Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

I call to order the Board of Supervisors Wednesday, September 9th, board meeting. Pastor Bobby Alter, Crossroads Community Church, is here. Pastor Bobby, thank you for coming out.

Our gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you for allowing us the freedom to come to you in a time like this, a meeting like this, just to invite you in and ask you to guide and lead the decision-making process. Lord, I thank you that you're concerned not only for individuals, but you're concerned for cities and nations as well, Lord. So I pray, God, for this meeting and others to come today. guidance and make the best decisions that we know of that would bless many and would honor you in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen. If you'll stand up, join me in the pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. Thank you, Vice Chair. Thank you, Pastor. OK, folks. Next thing up is adoption of the agenda. I've got a motion. Do I have a second? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? There we go. We got an agenda. All right. Citizens' comments. This is for agenda items that are not subject to a public hearing. Madam Clerk?

Mr. Chairman, we have one signed up, but I don't think it's an agenda item. David Dixon? Is an agenda item or can you wait till the general period at the end to speak on general topics? All right, then, Mr. Chairman, that's all that we have signed up. Okay.

Is there anybody that's here that wanted to speak on something regarding an agenda item? Okay. We'll move on. Next item up is consent agenda. Board?

Mr. Chairman, I would move that we accept the consent agenda as presented.

Got a motion?

Second.

I've got a second. All right. Roll call vote. Supervisor Oates? Aye. Supervisor Orndorff? Aye. Vice Chair? Aye. Supervisor Lero? Aye. Supervisor Akins? Aye. Supervisor Grubemont? Aye. And Chair votes aye. All right. We got a consent agenda. Next item up is Board of Supervisors comments. Do we have any? Looking to my right. Looking to my left. We're good to go. County officials, 8A, we've got an update on the Regional Broadband Project.

Mr. Bolharver. Yes, we have Tom Innes and Jason Smith from all points here. I believe they have a brief presentation, and then we'll open it up for the questions. Thank you.

Thank you, gentlemen, for coming out tonight.

Much better. Not a tax expert.

Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity to provide an update to you and the other members of the board. I'm joined tonight by Jason Smith, our President and Chief Operating Officer. We've got a couple slides to go through, and then we want to open the floor to questions. Jason is involved in all aspects of the day-to-day operations of the company and planning for future broadband expansion. So any questions that I can't answer about the the way that the grant mechanics work. Jason is here as the subject matter expert. Thank you. All right, so I want to hit a couple of high-level stats and some topics that we touch on. So right now, there is a section in Frederick County that is available and ready for service and sign-up. So several hundred locations can go to the website, sign up, get service. We'll do a drop and an installation. Of the 44 locations who have signed up, 29 are installed. They're very happy. We get a lot of good responses from those who actually have the service. As you know, there are a couple thousand left to be in this status. So I'm just pointing that out that we strongly recommend people to go to APBfiber.com. That is where they can sign up for notifications for when their neighborhood is ready for service. And if they're in this category, they can actually sign up and get their drop and their install scheduled. In terms of overall fiber construction, which is the focus of our team right now, we finished 37 of 191 miles. We have 11 construction crews in market today. We want to keep that number up as high as possible until the project is complete. Two categories of fiber, underground, mostly in VDOT right away, aerial, mostly attached to Shenandoah Valley electric poles. The project is about 50-50 aerial to underground. We are on track right now to finish the remaining 59 underground miles by the end of the year. Really strong collaboration with the Edinburgh Residency, which Jason can elaborate on. The other miles are aerial miles, mostly attaching to Shenandoah Valley electric poles. It's about 95 miles. At the current pace, with a little bit of improvements, we're on track for March of 2027. If we can accelerate that process, we'll bring that in. as much as we can. But to manage expectations, we're looking at March of 27 for the aerial portion. At permitting in the past, the statewide bonding capacity has been a constraint on the number of permits that we can get through the land use system statewide. Right now, we are managing about $15 to $20 million of excess capacity. That's enough for about 1,700 additional miles. So this was a constraint identified by VDOT early on. We added our bond capacity, taking that out of the process. Again, very strong collaboration with the Edinburgh Residency. They recently gave us a countywide aerial permit about two weeks ago. That is why we really want to push on aerial attachments. And all of our applications for land use go in. They come out at the time that we need them roughly for our construction crews. We need enough permitted miles to feed to the construction machine. In terms of permitting on the polls, we do have some Rappahannock Electric Cooperative polls. That process is moving along well. We have about 350 polls of theirs left. Shen Valley, we have about 1,200 polls there. And last week, we were fortunate to join you and Mr. Bolhoffer and representatives from Shen Valley to work through some items that we could flex on resources, both from all points and from Shen Valley. Very glad to see those resources coming into fruition now. The county had asked for a map of different service areas across the county, searchable by address, where you could zoom in, see your home, which status you're in, whether you're in the VATI program or the BEAD project, which I'll talk about. That's in development. I've seen the prototype. We'll share it with the county before we make it public to get feedback. It's very close, but not quite ready for tonight. But the team is working on that to have that public and available for your constituents. We do occasionally get customers or homeowners with a construction-related request. If those come to you, you are all obviously welcome to email me or call me. We strongly encourage people to use the customer support at allpointsbroadband.com. That will generate a ticket in our management system. It's much easier for me to go and escalate based on an existing ticket, so strongly encourage that email to come in to the managed email address. The more information provided on that email, the easier it is for me to solve an issue for one of your constituents. I want to talk a little bit about the marketing that's going on. So locations every other week are getting flyers to promote this investment between the county and all points and the state. Right now, we happen to be running a promotion for $79 a month for one gigabit of service. If you recall, our commitment was to have an entry-level service for $59 a month for what was back then 50 megabits, which was okay at the time. And our agreement allowed us to escalate that with inflation. Instead, what we've done is we've dropped our entry-level price down to $49 a month, and we multiplied the service by six up to 300 megabits. So our starting package is competitive with all wireline providers, much more cost-effective, much more affordable than Starlink. Our most popular plan is one gigabit at $79 a month. Folks who are in the project will get this marketing until they sign up or they request no more marketing. I want to touch a little bit on the BEAD program. So this is part of the Infrastructure Act that has gone through various federal delays. But we finally signed all of the contracts for this in August. This will result in about an additional $60 million of investment in Frederick County for unserved locations. It's a program where, again, all points will front the construction money. A portion of that is reimbursed. I think Frederick is one of the largest recipients of this program in the state. Early on in the process, there was another provider who was awarded a little over 700 locations. Before they got to the point of signing the contract, they declined, and they said, we can't do it. We're backing out. The state asked if we would accept their award and their obligation on the same terms, and we did. We've signed a contract for that just to make sure that those 750 locations aren't left behind or assigned to some satellite service. So this is in addition to and expanding on the Beatty project. We have a long-term commitment to this county to invest in rural broadband. When we finish our rural broadband project, Expansion, we're going to go and overbuild areas where we can compete with existing wireline providers. We're now in Bede. It's a direct federal program. There's a lot of environmental and historic preservation work. That's what's going on right now. We expect construction in some areas to start as early as January of 2027. But our focus is finishing the Beatty project. And we need to finish the Beatty project before we move on in a material way for the Bede. But we have signed a federal obligation to do that. It's going to result in a much more significant investment in the county. And then we can use that network as a jumping off point to compete with other areas. We do expect some more BEAD notices to come out over the next several weeks. But the main focus is the deployment portion of BEAD. And Frederick County was a major recipient of that. And lastly, As we all know, the maps of where broadband is available or not available have perhaps gotten a little bit better over the last couple of years. They're not perfect. There is a map run by the Federal Communications Commission. You can find the link here. If any of your constituents don't see their home or their address showing up in a broadband serviceable search, we can easily add them to this map. Once they're in the map, all providers have to say whether or not they provide service to them, what technology. If no provider is there, then there will be a subsidy program to make sure that they get a wired, reliable broadband connection. It's pretty easy once you do it once or twice. So if any of your constituents, maybe if they built a new home in the last six months and they're not on the map, we can add them very easily and make sure they don't get left behind. With that, I'd be happy to answer any questions or have any questions for Jason as well.

Anybody have a question? Senator Wanderer.

Looking at the agreement, you originally signed the $59 that was set as a minimum, and you have the program for the $79 for the one gigabyte. There was also a $199 initial sign-up fee. Is that price still?

We have removed the $199 fee.

Say that again, please.

We have removed the $199 fee.

So there's no $199 fee? Correct. Okay. And this may be a question for County Administrator Bonhoeffer. The intent is that every home, rural home in Frederick County, and obviously my focus is Back Creek, but every rural home in Frederick County will have high-speed broadband access.

I believe the intent is everyone. I'm not sure if everyone, they have a system where they take a look at whatever speed internet service they have. And if they meet certain criteria, they'd either qualify for the VATI or the BEAD. I think the BEAD has lower standards, which enable a lot more people to be qualified. But Tom, if...

Yes. So they, in between the time when we made the original agreement and the BEAD program, the definition of broadband changed. So people who had been considered served when we first scoped the project were no longer served because the definition of broadband went up. Most of those locations have a solution through the BEAD program. It's not 100% all points. I mean, there's a handful of Comcast, a handful of Amazon locations. The majority of the Bede awards and obligation in Frederick County will be through All Points Broadband. If there are homes or neighborhoods in your area that you're concerned about not having a plan for, I can research those addresses. I can search in the map and make sure that they get added. But the intent of the partnership is to solve the rural broadband divide in Frederick County.

OK.

The major concern that I've received is when. When is it going to be here? And March of 2027 is the deadline now to complete the work providing barrel bin.

Yes. Do you want to talk a little bit about the construction process and what we're seeing?

Again, thank you for having us. little bit about me. I'm from the middle of nowhere in North Carolina and so rural broadband is a passion of mine. So I've been watching these projects all over the mid-Atlantic for years now and I understand firsthand how difficult they are. And, you know, if it were easy, it would have already been done. And so the work that we've done to date to prepare us for finishing this project has been so critical. Going out and fielding, riding these roads and seeing the challenges, you know, The obvious question is, why isn't it already done? Well, it's because we have to do the detail work up front. If we don't and get out there, then we make a terrible mess. And the one thing your residents don't want is that mess. And so where we are today is we've ridden the routes multiple times. We call that fielding. We've gathered the information. Where's the pole? Is it in the middle of a field? How do we deal with that? How wide is the right-of-way? Can we get a piece of conduit in the right-of-way on the proper side of the ditch? With all of that groundwork documented and the plans put together, the permits prepped, the applications in with Shenandoah Valley Electric, we're now at a position where We're not going to slow down. We're going to speed up. And so that's why we're looking at this thinking, we're going to finish. We're going to finish the underground this year, barring some sort of catastrophe. Things do happen. Partnership with the VDOT residency here is so strong that they're just so supportive of us getting out there and getting the work done as long as we do it safely, which is always everyone's concern. So yeah, the momentum is gaining. The momentum is building. And so we're looking forward to closing this project out.

OK, thank you. The map that you indicated that's in development, what's your target date?

I saw the prototype yesterday. I think we're probably about a week out from walking through that with the county, and then another week to fine tune it. So we're looking at about two weeks.

OK, thank you. The houses that may be built to come online. Is there a sunset on? And again, the original agreement was $199. You're not charging that now. And so they're either paying as low as $49 or getting the one gig for $79 a month. At what point will that change?

You know, at this point, we don't foresee changing that new 199 install fee. We anticipate holding the line. Do economics change and economies change? Yes. The $79 gig product, that is a five-year price lock on that. That was in the fine print up there. So don't anticipate changing that for customers that sign up for it.

Okay. And what was the $49? What was the speed?

It was 300. That's a 300-meg product.

We have a 2-gigabit product now, too. In the way that we have designed the network for VATI and for BEAD, it is easily scalable to 10 gigabits in each direction. So... can't conceive of what someone at their home would need 10 gigabits for now. But in 10 or 12 years, we want to make sure that the infrastructure is there so we can replace the electronics and meet demand for a decade from now.

OK.

Thank you.

Yes, sir. You mentioned you gave out some email addresses and places for folks to go. And I'm sure they aren't writing all that down right now. Do you have brochures that you pass out for those folks? And that's the first question, I guess.

Yes.

Okay.

So depending on the type of a sales event or if we're doing door-to-door sales or in the mailers, they get mailed out, it will include a specific brochure. website to visit for a promo code you'll have a specific phone number to call and depending on if a door-to-door salesman came to your door or if an all-points broadband mailer arrived in your mailbox. It may have a different phone number. But we try to get that contact info as large as we can on the flyer.

Okay. I might suggest that we, Frederick, can I put that on our information channel?

Yeah, that's what I'll offer. Can that go on the portal?

I think that might be a good idea. That way folks could just go on Frederick County and find that information. And if they don't have the brochure, it would give them the email addresses and contact information for that. I think that would be helpful. I was going to ask the same question about the map. What have been the tough spots that have slowed us down to this point? What doors were slammed shut that you weren't expecting or whatever? Because people ask, what's taking so long?

Mr. Smith, we had this conversation two weeks ago.

Tell them. Yeah, I mean, look, it kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier. The details, when you're talking about going through the countryside of this county, the The process that exists in our world in the building of fiber networks, it's not designed to operate in the rural field. And so going out there, trying to use a process that was made for a metropolitan area, we've all had to learn what that's like to modify that process to work out here. It's walking. It's taking pictures. It's documenting. And you stub your toe. You come up with a plan. You work with a VDOT residency or with a poll owner. And you find out, no, you're going to have to make different accommodations for this. And it has been a process. We've learned a lot. I do believe that we've broken through on the learning curve. And, you know, that sets us up to finish this one. And just as importantly, it has set us up. We've learned what we've needed to learn in order to do this and BEAD. So, yeah, it's tough work.

Would it be fair to say you're not running into roadblocks from Chintel and VDOT and

So VDOT is a very strong partner with us. Okay. Shentel, we don't actually interact with a whole lot. The ILEC, you know, they do have to move their attachment on poles, but they're fairly easy to work with. Okay.

All right.

Thank you. I believe Shenandoah Valley Electric brought on another engineer to assist you. Is that correct?

That is true. Shenandoah Valley Electric added engineering resources to review our applications. We've actually added multiple resources on our team to scrub and try to improve accuracy. So I will say that both us and Shenandoah Valley Electric have been pushing more resources into this project to try to really unlock this last bit of it.

Okay. And I know that the county administrator himself and Mr. Tibbs have all been pushing hard. And we also have Brandon Davis with the director of the Northern General Valley Regional Commission. He's been instrumental in pushing this as well. Brandon, appreciate you coming out for this. So I'm going to look on my left. Anybody have any questions? Okay. The one thing I will say, we had a very good meeting with Shenandoah Valley Electric, and I think we talked about breaking the ice, and it's, you know, Tom, you said it before I came up here for the meeting, put the pedal to the metal and get it done. And we're going to be... You know I'm going to be calling you because our constituents have been waiting so long. We're at 10%, and we should be a lot farther along. So you've had a lot of roadblocks, but it looks like you're there. So please keep this thing moving. This train's got to go. We've got people that really need this service. Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for coming out tonight. They came from Rappahannock.

You might want to check. Are there any questions from folks here? I don't know if there's anybody here. No, I don't think there's anybody here.

No? Okay. But I want to make sure, Jack, I'm going to point you out on this one because we've got the portal. the communication portal. We want constituents to go to that portal because it'll be up there for them. So they can just go to the Frederick County website. So please get us the information we need so we can get it on there for folks because we've got a lot of people that have been clamoring for this for a long time.

I'll follow up with Mike and get all that info and connect him to our marketing team too.

Thank you. If I may, a lot of that information is there already. I know. We'll verify that what's missing and also we did invite the Shenandoah and

come to this meeting because i know they were requested at the last meeting yes yes and we had a good conversation with them so and again thank you gentlemen for coming out tonight and brandon david thank you for coming out tonight as well so thank you thanks mr oh mr rhodes yeah i just want to point out on that's right on the county website it's not on our home page you have to go up to the information hub

And that page opens up, and then you can get to the portal. So I think we probably need to make it a little easier. So when they go to the home page, there's a place right there on the home page to hit that button. And then the current map that's up there either shows a red dot or a green dot at your location. But it doesn't say whether or not you're going to be served. You're recognized.

Please get that map done. Please. I mean, a lot of people are depending on that.

Really?

Thank you.

Absolutely.

Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, not to belabor this, but the FCC national broadband map, I just put the last six addresses that I've lived in in my life, and not one of them work. So I would recommend that we take that off our site, because all that's going to do is frustrate our constituents, that if it's not relative valid data, let's not put it out there. That's right. And if it's two more weeks to wait for a good fancy website that all points is put together, Well, let's wait two weeks. Agreed.

Yep. Anybody else? Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you for coming out tonight. Appreciate it. All right. Next item up is local tax exemption trial. Hello, Mr. Fox. How are you, sir? Good evening, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice Chairman, honorable supervisors.

Pleasure to be here. This is in the nature of a process improvement ordinance regarding designated tax exempt... entities in the county under either local designation and also somewhat touching on state designation. We're not changing the designation of any entity in this ordinance. This is just a process update. We are removing the list of designated organizations because I'm advised it's become stale over time. There's no particular reason to keep it in the county code. The Commission of Revenue maintains that information. She administers the program so she can advise anyone who wants a list of locally designated entities that they're available. The list that's in the county code is not up to date. There are organizations there that are no longer exist in the county. So we're striking that from the ordinance. The main change we're doing is under the current ordinance, entities have until November 14th to apply for tax exemption on a triennial basis. And then you have to have a public hearing and act on that by the end of the year, which basically means you've got November 14th, you've got Thanksgiving, you may have one meeting. that's not enough time to vet these applications properly to bring them before you. So we're rolling that application deadline back to October 1st from November 14th. Ms. Seibert has already put out this year's application information as of August 1st. So we briefed you about this back in July, and we're now coming full circle asking for you to pass an ordinance updating the county code to reflect these process changes. We've also made it clear, which is clear under state statute, we've added it to our ordinance. This also applies to entities that are made exempt under state code by the General Assembly. They also have the same triennial certification requirement. That is the only mechanism by which anyone makes sure that these entities are still fulfilling the tax-exempt mission that they've you know, been identified for and given the exemption for. So they also have this reporting requirement even though you're not the ones determining their exemption. If we receive information back that an entity no longer qualifies for the state tax exemption that they've been granted, we have an opportunity to petition the General Assembly to address that and recognize that. Ms. Seibert is here. She can answer any questions you may have gotten from constituents that received the updated materials. You know, we've beefed up the application a little bit as well to gather a little more information that's necessary to make these determinations. This is once every three years, so it's not onerous and it's just part of making sure that we have a legal duty to narrowly apply these exemptions. to the benefit of the taxpayers, but also to these organizations, certainly those organizations that qualify and want to maintain their status. So I'm happy to answer any questions, as is Ms. Seibert, and we'd ask for you to vote to pass this ordinance this evening, unless you have any issues with it.

Any questions for Mr. Fox?

Any questions?

I see no questions. Any questions for Ms. Seibert? Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. Board, how would you like to handle this? I'll make a motion to approve as presented. Second. All right. We've got a motion. We've got a second. This is a roll call vote. Supervisor Griffmont?

Aye.

Supervisor Akins? Aye. Supervisor Lero? Aye. Vice Chair? Aye. Supervisor Warndorff? Aye. Supervisor Oates? Aye. Chair votes aye. We're good to go, Mr. Fox. All righty. Next item up is a presentation of the 1% sales tax for the school funding referendum. Mr. Bohoffer. And again, thanks for all your work with broadband.

You're welcome. We've been doing presentations to the schools. We did our third presentation last night at James Wood High School. I wanted to come before this board and give you a part of the presentation for the board. The part I won't be giving is the part that Dr. Hummer does. You will be seeing that during the budget. That's where he'll explain to you their need for their funding, generally based on the growth of the number of students and the overcrowding, et cetera, and the fact that some of the buildings need a lot of work done on them. But you've heard that in previous meetings. Uh-oh. I'm going to start out with what is the sales tax referendum, because there's maybe a little bit of misunderstanding about this. And a lot of people believe when you do a sales tax referendum, the voters would vote, and it automatically implements a 1% sales tax, and that's not the case. What the voters actually vote on is they give the Board of Supervisors the authority to implement up to 1% of a sales tax. Now, the Board of Supervisors on ongoing years at any time can change that number. They can lower it. They can eliminate it. And two or three years later, another board could implement it. So really, and I think it was Delegate Wiley described it as, it's really another tool in the toolbox for supervisors as you're looking at financing government operations and doing capital. So that's how the actual sales tax works. If indeed the voters approve it in a referendum, the board would have to approve an ordinance. And then after 120 days, it would be enacted. And I believe that's to give everyone time to adjust how they collect the tax. And please interrupt me at any time during this. I'll have charts up if you have questions. So what is the sales tax? The amount, we've estimated the first year amount to be approximately $18 million. Over the, it's actually 19 years, not 20 because of the time. And over the 19 years, it'll come up to about $575 million. And the reason that is, is the sales tax you receive each year will probably increase by 5% to 6% each year when you look at our historical record on the taxes. So each year it'll be going up. If you wanted to get the same amount of money from a real property tax equivalent, it's real easy this year because one penny equals $1.8 million. So if you wanted to get the same amount from the real property tax, you would have to raise that rate 10 cents to equal it. And it also goes up about 5% to 6% per year. I did this chart just to give people an idea. I actually stole it from the city of Winchester, but I changed the one last item because people wanted to have a more realistic number. So the bottom number on there, believe it or not, the average price of a new car in America right now is $50,000. So the additional sales tax, if you were to buy a $50,000 car, would be $500. So that gives people, I think, a real-world example of a large-dollar purchase. The next question, why is the tax being considered? Well, currently our debt stands right now at $331 million, and I divided up county portion and the school portion. As you can see, 95% of our debt is tied to school projects. We discovered, and looking at the numbers, and we actually, at the very beginning of this, We hired a financial consultant. We knew this was a very complicated process. We didn't have the systems in place, so we hired Berkeley, who has financial grants, to help us build a model so we could look at all this information because it was beyond our means and the tools we have. So using this model and working with Berkeley, we established what we call our affordability rate for debt service. And right now, the way our revenues are, the most we could afford really to pay would be 6% of our revenues. You may know that our debt capacity is 8% to 12%. Well, that's a little bit different. The debt capacity is based on the fact you could change your tax rate. So you could go up to a debt capacity of 12%, but you would have to raise your taxes in order to afford that amount, just to differentiate between those two terms, although I will use them interchangeably. So what I've showed here, this is with the... an assumption that if your tax rate revenues were to increase 4% per year, this is what our debt service would look like over time. And as you can see from 2028 to 2032, you're far going to exceed what you can afford at that 6% rate. However, as you see years after that, you will have actually much more room so you could actually take on more debt or do more projects. I looked at that amount over time, so all the way up to 2046, that amount equals, in debt service, $255 million. I did a back napkin number to try and figure out what would that equate to projects, and you could probably do about a $170 million project with that kind of debt service capacity. This is the same information. I just made the growth of the revenues or expenditures. I made the growth 5%, so you see the number actually goes up. I will tell you with this model, it's very tricky because there are a lot of assumptions in it. And we base most of them on historical information, but they are still assumptions. So it would seem, just looking at this, you know, you're only going to have a hard time for so many years, then you're actually in good shape. Now you get to this, and I have put this information in your folders. This comes from last year, from the last year with the budget with the school. They actually update it in November, so what you have may change in November, but the majority of what you see in here is going to be the same come November. When you look at the school's 10-year plan for CIP, it's $660 million, and that's their 10-year plan. Their four-year capital assets plan, which is sort of their ordinary capital, HVAC units, etc., is $47 million. And then I took the county's five-year capital plan and I adjusted it. I took out all the projects that were already funded because they wouldn't affect your debt. And I also subtracted out the landfill because it's a different fund. And I also took out all the school projects to show the county projects in the five-year capital plan. And that comes out to about $80 million.

And that doesn't include any sort of transportation improvements and that sort of thing, correct? That does not include the transportation. Okay.

So this is, some of this is anecdotal. Some of it I think is factual, but we were trying to figure out why is it the county was in a situation where they would need to have to consider this tax. So we looked at several factors and I talked to several people with historical information. I know I've been here for five years and I've heard many times a lot of residents get up here and they beat up the board for approving all the projects, but the The simple truth is, I think it's, and I may be wrong, but they've only approved one residential rezoning in 15 years, but they haven't approved many rezonings. But when you go back in the record, I had the planning department pull this out. From 1998 to 2008, over two-thirds of all our rezonings were approved during that time period. So that's the time when most of these rezonings were done. Another reason we're looking at this is we're one of the fastest growing counties. We've looked at the average over the last, I think, 13 years, and we're growing at 1.8% per year. Through a lot of that time, the county did not step up and pay for infrastructure, so now you have an infrastructure deficit. And it did not keep up with school renovations during that time. Also, this is a small one. We get hit with these all the time. But when you add a lot of these small ones up after a while, it starts turning to real dollars. These unfunded mandates, the state's always hitting us with. This year, we're having to do the MS4 stormwater, which requires monitoring and other work on stormwater ponds. If you remember in the budget, I think we created two positions for that. So there's a cost hitting you. When they increase the voting period for up to 45 days, we have to keep the polling places open. There's a cost to that, and the state didn't give us any money. Coming up in 2007, you're going to get hit with another one. It's called the FMLA law. We're now going to have to pay insurance on it as if you were paying on health insurance or Medicare or such, and that's going to be another cost to the taxpayers, and it's an unfunded mandate. But there are numerous ones of these. I pulled these off the top of my head. And as you know, every year, every county in the state of Virginia, when they write out their legislative priorities, they say, no unfunded mandates. Doesn't always work, but they at least include it in their list. We've been building a fire department. We've been switching from a non-pay to a paid fire department. I looked at the numbers going back to 2013. And from 2013 to now, we have added 100 firefighters, more than we would have added if we would have just followed, increased them based on population. So that's $10 million in additional costs just in salaries. That doesn't include the ancillary costs. So there's another thing hitting our budget. Now, $10 million is a pretty good chunk. Catching up on road construction. You know, for many years here, we would apply for smart scale and different grants and such, but the county had a habit of not putting in contributions. So year after year, we'd apply and we wouldn't get those funding for roads. Well, over the last five years, the county has stepped up and started putting in money to get road projects. Over five years, we have put in $30 million from our expenses to put in for smart scale and other state grants. Because of that, we've received an additional $90 million from the state to start building roads. So because of that $30 million, the county will now get $120 million of road projects. But that money for roads, as you brought up, it's another cost. It's added on that wasn't there in the past. I will tell you the sad part, just to editorialize a little bit, the sad part about the roads, is it takes the state of Virginia when you do these grants six to eight years before they even start these roads. So the sad part is a lot of times the boards that make decisions to do that never get credit for it. However, if you don't start somewhere, you'll never get the roads. And the good news is we have $120 million of road work in process. And we've actually spent a lot of that money and given to the state to hold. And the last one is, and this is happening everywhere, you're seeing an increased demand in services. People want more services. I hear it frequently with people saying, I want an ambulance to be at my house in eight minutes. I want this service here. Well, when you have more and more demand for services, you can only provide the services that your taxpayers are willing to pay for. So if you want to increase your services, there is a cost to it. But that's just a little story of how we got here on that side. So when we look at the 1% sales tax, the question is, what will it pay for? And this is where we use the model that Berkeley built. It's one heck of a model, pretty darn complicated, but it's a very useful tool. So we put some assumptions in this model because we need assumptions to make it work. When we look at our debt measure based on the Davenport, when they gave us our formula to figure out what we could afford to pay, it's based on expenditures. We put in our formula that expenditures would rise 5% every year. Remember, we're a balanced budget, so that also means revenues have to rise 5% per year. Historically, that number has actually been closer to 6%, so we actually lowered it a little just to be conservative. We've looked at sales tax revenues over the years, and they rise closer to 6%, so in our model, we put in 5%. We determined that 6% is the... debt capacity we can afford today at our revenue amounts. And this sales factor amount, it came from a PFM. They gave this advice, this number to some of their other customers. There are certain exemptions with the sales tax for schools that are different from the regular sales tax. So when we wanted to find out how much sales tax we will receive, they said to use a five divided by seven multiplier times what sales tax you're receiving now. And that'll be a good idea of how much you'll receive in sales tax. So we put that number in there. You really won't know until you have the first few years, if indeed this is passed and the board decides to move forward with it. So we ran this for the model. Part of what we did in this, you'll see, is the fourth high school. Now, when you look at the rules, it says you can't pay for anything that's already been built or such. Well, the fourth high school, we can add all the debt that hasn't been incurred up until the date this is in place. is installed. So what will happen is we put the fourth high school, based on after 120 days, the remaining debt into this 1% sales tax. And that comes to about $120 million. So that's why we had the fourth high school here, because you want to start paying the debt as soon as possible with this money. So we also have the Bass Hoover Apple Pie and Fifth Middle School. Those are the three top projects that the school board has already voted on. So it is their official three top projects. The next two, which really aren't official, but it is on their list as priority, is Dow J. Howard and NREP. So we toss those all into the model. The total cost for all those projects, $424 million. So we run the model on this, and this tells us if we can afford it. When you run the model, it comes out and says, everything's fully supported by the 1% sales tax. However, on the NREP, $28 million of the debt service would not be covered. So when you look at these numbers on the left, that's not the cost of the projects, that's the debt service for those projects. So this shows you what you could do with the 1% sales tax. Same information in a graph. If you were to incur all this debt on day one, it would drive your debt almost double it to $635 million. And once again, we split it out and the predominantly would be school debt and 2% would be county debt. However, you have to go back now and remember on our regular debt service after, I think it was 2032, we start getting below that 6% line. So that now frees up your non-1% debt capacity that you can also use for projects. So it's not just the 1%, this actually frees up other funding. So we ran this into a chart on here, and when you look at this, All this area in here is part of that 6% original debt that as you're paying down the old debt that it was used to finance, you have now greater capacity to take on more projects. And we looked at this number, and at a 4% growth rate, that frees up an additional $400 million of debt service, which could be up to $282 million of projects. Same information at 5%, which would free up $493 of your debt capacity you could use, which would probably equate, and like I said, this is a ballpark figure, but in the neighborhood of $330 million for projects. So with the 1% sales tax for schools, it also frees up other funding for other projects All the money in here can be used for county projects. You can use it for capital assets. It does not have to be used on just the CIP plan for the school. So it's money you can use for whatever the board would decide to use it for. The $28 million, I just put that up there. That's connected to one line. That shows you what the debt service would be for that one year 2038, just to give you an idea of reference of how much in that one year you would have available. So having said that, now I'm going to go to the county projects. As we showed you that list, the county had, I think it was close to $80 million in projects. I was going to break this down to give everyone here an idea of what those projects are. When you look at that $80 million, $47 million of that is fire and $25 million of that fire is fire equipment. The other money is station renovations and two new stations. Parks and Recreation, there's $18 million for Parks and Recreation and that five-year capital plan. The lion's share of that money is the recreation center that's been listed in there. And for the sheriff, there's $11 million. But I will tell you, that's pretty much his yearly cars he's buying. There are no large projects. I think he has a covered parking, et cetera. But the majority of that is just sheriff cars. And I put this down because if indeed this board were to decide to move forward, if the voters voted for this and the board decided to move forward with this, this is an unbelievable opportunity for the county and what you can and can do. It's going to take a lot of... Let me first go to this. First of all, I'm going to show you two items that haven't been defined in the five-year capital plan that have always been sitting out there I think that needs to be answered. It's the administration building and the courthouse, and primarily not the administration building. The primary thing driving this is the courthouse. The story is one day, and my understanding is by law, they may say they need more space, and then it would be up to the city of Winchester and Frederick County to to accommodate that space. And one idea at one time was to perhaps use this building for the courthouses and then the county would move elsewhere. I know another idea. I met with Winchester and they said the other idea is you could actually build them an annex in the back parking lot and then you could take this building and maintain it for administration. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I think these are things that really going forward when you're looking at this have to really be... looked at very hard and very early because the decisions you make earlier are going to be critical for the long-term success of this if you move forward. The other item I put up there, because this is an item that's been talked about, and these are no recommendations as such, but I know everyone has mentioned a recreation building, tourism facility, aquatic center. I think it's going to be important at some time for a board or a future board to have to say, what are we going to do and make that decision? But that's a decision for a future board. But I think these are two big things that are just sort of sitting out there where a decision will need to be made. And that's why I come to this is if indeed you move forward, you move forward 1% sales tax, there's a lot of money there and that you're The projects that need to be done are very expensive. This generates a lot of funds. It will not pay for all of this. If you look at the need of $800 million in projects, you may be able to get $600 million to $640 million worth of projects. Now, obviously, this board and school boards are going to debate what should be on that five-year capital plan and that 10-year plan, and that's all policy decisions that will be made in the future. But when you're talking about this kind of money and this type of opportunity for the county, I think it's critical to do strategic planning. I know this board met. We had a great strategic meeting and started discussing these items. I think I won't be here at the time, but the boards going forward really need to work hard on that and make some smart, long-term strategic plans when you're looking at this kind of dollars and the investment in the future. Financial planning is going to be critical. We have historically, not in the past, done much financial planning. We've been more year to year. And I think it's time we need to really focus and look hard at financial planning and looking at these numbers. This is really our first financial model. I built some crude ones over the last few years, but this is a really great tool to use. And I think it's going to be critical to have good forecasting models when you're looking to make these decisions because they're tough decisions, they're important decisions, but you're talking close to a billion dollars here. Our five-year capital plan, it needs to be fixed even more. When I came here, no one called it the five-year capital plan. It was called the wish list. And we cut out probably three-fourths of the item on that capital plan because none of them were possible. But even now, when you look at our five-year capital plan, There's no way the county can afford all those things on a five-year plan. When you're doing financial planning, your five-year capital plan should be somewhat realistic if you want to use it for a planning tool and a financial tool. And when you go to all the GFOA information and such, they always recommend to make sure your five-year capital plan is used as one of your primary planning tools. And I think even more so, you're going to have to look out further, 5, 10, 15, and 20 years, because there's some important decisions. With that, I'm finished. And any questions?

Any questions for Mr. Ball? Mr. Supervisor?

Yeah, I just have one. So that 1% equates to $0.10 of real estate tax. So if the citizens were to vote for it in November, basically that saves us from having to raise real estate $0.10 to keep up with what schools are going to need. Is that correct? That's correct. All right.

Anybody else? And if I may, I'm sorry. And the advantage, the difference between the sales tax is one of the things is the sales tax, a good portion of that will be paid by visitors where your real property tax is paid all by residents. We've tried to figure out what that number, we're not sure what it is, but it could be as much as 20 to 30%. Right. Anyone left?

I mean, one of the things that's bothered me ever since being on the board for the last, I guess, 11 months since I was appointed is that Frederick County hadn't had a financial plan together at all. We've just been overly reactive. What's in front of us? How are we going to pay for the high school? How are we going to do this? Our budget process, I mean, we did the best we could as a group. We definitely found that $42 million shortfall together, but There was a, I'll go as far as saying it was not as organized as maybe what it should have been. And I personally feel the county truly needs a five to ten year financial plan. And I'd like to, and this may not be the right spot to do this, Chair, but I'd like to get consensus from the board for us to authorize the county administrator to hire somebody on a per diem basis, whatever it may be, for us to start to put together a true five to ten year financial plan looking at our reserves with and without the 1%. We as a board It's important that we're making decisions on what we need, not what we want. And what we see on the graphs up there is that there's that huge triangle of what you could spend. Well, that doesn't mean that we should spend it. So I feel like we as a board need some tools to truly tell us what is in front of us and what our revenue is forecasted over the next five years.

And if I may interject, it's standard practice. We're very unique of an organization our size. What generally you do is most governments, I know Winchester has done this, is you hire a financial consultant. You go out there and you look at them based on their skills and the costs. And when you hire them, there is no cost to that. Now you have your financial consultant. consultant on board whenever you want to do any type of tools you want to do any type of planning they would have a set price and then you'd have to have the board decide yes we want to spend that money to do that type of project but the idea is I know Winchester in this situation they have a public financial management they're probably one of the largest in the country I know in the state of Virginia And when they needed to work on this, they called PFM, found out what it's going to cost, and then moved forward with it. We were fortunate that we have a relationship with Berkeley, and they squeezed us in just to get this model. But the idea is you have that expert on call, just like you'd have a contractor. And you have, one, hourly rates, and two, for large projects, they may actually give you a bid price. But at least they're there, and you establish the relationship.

We just, as a board, shouldn't be set up to the fact that every single time we have a problem in front of us, that we're trying to figure out how to handle it at that point in time. I mean, our schools are overcrowded. There's so many things that are on our plate right now that we don't have a plan for, and in my opinion, it's ridiculous. And we need a solution. Any comments?

I 100% agree with Mr. Akins, but we're going to have three big variables coming up here shortly. One is the reassessment. The second is November, if we get the 1% or not. And then the third is going to be, of course, the new county administrator and what they bring to the table. So I think come January, yes, absolutely. But I think until then, we've got some unknowns.

I guess the only thing I would say to that is that we're going to be moving into budget season right after January, and now we're going to be sitting on our hands saying, hey, I wish I would have had a little bit more data, potentially. I mean, there's never going to be a good time to kick something off like this.

I think there will be a good time, and I think that's right after January. This coming budget season, I think it's going to be just like last year. We're just going to have to tough it out. But the following year, we should be in place. I hate to, say, pick a financial advisor or something like that, and then we get a new county administrator that has expertise in another area or a relationship with another advisor. So I'd rather let the new county administrator weigh in on which one they want and take off. But I think this budget season, we're going to have too many unknowns coming up, and we're just going to have to fight through it like we did last year. And we did a good job. But I think that... The next year, we should be in place exactly where you want to be. I 100% agree. I agree with you, Supervisor Rhodes.

Well, my only thing is, the financial advisor, more than for the county administrator, it's for our finance director, finance department, helping them as well as they're projecting. Because one of the things that I've sat down with Sharon is, I want to see projecting now. I want to see projecting in October. I want an idea of what's going on before we get to January. So I don't think there's a bad thing to bring on a financial advisor now. And when the new county administrator comes on, he or she, we can talk to them and work with them on it. But again, it's to help us now. We've got a lot of unknowns here. I mean, this 1% sales tax, it's a big thing. And it's, you know, Mike's done an excellent job of showing the community 95% is schools. It's schools related. So, you know, this 1% sales tax is going to capture everyone coming through here. So that's going to help us, right? But I think getting someone in now really could help us prepare with the new county administrator coming in. I really feel that way, but You know, I'm going to float it by the board, whatever you want to do.

Mr. Chairman, if we do bring someone on, an organization on at this point, that can change. Right. I mean, these people are giving us prices and bidding and so forth and so on. So we don't have to use the same person. We can change that. If a new county administrator comes in, that'd be correct in saying that, he says, well, I really have a great relationship with so-and-so, I'd rather be working with them. And the board says, okay, we can change that relationship with our,

That's correct, and the sad thing is there's only like three or four that are even available that are governments.

Yeah, and Supervisor, I agree with you. I mean, we want the new county administrator to come in and be able to clean slate, but I would like the opportunity now to just get somebody in here to help us now with what we're trying to do. I think it's a good idea.

Like I said, my concern is you have two big things, reassessment and the 1%. Mm-hmm. And whatever projection you get for October going forward could go completely out the door based on those two variables. It could. And since they're coming up so quick, I don't know, just people that –

I think that, not to interrupt you, but I think that there's always going to be variables. I mean, this year we went in thinking that we ended up, and don't ask me to repeat it because I don't remember it all, but how we had a windfall of 1.9 or something like that after the fact with the budget. Nine. Okay, I stand corrected. Nine million. Nine million. I was way off. But that's a variable that we shouldn't have seen, or excuse me, we should have seen. But we did. And there's always going to be variables in place and in play. But if we do nothing, we're going to get the same results that we're at today.

I'm not saying do nothing. It's just that's such a big variable that you basically have two different plans that you have to pay for based on that one item. And it's coming up here in just a matter of, what, 10, 12 weeks?

Right.

Election day. Okay.

I think it would be a good idea to wait to see where we come up with the one cent sales tax and then go from there.

Yeah, and we'll have the reassessment information by then also. So by November 5th.

Like you say, just wait a number of weeks. But I agree. I mean, I'm not saying we don't reach out and have a group represent and work with us. And a lot of the things that we have internally we need to work on also. I mean, we can have an outside group, but internally we need to be sure that we're getting what we need also.

Yeah, it'll probably take, what, 60 to 90 days to get somebody on board anyway? How long would it take to put the RFP out and... Get the bids in and select them.

You won't really need an RFP because most of these are on riders. Okay. So you could actually do the contract. When we hired, I hired Berkeley temporarily to help us with this, and their rate was $200 an hour. It took them 14 hours to build this model and assist us. It was $2,800 for that.

So if I'm hearing Bob and Gary correctly, you guys feel it's a good idea, but just not today, to get somebody on board, but possibly November 1st.

Well, I think it's fine if you're just doing something like that. It's going to take a few hours and you need something. You have to do it right now, but I guess to build a whole financial plan for the county.

Mm-hmm.

I'd rather hear from multiple of the three or four how they would do it because that's going to be a big project, and I'd rather wait until we find out if we're getting the 1% before we really get into that.

All right. Can I make a motion or whatever you want to call it that, okay, we ask the county administrator to start to do the due diligence on finding that stuff out so that way after November 3rd, whatever the decision is, we can hit the ground running.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm good with that. Okay. And if I may suggest even another stopgap, just as we use Berkeley this time, you know, they are a smaller organization. I don't think in the long term they have the wherewithal to take on a large project like that. But if I could use them or have to help the finance department in the interim until you get someone on board full time, they would provide the benefits and help out our finance department and us as we go into this budget. And at that point in time, then go find someone that can do the really big stuff. Great. Okay. Absolutely.

All right. I got a motion? Second. Got a second. Adam Clark, do I need a roll call on this? Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Anybody opposed? There you go. We got that. Thank you. And Mike, thanks for all that, putting that all together. You know, the one statement I'm going to make is we had this, our strategic plan, and we really truly are trying to get a multi-year plan in place. There's a lot of things we can do, and I'm telling you that 1% sales tax could really help Frederick County in a number of ways, especially schools, the schools need it desperately, with the two elementary schools, with their HVAC and everything they need to have done, and then a potential middle school. So thanks for all the work you put into that. Appreciate it.

Yeah. Pile on top of that, you did an excellent job presentation. Berkeley Group did an excellent job also. Thank you very much for that.

Next thing up. Information discussion ordinance creating a policy for transient occupancy.

During the budget process and also at our last financial committee meeting, it was determined to allocate some of the transient occupancy tax to different items. This ordinance, I think, accomplishes what the board wanted. We have a 6% transient occupancy tax. 3% of that actually goes to the county. They can use for any other purpose. The other 3% has to be used for tourism-related projects. But 0.75% of that 3%, the board decided they wanted to use outside of donating it to the tourism board. So we drafted an ordinance that would allocate the funds. And I'm going to read these to see if I've got this right. $250,000 of the 3% of the general fund portion would be set aside to be used for future parks and recreation facility. Because it's not part of that tourism part, you're allowed to do that. $250,000 of the general fund portion would be allocated to Economic Development Board to be used for site readiness. And then the full 0.75% required to be used for tourism related would be set aside to be used for a future tourism related facility. And that was a three breakdowns. I understand also the other part we did was actually a policy that was established in your consent agenda, and that was for the decal tax. And you voted on that earlier. If indeed the board wanted to move forward with this, we would like to set it public here on October 14. At that time, we would also bring back the written policy that would go in the budget book, because you need to set that policy somewhere. So you would have an ordinance, and you would have the policy that accompanies it. Any questions?

I'll just say that this could be one small step towards a long-term financial plan. Right. I mean, we talked about extensively the things that we needed and that we've said that the county has wanted for the last 10 years but hasn't figured out a way to get it. This could be one small step to get there.

Agree. I think it's... Again, I keep on saying this, but it's putting down the railroad tracks and putting those guardrails in place and try to get some things done here. So I'll make a motion to approve as presented. All right. All those in favor? Aye. Anybody against it? There we go. Mr. Ball, thank you.

You're welcome.

You've been working overtime.

I just wanted to clarify, the motion was extended public hearing.

Yes, yes, that's correct. Thank you. Thank you for keeping us straight. All right. Next up is appointments to boards and committees. First one up is Northwestern Community Services Board.

Mr. Chair, I'd like to nominate Tiffany Snow to fill the vacant four-year term expiring on December 31st of 2028. Second.

We got a motion. We got a second. All those in favor? Aye. Anybody opposed? Good to go. 9B.

Mr. Chair, I'd like to nominate Eva Miller for... The four-year term on the Shenandoah Area Agency on aging, seniors first. She's eligible and willing to serve another term.

All right. We got a motion? Second. Got a second. All those in favor? Aye. All right. Anybody opposed? Good to go.

Tourism Board. Mr. Chair, I was able to sit in on interviews here recently for the Tourism Board. There were two vacancies, one in the city and one here in the county. We interviewed three excellent candidates for the county position and two excellent candidates for the city position. I'd like to nominate Kerry Rushing to fill the county Tourism Board position.

All right, we got a motion? Second. We got a second. All those in favor? Aye. Anybody opposed? We're good to go. All right, we don't have any committee business, public hearings, none, planning commission, none. We're down to board liaison. Who wants to go first?

I've been running my mouth all night. I'll keep going. From a tourism aspect, tourism boards adopted new members. Thank you for doing that, stepping into my stead, Supervisor Leroux. They're also going to be starting a strategic plan soon to chart the path to the future of the tourism departments. That's exciting. It's a big undertaking, but you never know where you're going to go without a plan. A big thank you to Justin and Renee for working on providing some resources at the Agritourism Summit. It was a good event. I know a lot of us went to that. It was good to hear about what Frederick County was doing to support this industry. If anybody here wants to learn more about what Frederick County is doing for agritourism, please let Justin or I know. With the EDA, pleased to announce that we do have a new EDA director. She started on September 1st, I think. named Amanda Killen. She is full of energy and passionate about what she can do here for Frederick County. The ED board and myself are excited for the months to come. Shayla and Amanda are already working together to build a strategic plan around the foundation that this board set as a foundation earlier this year. We are looking for another team member for the EDA. If you all remember, there was a team member that retired right when Patrick left, and we're looking to refill that position. So if you know anybody that's looking to work for the EDA, have them apply. That's all I have. Thank you, sir.

Mr. Leader.

Mr. Chair, the Department of Social Services Board met yesterday. They wanted me to put out some information to the public concerning some changes that are coming up this fall and winter with the expansion Medicaid program. Under federal law, H.R. 1, Frederick County's expansion Medicaid program, faces two major changes coming up. The first one will be October 1st, 2026. Eligibility will narrow for that program to U.S. citizens in specific qualifying immigrant categories. And the second change will be as of January 1st, recipients must complete eligibility reviews every six months instead of once per year and document 80 hours per month of work or qualifying activity. These new requirements will double the paperwork burden and increase the risk of coverage gaps, even for people who ultimately qualify. Locally, there's about 2,400 Frederick County residents that could be affected, a number that has grown by nearly 300 since May of 2026 and is expected to keep rising. That's all I have on Department of Social Services.

Thanks, sir. Mr. Chairman, members of the board, I have two reports. One, Planning Commission. Planning Commission met on September the 2nd, 2026, appointed John Bishop secretary for the Planning Commission. They had four items from public hearing. First item, Conditional Use Permit 04-26 for DNS Investments, LLC. Submitted to utilize an existing building for a general store without fuel sales. The subject property is located at 5387 Wardensville Grade, Winchester, Virginia. And that will come to the board September 23rd. for public hearing. Second item, Conditional Use Permit 03-26 for Winchester Gateway LLC, submitted to establish a data center on 71.85 acres. The property is located at the intersection of Apple Valley Road and Middle Road and is bounded by Route 37. The Planning Commission voted to deny the conditional use permit, and it will come to the Board of Supervisors on September 23 for public hearing. Ordinance to amend Frederick County Code, modification to remove data centers as permitted and or conditional use in certain zoning districts, and to remove other references to data centers, including definitions. and additional regulations for specific purposes. That amendment was approved and forwarded to the board for public hearing. And then ordinance to amend Frederick County Code modifications to remove the TM, Technology, Manufacturing, Park, Zoning District, and other references. to TM zoning for ordinance was also approved and forwarded to the board for public hearing. Second report, conservation easement authority met on Thursday, August 27th. Planning staff provided a comprehensive plan update. Two specific areas, comprehensive plan update planning, the rural preservation section. Some of the things that were pointed out, 87 responses. And considering what's rural, agriculture was number one. Special events was number two. and tourism was number three. It was interesting to look at that. And I will compliment planning staff and their process of going through the comprehensive plan updating and the work that was put in and involving the community and then analyzing the responses. A comprehensive plan update, key topics and themes, work session summary. A discussion was held there as well. There was also some work, some updated work, particularly Ms. Spencer's done a great deal of work in trying to update information on the website. And so there was a discussion, although We sort of ran out of time in the meeting. An hour is not always enough. And then the Conservation Easement Authority reviewed a resolution that was drafted in opposition to the Valley Link transmission one. Also added to the agenda was FY28 budget. And based on finance committee and looking at the solar funds, that there is a potential to have funding to address some of the conservation easement issues, also the work of the TDRs as that goes through the process. So early discussion, there was discussion that planning staff would look at the structure of a budget and make some recommendations. So Conservation Easement Authority will be working on getting a jump start on FY28 as to how the authority would recommend using funds for land preservation.

Excellent.

With that, Mr. Chairman, that concludes my liaison reports, unless there are questions from the board.

Any questions? So I'm going to report back. Vice Chair and I attended. Go ahead.

You go ahead, Tom. I've got one after you. Go ahead.

You know what I'm going to talk about. Sure. The joint meeting. Absolutely. We had an excellent joint meeting with the city and with Clark County. The city has already passed a resolution supporting what Frederick County and Clark County are trying to do regarding transmission lines. And just to help show unity, we had a great discussion about potential areas that we can work together. We will be meeting again in October, and it will be public. So any supervisor who wants to attend can attend this thing. I am waiting on the city to get the notes to Mr. Bolhoffer. And I appreciate Mr. Bullhawk for staying on them. And then we will get them to the board. So you'll be up to date. But we started this thing, I guess, Gary, was it January? January we started talking about wanting to work with the city. And it's moving along.

It is.

It's moving along. So I like it when it's positive. Mr. Vice Chair.

Yes, sir. So Frederick Water Board, at their meeting this week, passed or approved, I would say, a multi-year expansion project that will, upon completion, provide Frederick County with substantial and additional water supply. And it's a very, very large project. It's going to take some time, but I think it's a great project for Frederick County. And we're always concerned about our water, and this is one of the ways of making sure that we have water in the years to come. So good job.

I also want to, folks, you know, we're very fortunate with the staff we have here. They put a lot of time in. They're out at night. Public safety is there to support us, and we appreciate them so much. There's been a lot of meetings that we've been attending, and they're there to protect us. And I just, you know, I just appreciate all the time that goes in. I don't think people realize how fortunate we are with the staff we are, that we have. So I just want to say thank you on that. Okay. Okay. Next thing up, citizens' comments.

Yes, sir. We'll start with David Dixon.

Hi, Mr. Dixon, Stonewall District. And the reason I was waiting until the end to thank you all for talking to Clark County is that was one of the things I wanted to talk about. But now I know you are doing that, so I'm just going to. Just go straight on over to the only other thing I have, which is car moose. So they blasted last week, and the blast blew out a lady named Sandy Robinson. And let me see. She, she lives in the Stonewall district and it blew out her, blew out her well and ruined her wash machine. And she, uh, she told us about this in church and we, and we prayed for her because she, every night she's super scared about, about her, um, roof caving in on her. And, um, there definitely needs to be some more studies done for car moose. Um, like, like in our past we had, uh, Brenda Campbell and Victoria Luttrell, and they closed the studies on them, but then Victoria Luttrell, she's still without water right now, as far as I know, and they haven't fixed that yet. But every night she's crying herself to sleep. And she's 84 years old. She shouldn't be having to go through that. And I think they got her water just going, but I think her washing machine is still out. And they had to redrew it. And there's still going to be like another year of blasting. It could happen again. So definitely looking, keep on studying for that. Thanks, sir.

Richard McGough.

Good evening. My head's still hurting from the finance report. Thank you very much. I know that this, I'm not on the, I'm sorry. Richard McGough from, I believe, Stonewall, if I'm not mistaken. Thanks, sir. Stonewall District. I know that this transmission line is not on the agenda, but I wanted to be on the record because this is one of the proposed routes that's right behind us. And so I wanted to be on the record making some comments. This is really for emphasis. I hope that you've heard all this before. It'll make me feel a lot better. But I've been in western Frederick County for more than 30 years. My concern is whether we're doing everything reasonable possible to put the infrastructure in the least damaging place and construct it in the least damaging way. So there's three questions I want to ask. And hopefully, again, this is for emphasis. Who is the line primary being built to serve? Opposition groups contend that the Valley North is part of a much larger transmission build out being driven substantially by increasing electrical demand from data centers elsewhere. If that's correct, then residents deserve to know who is creating the demand, who is receiving the economic benefit, and who is being asked to bear the physical burden. Second, have we exhausted less damaging alternatives? Why aren't existing transmission corridors being maximized before creating any major right-of-way through Frederick County? We already have major transmission corridors in the area. Before creating any permit right away, shouldn't we know specifically why existing corridors cannot be expanded, upgraded, or used for at least part of this project? And this isn't a new idea. Underground high-voltage transmission through the general region was studied years ago. technology has advanced considerably since then, so I believe it deserves a current evaluation rather than simply being dismissed because overhead construction is less expensive. Have underground alternatives been seriously evaluated as well, including the HVDC, which is the high voltage direct current? Underground construction may cost more, but if a large industrial users elsewhere are creating much of the demand, should we examine whether those beneficiaries should bear the additional costs of less intrusive alternatives? And third, lastly, What happens beneath these towers? We talked about water. This gentleman talked about water. Much of the Shenandoah Valley has harsh geology. Simply put, water can dissolve our underlying limestone, creating underground cracks, channels, and cavities, and these can contribute to sinkholes and provide pathways for groundwater. The concern is already being raised next door in Clark County has been discussed. where the proposed route crosses an aquifer associated with the Prospect Hill Spring, which is a drinking water source serving approximately 400 homes and businesses. So, I got 30 seconds. So anyway, karst geology and groundwater don't stop the county line. Many of the western Frederick County depend on private wells before tower foundations are excavated or blasting occurs. We should know how deep will these foundations be What geological and groundwater studies will be performed? And who is responsible, getting back to this gentleman here, if construction affects the quality or quantity of the county, of someone's well? So who does it serve? Have we exhausted better alternatives? And what happens to the land and the water that it crosses? Those are the three major concerns I have. So thank you for your attention. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Jennifer McDonald.

Good evening, gentlemen. Jennifer McDonald, Back Creek. We've attended numerous meetings and closely followed development in the county. While we've previously chosen to remain quiet, after the last Board of Supervisors meeting where our names and property were brought up by neighbors, we now feel it is time to set straight some misinformation. For months, we've listened to various opinions on what we should and shouldn't be allowed to do with our property. But these opinions should not override our rights as long-term landowners in the county, especially as we, the farmers, are the ones working seven days a week to maintain our property. Regarding the concerns raised about the view shed, property owners only own the view to their property boundary. The neighboring subdivisions have significantly altered our original views. That, however, is not our view to own, and you have not heard us stand up to complain about their property. We heard complaints about preserving dark skies. We now see numerous outdoor lights from these developments, where we used to enjoy dark skies. Again, you haven't heard us stand up to complain about them. Many of the folks usually in here sitting behind me advocating for saving farmland are living in homes built on land that was once orchards and active farmland. In fact, we used to farm the exact land that many of these neighboring subdivisions now occupy. I didn't hear any of them in here trying to save the farmland that their houses are built on. Another neighbor raised concerns that they would lose their investment on their houses in their special neighborhoods. He said houses are a major investment. I would agree with that. So I looked up five homes in that subdivision that were sold in 2025 and 26, well after the potential data center discussions, just to see the difference in original sales versus recent sales. The average for those five homes was about a $236,000 increase. I listened to one neighbor state how our property was not compatible for a data center. Our property is compatible for many things. He stated we were miles from the sewer and water service area, We are less than one mile from the sewer and water service area, actually less than 4,000 feet. He stated our property was three miles west of the I-81 corridor. We are in fact less than 1,500 feet from the I-81 corridor, 1,500 feet, not three miles. We're one mile from the industrial park. The water line is adjacent to our property, maybe 10 feet away. We have a railroad running through our property. We're adjacent to the largest substation in the county. We already have 500 KV lines running through our property. Again, I'd say our property is pretty compatible for many things. Not once has any of the neighbors in the subdivision reached out to us to discuss anything. Had they previously reached out, believe me, we could have added a lot of perspective to the issues they were concerned about. I could go on, however, I'd be well past my three minutes. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Thank you.

That's the end of the list, Mr. Chairman.

Anyone else that would like to come up and speak?

Hi, my name is Leslie Spencer, Gainesboro. There is a 183-mile Mosby Heritage Corridor that is being buried, by the way, in Virginia. And next Wednesday at James Wood High School is the SCC public hearing. It's very important that the county attends. Okay, good evening. After the joint work session and hearing the comprehensive plan survey results, I keep thinking about the bigger picture of where we are headed. Sometimes we look at what other counties have and assume that that's where we're headed to, but maybe it isn't. Frederick County is unusual. We still have farmland, forest, water, historic landscapes in this incredible fertile valley around us. We also have major amenities, markets and highways. but we haven't lost a rural charm. And it feels as though we're trying to grow even more of it through revitalization by small businesses. And that's so special. That's why I keep calling us a unicorn. And I think the comprehensive plan survey results are telling us people here recognize that too. They're asking us to think bigger. Take housing. I don't think that we should build and build until prices fall. especially while people are moving here from expensive, heavily developed data center counties. We could chase that demand across our county and still not solve affordability. The housing infrastructure industrial revenue cycle has to go. We need a local housing plan for the people and workforce we want to keep here, which should include our own community land trust. And our county doesn't have to provide every kind of industrial growth America needs. We'll always need food. and our soil is rich for that here. Our next chapter could be smaller businesses, B1 and B2 uses, offices, rural tourism, and cute stores, food markets, event venues, fun places, alongside healthy high-wage campuses and tourism. As more of the world becomes industrialized and developed, What we've managed to keep becomes more valuable, not less. Before expanding the UDA and SWASA again, let's see what's possible with land we've already designated and keep rural, just make more rural things. Once those green spaces on the east side especially are gone, we can't build them back. Those are luxury green spaces. This valley was especially valuable 300 years ago. Its food, water, soil, and living systems could be just as valuable 1,000 years from now. We may not find another county that's done exactly what we're trying to do. We may have to invent it. Tischler Base has an alternative development and growth analysis. We should and deserve to be particular about the final development plans on the east side and ask whether it helps us thrive. I really want to help think about our 20-year comprehensive plan in a healthy, creative, award-winning, and even luxurious way. Frederick County is worth it. I hope you'll join me. Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else? All righty, I'll close this as comments. Board of Supervisors comments. Do we have any? I'm going to go left this time. All right. Mr. Vice Chair.

Mr. Chairman, I would move we adjourn.

We are adjourned.

Huh?