose the whole point they're trying to make because I'm too busy watching the show they're putting on. I believe it's time for this community to move past anger and express our opinions in a constructive way. I think this will allow us to understand the points that are being made. After all, we are referred to as the Bible Belt. When you ask a northerner or anybody and you say, I'm from Virginia, they make the statement, oh, you're from the Bible Belt, and I'm proud of it. Thank you. Thank you, Lita. We appreciate it.

So Teresa Tyree didn't come up. So Galen Jackman. Oh, and following him will be Judy Sink.

Galen Jackman, 750 Summerwind Drive, Union Hall. Last month in this forum, I asked in writing that the board place on the August agenda the inquiry conducted into the allegations made by a county employee. It's not on the agenda, and no one has responded to me. Why should I be surprised? So let me throw some more wood on this bonfire. You may not be aware of the Code of Virginia 15.2-814 inquiries and investigations by Board of Supervisors. Here's what it says. The Board may inquire into the official conduct of any office or officer under its control. For these purposes, it may subpoena witnesses, administer oaths, and require other evidence. If any witness fails or refuses to obey such lawful order of the Board, he shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor. Here's a couple of key words. Board. It doesn't say chairman or vice chairman, it says board. Second, subpoena witnesses administer oaths and lawful orders. That's much different than conducting discussions. So let's go back to the inquiry. Three days after Supervisor Quinn forwarded the allegations to the board, Chairman Thompson wrote a letter to Supervisor Quinn stating, we have carefully reviewed the allegations. We have conducted discussions with the staff and other relevant individuals. Based on this inquiry, I have determined that the allegations you have made are unfounded. Signed, Ronnie Thompson, Chair. I researched the board's agendas and meeting minutes and found nothing regarding this inquiry. So what we have here is a chairman on his own directing or conducting an inquiry and making a determination on a matter with potentially severe consequences without the board's deliberation on the matter. Chairman Thompson said in his response, we have carefully reviewed. Well, he is speaking for you. Did you review the inquiry and its findings? Did you have the opportunity to ask questions? Apparently not, as there's no evidence the board ever convened over the matter. Further, there is no public record of any witness subpoenas or administering oaths to witnesses. When someone raises their right hand and swears an oath, it's no longer a discussion, as Chairman Thompson puts it. Additionally, Chairman Thompson used the words, allegations you have made, referring to Quinn. Supervisor Quinn didn't make the allegations. He reported the allegations made to him by a county employee. Shortly after this inquiry, the board charged Quinn for making allegations against other board members that resulted in his censure. Finally, this begs two more questions. Why weren't board members implicated in the allegations investigated? Where was the county attorney and the vice chairman in all of this? I'm not an attorney, but I do have a nose, and this whole thing stinks. On this matter, the board does what it always does. It refrains from responding. It runs and it hides. Where is your courage?

Good evening, I'm Judy sink and I'm a resident of Franklin County After everything that's happened in the last couple of months I decided to do some serious scripture searching and studying and I think that each of you probably needs to read your Bibles a little bit more as well and So much of what you all are doing and have done in the past was done in secret. Luke 8 chapter 17, excuse me, Luke chapter 8 verse 17, Jesus says, nothing is hidden that will not be made known. Luke 12 verse 3, Jesus warns that people will account for every careless word spoken in secret. Ecclesiastes 12, 14, God sees what is done in private and judges all hidden actions. All of your little secrets will be brought to light and each of you will be held accountable. And honestly, I don't think I want to be around when the accountability takes place. When each of you decided to enter into the talks or agreements with Caruso, you saw dollar signs only and had a complete disregard for the people living in, around Summit View and a total disregard for our church, the services we have, the activities that we have regularly. At any time the county needed something for Summit View, our church agreed to the arrangements. Some of the things the county agreed to help or provide in these agreements has yet to be seen. The playground, for example, was paid for and installed at the expense of our church. It is used on a daily basis. It is a shame that Franklin County has created quite a reputation, and it's not a good one. I heard the news that Project Flash had been nixed, but in my gut I said, I don't think so. But I still think it's on the books. I just ask you to have some testicular fortitude and say no to the data center, solar farms, and wind farms. Please stop seeing dollar signs and see the possible issues these projects will create. If you read Matthew 26 and 27, which is about Judas, what he did and what happens to him, he thought he wanted those 30 pieces of silver, but in the end, what did it cost him? It cost him his life.

David Resendez, please.

Good evening. My name is David Campbell. I'm a resident of Franklin County. All board members and Mr. Nguyen have received an email from me this afternoon with these same exact questions, but I'm posing them here so that they may be entered into the public record. I have several questions tonight concerning the Constitution solar litigation and more broadly, the legal significance of Franklin County's comprehensive plan. Members of this board have stated publicly that the comprehensive plan is not a legally binding document. I understand that a comprehensive plan is not the same thing as a zoning ordinance, but the Constitution solar case raises an important question about what not legally binding actually means. Virginia Code Section 15.2-2232 specifically requires certain utility facilities, including solar facilities, to be reviewed for substantial accord with the locality's comprehensive plan. And in the Constitution Solar case, the Circuit Court ultimately determined that the proposed project was in substantial accord with Franklin County's plan. So my first question is this. Before the board acted on Constitution Solar, was it advised by the county attorney about the requirements of section 15.2 2232 and the legal significance of the comprehensive plan in making that decision? Second, was the board advised that denying the project could expose Franklin County to litigation? Third, was the board advised that the reasons for denying the project needed to be supported by the language and policies contained within the county's own adopted comprehensive plan? I recognize that legal advice itself may be privileged. I'm not asking anyone to disclose privileged attorney-client communications. I'm simply asking whether the board received legal guidance concerning these issues before it acted. And that brings me to what I believe is the larger question facing Franklin County tonight. Has the Constitution solar litigation changed the county's understanding of the legal significance of its comprehensive plan? If the county continues to maintain that the plan is not legally binding, then I would respectfully ask the board and county attorney to explain how that position is reconciled with Section 15.2-2232 and the court's ruling in Constitution Solar. I also would like to point out right now that as far as losing trust, Mike Meredith had the trust of everyone in this room except you guys.

Dawn Greer.

She's on deck.

All right.

David Resende's firm, Virginia. I'm going to try to make this short and not get all tongue-tied. I'm actually using this smart device and wrote it down a little bit. Hopefully you can understand me good. But first, glad to hear Project Flash is not going to happen, if it's true. Is it true? When do we get the official statement? what are we gonna do to keep them out permanently if it is true that it's out set some kind of laws and rules and things to you know make it hard for them to come in I'm pleasing that they don't want to and I'd like to know why was it dropped was it the board was it the people was it the data center company that decided to back out And if it was because the board or whatever, is there going to be some kind of fees, fines, penalties or something? Who's going to pay that? More or less taxpayers. So getting some answers on these things would be really nice to know. I thought it was cool what Mike did Sunday. I mean, it relieved a lot of people. Like I said, he earned a lot of trust and he relaxed a lot of people because y'all know how it's been the past couple months been rough. So anyways, moving on from that. Solar farms, man, they're no good for our environment. We already know we fought the one over there before and put them on roofs, put them on buildings, find other ways, make laws and rules. Y'all make rules who can build and can't build and what they can and can't do with our own property. Well, y'all can make some kind of rules to make it unpleasing. I understand growth. I understand, you know, needing things and stuff, but you know, we're always been a hometown small beautiful area you know let's keep it that way we got roanoke we got martinsville greensboro uh and then also for the solar things training uh if there's it could fall for the data centers too uh for our firefighters we don't know how to handle i don't know if y'all ever seen a lithium battery and when they're on fire and water hits it what happens we don't have that training and we don't you know Training and money, you know equipment special equipment Golly And the other big issue that we need to get on is flock cameras Send mr. Overton down to talk to mr. Davis and follow suit y'all help whatever control I don't know whatever it is with Sheriff's Department, but you know Send them down there get some lessons and maybe even look at their board members and how some of their stuff goes It's kind of run different and pretty interesting I've been kind of watching them a lot and I love how we got all these cattle guards now and extra guards Chelsea You're gonna have to pardon me for your last name I

Dawn Greer, you were next, ma'am. Chelsea, if you would, take a seat up front.

Well, it wasn't changed in 30-day notice, and none of us knew the new rules. Dawn King-Greer, Ferrum, Virginia. All right, you guys, one more time. Laura, you can sit there and shake your head when Tim sits there and says that we need natural protections, but we're tired of talking to you. We're tired of speaking to you. Steve, we're tired of speaking to you. We need natural resource protection. So clearly, none of you were competent enough to draw up anything against any solar plans when you updated the comprehensive plan in 2023. So let me help you out with that. Different counties in Virginia, you've all received the email. There are six shields here. These are six different things that six different counties in Virginia did that legally were okay with solar farms. It is something to think about. First of all, Nottoway County. You need to make sure that there's buffer landscape plan explicitly considers the flammability of the final growth maturity to minimize the potentials for wildfires. We have replanted the pine in Franklin County, Virginia to be quick-growing, quick-burning. We don't have the financial infrastructure to completely redo the fire department. They surely cannot pull the funds out of their tail, and well, Mr. Stanley forgot to tell you that if you jumped on the tobacco commission plan, they weren't gonna pay for it if you didn't make the companies do it. That shield is a must. Campbell County. We need to make sure that the ordinance mandates that civil construction, grading, and access roads, storm basins must completely and fully stabilize the mature vegetation for up to six months before any solar panel installations begin. Why? So we don't get washed out and we have to redo the roads. Isles of Wight model. to legally declare that in case no case viable mature heritage or significant tree eight inches or more in diameter will be removed for any landscaping zone or setback. Maybe you should consider giving some of the farmers and some of the regular constituents some of those tax breaks and land grants that you give these big industrial centers. Craig, LaVanna, Greene County. Craig County has the 150 foot wide vegetative buffer. Fluvanna, 175 foot undisturbed forestry buffer. And Greene County, a massive 300 foot buffeter. We don't wanna see a great big industry. If we wanted to do that, we would've moved to Roanoke. So in our village, in our county, in our rural agricultural district, Steve Standy, you don't like it, get the hell out. Wildlife Corridor Shield. Shannon Dora in Goochland County. We have got to make sure that mandates that solar arrays preserve, dedicate, continue wildlife quarters of at least 50 feet.

We're protecting our land.

There are six shields of protections from six different counties in the state of Virginia that knew the competence of writing up a document and not overstepping their boundaries that match state law.

Thank you, Ms. Greer. Thank you.

Billy Riddle, take your seat in the batter's box, please.

Chelsea Baritza. I am a Franklin County resident and landowner in the Rocky Mount South District and the Blue Ridge District. And I'm here today to talk about trust and transparency. I have been an attender of these meetings over the last six plus months. I have not spoken much. But I am speaking here before you today to just really encourage you to think about one of the things that came up in the community meeting over the weekend, which was how much we would all love if this board thought about what can I share before you think about what do I have to share? And I think there's a big difference there that I'm seeing and feeling as a constituent, especially in light of Project Flash and the NDA, which frankly, I have a lot of questions about how an NDA is even allowed to be signed and dictate to the extent that you Many have felt compelled to lie to constituents that you were even in conversation with a data center. I get that there are certain things that might need to be protected when in negotiation with businesses, but it does strike me as very odd that you would need to lie to constituents about what specific topic is being considered or discussed. Another thing I wanted to highlight just that the community meeting this weekend really brought to life for me is just how important open conversation and dialogue is. And I think that's what makes Mr. Meredith's announcement tonight so disheartening is he really engaged in dialogue. He was very open to listening and also thinking about what can we share rather than thinking about what do I have to share or what am I not allowed to share. That's what so many of us are hungry for, seeing restored in this county so that we can start to rebuild that trust with our representatives and feel like we don't have to maybe show up Outside of our day jobs to every single meeting that's going on in the county So again, I just again want to encourage everyone on this board to really think about Not just in terms of what you share in these meetings But are there things that could change about the way we get work done in government to allow for more transparency more engagement more discussion Other communities that I've been a part of it seems like there is more back-and-forth

Amos Denton.

Madam Board, I certainly appreciate your time. First off, no data centers in Frank County. How about that? Big round of applause. You know, it's not coming here now. And all it took was intimidation, lies, bullying and harassment. You know, She mentioned transparency and dialogue. As the host of the Appalachian podcast, many of you know, we've spent the last four years trying to get exactly that. Board members here, town council, mayor, people of the vice presidential candidates have come on the show, opened dialogue, spoke from their heart, and we've given them the opportunity to address citizens. And I know other people on the board right now have also, you know, reached out and said they would like to come on. And I think that's admirable. We've never had anything like that. You know, probably the history of the country, like getting people to come on for that amount of time and open up. It's phenomenal. And it seems like the actions of some of the people of our county lately have kind of put a halt to that. And it's kind of disturbing. You know, I get it. I understand people are. passionate about things, but how some of the people in this county have acted recently in regards to that is disappointing to say the least. because they call for dialogue, but they make threats, and they allow these threats to persist. And I'd like to personally apologize to anybody on the board that had threats made against them or their family harassed, because my name was tied to a Franklin County community page, and the podcast was. For three years, we ran it and tried to muddle through the BS that goes on and all that nonsense, and then people start coming up to me and friends asking, why is he allowing that kind of rhetoric to go on? It wasn't us. You know, we were removed from that page. Jenna Carter-Smith, Laura Carter, they're the admins. If you want to find out who's letting this violent rhetoric go on, it's that right there. And I'm about as anti-government as it gets. I got the receipts. But I'm also willing to sit down and see your side of the story. And they might think they have a victory right now, but what's going to happen is... Whatever was going on, whatever company you were speaking with, MDAs, whatever, MDAs are serious. These data companies are paying $10 million per acre in Northern Virginia to buy up land secretly so nobody talks about it. So their lawyer fees are a drop in the bucket and they are sharks. They're going to come into this county and they're going to look and they're going to find out who it was that was leaking information, who it was that screwed this NDA, and they're going to sue the hell out of this county. And it's going to be for millions and we don't have that money. So property taxes are probably going to go up. Businesses are going to come here and we're going to be screwed. So... Please, moving forward, think before you act and have a plan ahead of time of what you're going to do next. I haven't seen a plan. No data center. I don't care for them. But at least listen and find out what they're going to offer because not every data center is the same. Just like cars, just like people. One might be huge, size of a town. One might be the size of, you know, something that can fit up at some of you. And that's all right. You know, if we at least get to at least... Don't shoot it down before we have the opportunity. I think we shot ourselves in the foot, and it's going to come back to bite us in the ass in a couple years, and I hope everybody remembers the people who were behind this nonsense.

Thank you. Thank you, sir.

Go ahead, Amos. Lauren Walt, please.

I'm back. Madam Chair, when you took that seat up there, I looked at you and said, I'm not sure whether to congratulate you or tell you to have my sympathy. Jury's in. I want to thank all of y'all for taking y'all's personal time to look out for the county. Right, wrong, or indifferent, we all have different opinions on stuff, but y'all take the time to try to improve the county. I feel every single one of y'all do. This county was built on agriculture and manufacturing, 100%. That's gone. In my lifetime, Franklin County was the biggest dairy county in the state of Virginia. 90% of them farms are gone. That money's gone. There's no revenue coming from that. There's no personal property taxes coming from $150,000 tractors when 90% of the farms are gone, period. Manufacturing, let's talk about that for a minute. Washington Iron Works, Standard Register, Weaver Mirror, Cooper Wood Products, Lane's Furniture Company, Erath Veneer, J.P. Stevens, Puma, Blackwater Door. Where's them companies at? That money ain't here. Where are we going to get money? I hear we want a splash park. We want Chick-fil-A. We want Long John Silver's. But we can barely keep our head above water. Small business owners, you know, I know Marshall, Mike, Nick, y'all are all small business owners. Mike was a small business owner. We're paying taxes on a five-gallon bucket we keep tools in every year. We end up paying 50 times for a five-gallon bucket. Small businesses can't do that. We've got to find ways to get revenue, whether it's adapted. I don't know what it is. But I would be mad at y'all if y'all didn't talk to every damn person that wanted to come to this county. I ain't saying you got to listen. I mean, you got to hear it out. We can't just decide on a whim and a prayer that it's not going to work for us. This county approved one of the biggest revenue engines that most people in this country has ever seen. What was the price? It was steep. Lost 100 farms disappeared. 2,700 people lost their homes. 20,000 acres was lost. 1,300 graves was disturbed, the internal resting place of people. 3,500 Native American villages were lost. But every person in this room, every single one of y'all, every single one of us have benefited from Smith Mountain Lake. Now, at that point in this county, how many people were pissed the hell off? A lot. I know people that gave their land away because the hydroelectric dam was going to make their kids have fins. We know now that ain't true. But we have to listen to it. We have to find ways to make money. I mean, how's our police department going to be funded? Our schools? We've got to find ways to generate revenue. We need to hear it out, and we need to respect each other. The nastiness has got to stop. families have been harassed because y'all are on this board. That ain't right in this county. We're Franklin County. We're FC, not DC. Leave the nasty in DC. We'll be FC. Thank y'all.

Thank you.

Bhati and Nanda, you'll be next.

My name is Lauren Walk from the Boone District. Good evening. Today I spoke with Jared, a senior data center reform campaign coordinator with the Piedmont Environmental Council and a resident of Loudoun County. We discussed what Northern Virginia has learned after more than a decade of rapid data center development from a server. These data centers went from a server farm to industrialized sized industries. It's important to recognize that not all data centers are the same. He acknowledged that data centers brought in significant amounts of revenue that communities like Loudoun County had benefited from financially. Those benefits, he said, came with lessons that had been hard learned. He told me about enormous infrastructure demand, increased costs in electricity, continuous noise near residential area, water use, generator emissions, and the importance of deciding where these facilities belong before applications arrive. He warned that they look for areas without strong zoning and with an amenable population. We have one of those two. Virginia's own joint legislative audit and review commission has reached many of these same conclusions. Data centers, the high industry use ones, are harmful. Today, data centers remain a by right use in Franklin County's regional enterprise park districts. And because much of Franklin County is unzoned, we have additional vulnerable spaces that deserve serious consideration, as Mr. Tatum pointed out. I'm asking this board to act before the next proposal arises. Please remove data centers as a by right use and establish a process that requires meaningful public review, as well as protective measures. The county needs to develop strong enforceable standards to promote sustainable and reasonable economic development. Franklin County is a beautiful place rich in farmland, water and communities and natural resources. The county deserves to grow with dignity. Please use this opportunity to put protections in place now while we still have the opportunity to choose rather than to react. Additionally, this man has offered to do tours if any of you want to go and visit the data centers in Loudoun County. So thank you so much for your time.

Benjamin Johnson.

Hi. Firstly, speaking only as a citizen, I would like to ask that public comment be moved before public hearings in the agenda. Six o'clock is a good time for many working people to speak at meetings, which is the time that the school board uses. Meeting opens, they have public comment immediately. Public comments are at 6.43 tonight, so that's actually not bad. Usually when I go to these meetings, I tell people I'll be back at 9.30, you know what I mean, or 10. I was back at 10.30 last time. And they often start after eight on a school night, right? So this prevents many citizens from seeking an audience with their elected representatives. Please follow the lead of the school board and amend the time of the public comment to be immediately after the call to order. Now on data centers. Regulations that will disallow data centers in this county are essential. Data centers are a huge risk to the environment, quality of life, water use, and property values. Companies behind data centers are full of power-hungry, greedy people who, if allowed, will squeeze every dollar out of good, hardworking householders. So it's not a science issue, really. It's an ethics issue. It's a question of looking at the type of people that would want to bring a data center into a county where there's going to be these noise emissions, and they really don't care. They just want to make money. We don't want those people. If it's not possible to disallow them, extreme restrictions on those data centers that heavily disincentivize them in Franklin County are essential. Okay, now speaking as the FCEA president. On behalf of Higher Teacher Pay, I know that we will have a lot more information on the school budget numbers next month. However, any way you slice it, teachers in our county are not paid enough to survive. I represent many teachers that have a second job in order to make ends meet. And they talk about it like it's no big deal. Like it's a huge thing within the teaching populace, right? Like I'm going to, I'm going to food line after this to bag groceries. These aren't teachers with eight kids or who live in a mansion. These are regular career teachers who could head right up to Roanoke city and get 5,000 more on average. And they do every year lose some of our best teachers. Phase three needs to be implemented, regardless of what's going on with the school board, with the superintendent. It needs to be implemented because of the teachers. And further than that, the base pay needs to be raised. The 4% raises on the table only cost about $1 million, whereas the rest of phase three should cost about $2.1, right? The base pay for teachers in the county is $45,000, and if you increase that 4%, you only get to $46,800. We need an 11% raise just to catch up with Roanoke City, to whom we're losing teachers every year. The dialogue that has been only about phase three needs to shift to being, oh.

Thank you, sir.

Don Berthier. Good evening, everyone. My name is Benjamin Johnson, and I am a resident of Franklin County. I'd like to start by saying that if you any of you pull a stunt like you did with that data center again, I will be amongst the first to vote you out. It is disrespectful, it is spineless, and it is a disservice to the people that put you in those seats to serve, bolster, and enhance this community and the people that live here to pull a move like that. I and many of the others will not and are not tolerating any lack of transparency or honesty on anything moving forward. And if you cannot be held to that standard and the oath that you have taken, then resign now and we will find somebody that will not stab us in the back. Data centers are not good for the people that live here, for the environments in which we live around. Flock cameras are not good for those that live here. None of these things are good for us or our community. I understand we need to raise money. We need to have money coming in. There are many other ways to do that. Take examples from other places that aren't bringing in these people that are just seeking to make money. Do any of y'all think that you can stand up to that, to move forward, to really put the people first that are here asking for your help, asking for your honesty, asking for you to put us first? What can you do to help bring in this revenue that we need without compromising on our wellbeing and our communities? I would love to hear your thoughts on that. I'm sure the rest of us would as well. Thank you.

Kim Jones. Good evening, Don birds here from Franklin County up in Hardy. This this might be a bit different than what you're familiar with, but I actually came here to share a message of gratitude. I spoke here a few months ago as a resident of Gills Creek about concerns about support for the Hardy Volunteer Fire Company that serves the Hardy area. Although our station is a short distance across the Bedford County line, for over 50 years we've served our Franklin County community. Both of our chiefs, our president, our secretary, and our treasurer are all residents of Franklin County. I am here tonight simply to express sincere appreciation to the board for restoring the funding for Hardy 12 in the recent budget updates. Most notably, I want to publicly recognize Supervisor Mike Meredith for his exceptional support in advocating for us and for his overall support of public safety. Mike's announcement a few moments ago has left me sad because he truly cared and he seemed like a man of good character. Hearty 12 is committed to continuing a legacy of support and being part of the community, including the upcoming Ag Fair, next Friday's First Responder Night at Franklin County High, and our annual Santa Run that goes through the neighborhoods in our county to make kids and families happy. I might even get to be Santa again this year. Go figure. Our department is excited to take upcoming delivery of our new brush truck with the primary purpose of fighting wildland fires. I invite all of you to come visit us. Just give us a call, we'd be happy to show you our facility and what we do. I personally look forward to working with Chief Fowler, Mr. Sandy, and the public safety leadership to take care of anything that Franklin County needs to maintain our good standing with the Franklin County leadership. We need more positive energy and more trust. I feel for y'all. And I hope that we find ways to have more dialogue and to heal and to move forward as a community to serve our residents. There's a lot of energy here and I just wish more of it was positive. Thank you.

Thank you.

my name is kim jones i'm the chair of the franklin county community coalition i live in the gills creek district um before we begin i would like to submit a copy of your public comment sign-in sheet that you guys had out there that have some corrections on it that reflect your unanimous july 21st vote restoring the five minutes for a representative of a group of two or more um so i would like to speak on behalf of the coalition tonight which would give me five minutes not three did you sign up ahead of time ma'am I signed up on the sheet ahead of the meeting. Yeah.

Is there a five-minute indication on the sheet, Mr. Mitchell?

No, ma'am. You don't have a spot for it.

No, ma'am. You have to sign up the day before for five minutes.

And is that public information that everyone has access to?

And you have to have your group with you as well.

They are. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

So we can provide you with three minutes, ma'am.

OK. Well, I've already lost 40 seconds asking for. We'll start your clock, ma'am. OK, thank you. Thank you so much. I guess I would just like to start by saying that Sunday night, Supervisor Meredith came to our town hall community meeting, you know, and there was, I don't know, a little over 100 people there, maybe almost two, I'm not sure exactly. And he told us that Project Flash was essentially dead. yet tonight we haven't heard from one of you guys you haven't acknowledged that announcement you haven't explained this status you haven't addressed any of the agreements or any of the money connected to it there's not been one word Now, immediately after you guys came out of closed session, he resigned. I won't speculate publicly about why, but silence under those circumstances do not rebuild trust. It deepens the questions and the people deserve a complete on the record account. Supervisor Meredith also said that Franklin County must rebuild trust with its citizens. He's right. He was right to do what he did on Sunday. He did not break your trust. You broke ours. He's the only one who was brave enough to actually tell us the truth and now he's gone. You just lost an amazing asset and for what? We elected him and we elected you to serve us, not to bully other supervisors for doing the right thing for the people. In 1776, Virginia's George Mason wrote, all power is vested in and consequently derived from the people. That magistrates are their trustees and servants and in all times amenable to them. Those words establish a very simple order. We hold the power. The public officials hold it in trust, and every official remains answerable to the people, and that matters in Franklin County right now. Trust cannot be demanded because someone holds a title. It has to be earned through your conduct. Over the past year, we've watched major issues affecting this county unfold largely outside public view. We've used FOIA to reconstruct decisions, and significant matters have appeared on consent agendas following discussions many citizens never witnessed. yet we're told to trust the process. But trust is not restored through reassurance. It's restored by showing people the work. When your records are complete, your decisions are understandable, questions receive serious answers, and disagreement carries no penalty. The concern is larger than any single decision. It is whether the citizens can still see themselves in the process of their own government. I chair a board too, and the people who serve with me don't work for me, and they don't owe me agreement. My responsibility is to make sure that they can contribute, question me, disagree with me, and sometimes tell me I'm wrong. That does not weaken an organization. It makes it stronger. Your duty is to deliberate together without surrendering your independence, to listen without requiring conformity. You serve together, but you answer to the people. And being a chair may change how you serve, but will never change who you serve.

OK, thank you all for contributing your comments to the board this evening. We appreciate it. At this point in time, I will entertain a motion to recess until Thursday, August 20. So moved. OK. Thank you.