Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

in the King George Service Authority Board of Directors. Call to order. All right. Will you stand with me for the invocation and the pledge of allegiance?

Is it my turn?

Nope. It's mine. Gracious heavenly father, we thank you so much for this day that you given us, Lord. Um God, your your work comes in many forms and tonight it's uh taking care of our county business and uh um trying to take care of our budget, the resources and trust to do our care. And God, I pray that you'll give us the wisdom to do it uh do it well. Um the boldness to do it uh um out loud and uh transparently for everybody and the the grace to do it uh um in a way that uh um keeps peace across the county, keeps everybody um happy. God, I uh lift up our u military forces tonight, Lord, especially as we get close to 8 o'clock tonight. Lord, I know there's a a deadline looming. And Father, I just pray that cooler heads will prevail, that wise decisions will be made, and that all your people will be um kept safe. Lord, I pray for uh the four travelers that are on their way back to Earth uh um still tonight. Lord, uh Father, I'm just so jealous of that journey. I know I'm not supposed to be envious, but I'm so jealous of those guys. as they were the heroes when I was a kid. And I pray that you'll just keep them safe and bring them back home to us um soon and and safe. And uh again, Lord, just be with us tonight. And let's just glorify your name. Amen.

Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. As we get seated, uh I I've told some of our guest speakers this tonight, but I'll repeat it. It It's warm in here, so I invite you feel free to to shed the jacket. Don't feel like you need to be formal on our account. It got hot. All right, getting started. Do we have any amendments to the agenda tonight? All right, seeing none, we'll move on. Public comment. Comments will be limited to three minutes per person in order to afford everyone an opportunity to speak. Please provide your full name and district when submitting your comment so they can be properly included in the public record. First up, we have uh Pastor Davis.

Thank you, uh, board of supervisors. We appreciate you. I want you to know that all your names are on our prayer list at church on Wednesday nights. We pray for you each week and some of you I pray for every day. But anyway, yeah. Right. I appreciate it.

You're welcome. I appreciate your all your volunteer work that you do. Um anyway, we just got through uh the Easter Sunday this past Sunday and uh Easter is a wonderful time of the year. No doubt about it. Uh there's a lot of wonderful days in the life of our Lord. No one was born like Jesus Christ was born. There's no been no other virgin birth in the history of the world. So that was a a spectacular day to say the least when Christ put on a body and become man and dwelt among us was one days when he lived 33 and half years and never sinned. We can't go 33 minutes Harley without sinning. He went 33 years and a half and never committed a sin. And uh then he was crucified and went to the grave and only stayed there 3 days and something nobody else has ever done. He rose from the grave and is still alive. Christ on the earth. He raised people from the grave. But they all died again. I can only imagine what Lazarus's second funeral was like and others that he raised from the grave. But anyway, uh he's still alive. And the Bible says he's coming again. Uh the Bible tells us that uh in fact I was about I was looking last night at the news uh Fox News and that guy that you know the whole world you know this is my world whatever it is they was interviewing people on the streets and I asked them what Easter was about and I was amazed everybody they interviewed I don't know what city it was in did not know what Easter was about. That's pretty sad, isn't it? We think about the greatest day in the history of the world was a g day that Jesus Christ rose from the grave. Anyway, uh the Bible tells us in Genesis chapter number one and verse 31 that God everything God made was very good. And uh so that means to me everything bad, everything bad

on earth is something good twisted. Everything bad is something good twisted. Uh the heart is a evil above all things. The Bible says for instance human sexuality Genesis 1 27 the Bible says he made male and female. God created them in his own image and uh now we have messed that up as man is trying to be a woman, woman's trying to be a man. We got 70 different sexes and alphabet people, whatever it is. And I'm not mad at anybody. I'm just saying it doesn't line up with the truth. Sometimes people get mad at me because I tell them the truth, but the truth shall make you free. And so, uh there's no man in the world that can have a baby. No matter how many sex changes you have, you can't make yourself a woman if you're a man. You can't make up a man if you're a woman. That's just Bible. That's truth. And so, uh, the fact of the matter is that God made man and woman. He made it good. But we twist the truth. Marriage, one man, one woman. And um, God said it's very good. And he made a man, he made a woman, and he made them to produce children. Now we have plans how we cannot have any more children. Is that my time up? Great. Day in the morning. That's the fastest 3 minutes in the world.

It didn't dink. Did you Did you start the clock? I'm going to stop. Thank you. Hey, thank you. Amen. God bless. Mr. D, y'all going to need to turn the bail on. All right. Next up, Miss Levelvel.

Hi. My name is Anna Maria Lobo. I live in Presidential Lakes. I want to thank all all of you for your service to the community. I know this job is not easy, but you have the power to do good things and bad things. Also, I want to thank the King George Sheriff's Department for cleaning route 3 and 301 and April 3rd. I was coming from the Y when I saw the deputies picking up the trash, which was unusual. I haven't seen them cleaning the roads before, but years ago, I saw the inmates from the King George jail doing the roadside clean up with an officer watching them, but I haven't seen that for a long time. Route Tree was starting to getting very trashy. People going to the dump are now always careful. and the wind blows some of the trash into the road and nobody pick him up. So well done deputies, you did fantastic job. Also, I want to let you know that the people of King George are very upset with the last taxes assessment. It seems to me that you promised to work harder on the taxes issuing in 2021. The taxes went through the roof up to 40%. But unfortunately, the commissioner of revenue did not work with the supervisors in 2021. I hope this time you work together. I think they added another 20%. They assess the land that my house sets on for $90,000 and aim for a piece of land that is not for sale another $80,000. I am trying the consolidated my two lots, but it's not easy or cheap. I had my land surveyed in the past, but it was never recorded in the county. Now I had to do it all all over again. The

assessments they assess $10,000 285 for a crawling space with my house sets on it. $20,000 and one and one $20,000 166 for a garage. $3,000276 for a porch and $9,00070 $9,0007 13 cents for a for the deck. All these things came with the house and the garages attached to the house. We tried to keep everything nice. We haven't added anything. The only thing we did was replace things that needed to be replaced. We were lucky 31 years ago to get excellent builders. I hope that when you hire these people to do the assess the assessment right and also I would like ask you please don't not get any incentives from these people. Thank you you for listen to my concern.

All right. Thank you ma'am. And next up is Mr. Adam Soff. Maryland doubled the number of high-speed traffic lanes of the Governor East Bridge on US 301, our principal alternate I95 route, and VOTE did not add any stop lightss or exit ramps to facilitate access to our riverfront county parks and neighborhoods. In March, a vehicle overturned on the bridge and another accident at the bridge shut down both directions of US 301. The added traffic congestion and accidents impede and discourage transportation on our secondary PTOIC riverfront roads. This impacts every homeowner on Rosland Road and all the visitors to the Dogin Heritage Museum, the Dogen Wayside Beach and Barnsfield Park and Dogen District. You represent the residents that vote here and pay your salary, not the out of town traffic on US 301. You're obligated to protect us. An exit ramp for county facilities doesn't have to look ugly. And just because you can safely cross the intersection, it doesn't mean everyone else can. You alone do not set the standard for road design. Please designate US301 between the Governor East Bridge and Route 218 as an economic development zone and request the Virginia State Senate's joint resolution for VOTE to study replacing the intersections at Dogen Wayside and Barnesfield Park with one PTOIC Riverfront exit ramp that meets the county's transportation requirements in accordance with the King George County 2019 comprehensive plan. Because every King George family has a right to a zero accident intersection with unimpeded access to our county parks. If US301 is important enough for Maryland to fund a new bridge for interstate commerce, then it's important enough for Virginia to fund an exit ramp for our public parks. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Is there anybody else in the audience that would like to make public comment that didn't get a chance to sign up? Hi, welcome.

Thank you so much. Um, hi, my name is uh Sandy Ali. I'm uh with the Shiloh District. Uh Kathy Bender, you're my rep. Um my family, we own about uh oh, a little less than 12 acres in that district. And um we noticed that uh over the last year that the property taxes on that land had almost doubled. Uh it was a shock over the last 48 hours. I've uh done some research and I looked into the actual sales here and it looked like the sales cost went down. It dipped a little bit. maybe the sales in themselves or the actual pricing went down. So, it didn't make sense. I dug a little further and what I found was there were a series of uh data centers that were coming up 20 years ago. The land was purchased. I used to attend these meetings. I met with severe opposition at the time. As a small business owner, all I wanted was to have my land reszoned. I met with quite a few of the women that were on the swim team at Dogrren. I also met with some of the local dentists and some of the other health care professionals that were in this area all in support. But when I came to meetings like this, I was opposed. 20 years later, I find the data centers maybe the board has changed. It looks like the people are little different from what I saw back then. Um, I stopped coming to the meetings, but I still own the land. Anyway, when I started to look into what was going on, most recently

I found that uh the data centers might be the culprit. Um, but I drafted a little statement. Got a minute left. This is what I came up with. I was born in Northern Virginia, raised there for the all of my life. I'm a retired right now. Uh over the last 20 years, I've tried to build in this area. Didn't think anything was happening. Couldn't get resoning. I was denied no support, no grants, no political favors. Just closed doors. Now, two decades later, I'm handed a tax bill that's almost double. Why? Massive data centers perhaps private profit driven behemoths all rolling in with special treatment perhaps. I don't know what's going on. I can only imagine. They get tax breaks, abatements. This is what I found online. grants, zoning, redistricting, all fast-paced non-disclosure agreements, and even possibility of going to court if there's a harm that we are not even privy to right now with no oversight. They want to meet in private rooms. If all of a sudden people come up with some sort of physical ailment down the road and then if they want to move further and to allow these bohemoths to grow, there's imminent domain. This is a problem. Thank you so much.

Thank you, ma'am. Is there anybody else would like to speak? Did anybody get any correspondence? Mr. D, you have anybody online? No, Mr. Chairman. All right. Thank you, sir. I'll close public comment at this time and we will move on to the reports of the members of the board. Uh we'll start with Mr. Robotham.

Hi. Good evening everybody. Uh I have nothing for the group this afternoon. Okay. Thank you, Miss Bender. Yeah, I'll try to keep mine short. Uh, thank everyone who came out and spoke. Uh, for the my district reporter, Sandy, I didn't get your last name. Ali,

you can meet with me at any time or call me. I I did meet with the assessor over this p before the Easter break and I asked him about the land values in the data centers driving up those values and that's a conversation to have later. uh we can have it offline, but I am concerned about some of the industry that has been here driving up the land values. He assured me that that they look at a lot of comps, and I also expressed interest in why the one-story homes went up in price. And I I don't know what the answer is. That's a further discussion we're going to have. I I encourage you to come and I don't know if you've had an opportunity to pull your field sheet and look and see, you know, what's on your field sheet. There could be mistakes. that I had a mistake last time. It was It said I had an outdoor uh kitchen. I was just a barbecue. So, you you don't know it could be a mistake. And then to come and to the board of equalization and to plead your case, but thank you for coming and my information on the website if you'd like to contact me. Uh couple other things. Uh GW, we had a GWRC meeting. Uh just talked about many different topics. You can go online and and listen to the audio presentation if you'd like. Mr. Sins was there with me as a representative. Also went to the Rapahhanic River Basin Commission where we talked about a lot of the new legislation especially the pasa stuff that's coming and the bioolids that banning bioolids on egg land. So, and then I put in a plug that uh about or dog run plant and the need for uh some place to haul sludge so it's not so expensive for those of this year getting their pumps the pump house and I encourage the delegates and state senators it would be nice to get some funds to help us with that to help the region. One uh other thing for last thing I had we also had wait a minute I think that's it. Sorry, I wrote them down real quickly and I might have missed something, but I do appreciate everybody

that came out today. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Mr. Mets.

Thank you. Um, first and foremost, I appreciate the Farm Bureau invited all of us to a legislative affairs update last night. Very nice, uh, event. And um we got to hear kind of firsthand how not only some of the recent legislative um bills that have gone through might impact farming, but also a discussion about uh the reassessments and particularly the impact on open land valuations. Um I I brought back up make sure that if you have large tracks of land, you are utilizing to the fullest what we have available within our tax controls and zoning. We have land use provisions. You have to work with uh the commissioner of revenue. Um if you're going to use the forestry land use, there there are is a um thing that you have to go through to get that put into land use, but uh it is very effective and a lot of our farmers are using those provisions. Um just to go back to the assessments, we have not set a tax rate yet. I think a lot of us read that what your tax could be if we kept the same 68 cents per 100. I don't think that's any of our intentions. Um, we're starting that budget discussions. I encourage everyone to come speak at the uh public meeting when we have those. Um, and yeah, I I had to get my septic pumped as part of the uh septic pumpout rules. So, uh, yeah, fun times uh for all of that. I I look forward to if there's any any feedback from uh the state on that. That's all I had. All right. Thank you, Mr. Shout. Thank you for coming out. Speaking of tonight, Miss Lobos, if you want to meet to talk about your the assessment, please let me know. I'm sure that Miss Pucket would be more than happy to help you as well. So,

on 2 April, I had the pleasure of uh going to the Blumia uh Tulip Festival uh ceremony kickoff, and that was a really good event. U had a good time out there. I hope that everybody gets a chance to go out there during the uh tulip festival and see. They've got a very large field full of tulips and it's uh it's is beautiful to to see and see that many flowers in one place. I've never seen that many in in one place before, but it was really nice uh event. um had the uh chamber from Freddy'sburg out there in full force and a number of county personnel were there and uh it was as well as mil miss uh Hillary Pent the delegate was out there. So again it was a really nice event and again uh as uh Mr. Mets mentioned last night, several of us, actually almost all of us were at the event with the Farm Bureau at the appreciation dinner and that that was a very nice event at Back Porch uh winery or vineyard rather. The uh Farm Bureau's got a a bunch of of u different programs. If you're not familiar with them, uh, or if you're not a member of the Farm Bureau, then I encourage you to be. There's a lot of advantages to to being a member of that. Uh, they've got a, um, uh, $4,000 uh, grant that's uh, available for uh, advoc advocacy of young young farmers, women's leadership, farm safety. The applications are due uh, April 17th, so it's it's pretty close to us. Um, and then there's there's there's for projects that are to be completed through like August. Um,

there's also a Virginia Farm Bureau YouTube channel. So, if you go to YouTube, you can go there and find it and there's a lot of information available there. So, I'm a a member and a a probably a big customer there's Farm Bureau. They they have really good insurance. So with that though, uh they're our strongest advocates in the county for our agricultural and that's really what they do. Okay. So they work um with all of our farmers, ranchers, um and people to help advocate for our rural uh aspects of the county and um from veterinarians to um I guess the plants, insurance, the safety. Uh they're really big on safety. Um so which we're all concerned about. I am going to drive my tractor down Route Three. But uh but it was a good event. There's u a lot of things that are going on as you guys are aware of. Um and Supervisor Solins has spoke about it. If you haven't voted already by April the 21st, uh it's a a really big deal. Um there's a really big a few big signs. There's a really big forbait sign as you're heading west on Route Three on the side of the road uh with an indication on on uh a suggestion on how to vote. But um I would encourage people if you haven't voted already, please go vote. And then of course we're we're praying for everybody tonight and uh pray we're victorious. That's all I've got, sir. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Mr. Davis. Mr. Davis,

thank you very much. Thank you for being here. I appreciate you. I've been I spoke last meeting. It feels like it's been forever about the assessments, things that came out. You know, my suggestion was at the time to just toss the assessments, the ones that came out. So, you're right. I've been on this board, this is my my two and a half years counting this year, and most of us are about the same. So, if it's before that, I couldn't do anything about it. But if you visit our planning and zoning today, I think you'll find a different set of people in there that I've gotten nothing but compliments about them and how they help people and go beyond to do their job. If I if you call up there, they get it done. We got some really good talented people in there. So, there's a lot of things that changed as far as, you know, data centers could be driving the price. I think what you're probably looking at cuz before there was ever data centers, there were these things called developers. And developers will come in and if a piece of property, you know, I've said this a thousand times, if it's worth $100,000, they'll pay $200,000 for it because they know they can build, they can cut it up, put a bunch of houses on, make $100,000 a house. So that's really what's setting the market. You get a realtor who's selling the land and he knows he has a buyer who will pay double what it's worth and which isn't just regular people like us who just want to buy land and he's going to go sell it to those people and that's what's going to help drive those costs up. I think that the assessments are severely inflated especially when it comes to just open land and and even houses. I have a a friend of mine who is in the Shiloh district. His father built his little one-story Rambler house in 1975. And when you walk into it, it's very clean and very nice, but it looks like it was built in 1975. And he built his house, which is 1,000 square ft larger with more land. And it's as modern as you can think. And his father's little tiny Rambler house on less land somehow or another right beside it is appraised at more than his house that was built in

2019. It It doesn't make any sense whatsoever. You know, it's something this board has been very transparent about things. So, when it comes to data centers and things that nature, when you watch us talk up here, we ran on transparency. We talk about everything right in front of you. Sometimes we get along about it, sometimes we don't. You know, one thing that I've been preaching about a little bit and and I'm really crunching on some numbers right now to kind of see I know over the past year from this point in time last year to uh to to to today, property values as far as what they're selling for went up about 2.1%. what they're selling for. It's a far cry from what the assessments and things have come out at. I think the last assessments were done in 2023, I believe. Is that correct? Before we stepped on to the board, that's when the other assessments were done. Was it 2023?

22.

Okay. So, you know, I think one thing we can do is maybe go back to where those assessments were done and kind of look at what the averages was of of where property sales have gone and basically do our own assessments of that. And and I I think you're going to find somewhere probably about 3% to 3 1/2%. But a 3 to 3 and 1/2% increase is a lot better than 100% increase for what people are getting right now. And so that just kind of gets us there is inflation. And there is this thing called inflation. It stinks. And you know, and I wish it, you know, if I was on the state level, I'd be pushing for things as far as, you know, people who are retired and on fixed income, like their taxes should have a point to where they just kind of stop. You know, they they've worked their whole life. They've paid their price. They've been paying on this land forever. And it should come to a point in time where you get a break and you just get to relax. And it's time for the next generation to take care of some stuff, you know, not just the same old people all the time. So, you know, that's one one thing that I look at and and and that's something that we're kicking around. I've got some numbers I'm pulling together right now with with the team of realators that I talked to and some developers and some appraisers that I know that we're looking at what's a good number to look at and I'm going to be talking to other board members about that in the next coming weeks. But trust me, we we hear that. You're not the first person to talk to me. I go out expecting to talk to people about it and I'm not happy about them either. You know, I mean, I there's I talked last week about a a piece of land that's I think it's like a quarter acre or less. It sold for $6,000 two years ago and today it's landed on a hill like this. You can't put a house on it and it's now all of a sudden now it's worth $60,000. It's just absolutely we that person went to the the board of equalization and it's been cut down to $10,000. So, there is hope there. You can go and they will look at it and you make a case for yourself and bring your comps in. I encourage you to bring if you bring in comps of your property, look at properties in the Northern Neck. That's where you because we are the Northern Neck. We're not Stafford. We're not

Freddixburg. We're not the Northern Virginia. We're are the Northern Neck. So, looking comparable to the amenities that that they offer compared to what's being offered in Stafford. It's a little bit different. So, the prices not to be the same. I was talking about, so I'll be quiet while Ken's talking. But anyway, thank you very much. But we do hear you. We are working on it. And um at least this guy on the board is not happy with the assessments at all. And I know that other people aren't as well. And I'm not one of those people who think, well, we spent $500,000 on it, so we have to use it. Two wrongs don't make a right. No matter how you squeeze it, and it doesn't matter. It doesn't mean I have to take it. And it it it if we spent money, we spent money. That's on us. So that's just my story, and I'm sticking to it. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, sir. Um you wanted to real quick go back.

Sure. So I forgot to mention something. Uh, Mr. Smolick, Miss Bucket. So, one of my constituents um uh I'd say he's prominent to me. He's got considerable amount of assets and such, but he went to a review um with the younger gentleman from the assessment here in this room. And the gentleman showed up uh 20 minutes late. And even though he said he was he, you know, said it like he was joking, he said, "You need to be nice to me cuz I'm the one that determines how much you pay in taxes." So, just as a note, so if anybody out there goes to one of those reviews and gets comments like that, uh, please let me know. I'd be interested in knowing about it. So, and I can provide you more information, Miss Bucket.

All right. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. Uh, I'll be real quick. So, everybody, thanks for coming out tonight. Uh, for the folks that are online, thanks for dialing in. I appreciate it. Um, and thank you for the phone calls and the emails and staying engaged. That's the only way we can do any better is is if you help us and uh stay involved. So, thank you for that. Thank you for the folks that made public comment. I I think we've um my my colleagues have hit on pretty much everything, so I'm not going to rehash that. uh as far as uh um engagements and stuff over the last uh I guess 3 weeks now it's it's cool to have a month with five Tuesdays you get an extra week off but uh um as far as engagements uh most of the stuff y'all already hit on so I'm not going to touch on that again. I did meet with one of the local residents uh talking about as you would guess the the tax assessments and and whatnot. And uh um one of the fun things though was I got to attend an Eagle Scout Court of Honor. Um, so I want to uh give a shout out to Miss Kaitlin Crley who is now the fourth generation in her family Eagle Scout. So that's awesome. Um, and uh, she had a a cool project and it's if you know anything about Scouting America that you have to do like a kind of a a final project and and hers was really cool. She did a an information kiosk down at the the Dog Museum um, uh, down near the bridge. Um, I guess that's about it. I We've hit on everything. I do want to say uh we've got a couple of open spots on the RXY uh board of directors and um has anybody gotten any inputs on filling those spots? That's something we need to fill fairly soon. So, um if you have some ideas, maybe bring them to the table here in a couple weeks and we'll try to get those get those nominated and filled. you hang on just a second. You gave me a little bit of information about what they're looking for. Um it helps if they've got um a background in

counseling or uh um psychology or just basically nursing, nursing, environmental services. Okay, cool. I hit it all. All right. Yes. I was just going to have you we we live in acronyms, but the public doesn't know the acronyms. So, if you please spell it out. I would have said it if I knew it. I didn't I don't even myself remember all of it because there's so many boards we serve on. But for the public if they're going to volunteer, they need to know exactly what the board is. It's a Rapahanic area councilown community service. Y

thank you. All right. So, yeah, we need to fill a couple of those spots there. All right, that's it for the board reports. Uh we'll move on to the consent agenda. Can I get a motion? So moved. What's moved? Um consent agenda as presented. Thank you. Can I get a second? Probably seconded. Any discussion? All right, Mr. Stroud. Mr. Mets, I I for the record that people that couldn't hear it, Mr. Stout acknowledge. Yes. Thank you. I I

Mr. Davis chair votes eye. Motion carries. And now on to constitutional officers. Um, I'm I'm going to start I'm gonna offer Miss Pucket. Did you want to say anything tonight? Okay, perfect. Easy peasy. Um, does the sheriff's office have anything to say tonight? Nope. Okay, cool. So, Mr. Jones, over to you, sir. Just wanted to get the short ones out of the way quick.

Good evening, uh, Mr. Chair, colleagues. Um, one quick note, uh, before we get to the good folks behind me. Uh, one quick note about my office. Uh, had some conversations with county administrator about the timeline for the tax bills. Just wanted to report that we did, uh, take care of the first phase of the proofs already. So, we've already started trying to work on, uh, speeding up the process. Um, so as soon as everything's been adopted, we can just shoot the file over to the printer. So I just want to give you all that update that we have already started working on that. Uh, but now I'll turn this over to the good folks from PFM. They're here just to talk a little bit about uh the county uh investment situation as it stands today. Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome, gentlemen. Hey, real quick before we get started, can can I make sure that the sound is going out? Is everybody hearing that? Okay. I'm not hearing it over the speakers. Yeah. Test. Test. Good. That sound. Okay. Good.

Good. Okay. Thank you, Randy. And and members of the board, thank you for your time here this evening. Uh my name is Scott Fleming. I'm uh here with Jack Schnorbus. We represent PFM Asset Management. We are the county's investment advisor. We're very proud of our long-standing relationship with the county that goes back gosh 24 years. And uh let's see if this clicker works here. And what we wanted to do today is is provide you with a a very brief investment program update. We know that you have a very packed agenda, so we won't keep you too long here, but we are, as I mentioned, the investment advisor. So, what does that mean? We are assisting the treasur in terms of formulating and executing certain investment decisions. Um, as it relates to um the treasur's uh constitutional authority, we are providing information, resources, analysis, um, and helping with best practices of others in the area and what they're doing, all to help him make the best decision with the uh, county's investable funds. That said, we do uh, manage funds on the county's behalf. We have two portfolios. uh we have a capital and a general fund. We manage those on a relative value basis. So that means we take all the investments within your your investment options within your uh investment policy. We look at Virginia code. We compare them and we then invest based upon how they compare to each other on a relative value basis. Um that said we do have a strategy um that is we advise the treasur the treasur makes the decision. We have a a one to threeyear strategy. With these longerterm funds, we just call them a reserve or or core funds, right? That's as opposed to liquid funds which you need to to pay your bills. Um that strategy has a duration or term around

21 months. So call it a year and 9 months. And uh we compare ourselves as such and we invest to try and keep it around that term. Um it's worth noting and it's part of the reason why we're here before you this evening is there was a change at the end of last year. So you look on the right hand side, upper right hand corner, um the total managed portfolio did go up from 23 oi million to 33i million. Difference of course being 25 uh being 10 million. Uh please I apologize for the the typo in the the last bullet point there was 2025 obviously not 2026 but the determination was made based upon our uh our our advice and the analysis we've done that taking some funds that are liquid right extending them out locking in yield was uh a a prudent decision to make and so that was executed in December. Um that said, uh I do want to hand things over to Jack to discuss um some of the the values that we've seen in the portfolio. Those values have increased, which is always good, right? We've seen that the the yield on the portfolio increase. Again, always great to see and and discuss some of the interest income that we have seen generated over this uh with these accounts over the years. all helping to drive the county in and hopefully, you know, make sure that the county residents can be taken care of as best as possible.

Jack, Mr. Fleming, excuse me, sir. Yes, Ken Strader. So, I don't know if you want questions now at the end so you don't have to come back to the slide. Uh, sir, if you want to fire away, I'm happy to answer a question. So, the uh King George County's investment policy, is that uh something that anybody can see or something we can see? Is that available? Randy. Yes.

Okay. And then you mentioned and we can see in the report. So the influx of the $10 million that happened in December. So I'm I'm just curious why uh you didn't do why I mean the $10 million didn't just hit the county in December. The $10 million had been there sooner. Why did we make the decision in December to uh invest it rather than April?

Right. Well, series of of conversations that we've they've been ongoing with the treasur's office and uh as far as the timing itself, it's just a matter of of when that decision is made. So, you know, we looking at the Federal Reserve, looking at some of the rate changes that are taking place, right? We all know that if you look at short-term rates, they tend to go down quicker. Long-term rates, we want to lock those in. For us, it was just a matter of of having those discussions and when that decision was actually made. So, I I don't know if I'm answering your question, but

No, not not really. Um, so, um, I know I'm very grateful that that happened, right? Um, I'm just curious why it didn't happen in April cuz there were some uh a lot of changes in the market last year and if it had happened considerably earlier then the county could have benefited a lot more. Um,

and and and and supervisor, not to interrupt you, but I will say this. So the if we look at where the funds were, right, they were in bank accounts or they were in local government investment pool. If we look at the state of the yield curve, the highest rates available unless you go way out 10 20 years is overnight. So if we look at it from a um uh opportunity perspective, the yields that were being earned on those liquid funds were higher than what we actually invested them in in the portfolio in December. So, I would venture to say that the county made out better keeping them in in April because they're morning earning more interest income overnight or in liquid investments at that point.

A sweep account. Sweep account.

Oh, it was an LJIP. So, it was in it was in the local government investment pool. It's run by the Department of Treasury in Richmond. And those yields were I don't have the average from April until December, but let's say that was well in excess of 4%. Over that time period and with the funds that we invested in December, granted, those are longer term, right? So, you're going to lock those in for slightly lower rates, but you're going to hold on to those yields for longer. What Jack? 380 give or take? 3.80%. And so what you're saying is that the investments that you're putting the county's money into is lower than what the county was already earning in a checking account or in a money market account. The from the perspective of looking at it long-term, right? We are investing these funds. These are core or uh reserve funds, right? That are typically not going to be touched for one to two years. longer term strategies perform better over the longer term. So when we're talking to clients to extend sometimes it is a measure of taking a little bit a little less yield at the onset but making up for it and then some in the longer term because if we look at a bank account a sweep account we look at the LGIP that is tied to what the Federal Reserve does. So for example the Federal Reserve cut rates three times last year in September, October and December. So every time that 25 basis point cut takes place, those liquid accounts typically go down within 30 days. With these with these funds, yes, you're taking a little bit of hit in the front end, but on the back end, you're holding on to that yield that you cannot ever get back if it's sitting in the liquid yield until the feds. My understanding was that the the funds that are available to the county to you guys to invest in from uh the government funds actually yield

better than some of the commercial funds. So if you're they're only in 4% range. That's pretty low. I'm sorry. You're saying is is there a question as to Well, I mean that's the highest that's the highest yield right now that the government can obtain.

Correct. So investment code of Virginia then the policy of the county stipulates that typically it's 5 years and in as far as the maximum you can invest for. So if we're looking out at the permissible investments typically they're double A or AAA rated or higher. you're you're not it's risk return analysis, right? You're going to you have to take additional risk in order to get additional return. So the county and then of course the state mandate what you can what their level of acceptable risk is for public funds. And so you're looking at a subset of securities that are available and then also a a maximum maturity which will then put a a ceiling on the amount of yield that you can earn in given the current environment. And you guys don't you guys don't reveal what the funds are?

It's it's public knowledge as far as Yes. what the the securities are within the portfolios if that if that helps. Oh, it is. Okay. Yes, sir. All right. Thank

I appreciate it. Thank you. See if this works. Perfect. All right. Uh, thank you everybody. So, I wanted to touch a little bit of time on the overall portfolio for King George County. Um, as stewards of the investment portfolio, uh, the investment objective is safety, liquidity, and yield. And so on this slide, what you're seeing is over the past 3 years, um, sustained growth. Um you can see uh in the green box the market value has appreciated uh in the last year alone close to 1.2 million and then in the past 3 years 2.9 million. Now that takes into account interest earned and market value appreciation. So as interest rates come down the securities you hold those appreciates appreciate. It's an inverse relationship. Um, I think what this slide really tells us is that we're not taking on undue risk. We believe in sustained um, growth as long as we are meeting the investment objectives of uh, King George County. If we look at it from an overall portfolio yield, um, we know markets don't move in a straight line. You need to have a disciplined investment approach. So what this is looking at is the portfolio over the past 3 years. So coming out of co the yields were much lower as you can see March 22 we were below 1%. And so over time uh with the prudent investment approach we've seen yields increase and we've been able to take advantage of that. Uh what does that mean for the county? Well you're able to invest now at yields much higher than historical levels. Um I think overall what what this is showing is um the portfolio is doing

exactly what it's designed to do and that's preserve principle, maintain liquidity and contribute meaningful income to the county. Mr. Enormous. Yes. So 3.87% the average for equities last year increase 17.9%. So this would be significantly underperforming the market. So this is a fixed income portfolio and how it's designed is by the Virginia Investment Code. So we're not allowed to invest in equities.

Okay. So you said another term you said uh undue risk. Mhm.

Can you define what undue risk is? I mean what is due? What is un undue like what is you know so who's defining what acceptable is because what we're not defining is what acceptable earnings are. So undue risk would be investing in uh in securities that have lower credit ratings. So we have in the investment policy double A is the minimum to invest in for let's say a corporate bond negotiable CD for issuers. So if a security is, let's say, a single A, that would be an undue risk. If we went out and we purchased a security that fell out of policy, the state would let you do that.

It does not. It doesn't go below a double A. Okay. So I mean that's not an option anyway. So undo it's not you're not making whenever making a decision about an undue risk. If the state doesn't let you do it anyway, what is the most risk the state would allow us to take? Are we maximizing that risk for return right now?

Well, I will say this, the code itself allows a lot of leeway in terms of what you can and cannot do. That's why you always say when you're putting an investment policy statement in place. You either have it as strict or stricter than the investment policy. So, uh, uh, supervisor. So, if your question of undue risk, it would be could take a number of different forms. could be taking one security type and investing 100% in that. It could be according to code with certain types let's say corporate boats bonds or corporate notes you can invest 100% of your money in one issuer in one maturity or one term and you go out 100 years you know so I'm not suggesting that what percentage if you said is 50% in a higher higher risk and 50% in a medium risk what is how is the county's investments right now just give me an idea a percentage of high a percentage that we have in a higher risk and a percentage we have in the lowest risk. I

I would make the contention that there's nothing at a high risk and it's because we are taking a prudent disciplined approach. The highest risk the state allows. I'm going to step in. I'm going to step in. We're on slide two and we're an hour into the meeting. Um an hour into this brief, huh? Into this brief. Oh, no. We're an hour into the meeting and we're So, I'm going to ask us to hold our questions. Yeah. Write them down. We We'll get to all of them. I promise. Yeah. I I want to actually hear what you what your brief is. Yeah. Absolutely. And we have happy talk offline and set up something as well, sir. For for sure. Sure.

And we're definitely going to come back to your questions. I just wanted to

Thank you. So, I think um if there's one slide that I'd love for you guys to take away from, it's this slide. And this is the successes that we've uh in tandem with the treasur's office for the county as hard-earned dollars. Um fixed income isn't designed to be flashy. It's supposed to be a reliable engine that generates income for the county. And so, this is looking at interest that has been earned over the past 10 years. And you can see in last year alone it's been a million going back three years uh just under 2.5 million in 10 years 4 a.5 million. So, um, ultimately I think this slide is really showing the partnership we've had with the county, uh, of utilizing idle funds to maximize the yield we can achieve so that you in turn can look at those resources as you need it, whether that's operational needs, fund priorities or reduced any any uh other funding sources. So, um, ultimately I think this is the the highlight. Uh, with that, I'll I'll I'll open it up to any questions from the board.

Yeah, perfect timing. All right, any questions out here? You got any questions? I will let Ken finish his statements. All right, go for it. Do what? So how do our returns if you go back to that slide for the returns there? Okay. So 3 87% and that's that percent is from it's February

February February okay from February 2026 and out. So, how do our returns compare to Lden County? Mhm. Well, I I'll take it a little bit of a different angle because Len County manages their own funds. They have their internal investment team. Just tell me what the difference is. I don't know what the difference is. They don't they don't report. What about Fairfax? They they internally manage their funds as well. They they have an entire team that does that. But to to to get to where I think you're trying to go, sir, not to put words in your mouth, but trying to see other localities that have this arrangement. How does that match? Is that sort of what you're looking for? How a comparison to other localities?

You will start. Okay. Go ahead and give me that. We we are smack dab, right? Where a a very a competitive market yield or market return for the portfolio. Now, different localities have different strategies. Obviously, the strategy will then determine what your overall yield and returns are. But given the the runway we have and given the amount of funds we have to invest, this is a strong market return for these managed funds.

All right. Given the runway we have, so I don't know what your your runway is, but how do we compare to So, okay, how about this? What is the highest yield for a county that you represent? What is that? Again, it's strategy driven. I'm just asking what the number is. Well, that's that's not information that that can be provided unless that county is, you know, allowing it. But I So, it's not public information. It's not public information. You don't have you don't have to give us the name of the county. You can just say what the

it's with a different strategy, slightly longer strategy. It's around 4% or a little higher, but that's with a slightly different strategy. If we're looking for the strategy comparing apples to apples, right? Strategy of other counties, how we're managing them. This is within a few basis points of and that's that's more a matter of if you think about it, it's kind of scale, right? If we have a locality that has $200 million versus King George's which has let's say 10% of that, then you have a few more levers to pull, right? You have different issuers, different securities that you can have access to because they might have higher minimums. to invest. So that's where a lot of the differential comes in terms of the the investment universe and where the where the yield differential.

I would also mention that the portfolios are managed to a 1 to threeyear treasury index. That's the benchmark. So this 3.87% as of February is beating the benchmark. So we're above that and we can provide you material with what it's been the past 10 years to compare against that benchmark. But we have other localities that depending on their liquidity needs maybe they have a strategy that's a 0 to threeyear 0 to 5year and so right now it's a 1 to threeyear and um confidently can say that this is still beating that benchmark of a 1 to threeyear treasury index.

So I would be interested in having a meeting Um, my concerns are one that we're getting the most bang for our buck. Okay. I want King George. So, we the supervisors up here and we have a budget meeting. We have constantly budget. We got a budget meeting on Friday. So, we have, you know, I mean, you guys, I believe, are quite familiar with what we have to pay as far as the county goes. But I can tell you, I've got this book right here, and our citizens don't. Okay? We had a lot of questions at that dinner last night, and people don't understand where our money goes. They don't even understand really where it comes from because they feel like it all comes from their real estate taxes. Okay? but they really don't understand where it goes. So, whenever we talk about where their money coming in and where it goes, and what I'm really interested in is that it's making the most money that can be made for it. The same thing I do with my own money. All right? If somebody's not handling my money correctly, then I fire them and I get somebody that will handle it correctly. Period. Okay? Now, that's just me personally, but I take this job and what's done with the money very seriously as if it were my own. Some of it somewhere in there, very itty bitty piece of it is mine. And I take that seriously. So, what we want the most bang for the buck. Two, I really want to know what the strategy is. I'd like to, you know, break that down because I want to know how that strategy could be that that the strategy the county has that you're working off of is delivering for our citizens the most it can deliver. Cuz if it is not, we need to change our strategy. And that's what I see you guys

doing is saying, you know what, if you change your strategy here, we can raise that number up. We can put more more money in the account by changing that strategy or modifying because you see the strategy. you of anybody should know the best way of achieving that and I want you to make sure that us as a county are doing the most we can to make the most money. Um, and then my third concern is that the county's money is in totality is being managed in a way that it's making the most it can for the citizens that it's invested and and whenever we talk about liquidity, you know, uh, our finance department knows they've been doing this for a long time. They know what bills are due, when they're due, when they have to be paid. I mean, it's just like managing your your account at home and you know how much money you need to pay your bills and where it needs to be. And if and if you don't need that, you have a little bit of overage, okay? The rest of it should be invested here and making the most it can make. I mean, that's just total management. That should be a part of that strategy. That's what I want. That's what I want to see whenever we have the meeting so whenever we come back in here, we can distri demonstrate to our citizens that we are managing their money the best that we can. And if we're not, we need to change it. Thank you sir.

Yes. Thank you. Appreciate that. Um I think what you hear is a question about whether we have the correct strategy for the size of the portfolio that we have in the county that we are now. I am not for investing in junk bonds or locking up our money for 20 years. Right. This is the county's money that needs to as you said invest for the purposes of of the county. I think what this has been I appreciate this Mr. Jones. uh you having the team come and present this um I think it gives us all some more information about what our options are, right? I think I'd like to see now maybe more go towards economic development than just sitting in a bank on a you know a very safe um 5-year bond type discussion. I was at Rockingham County and they did a pretty innovative thing. their EDA actually borrowed against their general fund and they were paying back at a very competitive interest rate as a you know again it's it's what's our strategy right are we going to invest here locally or are we going to invest by putting it in some bank bond um to earn you know that number is going to probably come down as bonds get cheaper right so anyway just wanted to say thank you for giving us this data to to ponder on Mr. Mr. Botham, I think you had a question.

Yeah. So, I was uh uh I think Mr. Mets summarized it uh pretty well, but one of the questions I had, you know, as I look at uh what we have here and being part of the service authority, I believe we have some of these funds in uh mixed in the in the Treasury account here. And uh what I'm looking at is and and and I guess it's kind of the same question that these guys have have asked so far is have we done any kind of assessment or a study that says what we should keep in cash vice adv vice uh invest cuz why' we only do 10 million? I mean, we're sitting on 23 million that's sitting in a bank that's probably collecting less than a quarter of a percent in interest sitting in a checking account for cash when we could be getting, I'll just say 3% on the low end and we can take the money out within 24 hours. So, if we can withdraw the money in 24 hours, we have the opportunity to get cash to pay bills that we need to pay, but we should have money on hand to pay a bill if emergency comes up, right? But have we done any kind of assessment like that to see, hey, we should keep X amount because we know we have a recurring amount of bills per whatever the quarter, month, however you want to look at that and then invest the rest.

It's it's a good point and it's it's it's well founded and I will say so we just roll that all into the term cash flow analysis. We we perform cash flow analysis uh for the county. Uh we did one we typically advise doing that at least every two years. We did one in 2024. So obviously we're now rolling into that same cycle again to then determine what is like you said what what's available cash that's needed for your daily bills going in and out right and then what can then be uh if if invested with PFM right on a core fund can be extended out and be more core and then work to the supervisor's point as hard as possible. So the answer is yes. All right, Miss Bidter.

I don't have a Lee kind of took my question. He we were talking about it, so he Sorry. He said it better than I would have. So Okay. Sorry, Mr. Davis. Yeah. So what you're what you're seeing is and most of us have some of us been a little little bit longer, a little bit shorter as far as how long when we came on this board, we were just shocked to see that there. I think it was the number was $24 million had been sitting in a checking account for years. So that's that's that's what we found, right? That's what we saw. And and the young lady came and spoke. I don't know if she was with your group or not. Very nice lady. Um

but we we just weren't happy with with some of the things that we were and I know you're just taking direction on some things and and just most of us here are also in the business world. So we invest and we do things. So we know a little bit about it and I work with nonprofits other businesses and doing the same thing. So that's just our concern. So we've been keeping an eye on this thing because we probably missed out on millions of dollars over the past however many years by just not have money just sitting there doing nothing. And it comes to a point in time we I believe true wealth is when your money is working for you.

That's true. So there's things that we do to, you know, to keep taxes down to, you know, fire department needs raises and, you know, $100,000 kicked to the sheriff's department probably this year to get their salaries back on track and teachers and all this stuff. And it's this money belongs to King George citizens. So we want to make instead of I can't keep going back to them going, hey, we need more tax money. Hey, I'm tired when it's time for you know what we Well, Mr. Davis, we have a lot of money sitting in the bank. What are we doing with our money that we have right now? And so that be since we came on the board, people are becoming more aware of what kind of money we have. All I hear about is when I is how much debt we have and then you start getting in, it's like, man, we we look pretty good compared to a lot of counties, right, as far as debt and and money that we have and things like that. So we're I I want you to understand just where Mr. Stra's coming from, where we're coming from. It's not a it's not to attack,

thing. It's just that we're we're very uh there there's just been we believe just some some mismanagement over the years as far as what we could have gotten. And I think it's because people don't want to take a risk sometimes, right? They they want to back it back down and they don't want to risk any kind of loss and what if we can't get the money back. But there's all kinds of things you can invest in great returns that you can get that money back, right? So that's all we're adding to it. So I think that um m having a meeting with Mr. drought and maybe another member of the board probably be a good thing and just just so we can get an idea of exactly what the vision is and what what's going on and what the long-term goals are. That's all. And helps us. Oh, sure. Yeah.

Hey, just really quick, uh, a couple of things. At no point in time do we have more than 3.5 million in our checking. There's a sweep account that earns more. So, at no point in time, I just want to correct that. Uh the other thing at no point in time do I meet with PFM in a vacuum by myself. I always have representatives of you all's county administrator as well as the finance director. So decisions aren't being made in a vacuum. I just wanted to make that clear as well. Thank you. Yeah. And thank you for being here tonight. Mr. Randy, thank you. We know last year you moved the money the money was moved to the money market.

We were briefed on that. You guys came in Yeah. So yeah, LGIP. So, which is a far improvement over just a checking account. So, the earnings went up, right? A lot. Yeah.

I wouldn't say a lot, but they did go. Yes. And and if I could add something again, this I hope I'm not sticking my nose where it does not belong here, but from knowing what the uh bank account, the sweep account to to to uh what Randy just mentioned, that is a competitive yield that's being earned. I come from a background I was at BB&T before it became truest for 20 years and I helped price public funds deposits year after year and there's an expense involved with doing so. You have to overcolateralize every dollar of public funds that it sits in your bank whether it's Atlantic Union Bank Truist Wells Fargo you name it. So a bank's never going to give you a rate that it's going to give you and I because there's added expense administration costs reporting and so forth that's involved. So the rate that's being paid on the the sweep account is not a far cry from what's being p paid on the LGIP and this yield is is right in line with that. So again, I I I do not want to stick my nose where it does not belong, but it's worth mentioning that as it stands right now and given where rates are, which is the higher rates that are available are overnight and until you go out beyond what your investment policy require allows, you're in that that you're in a good spot in that regard. We have localities, and I of course can't mention those that are earning a heck of a lot less that you are earning right now. We have folks that are earning less than 2% on hundreds of millions of dollars. Less than 2%. So when we're talking about 3 and a half%, we're talking about LGIP at 370 or 380, we're talking about this at 390ish, you your money is working better than a lot of other localities and some that are quite larger. So again, we would

welcome the opportunity to to speak with any members of of the board uh and and expand upon that. But to the degree that we talked to, we deal with over half over two dozen localities throughout the Commonwealth. Uh and hearing others of how they're investing, uh this county is in good shape in that regard. in my personal opinion and what I've seen dealing with other localities. All right, thank you gentlemen. Appreciate you coming out tonight. Thank you. Okay, we'll move on to the agenda and

we'll um kick it over to the board of directors. Thank you very much. Uh can I have a motion for the consent agenda? Make a move to approve the consent agenda as a as presented. Do I have a second? Second. Have a motion properly seconded. Any discussion? Right. By roll call vote. Mr. Robothaman. I. Mr. Davis. Hi. Mr. Sins. Hi. Mr. Mets. I. Chair votes I. Motion carries. Next up we have some presentations. The first one is the we had talked about this at the last board meeting the recommendation to approve the Stantech proposal for the service authority rate study. U. Mr. Hamilton.

Yeah. Good evening folks. I guess the uh presentation that the treasur's office just did kind of sets the table for this conversation. I'll try to keep it much shorter um depend on your questions. But in any case, on the 17th of March, I presented to you a proposal that we received from Stantech along with a cover letter that came from Davenport Financial um with respect to conducting a comprehensive rate study for the King George County Service Authority. Um we have Kyle Lux, am I pronouncing it right, Kyle? and Dave Haidider from Stantech, Kyle's from Davenport. I'm here to answer any questions that you have. Uh, however, it has been many years since the county uh since the service authority, excuse me, has had the guidance of a rate study. Uh, I believe it's been at least 5 years since the rates have been adjusted. I'm not sitting here recommending a rate adjustment, but what I am recommending is professional assistance and guidance to help us make determinations about how we manage our money and how we manage our rates. Um in particular um we have one classification of rates right now which is simply residential. We need to expand that residential, commercial and industrial particularly with the uh industrial clients moving into this area. Um our fee structure is out of date. Our tapping fees are out of date and we need professional uh assistance and guidance. I believe that Stantech in particular is well equipped to provide that type of guidance um and informed um management for moving forward in the future. And therefore, I've made the recommendation that we go ahead and approve their proposal. And of course, they're both here to answer any questions or supplement that. So, I don't want to take too long. We've already spent enough talking about the county's money, but that's my recommendation.

Right. Um I'm going to let Kyle and represent from Stanton, I forgot. I just met you and I forgot your name. Dave, can you come up to the podium so we have any questions from the board members? Does anybody have any specific questions? Brian, real basic. When are you going to be done? I think we targeted uh being done by like October. So, it it does take some time uh to complete the analysis. So, that would be the the completion date. I appreciate that because it sets us up. What's the you know, we have an expectation. So, thank you for setting that expectation. And then real simple other one. Did we include public outreach at any point in this before the public hearing?

Yeah, correct. Um, not necessarily even proposing a public hearing, but my goal is I think the original proposal we received in March showed about a fivemon term to get the work done. Obviously, we're into April now. I have no expectation that this would be complete in time to influence decisions about the fiscal 2027 budget or rate structure. My plan um would be to use this moving forward through 28's budget. And they definitely have incorporated outreach meetings with board members, staff, and I believe potentially um the public. Yeah, I just bring it up. We have some pretty active business owners and some pretty active residential members that are part service authority me um customers

that would probably appreciate a Q&A session somewhere just to so they can understand how to they can plan for and budget going forward in the future. Well, again to be clear this this you know the outcome will be a multi-year financial forecast and rate plan conducting a cost of service analysis. In other words, what is it costing us to do business now? um examining examining alternative rate structures. We barely have a tiered rate structure here. It's really not in place. Um and then talk about availability fees, i.e. the tap fees. And yes, I'm sure that that would include some outreach. Thank you. Do you have a pro the outreach maybe having a in here we have a Q&A set up? No problem with that at all. Yeah, that would be appropriate for sure.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Sols. Excuse me. Can you remind me what the final cost of this is? I think we proposed $85,000 I think is the comprehensive study. Okay. Thank you. And uh actually the next question is for Mr. Hamilton. Can we get this proposal attached back here on on this agenda so that people can actually see it? We can. I thought I sent Jackie the hike hyperlink the other day and apparently I did not. The cost is 85,400. It was attached to the last agenda, but it may not have been hyperl and we can certainly make sure it is. Okay. Thank um can that be hyperl in the minutes

that Mr. Sols did you have another I'm good on that Mr. Davis Mr. roboth them. I'm going to ask Kyle a question because you drove all the way here and I I know there's a lot of scuttlebutt about how our debt and there's some misconceptions there about the debt and so how can you give me your summary? You've been around a long time. How the debt was acquired?

Yeah. So, so the debt for the service authority was acquired over a whole bunch of years uh to really uh obtain the actual financing itself meaning the the capital infrastructure. So utility system is you all know you're on the board. You've got pipes and pumps and so forth and so on. You've got a lot of infrastructure in the ground. Uh no different than if you've maybe bought a home or built a home at some point. Uh you've had to put certain investments in terms of that capital that's going to last a long time into that ground. Um and so that really is what the debt over the years the service authority has been used to do. whether it's to buy the infrastructure to build the infrastructure uh that is there to service the various customers on both the water and the sewer side and so um we've obviously talked about this miss Bender over the years the debt is not for operating costs um it can't be for operating cost it really is for uh the actual assets that are on the ground providing water and treating the sewer so forth and so on um there's certainly certain limitations legally in terms of how that works you've got certain policies as as a county and as a service authority in terms of how that works. Um it's all fixed rate and so as you think about in terms of the prior conversation the the movements in the marketplace the debt for both the county and the service authority is all fixed rate looks like a mortgage. Um it's paid in fixed annual installments in terms of principal and interest. So it's very routine that way you know what those payments are um over time. Um I think I'd also note that it is very normal for a utility system to have outstanding debt. Um because again the business that you are involved in involves infrastructure that is going to last a long time period. Um and so uh it is very typical whether it's in a smaller jurisdiction like King George or a larger jurisdiction like the Loudens of the world uh to have some debt outstanding uh related to a utility system. again, just given the nature of of the business that you're involved in in terms of water and sewer.

And then when I was first on the board, you you guys did really well with refinancing some of our bonds for the service authority to get better interest rates. So, I do commend that. Then it was several of them, correct? In like 2021.

Yeah, that's right. Over the years, you've been able to do that, take advantage of lower rates. That's something we're constantly watching. um given the refinancing that was done in that like 20 and 21 time period and how low rates were at that time period um hard to imagine that in the near term we'll be refinancing for savings purposes but we do watch that and to the extent there's an ability to refinance for saving purposes which is probably the the coral area the flip to the prior conversation maximizing what you're able to do um certainly we'll we'll be watching that um and I think a big part of this is as Dave in terms of Stantech um what we as your advisor and had been for a long time sees a healthy process here is to take a good look at the overall structure of the service authority. It's obviously been in place for a long time period iterations of it um so forth and so on. But I think a good healthy deep look in terms of the rate structure, how it's being charged, how it's being developed, why is that fair, why is it not fair uh a lot has changed since she put that rate structure in place probably in the late '9s. Um and so again maybe getting back to the prior conversation in terms of the stand side of the equation that's a good healthy thing for utility system to do on a periodic basis. So I'll just add that point and happy to answer the questions that you have.

Does anybody have any questions based on my question? Thank you Kyle. I appreciate I have a comment.

Yes. Go ahead. just wanted to point out that it's my hope that assuming that we do approve this and and move through this exercise and are happy with the guidance we receive that this becomes something that we budget every 3 or four years. it would be a lot less expensive and make a lot more sense um to have a comprehensive look periodically to help guide us in the future so that you don't have people who are coming into office who maybe aren't familiar with the history that there is a guideline a benchmark for how the rates are set what we expect a typical debt rates to be and the debt service fees to be and things like that. So I'm not asking for anything more than one rate study right now but I do think as he just said it's a very healthy thing to do. You'll notice the client list that they have here includes people like um the town of Persville or Lowden or Henrio County um city of Annapolis over in Maryland. A number of a number of clients here in Virginia and I just think that this is this is expertise that we really desperately need.

And you are looking for a vote today, right? Hope so. Do I have anybody would like to make a motion? I make a motion that we approve the Sante proposal for King George Service Authority rate study. Second. We have to have the amount correct. I was about to say, can I amend it to 85,400? Hold on a second. In the amount of 85,400. Hold on one second because I think we have to appropriate from a certain fund. So, we're checking with our finance department for one quick second. I believe we had agreed that we were going to take the funding from the remaining balance of the purchase order that was used for the automatic meter reading system. Is this Can you guys hear me? Yes.

What I've heard is uh procurement has not yet seen this contract. Uh county attorney has not seen this contract yet. So, we need to pause it until Yeah. In that case, I'll withdraw that motion until the contract's available for legal review. Can't we make a motion that the board approves it and then I execute it once it's cleared through finance? We're going to have to pause a second for the next board. We'll put it on the next board meeting for okay for approval with it attached. Uh I did send it to Levita 3 weeks ago. But um

the last board meeting if you recall Miss Levita did say you cannot use those funds from that old PO because those phones were those funds are not available. So you will have to take it from your fund balance. So either way we do it, the contract has to come through finance and procurement so we can actually review the terms and conditions as based on the procurement process. Okay. I I understand that is not what I heard what Livia told me privately before the meeting, but I understand there's some confusion and that's my fault. I accept responsibility for that uh particularly because I didn't get the link on the agenda to so

I appreciate your sentiments and I'm sorry uh for not executing this properly. We will put it to the April April 21st. This is the next one, right? Just 22nd. Oh, that's right. 22nd. We had to move it. April 20. We'll put it on the April 22nd board week with the hyperlink so everybody can see it. And I really appreciate you guys being here. All right. We will move on uh to the recommendation to appropriate $92,818 from the service authority fund balance to pay the FY26 interest payment for the $4 million inter interim financing bond. And this came up because there was there was some cu confusion with uh it has to be approved and I called all the board members about this and and talked to them about this loan. So we were putting it formally on this agenda. It has been paid. Are we worried? This has been paid. So this is just a formal document right now. And then the next motion will be about uh to make sure future payments from the service authority fund balance pays all the interest payments that are on this loan. So do I have any motions or any question? I'll ask for questions first. Okay.

Okay.

I don't think it's on. Is it working?

Chair is pretty good. But as far as the first item, SA43. So, should we just take care of that first? That's what you need to take care of. Yes. We'll take care of that first. So, do first of all, I want anybody to open up. You have any questions? Do they need the background on this for me or you all got it? Did everybody would anybody like a little bit more background on it? I'll be really quick. I think we all understand the background, but I I have a very serious question. Have we spent any of this bond money? We have committed $312,000 to Bowman and we're preparing to um execute some purchase orders for equipment.

You have a rough order of magnitude of what those purchase orders are going to be? Uh the boilers are likely going to cost about $700,000 650. Okay. And the aating equipment, I'm not sure. I think about a half a million. Okay. Okay. And this money was also intended to up to do the groundwork or basis work so that we could take septic pump out receptage receiving. Are we doing anything with that?

I don't know if that was included in the scope of the bond as far as what was presented when you all collected the $4 million or voted to collect it, but I have asked Bowman to review that as part of the design proposal. Just for the record, I was not on the board when that bond was voted on and

I wasn't here. But um it's certainly something we've had inquiries about from DEEQ and in fact we had a representative from DEEQ at dog run today and I mentioned it to him, but I was going to mention that in a very brief board report, but we're hung up on this stuff. Just to be clear on this bond, we got the bill on March 26th. It was due April 1st and the bill said 3.7% and the interest rate is 3.68. I went to the bank and said, "We want a bill that's corrected." We were all concerned about paying a late fee. So, we asked finance to go ahead and cut the $92,000 check, which is why we're asking for a vote to approve the fact that we already paid the bill. The concern is this was relatively short duration bond. I think it's a 5year four years. Yeah.

So, the amount that this impacts any customer in the service authority is a little disproportionate to our other debt service. And it seems like we embarked on something without a plan. So I I'm glad we're starting. I'm glad we've got Bowman. I'm glad we've got an idea what we're going to spend it on. But when in the future when we take out debt, we need a plan.

There was a plan. It's just not been act Mr. Hamilton came in at that point sort of in the the changeover and and right now with Dogrren, especially for DEEQ, some of these upgrades have to be done before we even think about sludge receiving because these upgrades need to be done to keep us in compliance. Well, then let's get on it moving. So, all right. Glad we got our interest payment. That was my concern. So, it's just, you know, some of this stuff you have to have the engineering behind it to before you can go out and start purchasing things to make sure that it it meets what the regulators want done and, you know, you to make sure the plant runs officially and meets the nutrient limits.

Understood. That was a fairly recent movement on getting Bowman under contract. Seems to me like we spent 6 months worth of interest to get to this point. We had all been under contract in December. I have great faith that Mr. Hamilton will keep us on track moving forward, but expect us to be here watching you closely. That's your certainly your job and I don't want to disappoint you. But again, I wasn't here when you solicited the bonds. I was not handed a plan. Um, and I'm definitely concerned about about spending that money efficiently and transparently. But we we need it at Dogrun. We don't have time to mess around. No doubt. Anyway, that's where the $92,000 comes from. Um, was the first interest payment.

All right. So, is there any more questions on this? And do we have a motion on the first one? I move that we appropriate $92,818 from the service authority fund balance to pay the fiscal year 26 interest payment for the $4 million interim financing bond. Second. Motion properly seconded. Any further discussion? By roll call vote, Mr. Robotham. I Mr. Davis. Hi. Mr. Solins. Hi, Mr. Mets. I, Chair Vai. Motion carries. Now, we're going to go to SA 0404. And Leverne, I'll have you speak. This was just I I have to be honest. I throated it as an idea so that we didn't have to come back to this point.

Yeah, I understand. I understand that. I hope everybody can hear me. Let me just take this off. But for one, you cannot appropriate funds for future board of directors members. And that's what this SA4044 is stating. So that cannot be done but and that was mentioned before it got on the agenda too. I I did not get that information but I was trying to be proactive and it I guess it is not possible. Is there anything that will this have to come now before the board every time for the payment? I don't think so. I just think we needed to appropriate um the first one.

Yes. I think it because it was approved. I don't know if we have to do it every board meeting. I don't think we have to, but you can't do future payments. You just can't do that. That's just one thing you can't do. Um, I'll get more detail and pass it along. But for this one, it should have been appropriated when we approved it, the 4 million, but I don't think it was at that time. Yeah, I think it was a lot of drop balls, but it's all fixed. can't go back and fix the past, but you can just move forward. You can move forward and we may have to. I don't know. I'll just discuss that with Miss Cobb a little bit further. Can you get back to me on that one? Sure will. I'd be glad to. Mr. Solins, I know you have a question.

Yeah, I don't think I do. If we can't preapprove it, then we're just going to scrap it. That's come before the board anyway. We were just chatting. Could we we could if it's of interest. Sounds like we could approve the interest payments for this year. Or we could just punt it. I don't understand how under what circumstance you would need another vote to make pay interest payments on a bond you've already agreed to take. Why that would need a vote at all? I'm confused, but I assume that needs to come from the veto. We could just I mean we everything goes coming from the budget now. Everything goes into the warrants anyway. We vote on that. Why Why do we have to have something special for this?

Hold on a second. Let me get confirmation from would that be a finance or legal question? I'm just going on what I was told and it's a finance question. I think you have corrected what needed to be done because an appropriation was not made when it should have been made. So your motion just cured that and she's right. You you can't commit future boards to make appropriations or anything else with certain limitations. So it's you've done I think you've done everything you need to do and that puts us in a good posture. Yes. My only concern was the next payment. So, this will just have to be on the warrants and for the next one. All right. Just wanted to make sure we do it right and everything's done correctly. Miss Bender. Yeah.

So, I know I'm not part of the board of directors of service already, but I'm looking here. Just wanted to, you know, maybe have Davport if if there was something that they wanted to weigh in on this. It looks like I got a nod from the audience if that's okay with you.

Oh, absolutely. I if that's our a little bit of context and very small what what I think would typically happen in the normal course is for a debt service payment no different than any of your other outstanding debt that's going to get put in your annual budget. And so in a normal care course and looking at the county attorney in terms of Mr. Stewart over there as you're doing your annual budget which you're doing right now uh the way those loans and bonds work is those payments should be built into the budget. And so while you may not be able to quote unquote bind future boards, the practical reality is on an annual basis you're budgeting for debt service. And so what we would expect is that you're working on this budget. The payments for the next fiscal year would be included in that budget. Same process next year thereafter and thereafter. And that's the way the payments on the other outstanding debt whether it's a service authority or the county generally work.

Thank you for that clarification. Right. All right, with that, we'll move on to the next item, which is so this has been brought up several times about consideration revisions to the board meeting schedule. Different ideas putting it at the end of the board of supervisors meeting going back to what was done for years, which is putting it at the beginning as its own separate meeting with uh recommendations of times like starting at 4:30, 5:00, and having it go 30 minutes or an hour. Number one, I don't want it to be like when I first came on the board where it was five minutes long, boom, boom, done. I think that's part of the reason we got into the mess we were in, you know, because it wasn't being paid enough attention just for me not having the service authority be the the the afterthought because it is very important to the for the vitality of economic development and to the county. So, I want a discussion about how folks and I'm going to go down each person. Do you like the way it is? What kind of changes do you think? I want to make sure that we take into consideration different options and I'll start with Mr. Robotham.

So I'll say uh I guess to start I'm I'm fine with the way it is. Uh, I know I brought up at the early board meeting, uh, I think there would be, I mean, based upon a lot of, uh, what we're accomplishing here each month, uh, potentially dropping to a once a month, uh, meeting for the board, and if there is something that comes up on the agenda, the board of supervisors still meets twice a month, we can add something to the agenda. You know, I can still be available that date. I'm sure the rest of you will already be here. Um, and you know, we we make it an ad hoc kind of meeting to address uh I don't want to call it emergency matters, but lack of a better word, something of of that sort. If we have to pay a bill real fast or something, you know, something like that. Um, that's kind of the consideration I had.

Yes. And with my recommendation for the monthly meeting would be the second meeting because that's when Emboden can prepare the report. So, I will go down to Mr. Davis. I know you just came in and I'm putting you on the spot. We talked about it before. If you're talking about con separating this meeting from the regular meetings and having it once a month, I'm all for that. Are you like talking 4:30? Are you I think Mr. Solins cannot make 4:30. Can you make five making it at 5:00 the on a Tuesday?

Mhm. Same day. I mean, we can pair it down except for very things that are a lot. Mr. Dr. Hamilton and I have been talking about that reducing his report, keeping things short in the agenda except for things that are really vital to service authority. I think if we go to five, I think we're going to be running to 5:30 probably quite a few times. Well, yeah, that we run I just don't want it to be too short because that's what we did way in the past when that was not the right course of action.

I'm for what I'm for I am for separating them. I'm not against though moving it to a different day of the week once a month would hurt my feelings either. Whether it was a an off Tuesday or a a Wednesday or something of that nature either. I wouldn't be opposed to that, but I am for separating it. Mr. SS,

my preference would be to try to keep them um not as is, but may go down to once a month. Um I I think one thing that would help us is if uh when we have the the agenda meetings, all of us come together at the same time so we can kind of talk through um whether either or the two agendas is overloaded and and try to manage our time that way. Um and just the same caution that I've had before. Um that it seems like sometimes uh we have stuff popping in at the last minute, you know, for various Sunday reasons. Sometimes it's real reasons. Sometimes I'm left scratching my head, you know, so let's just make sure that we're looking ahead and otherwise the the idea of having an ad hoc emergency meeting it we're going to be right where we are back where we are now. We're going to have the same meeting every two weeks. So we just need to make sure we're planning ahead.

Is it one thing I just want to caution is with a service authority sometimes there is emergencies that arise. It's not like a regular county. You know, I understand like I say sometimes it's legitimate. There's reasons for it. Sometimes I'm left scratching my head like why did we not see this coming? Um the other thing I would like to make sure that we do is um make sure we get all presentations um hyperl in so that uh um you know people don't have to come back and ask for them and download them separately and whatnot that it's all posted online.

I think Mr. Hamilton had that noted for for future to make sure the presentations and then Mr. I'm I would definitely the way that we run them together is perfectly fine by me. If we have to start at five to make the agendas work, maybe that's how we start out. I like the idea of going to one uh one meeting a month. I I could I could be on board with the second meeting of them of the month being in the agenda because I like that having the emboden report available. Mr. Souls,

sorry for the go back, but I I'll commit to come making it by five once a month. I'm not going to we're not going to continue to do this meeting every two weeks along, you know, combined and start a half an hour earlier. We tried that when we the three of us first took office and the public didn't like it because um some of them couldn't make it on time and I can't commit to doing this, you know, two weeks a month or more. So, I was only thinking of once a month and because we did talk to finance and and Leverne, could you It would be possible to do it once a month. Yes. to make sure the bills are paid and everything can approve your warrants on that second

and then with Emboden the part part of the reason they have to come the second is because some of the testing they do is at a certain is allocated at a certain time and the results don't come in until that just before that board meeting. So that's part of the reason why they always have to come in the second meeting is just when the testing that's required by the state happens and when the results come in. So that's part of the thing. So, let me ask because the next topic we would have to put that into the new revised bylaws. So, we take your suggestions uh and uh put them into maybe the next meeting to have uh this will all be part of the revised agenda. And so, what do I hear? Do you hear maybe once a month on the on a Tuesday starting at 5:00?

They pull it out from being internal and just to be the beginning. Double check our agendas. We've moved a couple of our Tuesdays like next the next one is Wednesday. Well, we'd have to vote on it next time because this is only discussion item. So So what was your proposal? 5:00 the second meeting. The second board meeting. Gotcha. Second Tuesday. Every month. Third Tuesday. Third Tuesday. Second meeting.

Yes. Sorry to clarify. The second meeting every month. Sorry. Not the second. I get where you're confused. I said that incorrectly. But it would be the third Tuesday. Okay. So, we'll put that now. Mr. Hamilton, we were going to go on to the proposed changes to the board revised bylaws.

Yep. Um, so this is also just for discussion at this point, but I know that um there are a couple of errors in the bylaws that have been pointed out to me over the last few months. One in particular is the fiscal year is quoted as starting on July 1 and ending on June 13th or something like that instead of June 30th. Uh another one is the fact that you all voted uh 6 or 8 weeks ago for um to allow remote participation at the meeting. So we need to update the bylaws to state that. Uh there is one other thing that in particular is causing great angst in the office and that is the reference to the quote debt fee which I would term at base rate. And so I'm proposing at least an initial discussion about making some changes to the bylaws to correct those things. What I would like to do, if you all are willing to hear that out, is send you a red line of the bylaws with the proposed changes and potentially take action on that at the April 22nd meeting. Um, in particular, I thought I wanted to bring up the debt fee question versus the base rate because we do have the benefit of both Davenport and Stantech here today despite the fact that we didn't approve their contract. Um, but they can tell you I'm not aware of another water or wastewater utility anywhere in this country that makes reference to a debt fee um that is calculated or determined or described the way yours is in the bylaws. And I would roughly estimate that in the 8 months I've been here, there's been at least 200 inquiries from people who are saying, "What is this debt fee? Why am I paying it? Where did it come from?" I've never seen anything so misguided in terms of its description and unfortunately if you read the bylaws the debt fee as it's described is an arbitrary number. It is not directly correlated to debt service and it incorporates things that are normally considered a base rate in a utility in

terms of paying for the existing infrastructure when you buy in. So I would like to strongly encourage you to consider making that change. It causes a black eye. I don't know how else to put it. Um, from people every time they see the bill, they see the word debt fee and they call and they say, "Why is this here? What is it?" I'm not suggesting that we wouldn't have a line item on a future bill that would say this is your percentage of this year's budget that goes to debt service or this is the amount that we have in current debt service. I think we could look to see that come out of the rate study and I would like to be transparent and be able to tell people. I could tell you that out of this year's budget, I know roughly what the debt service amount was. I want to say it was about $2.6 million. Um, not all of that is certainly on the $4 million. But, uh, again, we need to to reconsider how that's described. So, that's something as part of changes to the bylaw I would like to incorporate as well if you all are willing to entertain that.

Mr. zones. Dan, do we have a um a way of calculating the the base rate or the debt fee or whatever your whatever we choose to call it? What how how is that calculated on someone's bill? Well, right now it's just set in the bylaws. I don't know how it was calculated. I don't know how it was set. It's a set rate regardless of how much this is the debt fee and it's part of the tap. When you buy a connection fee, it's broken down and it says the word debt fee. I don't think that's correct. And it's also part of every bill, but I I don't know how it's calculated. It's just it's a number that somebody put in the bylaws and that's what the the rate is. Okay. Thanks, John. Yep.

Does anybody else have any questions or want to ask a question to our two representatives in the audience on this? Not necessarily a uh question, but when we uh when we do put things in the corrected bylaws like base rates and uh if we change the change the name, can we actually define what those terms are just so the public when they see that actually understands that the base rate is here's your normal fee for you know standard infrastructure costs. nothing to do with the usage that you're going to incur on top of that for the 5,000 gallons a month you use which will be at the rate that we have listed on the web page.

There is actually an EPA definition I believe for the word base rate. I actually sent think I sent it to you all about 4 months ago when this first came up and I would suggest that I could use language like that because it incorporates debt service in the base rate but it's not only debt service in the base rate. Right. So we'll bring this back up to our April 22nd meeting for review or action item with the proposed red lines and and Dan, can you send those sooner rather than later to every best I can. This week is shot for me, right? And the budget is pushing hard on me, too. But anyway, right. Well, thank you very much. Any other further questions before secondary? Mr. Str,

you got a board report coming, but it's going to be about six quick things. Yep. Mr. Strat is on this or on the general man. I'll let you ask the question. Well, I I I have a question that maybe uh Davenport may be able to help with, but in the uh annual comprehensive financial report, is this for the service authority? Yes.

Okay. So in in in in the report um we had the interest expense decreased by almost half million dollars and that happened uh because a larger portion of the scheduled debt service payments um were going towards principal and FY25. So you know that makes sense and math makes sense. But my question is if we didn't put as if we put uh um larger portion of scheduled debt service payments. So if we if if a larger portion of it that uh went to the debt service then does that mean that you know now that that is extended out? In other words, we're now we're going to be paying on it longer so eventually the cost is going to be more.

No. So, so the the outstanding debt whether it's on the service authority or the county is is fixed rate and it looks kind of like a fixed rate mortgage. So, if you've had maybe had the good fortune to have a mortgage at some point in your life, most of those paid over 20 or 30 years um in fixed annual installments and the combination of principal and interest is typically a level annual payment. Think about me like your monthly payment on your mortgage is basically the same amount and that payment is comprised some portion of principal and some portion of interest. The longer you move along that loan the combination the ratio of those two becomes more principal

and less interest. So I think Mr. Shaw that's probably what you're seeing is that as you move through time you are paying more principle and less interest. That's a good thing. That means that the interest component of it is shrinking and you're paying even more principal than you were the year prior. It does not mean you're pushing anything out. It is on a very set fixed schedule. Very much like again using fixed mortgage. Correct. Very good. So because that's something that's near and dear to Miss Anna Marie always asks about paying down the debt. So there's there's your answer Slobos.

So and thank you for breaking it down like that for people. Thank you. Thank you sir. I believe we also paid off a line of credit early um which is actually the $15 million that I'm trying to pull the80 grand out of for the Santex study but so that would have reduced the debt service I think in the current year's budget and again I wasn't here when that was prepared but I believe didn't you tell me that was the case Miss Bender um I would have to we paid off the line that was a totally different thing so we'll we could talk about that later but thank you ma'am

yep Thank you, Mr. Straw, for that question. That that does help out a lot of citizens, especially and Maria asked that question all the time. All right. Uh Mr. Hamilton, I'm sorry I almost skipped your general manager's report. Go ahead.

That's okay. Um I'm going to keep it extremely short. Um today, we've had five water leaks in 2026. When I think I spoke to you last, there had only been two. The next day, we had two in the same place um due to a state highway crew. But we've had five water leaks. Um, the maintenance crew has been focused um, amongst their other daily duties and compliance with things that were identified in a sanitary survey that was conducted by the Virginia Department of Health last fall. There were a number of things that needed to be fixed by April 1st. All of those things have been done, including what are called boiler inspections, which are what they're considering hydronneumatic water tanks. Um, they also replaced a fence around the wellhead over at Hopyard. And I bring this up specifically because the county general property staff offered to help out with that. They saved us about $8,000 because we were able to just buy the materials and put it up as opposed to like an $11,000 quote we had from a fence company. And we can't not comply when you get a sanitary survey and they say your security around your wellhead is breached because your fence is falling down. You've got to fix it. Um these are things that need attention. So that's been done. Um, we did receive back a report that identified the fact that we had exceeded our total nitrogen limits at the Dogrin plant for the year 2025. We've had some correspondence with DEEQ about that. And in fact, DEEQ sent a technical representative who was here today at the Dog Wastewater Plant and we'll be here again tomorrow working with Emboden and both Kathy or excuse me, Chair Binder and I met with them. I did mention the septage receiving ideas and our plans there, but we're looking to get their input, make sure that the plans we're making with Bowman for technical upgrades are going to get us to where we need to be to be in compliance on these limits. Um, I'll be attending a conference tomorrow with Chair Bender. It's the Eastern Virginia Groundwater Management Advisory Council. I'm looking forward to engaging with regulators and other utilities there about the push to

force us onto surface water in the future. I'm hoping to at least plant the seed that we can reconsider some options there. And then lastly, I do have a outreach presentation for some Cub Scouts tomorrow evening. It'll be here at 6:00 p.m. I plan on giving them about a half an hour, 45minute presentation with that groundwater model or the hydraologic model I had a couple months ago. And then I'm going to give them a quick tour of a water treatment plant, probably the one behind the elementary school. If any of you would like to join us, you're more than welcome. Uh you're going to need to provide your own transportation. and I'm not accepting the risk of putting anybody's children in my car or anybody else in my car as we move around. But that's all I have tonight. Uh, thank you for your patience. I apologize for the hyperlink issue. Um, Miss Fish pointed that out to me last Thursday and I thought I sent it to her Friday morning and I spaced it. So, I will own that mistake and I apologize.

Does anybody have any questions? All right, with that, thank you very much. Uh, we'll go to the secondary public comment. Comments will be limited to three minutes per person to afford everyone an opportunity to speak. Please provide your full name and district when submitting your public comment so they can be properly included in the public record. Would anybody like to come up and speak just on service authority matters and Marie is coming.

Hi, my name is Alan Maria Lobble. I want to thank you to Mr. Hamilton for doing all this job. I don't think he understand what the depth is. 30 years ago it starting putting this debt and I always asking why you not using this debt that you put extra money put it and pay the and pay the debt that is my question and I think I asked Mr. Hamilton, what is the debt? Are you asking me that question right now? Uh, no. I think I asked already you. Okay. Yeah, because this is starting 30 years ago. Yes.

Uh, putting this dead in the bill and the water and diagram was very very expensive 30 years ago and the sewage. Thank you. One of the things that rate study will do for us is help us gauge our rates as to comparable utilities so that we'll make sure that we're charging a fair and reasonable rate and yes if we're not we'll have to figure out why. Um but I don't think that's going to be an issue. Thank you. You're always in and um well I know

and this Stantech representative heard loud and clear that's one of the concerns and Kyle knows that that's been said many times. So, uh, you heard it from one of our concerned citizens who comes to almost every board meeting. So, thank you very much. Does anybody else in the in the audience want to have a public comment? Anybody online, Mr. Dyn? No, Madam Chair. All right. Any correspondents since people have been sitting up here? All right. With that, I'll close public comment and we take a motion to adjourn the board of directors. Make a motion to adjoin the board of directors to Wednesday, April 22nd, 2026 at 5:30 p.m. in the multi-purpose room of the sheriff's office located at 10445 Government Center, King George, Virginia, 2245. Do

I have a second? Second. We have a motion properly second. Any further comment? All those in favor say I. I. Chair votes I. Motion carries. Our meeting of the board of directors is now adjourned. Mr. SS. All right. Thank you, ma'am. All right. We'll pick it up with public hearings. We got the three public hearings tonight and we will kick it off with the first one. Uh item 0402. The King George County Board of Supervisors will now hold a public hearing that has been properly advertised to receive public input regarding consideration of fee changes for the Department of Community Development. Miss Kelly Leuke, Director of Community Development.

Hello everyone. Good evening. Um for the public, I'll introduce myself. I'm Kelly Leuk, director of community development. And with me tonight is Mr. Rick Harren, our building official. Over the last couple of months, we've been looking at updating our fee schedules, and this will require public hearing that we're having tonight as we're proposing it gets added into the county's code as appendix E. The last time fees were updated was in 2021, so they were definitely due for a review. Uh, if I could ask Chris to scroll down a little bit to the first table covering the planning, zoning. Yes, thank you. So, the first fee schedule covers planning, zoning, GIS, and environmental fees. There are several items or application types that we corrected, rearranged, or removed to be consistent with the ordinance and applications that we're currently using. There are other items in the ordinance that weren't addressed in our fee schedule at all, such as a public hearing deferral at applicants request, zoning text amendments, requests for exceptions, which we added to cover public hearing advertisement costs and staff review time. Minor and family subdivision and boundary line adjustment plat review costs are proposed to be increased around $100 each. On the zoning side, there are $50 fees proposed for DMV and business license permits, small increases for GIS and addressing fees, and no changes proposed for the environmental and storm water fees. On the building permit side, if you would scroll down, Chris, keep going. Keep going, please. One more page. Okay. On the building permit side, we have two fee schedules. One for

residential permits and one's for commercial permits. And I'll invite Mr. Herren to go over some of those changes that are proposed. Um so what we did we compared our fee schedule to the other surrounding counties and uh we came to a medium. So King George is in line with the new fee schedules for Fredd the city of Fredericksburg uh West Morland County and Spsylvania County. Um our fees are relatively in line. Um, there are some other fees that other counties charge that we don't charge. Um, they kind of nickel and if you get down to the grassroots and stuff, there's a lot of fees that that are implicated after the permit has been issued, whether it's inspections or whether it's um issue of certification for occupancy, different different fees. We don't nickel and dime. We're just trying to make it a little bit more easy to understand, a little bit more easy for the software. Um, and the new permit text.

Um, so the Do you want me to go line by line on what we changed? No, I don't think so. But it's Yeah. Okay. Any questions? Any questions? Questions. All right.

Thank y'all. just wrap. Yeah, I'm just going to wrap it up. Um, so like I said before, fee schedules for land development are proposed to be adopted as appendix E. So they're actually going to be incorporated into the code, which is um, common practice. And staff's proposing that if they do get adopted, they go into effect on July 1st to coincide with the new fiscal year. And then the ordinance 0-07-26 is in your packet for your consideration. All right. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. I'll open the floor for public comment now. Upon completion of public comment, I'll bring the board back uh bring the matter back to the board. Public comments is going to be limited to three minutes per speaker to ensure everyone has an opportunity to speak. Please state your name and your address before you make the comment. Um I don't have the list up here. Is there anybody in the room who signed up for public comment? Is there anybody who didn't sign up for public comment but would like to do so? Does anybody have any correspondence? Oh, come on up, sir. I'm sorry.

Uh, good evening. Uh, my name is Dwight Brown. I'm not sure what district I'm in. Uh but um I'm here about the Ralph Bunch High School. Not the right time. Okay. No problem. No, no, no. It's not too late. You can come back at the end of the meeting and talk to us. But but the public comment now specifically for this uh public hearing. Okay. No problem. I apologize. It's going to be a little bit, but don't don't leave. That's what I'm Thank you. Okay. Anybody else wants to make public comment on the change in the fee use? Did anybody get any correspondence? Mr. D, you got anybody online? No, Mr. Chair.

All right, I will close the floor for public comment and bring it back to the board. Any discussion? Hey.

No, I just appreciate you guys' time and effort y'all put into it uh in making a comparison and also being fair, you know, about it. Um not I mean looking at the fees, nobody should look at that and think that they're getting uh jacked in the process. So I appreciate that. All right. and I will close the public hearing on on that item. Now, King George County Board of Supervisors will now hold a public hearing that has been properly advised to receive public input regarding Oh, yeah. Thank you. Kelly's like, "Dude, what are you doing?" I'll make a motion to uh uh accept and approve the ordinance 072026 of fee changes for the department of community development.

Second properly seconded. Any discussion bender? I shroud. Hi. Mr. Mets. Hi. Mr. Davis. Hi. Chair votes I. Motion carries. Now I will close the public hearing. Okay. The King George County Board of What's up?

We're good. All right. The King George County Board of Supervisor will now hold a public hearing that's been properly advertised to receive public input regarding ordinance 08-2026, an ordinance establishing a deadline for submitt of landowner applications for equalization of real estate assessment to the King George County Board of Equalization and for the Board of Equalization to complete its deliberations on all applications. Mr. Gina Pucket, Commissioner of the Revenue Good evening, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. My name is Regina Pucket, Commissioner of the Revenue, Virginia State Code directs that every four years there must be a general reassessment of real estate property. According to Virginia State Code sections 58.1- 3370 and 58.1-3378 in the tax year immediately following a general reassessment conducted the county is required to appoint a board of equalization. The governing body may provide an ordinance um to which the date by which applications must be made by property owners. Once the board of equalizations has been deemed to have dis um discharged their duties, the governing body may also provide by ordinance the deadline by which all applications must be finally disposed of by the board of equalization. Tonight is the public hearing for that ordinance. All right. Thank you. Any questions? I guess Mr. S, I do have one. What would be the date for public? Are we just picking a date? Do you have a recommended date?

It says a fourth in the Well, I just wanted it in the, you know, public record verbally. I know it's there written. So the deadline for the to file with the board of equalization is May 4th and the um date by which the King George County Board of Equalization shall finally dispose of all timely and remaining applications for equalization of real estate assessments is July 31st. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you, ma'am. All right. At this time, I will open the floor for public comment. uh completion of public comment, I will bring the order back or to bring the matter back to the board. Public comment is limited to three minutes per speaker to ensure everyone has an opportunity to speak. Please state your name and address uh before your comment. Once again, um is there anybody in the audience who would like to comment on this particular matter? Did any of the board members get any correspondence? Mr. D, you have anybody online? No, Mr. Chairman. All right. Thank you, sir. I'll close public comment at this time. Bring the matter back before the board.

Any discussion? I do, sir. I did close public comment.

Okay. I close public hearing, sir. Um, so Mr. pocket. I'm I'm curious where how we came about with May the 4th, like the deadline for May the 4th. And and the reason that I asked that is because um I've had some people that have asked me that, you know, are concerned that they have to get either uh have their prop. They have to get somebody another assessor to perform an assessment of their own um to be able to counter, you know, what the county is assessing. um and they have to basically build a case and they're not some of them aren't uh adept at it. So, they're not really confident. So, they're having to ask somebody else. Um but they have, you know, now less than 30 days to do this. Granted, they've had the last couple weeks, but the order of equalization has essentially three months to to work it. So, I'm just curious why how that where the where we came up with the dates, what they what the the thinking was. the um the assessor has met with a lot of folks already and currently we only have um 11 actually five confirmed and six pending that need to meet with the board. So we were we deemed that to be sufficient time but however they could appeal they could file the application and then you

know have their meeting with the board you know be extended to a time that will accommodate them. Okay. So it it it's a date but we're willing to work with them. Yes. Of course. So that brings another you said how many you have you've had met with five and they have six pending. They have not met. We need to um that's next later in the meeting. We're going to appoint some folks I guess. Okay. They haven't met with the board of equalization. The board of equalization has not been formed. Right. But the assessors, you said they've met with the assessors.

They I I do not have a total for how many people he's met with, but I know it was quite a few. quite a few. I mean, what I'm curious of is from the last time there was an assessment, you know, I just I know myself, I was uh you know, I got the the mailing and or somebody uh got it and didn't see the print in there that I had a date to respond, so I missed it. And I'm like, "Oh, well, you know, I just I just missed it, you know, and that was that." Um, so I just want I want and I don't I don't know how to we we do the uh messages um you know we put out the word word of mouth. I mean you know I think we need one of those billboards that the sheriff department uses for speeding or something is tells people that look if you have a problem with your tax assessment then you need to file an appeal.

Correct. Um, and I don't know how to get that word out any anymore, the churches or somehow, but I just feel like somebody after this date, you know, or even after it's done, people are going to be like, "Well, I didn't know I could appeal." And what we're like, "Well," and that's where I shut up last time. It's like, "Well, was in your letter and yeah, it was." So, I just had to shut up, you know, but at the same point, sometimes people just don't read their mail. And so it just I I feel like somehow getting the you know if there's some way we can get the word out more and I don't know what that is but it's important that people realize that um and that's why I was asking that they have that maximum time but I appreciate your lenency and working in

Yes sir. Real quick comment on that Mr. Stout is I'm sorry Mr. Stewart is it possible to like we've done it with board position. Is it possible to get Amy to put out a blast as far as this is the date, get you if you have just have the county sublast out? Yeah, we'll have Miss Pucket just type up whatever she wants sent out and we can just send it to Amy and Amy will get it out. Be more than happy to. So, you can work on the language, whatever you want to say and Amy will get it out. Okay, good idea. Thank you,

Mr. Stewart. Sorry. Is there go ahead if I just wanted to mention something. I was concerned as well um as Supervisor Straoud was. The way I read this, they've got to make application by May 4th and then the board of equalization will give you a date to come in and present your case. And I was hoping Regina was still going to be up there. Um but I think typically when you send the assessment out, you give them the deadline as to when they have to make application for the board of equalization. Did was that not done? It was It was Don. And what is it this day?

I'm not sure. Is it the same? Was it the same day as what's in the letter? I know it was in there, but I think it wasn't. It was April that was in the letter. So, you're extending it actually. I think this is, but Miss Pucket would have to respond to that. Um, there was an April date. We only had two weeks.

Yeah, like two weeks to respond. And I apologize. I've not been involved in this, but that caught my attention because typically it tells you in your assessment you've got to file your application with the U BOE by a certain amount of time and then if you want to appeal, you have certain steps to file and appeal to the circuit court. That that's exactly that did happen and it was only like a couple weeks. That was what raised the concern initially with me. it was people were calling and

the date that the assessor had put on his notice was just for filing with the assessor which was May 24th. So no, the the May date was not on there. So Mr. Chairman is sir. So the the assessment is saying if you have an objection, you've got to contact the assessor by May 24th. Um I'm sorry, did I say May? I meant March. It said March March 24th. So you you never gave a date as to the board of equalization on the assessment. Not that I see on the notice. It does not have that May date.

Okay. What's the difference between the two for the citizens to understand? um you know that

famous the first appeal is to the assessor himself so he can sit down with you and explain how he came to the numbers that he has and the burden of proof is on the taxpayer to say that they don't agree with it and try to get it reduced and then the second appeal will be to the board of equalization which is consists of um three citizens we have to nominate an al um alternate but um then at they would have a time period to present their case before the board of equalization.

So for the citizens to know is that it's not over the assessment doesn't agree with you. If you leave there and you're not happy with it then there's still another you still have the opportunity with the board of equalization. That is correct. And if you don't agree with the board of equalization then you can go to the court. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Any other discussion? All right. Very good. Can I have a motion?

I have a motion to approve ordinance 082026, an ordinance establishing a deadline for submitt of landowner applications for equalization of real estate assessment to the King George County Board of Equalization and for the Board of Equalization to complete its deliberations on all applications. Second. Okay. Motion properly seconded. much as I don't want to say this. Any further discussion? Very good. Miss Bender. Hi, Mr. Shout. Hi, Mr. Mets. Hi, Mr. Davis. Hi.

Chair votes. I motion carries. Thank you very much. All right. And our third item. The King George County Board of Supervisors will now hold a public hearing that has been properly advertised to receive public input regarding fiscal year 27 through 31 capital improvement plan. I'll call on Mr. Matthew J. Smallick, the county administrator for a staff report.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. Matthew Smolnik. So, this item has been uh the last two board of supervisors meetings just as information. So, nothing should be new to you. So, what we have here tonight is the public hearing for the FY27 FY31 CIP. Again, we're focusing on just this next uh next year F FY27 as far as funding. So, as I've done in the the previous couple of uh meetings, I've presented you all in the public with uh the spreadsheet, and my recommendations are highlighted in yellow. So, I'm going to go through each of those items that that I recommend uh approval. So, just for the for the uh purpose of the public hearing, these items were submitted, let me back up. Yes, these items were submitted to county staff with the full requests that are attached to the agenda uh for the specific uh projects. my my review team, Chris Connley, Lever Dillard, and Levita Cobb and myself uh interviewed all the departments who submitted uh requests. Those requests were compiled and we made this sheet. This sheet was presented to the board and to the public along with uh the the detailed request sheets. So went to the planning commission as a public hearing. Their recommendations are in the um on the spreadsheet in red font, the PC priority. brought those to the board of supervisors, garnered some feedback from the board, and then we advertised the public hearing. So, here we are tonight. You know, for the record, nothing has changed since my last presentation, but for the sake of the public hearing, I will go through each of the highlighted items um and just talk a little bit about them. The first one is uh for King George County Schools, a school bus refresh uh totaling $650,000. This is uh to to uh replenish and replace the school buses uh on a on an annual basis so the school doesn't get stuck replacing 20 in one particular year. So I am recommending $650,000 for that parking lot at PTOAC Elementary School. I believe this was a recommendation from u Mr. Davis. This

was a good one. This is a pretty rough parking lot. Um so this was also an urgent request uh by the schools at $100,000. I am recommending that uh PTOAC Elementary metal roof. this was a metal roof uh that as we know if if a if a roof is going it's going to lead to problems within the building. There's some history here with you know how and and the extent of the roof that was replaced but the request and my recommendation is for the full $800,000 for the the new metal roof at PTOAC Elementary. Keep on scrolling sir if you wouldn't mind. So the next one uh under fire rescue emergency services this is for an ambulance replacement at a cost of $400,000. Much like the the school bus, we replace these every year so we don't have to get stuck you spending and replenishing seven in one year. So I am recommending $400,000 for that solid waste and recycling. I see Mr. New Chalk here. Um a rolloff truck and um I know Mr. Stra made some very good comments. Uh appreciate that Mr. Strad after the last meeting. There's some some conversations going back to make sure we get the best deal for the county here. There are some specific needs that uh Mr. Newuk has for this. So you we've got one rolloff truck. It's not roadworthy. The other is in the shop seems like every other week. So in order to to make our pools at our convenience centers uh to take it to the landfill to keep our convenience centers up and running on the weekends. Um $265,000 for a new rolloff truck is my recommendation. As is $80,000 for the Perkins Corner office trailer. Uh as you've been to that site, you usually probably just dump in recyclables or trash. But if you ever set foot in that office, it's it's old. it's the the floor is soft and it is a hazard for employees. So, I do recommend replacing that uh in this next fiscal year. Regarding general properties, I think it's cooled down a little bit in here. Maybe that's cuz the the doors have been open, but as we know, the the HVAC in this this building is 33 years old. This is the original HVAC uh uh unit out back with the old refrigerant. It's been

bandated as long as it it can make it. So, this we added this to the uh the list. $282,350 for the sheriff's office fleet vehicle purchase. Same situation as the ambulance and the school bus refresh and also the the mobile data terminals in those units. They're running I believe it's Windows 10 and uh yeah, there's they can't get updated anymore. So, we want to make sure our law enforcement have correct proper access while they're doing their jobs uh protecting our citizens here in King George County. So, I'm recommending that. Regarding the register, new voting machines. These are heart voting machines. If you can recall, the half the payment was last year and the remaining half would be this year for a total of 86,695. These are to ensure compliance with the new voting election standards. I've been working with Miss Gump quite a bit on this. So, uh you should you should have been briefed on this uh you know, last couple meetings including last year. And then scrolling down, Mr. Dimes, I believe there are there's a couple more items. One of them is a restroom facility at Sadel Brooks Park. This is our only park without flush toilets. So, we recently ran some water lines uh down Ridge Road and the the water line is at the corner of uh right there at Ridge of the Stop sign. So, a lot of this is the engineering work uh and and really the infrastructure to get down there uh for for the water and sewer lines. And then rounding out the the CIP is information technology, $50,000 for computer and $72,000 for server upgrades. Now, Mr. Dimes, if you if you wouldn't mind, scroll back to the top and go to the right a little bit. I've got on this uh if and go back to the top. Yes. So, so I'm trying to get the going to the top. So, what you see here is is is how this money is going to where we are pouring this out of. As you know, Miss Cobb went through and and fine tooth comb for previously approved and constructed CIP projects. I believe she found about $660,000 of money that was uh allocated but not

it just didn't need to be spent. So she went through and Mr. D scroll over just a little bit here so they can see the columns. I believe starting with the column N as in Nancy I believe that's the first column that's fund balance. Just scroll to your right just a little sir. No go can you go to the top Mr. D and then scroll to the So I need to start with column N as in Nancy please. There we go. So columns N O and P. So this is where these will be coming from. So the school bus refresh proposing to take that $650,000 out of the CI CIP operating budget. So the the PTOAC parking lot at $100,000. These are the King George uh middle school bond that are still out there. We can we can pull some additional money from those. $800,000 for the roof. This will be come from CIP fund balance. If you can continue to scroll on down, Mr. Dines, the ambulance replacement, $400,000 will come out of CIP operating budget. The rolloff truck for solid waste and recycling, 265, also out of the CIP operating budget. Perkins corner office trailer, 80,000 out of CIP operating budget. the boardroom HVAC unit replacement 282,350 CIP operating budget as is the fleet vehicle purchase for the sheriff's office at 260,000 and $296,824 for the mobile data terminals. Uh new voting machines also coming out of the CIP operating budget $86,695. We got a couple more as is the $850,000 for the Sadel Brooks Junior Park restroom. And the last two items will also come out of CIP operating budget. $50,000 for computer replacement, $72,000 for county server upgrades. So that is the the list of recommendations uh from your county administrator and then the funding uh buckets that this money I'm recommending through finance uh should come out of. I know we have a

public hear and I'll be happy to answer any questions now or at the appropriate time, Mr. Chair. Right. Thank you. Any questions? Go ahead. And probably should have asked this in previous meeting. Um, but the trailer at Perkins Corner, I I go there frequently, but I've never went in the trailer. Um, does that cost of the trailer include whatever's inside the trailer? Are you going to take what's inside the trailer and put it in the new one? I'm going to invite Mr. New Chalk up. This was his request, so he can probably explain a little better than I can.

I'm just trying to figure out if after we buy the trailer, then we're going to get a request for whatever's going in there. Yeah. So, the the current trailer has mold contamination, so there's certainly nothing we're going to bring over, but it's also not ADA compliant. It's very small. Uh there's simply one desk setup and a restroom. Um the the only thing that's possibly salvageable would be uh the the small refrigerator. Um, but the the price for the trailer that uh is right there is to be kitted out with a restroom and uh some facilities for the employees to sit, but it's not going to be, you know, anything extravagant or that long that needs to be. So, this is all inclusive.

Yes, sir. Yep. And we'll we'll do demo of the existing unit uh with probably run a little of a mini. So, that that brings another question. So, there's a restroom in there. Then where does the water and waste go? Yeah, there's a drain field. There's a drain field. Okay. So, because that this is leading into my next question regarding the Cidell Brooks restroom, you mentioned the water uh Mr. Simony uh come into the corner uh there. But is it what are we going to do with the what are we going to do with the waste like the sewer from the restroom at the CDL Brooks?

I I kind of transitioned Mr. New Clark director of parks and recreation. Um the the plan is to run both water and wastewater lines down. Okay. So, if we're running water and waste water down, why don't we tie in the trailer from the uh waste area to the shoe at the same time?

So, for the buildout for the center, that's something you definitely want to do. Right now, you have an existing well and a drain field. So, for the short term, it doesn't cost you anything just to do that that hookup. Uh I would utilize that. But however uh one of the issues that one of the items that was not recommended uh is for the the buildout of the Perkins Corner Center for the additional compactors in which case then we would be very interested in tying into the sewage not just for the trailer but also for the compactors. So instead of your typical convenience center, you want to have that tied in to the wastewater treatment so it's not going out into the ground. Um so that that definitely would be part and parcel of that. I just mean from my previous life whenever I did septics and ran water and sewer line, it was a long time ago. If you've already dug the ground up and the pipe and everything's already open, it's a lot easier to tee it off right then than it is to come in later and have an engineer come in and dig it all up again and pay for that twice. If the ground's already open, put it in then. It just seems like we're going to save some money to do it all at the same time. And then you can do a do a if you want to put a tee it off to go to the compactor or to do that later then just stub it up. So so the where the line will be open paralleling the the the road there off of bridge. Yes, we will the water and sewer will go in simultaneously. But I I I think so then you're going to have the the the stub lines coming from the new trailer over there. That ground will not be opened up right now. It'll simply be connecting to the existing drain field and well right now the you're right. We're we're going to have it open. We're putting both of them in there all the way down to Sadel Brooks. We'll come back through and connect it at a later time because there's there's there's going to be a lag by the time you do the engineering and the construction. That trailer is going to be in there a lot faster than you're going to be able to get a set of engineered plans drawn up, designed, approved, and and constructed.

Okay. Then can we at least whenever they put it in there put a tea in and cap it off? That'd be fantastic. Yes. Whoever's working that design say, "Look, we we're going to do this and thank you." Right. Had another question, but I I forgot what it is now. So, but thank you while you're thinking about it. So, I just Go ahead.

Yeah. Thanks. Um probably should have said this at the public comment last last week, but appreciate you putting these highlights up. Um just for the public's at um knowledge base this the money that you said you had worked with uh finance was sort of locked up. It was in CIP allocated funds that we couldn't use for anything else until we closed out those accounts by getting with finance. I appreciate the work that you've done and the administration to recoup basically that money we couldn't touch and put it against useful um activities for the county. I hope as we come through this year, this is the max value we expect you to pay. That

is correct. as you guys negotiate really good rates and and trucks and whatnot, I hope that this becomes a regular activity that we do to clean up our books and because there's a lot of things on this list that are marked urgent that we're not able to pay for this year and so or in the next budget year and so um there's some that I think are priority. I think everybody on this board probably has an item or two. They may not all be the same, but it would sure would be nice to be able to pick up some of these as we go into, you know, coming into the end of next year um through our CIP funds.

Understood. And and going forward, as projects become closed out, that money will get reverted back to the unallocated fund. So, yes, sir. Right. I'll now open the floor for public comment. Upon the completion of public comment, I'll bring the matter back to the board for consideration. Public comments limited three minutes for speaker to ensure everyone has had an opportunity to speak. Please state your name and address before you comment. Is there anybody in the room who would like to make public comment on this item only?

I have a quick question. Um, with the work that's currently being proposed to be done with the CIP funding, I'm assuming that there's going to be, like you said, maybe um some sort of uh priority listed because you said there's not enough funding to get everything done on this particular year. Correct. So, how do you go about deciding you I think you're going to be the person that does this. Who is going to do the work? Is there a process in place to make it equitable? I'm assuming you're choosing.

So, so we we do follow uh Virginia state procurement laws to the fullest. So, you know, any these these projects are quite large. So, you know, I have a procurement team and they said, you know, this is what we need to do as far as putting it out to bid and IFB. Um, you know, certain things like that. But there it's just not I we get to pick somebody. No, ma'am. We follow state procurement laws. Okay. I just know that that's going on at the federal level. I just don't want it to go on at the state and local. Thank you so much. Thank you, ma'am. Anybody else like to make public comment? Anybody get any correspondence? Mr. Dyn's got anybody online? No, Mr. Chairman.

Awesome. Thank you, sir. All right, I'll close public comment at this time. And thank you. Third time's a charm. I remember this time. I'll now close the public hearing. All right, I'll turn it back over to the board for any further discussion. or a motion.

I'll stop real quick. Uh Mr. Small, just thank you for the work you put into this. I know it's a lot. It is tough decisions on what you're going to spend money on. We we I treat this like it's my house or my family. We have to look at things sometimes and go, "This is something I can take care of this year." And but what we have done this year, you saw we got together and start picking out our projects. And really, we for the first time ever, we've scoped out kind of the next 10 years about when projects are going to fall in line. So people kind of have an idea. It's not written in stone cuz things can always change. Things can get moved up. Things get bubble. But we have m put a map out there for people to see. And you know, next boards aren't bound to it. But that would have to make good reason for why taking some things off and putting some things on. So we're trying to get as much been knocked out as we can. I appreciate your efforts on this.

What's that? I'll try to make a motion on this one. I make a motion to approve the FY2731 capital improvement plan as presented. Second. All right. Motion properly made, properly seconded. Any further discussion? Very well, Miss Bender. I

chair both. Motion carries. Thank you. Now, we'll turn it over to presentations and we'll be bringing back Mr. Smallic for the proposed fisc year 27 budget. I've got uh Senator Stewart handing out my presentation to the board members and Mr. Dyn should be pulling it up here. There we go. Thank you, sir. So, I want to I want to start by, you know, before I get into my budget presentation, I want to let the board know, the public know, you know, my employees, employee groups, any any anybody out there who's watching and listening that this is a working document. You know, in order to get to the final product, you need to start somewhere. And that's where I'm at right now. Really want to thank again my my finance team. I've been they've been darkening my doorway and vice versa for for weeks now. and we we don't have all the information. I'm going to go through that, you know, for for you all and for the public. But we're on track where we need to be and then we'll go over that with one of my last slides here. But without further ado, I'm going to put the the preliminary operating budget presentation out there for the board and for the public. So, next slide, sir. So, where we're at right now, these are very similar to the uh CIP. We had each department submit their requests to us. And I will I've I heeded my word. My departments, the vast vast majority of them actually submitted a budget to me that was less than what was allocated last year for the general fund. So I I put that out there early on back in December. I said, "Guys," I said, "We got to tighten our belts. If you don't need this, cut it out of your budget." And you know, like I said, for the vast majority of my departments, that's exactly what we got. So, I was very proud of them. So, right now, revenues and expenditures, as I stated to the board over the last couple weeks, my presentation on April 7th will not be a

balanced budget. It is not. 4 almost $2 million difference right now. Again, this is a starting point. I don't want anybody to get excited or, you know, nobody's committing to anything right now, but this is where we need to start. And I want to talk about the FY27 budget process. Again, this is separate from the service authority. It's different budget. Mr. Hamilton will be presenting that I think at the next meeting. We went through the equalization rate working with commissioner revenue. Right now our tax rate 68 cents with an equalized rate. There's the state code if if you go up a certain percentage you have to equalize the rate. Meaning that the amount of revenue that that is generated at the very end needs to be the same. If your value of property goes from 4.1 billion to 5.1 billion, the only way to get that same number at the end is to drop your tax rate. So that's what I mean by equalized tax rate. Uh right at 56 cents per 100 uh one penny on the real estate. So the next question is well what does one penny get me at this equalized rate? $517,300. I believe last year the number was right at $414,000. And then this and I will talk about the meals tax. All this is is in here. But and if you have questions, stop me. If not, we can wait till the very end because I I've got I think a pretty thorough presentation here. I worked with my staff, but if you got questions, you can ask, you know, ask me throughout or wait till the end. This $4.2 million delta does assume a 2% increase in our meals tax. So, I'll get to that in the next slide. Mr. Dyn's next slide. So, we've we've got some challenges here that we faced. Uh this this is my my second year with a budget, you know, at the helm. So right now, you know, real estate numbers, as as you heard from Miss Pucket, we're still waiting for the board of equalization. So what do we do? Well, you know, I'm going to hold those numbers pretty flat. However, we have seen some growth in the county. We talked about that a couple meetings ago, 1.3% growth rate. So a modest revenue

increase for real estate, I'm put it in there as $300,000. The proposed tax rate is to be determined right now. Citizens not registering their vehicles, boats, and RVs in Virginia. And we've had this discussion quite a bit. And today when I was on West Morland's page doing some research on their taxes uh real meals tax, I see something entitled report tax evader license plate and it's a a form on Civic Plus. So I said, "What is this?" And I think I've had some conversations with with a couple you this is a project not now for this budget, but I think after this budget. Um, I I' I've talked to Miss Pucket. Um, you know, as as far as her staff goes, and this is something I I believe we are missing out on significant revenue. You know, there's there's there's state laws that say when you move here or even, you know, I don't I'm not going to quote the state laws. If you have a business in another state, but everything is housed here, does that need to be registered in Virginia or or reported to the commissioner revenue? But I believe we are losing hundreds of thousands of dollars of real estate by people not registering their vehicles in the county. And what West Morland has is it's a tip line. It's anonymous tip line. I'll talk about I've got a plan. I'm not going to go into it tonight, but this is this was another challenge that we'll face. And hopefully the next with FY28 budget that will be addressed. I've got my plan. As soon as this budget gets approved, I I'll bring it back to you all. However, you know, we all know cars, trucks are getting more expensive. I'm proposing the same tax rate for personal property. So, a modest increase of $300,000 worth of revenue for personal property. Projected interest right now, I I've, you know, reached out to the treasur says, you know, what do you project we're going to make on our investments next year? Waiting for those numbers. Don't have those yet. Um, we've seen some some significant healthcare increase premiums. If you've been following is 15.3% that was uh that was approved back in Mar at the March 17 meeting. You guys

approved those those ratios, but 15.3% for county. I want to say schools was 22.1%. And this is pulled insurance. State funding for schools is not yet determined. I believe general assembly reconvenes 22nd 23rd 23rd and hopefully we'll have some some numbers then and then our enrollments also you know as you've heard Dr. Boyd say it's going down. So you know as your enrollment goes down your some of your state funding also goes down. So we're curious to see where that comes and really the biggest thing and I'll say it once and I'll say it again the biggest asset here at King George County for me as a county administrator are my employees. Um you know and and I think Dr. Boyd will say the same and every constitution officer. The employees are are, you know, what makes us work. So, you know, really trying to retain your employees with a competitive salary and benefits in a very competitive market here um in in this part of Virginia. So, those are my challenges. Next slide, Mr. Dyn. So, what's different from last year? So, as you know, back in uh November, we were of the sheriff's building. We held uh a budget work session. This was an opportunity for each of the departments to come. I know Mr. Met, you were there as a citizen, but you know, you got a chance to sit through and and hear the presentations and I wanted to do this to give the board of supervisors an idea of what was going to come um with a with a submitt request. So, it it's not a a complete shock of wow, we have 21 new position requests. You guys heard that back in November. So, that's a little bit different. Again, reassessment year. We've talked about this a little bit. Uh very large 21% increase. Um, I've mentioned the other bullet points so far. Meals tax, uh, increasing a 2% increase. And the other bullet point there is a there's a sellers discount. So, I I confirmed with with Senator Stewart, you know, so, and I'll get this onto the next page, but I'm proposing eliminating the the 3% sellers fee, and

I'll get into the reasoning and the the anticipated dollar amount on that. And another thing that's different from last year, uh, October of 25, we had the Motorola contract. Now, this is for fire, rescue, EMS, for schools, and for the sheriff. And with that was a six, it's a six-year maintenance contract, uh, an upgrade contract. Had a price tag for this current fiscal year, $1,53,539. We didn't have that last year. So, I knew whenever that got approved, I'm going into the FY27 already a million in the hole. So that's different. It can also be considered a challenge. Next slide, Mr. Dyn. So you look at a $145 million budget and I want the citizens and the, you know, the the board to you don't need to focus on all $145 million, nor really do you have control over all $145 million. A couple things I wanted to really focus on here. You know, salaries and benefits. So this is assuming, and I have no intention of any layoffs at the county. I don't think there's any intentions of any layoffs at the school. But you look at salaries and benefits for the schools in the county. These are the this is the dollar amount. And then also then you look at debt service payments. You we had a little discussion about that. We we know those payments are coming. They're part of the approved budget right at $10 million. So you take salaries and benefits and debt service, you're already at $103 million of $145 million budget. So again, you know, citizens, you know, board, there's a lot of this budget that if if you want to if you want to keep the lights on, this is what it's going to cost. And this doesn't take into consideration, you know, as as Dr. Boyd says, what when what do you need to keep the lights on? Required outside agencies, insurance, I think the county is 971,000 for our insurance policy. Utilities, you got to keep diesel and gas in the bus, the buses, the trucks, maintenance contracts. So there's a lot of this, you

know, the the piece of the pie that is really up for discussion, you know, is is small. It's not 145 million. So I wanted, you know, the board to see that and for the public to hear that also. Next slide, please. So CPI, uh, I calculated this. I was on the US Bureau of Labor Statistics site a couple days ago. You know, we know things are getting more expensive. you know, whether it's the small household at home buying field hockey cleat or if it's King George County finance department buying something, we're all consumers and the CPI has gone up and you know, we as a locality are not immune to this. You know, now we do get some relief when it comes to taxes and whatnot, but we are seeing the the fuel search charge and and other search charges and just the cost of materials going up. So, uh, I just wanted to point this out that everything is getting more expensive for the consumer and for the employees working for the county and the schools. Next slide, please. So, where do we where do we stand as far as our competitors? We always like I know uh, Miss Luke had the presentation on the on the fees and you like to look at see what your neighbors are doing. So, calling around and I had one of my employees help me and I've made a few phone calls myself. kind of the current rate is the middle column of course the locality left hand what they're what's being proposed again this is not what's going to be approved but it's what's proposed by the county administrators town managers so you'll see uh King George County equalize at 56 we're definitely one of the lowest and where that is you know to well to be not TDB to be determined where where do we fall in this X. So, it's a I'm going to say it again. You know, this this is a process. We need to be fair to our citizens as far as taxing them. Yet, we need to make sure that we provide the necessary life safety services. Um, and

and and you know, what can we do to keep them in the county versus driving driving out of county for for certain sporting events or for for whatnot. So, that gives you an idea, you know, the the table will set where we stand right now. Next slide, sir. So, let me focus on meals tax a little bit. We've had some discussions on this. So, currently at 4%, I'm proposing to increase it to 6%. Which is the maximum that counties can take it to. Now, cities have a little bit different more leeway, but the most the counties can go to is 6%. So meals tax is when restaurants and other sellers are prepared food uh they they they collect the tax from the consumer at the time of sale and this tax is held in trust until they remit the next month. So anything really from uh you know on February 20th those taxes were remitted for everything that was collected for the month of January. So these these these taxes should not be collected to operate uh the the the business itself. They're collected and held in trust to be paid to the county on a monthly basis. So right now, if meals taxes are remitted to the county on time, and Senator Stewart confirmed this, there is a provision in state code, not specifically in the meals tax section, but in another section of state code that localities can, you know, refund, rebate, whatever, a portion of of taxes if it's paid on time. I'm looking at this. I'm like, well, do our citizens get a a tax to if they pay the real estate on time? How about the the their truck tax? They don't they don't get a discount there. So, why are citizens essentially subsidizing the businesses? They get to keep some of this money. And a lot you think of some of our major uh meals tax collectors. I can think of a couple of them. They're not residents of the county here. So, they're allowed to keep a portion of this. So looking at this and then the next the table here is FY22 to FY25. These are

actual collections of meals tax. So you see the upward trend 1.5 million. FY25 was right at $2 million. I don't know why, but I I when I did the FY26 budget, I said I'm going to be conservative. I'm only going to put $1.9 million in. Even though I saw this trend, I said, I'm going to back it down a little bit. And I'm kind of glad I did. You know, this was you. We looked at July 1 through March 30th. We've collected $1,36,55. So that's three quarters of the fiscal year. That puts us on track for $1,750,000, which puts us shy over $1.9 million mark. So you ask yourself, you know, well, why is that? You know, my my gut tells me, you know, we've got 10,000 tourists a day in this county working at the northeast corner. They spend a lot of money in those restaurants in and out. Well, what happened this past year? We had a federal government shutdown. We have a lot of county employees here whose spouses are employed by the federal government. They didn't receive a paycheck. A lot of people did not come into King George County to work a dog. So, they didn't, you know, at at 11:55 run across the street and and clog up a restaurant, spend the meals. That's my guess of why the shortfall is, you know, and I I I haven't I I gotta I can go down a little bit dive a little bit deeper and see if that dip does coincide with a government shutdown, but we are going to be short on meals tax if we are at the current rate. However, if if so, if we do go to 6%. You know, what does that what does that bring us? So using my FY26 projections, which are 3/4 of the way done right now, a 2% increase is going to create an additional $870,000 a year. Again, this is a pass through tax. These are the people who are, you know, coming across that bridge at 301, clogging up 301, the people who are visiting here, who don't live here. And you know, I've I've said it before, but a real estate

tax rate impacts I guarantee it's going to impact every citizen of this county, but a lot of this meals tax is coming from people who don't even live here. So, you know, that's why city of Williamsburg, I think they're at 11%. You look at these places where there's a lot of tourists coming in. They're they're taking advantage of that out of town draw. Well, we don't have the tourists, but we've got 10,000 quote unquote tourists at Dogrin every day. We got three uh and 301 heavy travely corridors um you know east, west and the north south. So we need to take advantage of that. That's why I'm recommending it goes up to 6%. Next slide please. So some additional areas of revenue that I'm we touched on a couple of these already. The 870 for meals tax. So removal of the sellers discount. So based on my projections of what I think we're going to collect if it goes to 6% if everybody pays it on time, if everybody pays on time, we're around $75,000 a year coming up short. $75,000 year after year after year, that's that's quite a bit of money. I mean, now we're starting to talk some entry- level positions and some salaries here for for employees or, you know, keeping tax rate low for real estate, paying for other things. So that's why I'm recommending we remove that and that'll put $75,000 into the coffers. I've talked about the $300,000 modest increase for real estate through growth and also through uh personal property. You big question right now again a working document. Is there going to be any increase for you know anything through a real estate tax increase? That's to be determined. Next slide please. So here's here's some of the challenges. additional areas of expense. I've already touched on the Motorola contract north of a million dollars that I walked into this on budget on day one. You'll see a little bit a couple slides down um the number of positions that I've request that were requested to me for the county. I'm recommending three. For the record, the school is not the

schools are not recommending any full-time positions for FY27. We we've uh looked at a 4% cola for county employees including tourism and library. 5% cola for school employees including uh a step correction for compression at step nine that's 856,000 this is local money some there is some some state money that goes towards this but the local match is 856,290 I think with the the uh I think it's a third 31 3169 split most of it with the state the rest of it coming from the from the county uh social services Mr. Franklin's recommending a cola plus a 4% merit county's insurance uh increase pre increase for healthcare premiums 836,000 and some change schools portion $1.3 million. So these are some significant challenges that we had to overcome with this budget. Next slide please. So, I apologize for for the list if this was only five positions that were requested. It'd be much easier to read, but 21 new positions were requested at the county. And then there there's there's two different transfers that I would request to the board with this. Now, the way it's set up, unless a FTE is approved by the board for particular department, they cannot go over that amount. So, we've been paying there. There's the first one at the very bottom there, chins to DSS. So right now the um diversion officer that is fully funded by the general fund. If we switch that over to social services, we get reimbursed from the federal and the state government. Takes, you know, burden off of us. Saves us some money. Uh administration to finance. This was uh Miss Caesia Turner. Uh you all you remember her smiling face. She you know she hit her ceiling in administration. I I could I saw a an opportunity for a young lady to grow, push her to finance,

and challenged her. So, we while we still been paying her out of uh the administration budget for this fiscal year, I will switch that over to uh finance uh for the for the next year. You can see uh departments, position requested, annual salary, benefits, then the total salary plus benefits for for the other positions. And next slide, then we're not going to lose this data. Just go to the next slide. So, so this is the same information just my highlighted um recommendations for the board for FY27. The the green lines, these are the the two transfers that I just talked about. Line item 14, engineering, a capital projects inspector. We've got two individuals in engineering and they're they're working their tails off between county and service authority. you know, they're the guys out there managing the I think we're down to what 11 ARPA project, maybe maybe nine uh active ones right now. You know, I've got a you've got somebody who's making a dollar. You don't want the man answering 20 cent questions. So, that's what I've got right now. I've got a very talented young man down in the trenches making sure two pipes go together accurately. I I can better use his talents. So, I'm recommending a an inspector for that department. uh administration. This would uh replace uh Miss Turner. So, we were looking at one administrative assistant for the entire suite. That's across three departments. Administration, community engagement, and economic development. You know, I know there's been some talk, well, you know, are there services that can be utilized that don't need a person behind a desk? I don't think this is one of them. you know, this is this is somebody who's going to be answering phones, directing people who come up to that office, reviewing minutes from uh from three different departments, AP sheets. I mean, there's there's there's a lot that goes into this and uh I I know there have been multiple times where my staff is tied up, maybe they're on a lunch break, you know, and we're alternating lunch breaks. I'm in the middle of something. I hear the doorbell ring and I I I you know, kind of stop what I'm

doing to get up there to to answer a question, go down the hall or I'll walk them down where they need to be. So, I just don't like having a, you know, a dark desk there in administration in these three very important uh offices at the county. The last position that I'm recommending is a grant writer. Uh, I've talked to several of you about this grant writing. Right now, we've got, you know, I know Mr. Clark, I think he's still here. Yeah, Mr. Clark's still here. You know, he's he's diving into transportation grants. We've got we've got everybody trying to write different grants on top of all their other job duties. So, I'm I'm proposing one grant writer for the county. we can use it for the schools also. Um, and this is really an that's an easy ROI. You look at a grant writer salary and benefits at $83,000. If they pull in $84,000, they just earn their keep. It's an easy one to to to make, you know, your money work for you. And, you know, my my goal is to to have somebody put a multiplier five or six on their salary and benefits and that's what they are in the county, if not more. So, those are the positions that I'm recommending. The 279546 that was referenced on an earlier slide. That's the the salary and benefits for the three pri uh jobs highlighted in yellow. Next slide, please. So, this is the slide I don't like. I didn't like making the slide. And, you know, again, you know, to all my staff out there, these are not, you know, trying to find a way to close that $4.2 million delta. So, in no way am I standing up here on April 7th, I'm recommending we eliminate step increases for fire, rescue, emergency services. That's not what I'm doing. I am merely using high dollar items in the budget to try to make that gap up. You know, again, my staff heard the heard my word my words. They came in with budgets under last year. There's so many there's only so many paper clips, reams of paper, and staplers you can cut out of a budget before you start impacting operations. So things for you guys to consider, you

know, not fund any outside u non-mandated outside agencies. This means, you know, the law firm, the the the work the services work, colonial uh workboard, all the food pantries, you know, they wouldn't get anything. That would save you 274,000. Remove funding for the comprehensive plan update. That's $150,000 price tag in this budget. We had 150 in last year's budget. We had 150 in this. we started pricing these out. Some of them I know one little county $700,000 for a comp plan. So $300,000 is is going to be what we need. So if you're looking to cut, that's a high ticket item. And don't approve the recommended three full-time positions at the county. That'll save you 280. Eliminate all travel and training for all county employees, courts, boards, and commissions. This is going to start impacting you. I mean, these are certifications that people need to have. You know, I I tallied those up for and I didn't I didn't touch the schools on this. This is just county judges, you know, courts, sheriff's office, 228,000. Remove certification pay for fire, rescue, emergency services, 240,000 in the budget. Eliminate the step plan increases. These this is the the guaranteed it's usually 3%. I think it it goes down to 2% after a certain number of years for fire, rescue, emergency services. Eliminate the step plan increases for the sheriff's office. 39,000. Cut the cola and merit for social services employees, 121,000. Uh eliminate all the the cola for every county employee, library and tourism, 381,000. And then for all the the teachers and everybody over at the school, their 5% cola and the step correction goes away at a savings of $856,000 and some change. If all that was done, I'm not saying we we I recommend it, but if that was done, that would save you $2,754,272. Still well short of the 4 almost $2

million delta. There are some other things that we can do and we can talk about this. There there are other things that we can talk about on Friday that I think I can save you $6,500 for for this or, you know, we talked about I mean cutting convenience centers, you know, cutting the hours there. At first it was weekends. That's $75,000 for weekend operations. But then it's like, well, maybe you just cut it like on a Monday and a Tuesday. Keep them open for the weekends. But it's it's it's going to be a challenge. And I'm not going to lie to you. This is it's going to I've got all all the confidence my staff and you know, our relationships. We're going to get through this. We're going to figure out what's best for the citizens, for the employees, and to make sure King George County keeps functioning uh the way we should be. Next slide, please. So fund balance. So this has also been a discussion, you know, looking at this. So according to the county's policy, unassigned fund balance in excess of the minimum. You heard this referenced tonight. I forgot who it was. We're we're well in excess. We have a very very healthy fund balance here. Our policy states general fund unassigned fund balance in excess of a 15% policy would be available for appropriation by the board of supervisors as needed. These funds should be used for non-reoccurring expenditures, one-time capital expenditures, or economic development related expenditures. But over the past few years, King George County, I mean, that's it's it's just the way it is. It's we've used unsigned fund balance to cover reoccurring expenditures by balancing the annual budget. Now, here's what you look at. You look at FY24. You started or the board, the county started at 1,87350. Next year it crept up to 2.1 million. Then it crept up to 3.6 million. This year if we didn't do anything that number creeps to 4.2 million. Now I know there's money that's returned to the county and you know yeah Davenport's still here. You know they're going to be coming to you whenever we talk about the

the CT but you know good financial practices. This is not a good trend right here because eventually the numbers if you keep using this money to balance a budget guess what next year next year it's going to be 5.5 then 6.6 six. Then whenever you spend all your money, you just burn through $6.5 million of fund balance 5 years down the road. What that money should be used for is emergency expenditures, you know, economic development. That could be incentives. That could be buying land. I think somebody said that that is a risk. Absolutely. Um funding of capital projects. You know, a good example of this would be the the new CTE building that we're working on. That's the building alone is $20 million. You know, let's face it, by the time that gets all up and outfitted and everything, that's probably going to be about a $23 million building. We're going to have a state-of-the-art CT building, but that's $23 million. Davenport is going to be coming back to you in the near future. How we're going to finance that? My guess is they're probably going to say, "Use some of your fund balance. It's very healthy." So, instead of borrowing $23 million at, you know, 4.5%, you only have to borrow 15 million. That's what fund balance should be used for. Board, you can do whatever you want with it. direct me, whatever we want, but I'm just trying to give you some good governing and good financial planning here for the for the future of the county. Next slide, sir. Again, I'm just going to come back to to this. This is a work in progress. I don't want anybody to think that there's a $4.2 million budget in the final approved budget of FAFY 27. It is not. You know, we are all going to work together on this. I look forward to, you know, the input. I think our work our work session and maybe next slide, Chris. Yeah, here we go. Remainder of the FY27 calendar budget. So, on Friday, we've got a a work session at 11 o'clock. Very sim uh similar to last year. It was very efficient. We knocked all the departments out in one day with the exception of the schools. I will be taking lead on on county departments kind of letting you know where they're at. But all the department heads will be here maybe with their number two to answer specific questions from the board. And from tomorrow or tonight or

tomorrow morning, I'm going to start looking at this budget. Where else can we cut? I didn't come up with this $4.2 million number till about three o'clock this afternoon. So, this this is still new to me. So, now I'm scrambling of, you know, but again, how many paper clips and staplers can I cut out of the budget? April 22nd, we're going to have a again, this is a change of date. This is a Wednesday, a public hearing for the meals tax increase to 6%. And we will also at that time I will have a balanced budget for you. I look at my finance staff and we will have a balanced budget by uh by April 22nd for you all. And then uh May 19th, we'll talk about this later, but that that is the anticipated date of the next board meeting. Approve the operating budget. I'm sorry, let me skipped one. May 5 public hearing for operating budget and tax rates. Everything will be out here. We we've hashed through everything. Public comments. Under state law, you need to wait. I believe it's 10 days to approve a budget. So, we're going to put it on the May 19th. So, approve the operating budget tax rates and appropriate the funds for FY27. That's what the calendar looks like. It's very similar to last year. So, you know, a little while back I was I was a little nervous and we're still going to have some tweaks here. One of the questions that it's been asked of me of, you know, well, what if the board of equalization comes through? It doesn't sound like through Miss Bucket, there's there's going to be a lot of applications through the board of equalization. So, I don't anticipate a big change. All I did was a $300,000 increase over last year assuming equalized tax rate. So we can always come back once the budget's approved, schools get their fund, we can come back and amend it. So So whatever you guys do um you know prior here or or May 19th, it can we can come back and and change it. So I think that was my last slide, Mr. Dyn. That's it.

I'll jump in with questions on this one. So first off, can we get this hyperl to the uh to the website? Absolutely. Yes. I I literally finished it like at 58. No worries. Just want to make sure we get it out. And you all have Yeah, you all have a copy of the county's budgets. This is what you guys will go through between now and Friday to to you know ask get your questions ready. And also Dr. Boyd had presented each of you with one of their binders for the schools. So you have hard copies of both of these in your possession. We will get this hyperl for the public to look at. Absolutely.

Okay. Now, that proposed total expenses, that's $8 million higher than it was last year. And then, but then last year to the year before was 2 million. The year before that, that trend was kind of the same. That's a big It's a big jump. It It is. Now, I know there's a million you brought up for Motorola that, you know, but tack on another two to three million, you know, for the trend. Where's that additional four or five million coming from? Because we've had a fairly good year in the economy,

right? So, so all the devil's in the details, you know, when you add up 1,200 line items, you know, 800 here, 5,000 there, it adds up. I'm not going to say, but but it's all I I pick the big items here. And Chris, go to the expenses, the additional go. I'm trying to keep keep going. Keep going there. Well, so you know when when you look at this, you know, I haven't totaled these up, but there's there's 21, there's 23, there's 31, a 34, 37, 47 right there. I mean, that's that's pushing 5 million right there. some of those increases, uh, especially the pay increases seem rather large compared to what our military is getting from year to year from what our federal and state gets year to year. Um, I'm not saying we cap it at that, but does it have to be all or nothing on those things?

No. No. Again, this budget is nothing's all or nothing. These are this is the starting point, but that's that's what was presented and I said, let's let's start here and figure out where we go. Do we know what we expect from the the state on the schools yet? Probably not. Not yet. All right. Um, can you real quick explain the relationship? Um, and and this is as much for the public's benefit is for for us. Can you explain the relationship between that.56 the 56 cent uh uh equalized rate versus our actual rate of 68 cents a day? Okay. Okay. So, you have and I wish I had I should there's a board where we can draw and everybody sees and and just to clarify the 4.2 $2 million delta is based on a 56 cent rate, right?

That is correct. That is correct. Go ahead.

So, right now you have I want to say, let's just don't quote me on my numbers, but you've got $4.1 billion worth of taxable assets that we're sitting on right now. And our tax rate is $68 million. That yields 20, let's just call $27 million worth of revenue. Right? Again, don't quote me on my numbers, but that's just easy number. $27 million worth of revenue. So now all of a sudden with reassessment, oh King George, you have $5.2 billion worth of So if you took 5.2 billion times 68, your your end number, it goes way through the roof. With your equaliz rate, that has to be the same. So my the number after your equalizer has to be $27 million. And if one of your multipliers was 4.1 billion and now it's 5.2, two. The only way to still get 27 million is to drop that that other number that you multiply it by. And I I can have, you know, a picture for this picture is worth a thousand words. That's the equalized I was in CNF Bank explaining equalized tax rates to the ladies for 20 minutes and they looked it up. Oh, there's a picture. That's what it is right there. So, apologize for not having that, but that's what it is. uh your your your revenue collected for real estate has to be the same as the last year if you exceed I think it's one a 1% increase on a reassessment year. So what I think I heard was no matter what we do to the rates whether we accept the um assessments at face value and drop the rates or leave the rates the same and and drop the uh the assessed value or maintain the assessed value, whatever, it's still got to end up being 27ish million at the end.

That's right. So, so in essence, if you if you set a tax rate, hypothetically, if you set a tax rate of 60 cents, right? It's actually a 4centent increase, it' be a 4centent increase in the real estate tax rate because you would be collecting more money on the real estate. Okay. So, if you got Does that make sense to you? The math makes sense. the why doesn't so if there's if if it doesn't matter what we do one way or the other it has to equal up to 27 million in the end anyway

well that's called an equaliz then then the board can do whatever they want with a tax rate it's it's it's the way state code is is set out you know if if it goes up by a certain percentage I think it's a 1% is it one is there one a 1% threshold you have to equalize the rate but then that doesn't mean you have to keep the same tax rate you can lower it if you want you can take it down 40% 40 cents you can take it to 75 cents that's your purview but you have to equalize it and I think you know what it sounds like if I chairman correctly raising the rates isn't going to close that $4.2 million gap

Mr. Chairman the the what he what he's explaining is whatever your tax rate is now and if your real estate values go up um you're going to get a you're going to collect a lot more. So the state law requires you to equalize that rate so you receive the same and that really is just a transparency measure for the citizens. Once you come to that equalized rate, this board has the authority to then raise that rate or lower that rate or or whatever you want to do with it. That last step is where I was missing. Okay. So So if you do raise it one penny, you're creating an additional $517,300 worth of revenue.

Gotcha. So if that delta is you know million35,000 you raise it two pennies. Cool. Thanks for bearing with me. Okay other people I saved all my questions for you. That that's that's fine. Mr. Solins I really just have two qu can you send the presentation to us through besides put and then absolutely for clarification for Friday. Could you list the mandated outside agencies for us and you have those already? Uh, we sent those to you and Miss Cobb actually broke out a nice summary of here's here's specifically what they do for King George County. We will resend those to the board members. I probably lost it somewhere in my email with all the emails. Make a note. We we'll resend that. Yes.

Thank you. And it' be good for the public so they can see. And these are mandated by the state. Yes, ma'am. Yes. So, we last budget that was right. We used 3,609 to balance the budget. Yeah. So, we know that 3.7 million came back from the school. That that's that's last that that was a FY25 closing. So, that's a year behind that comes back from the schools. All right. So, if we go FY25, we only used 2 million 132 to balance the budget and we had three. So, we we had more money come back just from the school. And then I think you guys reallocated 2.1 million at that same year. 1.7 1.9.

Okay. 1 N. And so my question for this year though, um, because I know y'all have meetings monthly now to go over everyone's, right? So what's the numbers are great, but also what percentage are we expected to get back? So most I mean, yes, I know we used money, but that money came back for that that year, so we really didn't use the money. It came back, right? And so it looks good on here that we used 2 million and this year, you know, 3609. So, I'm trying to get an idea of the other departments where we at as far as that money coming back to get a true idea of how much money we actually used to balance the budget.

I I think the a way to answer that question is, you know, since the board approved and appropriated all that money, you shouldn't expect to get any back. I think it's through because you said here's the money you you have free reign to spend every last dime of it. However, it's the it's the staff we've got here. It's who you got over at the school to spend taxpayer money like their own. they're going to go out and shop for that better deal. And at the end, it all adds up, you know, to to to bring money back. So, so you can't expect to get any back. Expecting it back is that's that's wonderful. But if if you appropriate 145 million, I mean, you're giving the green light to spend $145 million.

Absolutely. But my findings though have been um last year while working the budget, the library, $200,000 was left over from the budget from the year before. in this other department there was money left over from the year before. So that's more of an accurate picture. I I know that that's what it but we they also know that this board runs a very very tight ship and that we we aren't this isn't you got the money so blow it and spend it and bring it back. So people are bringing money back because they know that's kind of what's expected and they're taking things a little bit more seriously.

But that's more of a true picture if you see what I'm saying. No, we can't expect it but we do expect it. We do expect you not just to go out at the end of the day and say, "We have two months left. We got $300,000 left over. We need to go out and spend it on something." It's or else we got to give it back to the people, right?

You know, that's ridiculous. So, we've cut that back over the past couple years. That no longer is happening to because we have monthly means as opposed to just the end of the year. So, congrats to you on that. But that's more of what I'm kind of looking at. like you you probably know looking at the budgets and meeting with people kind of where they are where we can generally what we can expect to come back to us that's going to give us more of a clear idea. Just looking on here it's like man they used three $2 million out of the general fund to balance the budget. Yeah, we did but that 3.7 million came back and then we took that some of that money and that's not counting the other departments.

I think what we can do and I think will help answer your question. It's a very good point Mr. Davis. I think at the at the work session we can have the trial balance. So we're right at you know 3/4 of the way through the year we'll have a percentage and I'll have that I can send it to each of the about where we are right now. Absolutely. So so you all can see you know hey this department's they're already 85% 3/4 of the way through the year. They got, you know, they got But it's also for you to sit, you could sit down, talk to people and say, "Look, guys, you want you need two new staff people on here and you guys still have this $200,000 left over and maybe it's, you know, you don't know how much of that money are we going to be to save in order to make some of this stuff happen,

right?" You know, and and one thing just in full transparency, we did it last year and, you know, I plan on doing it again. You know, we've got an aging fleet of vehicles. You know, when I came here, there was a whole parking lot. Luckily, those are all gone now. I think we've surplused a number of vehicles out there. But, you know, with with take for instance the inspector, you know, if if that gets approved, I'm going to use leftover money from this year's budget. It's under $50,000. I can go buy a vehicle. I'll go to sheh he see what's on EVA and and you know, take care of those purchases right now to you're right to as a way to you've been frugal with your money, you know, and you need something. Here you go.

So, yeah, I think a trial trial balance is for each department we can have for you all uh on on Friday. Yeah, that's it was a no-brainer for us as far as 3.7 coming from the school and then the school saying we need a new Hback. It's getting old. Look what we did. Can we have some of this money back to do that? Actually helped me out because if if that 1.9 hadn't gone back to the board that that 4.2 million is now, you know, it's I'm over 6 million. So So yeah, those onetime expenditures, that was a that was a good call. Yeah. Thank you. Yes, sir. Suspender Sean asked or

uh no been called upon. Why? Okay. Uh you know, you you've already been thanked for your work. I'd like to thank the staff. Yeah.

Because uh this is, you know, every year you get better. And uh I know to begin with you were a bit of a rookie, but you've came a whole long way in this and your staff has too in the whole budgeting process. Um the report that uh Miss Cobson sent out on one April answers a lot of the questions that are that are asked. You guys were on that too. I think you got forwarded to you. It's it's easy to miss. Um but was it one April? Uh maybe it wasn't. Uh, but it was it was it it was a cash flow report. So, I had asked Miss Cobb for it and then I sent I think I sent it out to everybody. You sent it out to everybody.

Do you all have the same information? That's right.

And and cuz I had met with her over some of the to go over some of these things and um it it provides a it really provides a lot of the details in there. So, um my questions though, um uh I guess a couple questions and a comment, but the issue of using the fund balance for the one-time capital expenditures, I understand that. Um but I want to say I I don't totally agree with it. Uh, and whether that matters or not, um, because if we do well as a county, let's say our treasur does really well with investments and, uh, our general fund balance grows more, then I'm good with using it for sometime purchases, but I think we could use some of that money also to like pay down some of our debt so that $5 million that we're paying in service fees goes down along with it. Um, you know, now that's with the understanding that, um, if we're making more money with the money, that's cool. Um, looking at it tonight, I wasn't convinced of that, but uh, I have the question though, and and I'm not we're probably not going to have the answer tonight, but is how and I've been to some meetings. I've been or been to some uh I guess some some classes that was uh held and in some counties I guess discussions but they have police counties have police and their job and I'm not talking like cops like with a badge but they're county employees and what they do is they go their job is to go out and make sure that the county is getting what

people are reporting to pay taxes on is actually what exists. So what I mean by that is if a business is reporting their equipment and we're taxing that equipment and if they don't report it, how do we know if a countyy's bought some robots and they're using robots and robots, let's assume robots are expensive. I would think they'd be expensive and are using robots. Are we are we taxing the robots? and and maybe you know the answer to that, but how do we know if they put new robots in or not? So, it's a is I think it's a 732 form. 752 form.

Yeah, 762 form that they have to fill out. So, I guess your question is when they set fill out that 762 I bought new robots and all these new computers. Is there anybody to verify that? Is that is that your question? Right. Yeah, we do. No, typically, you know, that that's that's commissioner revenue. I don't know. We as a county when 762s come in, that's Miss Pucket's department. I don't know how, you know, how she verifies that that bit of information. Some counties have people that work in the like I'd be interested to see that. this may be a good idea to to

some people have some counties they have people and this at this point I was going through the the I think it was the zoning permitting training that was happening and they have like some counties and I've seen them on that uh I'm a member of some of the group and and they they advertise these positions they go around and make sure that people you know that they have a garage you know they're reporting it and they're they're doing stuff it's but um I'm not And I don't like I didn't like the attitude so much of that those police but for making sure that the businesses that are supposed to be paying taxes and I'm one of them and are actually reporting and I don't mean your count pencils I'm not but big things um robots forklifts uh things like that. How are we making sure that we're getting that? Because what I'm trying to do, this whole conversation is about transferring the burden from or at least, you know, away from the individuals to the businesses cuz we're trying to bring businesses in. I'm all about that. I'm not trying to beat businesses up. I'm just saying that how do we hold businesses responsible? We've got the tax assessments and yeah, they get they get assessed, but we're not we're not looking at that equipment. And soon this is going to be a really big deal. Okay, it's going to be a really big deal because whenever you get a data center in there and that's a lot of money, a lot of equipment and I we're talking about they're talking about getting reports and on what they buy and going through that. Okay. And those can uh somebody's going to go blind trying to read them. But, you know, that's my question. We're talking about the budget and we're trying to find money and I'm just trying to find out are we getting what we're supposed to be getting already. um for some businesses and and I'm trying not to highlight a business,

right? No, no. You know, in hearing this, my my first three minutes of thought processing is much like a grant writer, I mean, this would be an individual that's it's easy to to prove their worth.

It would prove their they should be able to prove their worth very very, you know, relative easily. But there I see some value in that. The other thing is is is you know ask some other counties if they have this guy and if they do maybe we can share them and if nothing else they should be better at doing their job cuz they've been doing it for a while and at least give us some pointers on that. Okay. Um and then my last comment is referring to um you'd mentioned uh West Morland and report the plates and I'm all about it. Great idea. But the other idea I think I mentioned before to you is that we put license plate readers at the landfill. Um, get away from the permits and sticking or the the the tags and sticking them to windshields. Just do away with that. And just like whenever you go to the car I I have a I go to the car wash. I go to the car wash and it reads my license plate and the little gate comes open. Okay. It's just, you know, a camera. It reads the plates. you come in and it lets you in or it doesn't. So, whenever somebody registers uh you know at the county then their plate gets registered. That's what gets them into the landfill. The play ain't registered, they don't get in. I mean, it's pretty easy. The poll doesn't go up. Um you know, we buy some hardware. We're not talking about a person, but you know, um anyway, that's that. Thank you. Mish miss.

Um I I will echo everything my my partners here have have said. Um I I will say there's a lot of people I think that have those Maryland plates that never go to the landfill. So we need to track them down as well. Um I like that reporting form. Um so I I Mr. Small Neck, I was looking at your county position recommendations and not for tonight, but just some comments between now and Friday maybe for you to run down. Um there was a law clerk in there. I thought that that was a split with us and the comp board. So, just double check that. And I too, like Mr. Davis here, had said um to you, you know, looking at the the audit from the 24 budget, the 2425 audit that just came out, right? In that one, I saw four plus million returned to the general fund on a year where it was a deficit in the plan. It became a positive at the end of the year. um that is good fiscal responsibility. I would also be interested in are there policies that we as a board have instituted on you as a leader for this county that works against us? You like you said, you know, three full-time positions. we give you a a headcount and I know the sheriff's department and and probably our fire department have certain recruiting classes and and my experience is we never get 100% out of those recruiting classes. And so I question whether we're ever actually hitting the headcount that we've given you to stay within. Is that a policy? I think you had two overhires in here as a fraction of a percent of expense. But my point is is that's really not $25,000 in the year because usually we bring them on mid year and we only keep them for the few weeks until they decide that this isn't really the job for me and they leave. Right? So that's still within that

budget code is still staying within budget for the year annually, but they temporarily exceeded their headcount number because they know based on past history kind of what the fallout rate is. Um so I I think now I'm definitely comfortable you we are we will continue to monitor very closely how all the departments do with the what we've allocated for them. But I think there may be policy where we could get a little better at hitting the hitting the number which gives us an ability to to maybe be a little more precise with what we're approving in our budget for the year because it seems like we're diverging as time goes on probably due partly to inflation, right? Salary inflation, equipment inflation. um we're we're using more of the general fund to balance the budget, but we're coming out at the end of the year with a lot more revenue to put back into that general fund and it seems like just something is off and I feel like that that is one policy. I have a feeling you have others. And then just a statement, keep looking for those savings. Um

I would I think you had mentioned to me maybe some advertising costs in the supervisor's budget. Yep. I would like talk about those on Friday. Absolutely. I would like to pursue that. Right. and and I want everybody to be unafraid to come tell us, hey, I'm doing this thing. I think we we instituted it because we needed to fix something. The something has been fixed. Maybe we can stop doing this. And it it might not be a ton of hours, but I think if we add that up across all, you know, all of the employees within the county between us and the schools, that's a thousand people. If everybody saves a few hours, we're now a couple hundredk to the positive at this. That's it.

All right. Thank you. And Mr. Stra, did you come up with another question? That's why I made you not to go last. I think you know, you guys, if you don't know him, his brain works 100 miles an hour. He's always got one more question. That's why I didn't want you to go last. I'll take that as a note. Thank you very much. All right. Mr. Med, no.

Your comment. When we came on there was no meetings monthly about your budget. They waited to the end of the year like this to see what going to happen like oh no. So Mr. Smark had really stepped in tune with the board and go okay this is what you guys want and the monthly meetings and knowing exactly where people are. It's really paid off for us and he's he's done a great job at I just wanted to add that. Thank you.

And our finance people too have too. When we took over we were Yeah, I say everything with the highest level of compliment I appreciate all the time and I I've as the new one coming in. Um they've walked me through a lot of what they're doing and I I'm the the things the the board instituted are moving us in the right direction. I think now we just need to figure out why our numbers aren't adding up at the end of the year. Um and and what opportunities there are. As I said, my employees are my most and like Miss Fish came up with that one. It wasn't me. it was, you know, as my employees. So, so I got a I got a wonderful team.

Yeah. Their their monthly meetings have turned it into a glide slope instead of a cliff. And uh when we first took over, we were talking about finances once and we asked the former finance director, hey, this software that you're trying to get away from that's so bad. Can can it give me a real time update? And she's like, no. Well, they that at the end of the meeting, they pulled me over and they're like, "This is what you're looking for." I'm like, "That's exactly what I'm looking for." So yeah, a lot of talent here.

One go back to Mr. Smallneck on the equalized rate was I I for Friday um that $27 million seems to be the number that we revenue received last year. I think we've seen in the last couple months we did grow we're growing at about 1.3% a year. That that is correct. The question is, is the re is the equalized rate against last year's budget or is that against the total um calculated revenue before assessment and after assessment? Because I want to make sure you're not putting yourself in a hole that it should be 57 cents equalized, not 56.

No, it's it's it's what it was last year. It was last year. You have to use you almost have to use two years. you're crossing over because you've got two different years from two different assessments. You use the assessments from last year, but then you're using the assessments from this year. And your common denominator is that end product and yeah, 27,8006. So that accounts for no growth. No, because I I I counted I I put in remember $300,000 worth of additional revenue to take us to 28106 for background growth. I I I did account for some background modest growth. Yes. Yeah, that seemed a small number, but and you're I'm I'm I'm a fiscal conservative, so Yep.

All right, that's what we'll use on Friday. When do we have to advertise that?

So So we'll have to advertise it for the May 9 may I had it up there as my last slide. So again, when it comes to the real estate rate, you all can advertise. I mean, you guys can advertise a tax rate of 68. you're going to get people blowing up. But as long as you go under 68 cents, you're fine. But if you advertise 62 cents, you can't go to 63. You can always go less. So So that's why we've always county administrators that I've watched have always says, "Let's advertise for a higher amount." And we can always bring it down. Yeah. Then this is that that's right. Then there's there's some damage control. Why are you advertising for this? So it's getting that message out there. Yes. Good point.

All right. Thank you. We'll move on to action items. Uh item 0406 V. Sierra Ridge. And Matt, that's you again. I'm pulling this up real quick here. So in your packet, there are uh some of the roads in Sierra Ridge have uh been completed. There's the sketch in the AM3 report along with a draft resolution. Uh the the roads are 3/10enth of a mile long leaf lane, state route 1160 and then 1/10enth of a mile for Sourwood Way, State Route 1161. So VOTE has we've gone through the process. These are ready to be accepted. I just need the board to to make the uh adopt a resolution to accept I guess it would be 3/10en of a mile long leaf lane and then uh 1/10en of a mile of Sourwood Way in the Sierra Ridge subdivision into the state VOTE secondary system adopted as presented. Thank you sir.

Moved second properly seconded. Do we have any discussion? All in favor say I. I. I. Any oppose? Chair votes I. Motion carries.

Thank you, sir. All right. Item 0407, appointment of the board of equalization, member of member or alternate, Miss Regina Pucket. Good evening again. On March 17, 2026, the board appointed the board of equalization members. However, Mr. Robert Bailey III is unable to serve as an alternate. Tonight, I'm here before you to request that Mr. Bailey's name is removed from serving as an alternate and ask that the board choose a different nominee to fill that role. Mr. Bailey is willing to serve as a primary member on the board of equalization. There are also two other alternatives that are willing to serve on the board of equalization. The first is Jquel and parent and the second is Michael Audi.

Thank you, ma'am. Any discussion? Yeah, go ahead. For me, I'm going to bring back the same thing Miss Miss Bender talked about last week is are you stuck on having three members, Mr. Smick? Are you stuck on having three members on the equalization board or can you have five? Well, I believe you need a minimum of three. you need. It's okay. So, you can have fun. So, we in case there's people are sick of people, we need to just nominate the two alternatives. But you have to have a complete board and then an alternate. Okay. Then appoint Robert Bailey and one of the other ones and keep one of them an alternate. What I would say at least make it five. He'd be on the board. He wouldn't be

Mr. Chairman. He didn't want to be an alternate. He said he would serve as a member. That's what I was saying. I'll say make him a member and pick one more and then let the other one be the alternate. That way we have five. So you're saying we've got the we've got the three, we add Mr. Bailey, we add either Miss Parent or Mr. Audi, and uh whichever one doesn't get picked would be the alternate. So we'd have five plus one. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, I would. Yes, I would nominate Robert Bailey and maybe Jackal and parent and keep Michael. It looks like Audi as an alternative is would be the way I'd look at it. Okay, I'll make a motion. That's your official nomination.

Yes. All right. Do I have a second? Second. Okay. Any further discussion? All those in favor? I I oppose. Chair votes eye. Motion carries. All right. Uh there are no discussion items and uh Mr. Davis wanted to come back around to the bylaws. Yeah, I wanted to come back, Mr. Smallic.

We've had conversation and just I want to have a conversation in front of the board here as well. So, I've had the ordinance. You know what I'm talking about concerning junked up properties. So, there's several properties that I get complaints about. Some are, you know, might it's a junked up property with machinery equipment, all kinds of stuff next to a commercial building that someone's trying to rent that property, but they're having a hard time renting it cuz so and so just got everything junked up. And we don't really have an ordinance to deal with those things. We could send out letters and say you need to do this and we'd like people all that stuff, but I'd really like the county to look into and get with Mr. Stewart as far as what would we I don't want to become an HOA or measuring people's grass, right? But I I do want to draw something. I mean, we have main highways like, you know, you go down 206, you're going on the base, and as you're going on to the base, every day people are just driving by piles of junk, you know, just stuff like that of businesses that should be removed. So, I'd like y'all to look at that, what that ordinance would look like. And any of my peers who would like to chime in on what they thought that should look like, but I'd lean on you and your legal. I guess after our conversation away, is that business paying personal property tax on all of those vehicles parked in the and the in the

not if they're junk and be and they're disable they pay nothing. I think we have a minimum depreciation.

So so so state if I may in in previous lives there are there are ordinances you know inoperable vehicle. So we do not define inoperable vehicle. Typically that has been defined as a vehicle that does not have a current registration nor a valid um inspection. So that throws you into an inoperable vehicle class. And if there's there's if there's a provision in there, then yes, there can be enforcement action by the zoning administrator and then civil penalties uh and court actions if they refuse to clean it up. So junk, you know, defining junk is hard. I think Mr. Von has a sign in his office. It's not junk but close.

Somebody made that for him one time. And junk is very hard to define because what's junk to you maybe somebody's, you know, prized possession or maybe some materials that they use for their side business. So you know, we can look if it's the will of the board, we can come back and present you some different options if it's the will of the the board. um and and we can we can start this discussion.

I would definitely be supportive of options, but I'm I'll just tell you I'm very hesitant of the inoperable vehicle as somebody who has a registered and tax paid but currently not registered because it's an old beater and it's in process of not running. So this could be this could be less about that's the example that he used. Okay. So this could be this could just be washers, dryers, refrigerators, things like that just stacked up all along the highway. But again, that comes into the question is what is junk? It's very hard to enforce because to you it looks like junk that somebody says that's those are my parts for my business. Those are so that that that's the tricky part.

Yeah. And that's why I'm saying and there's a great conversation. Yeah. I'd like to get what we can do. What we can do, I think. Yeah, if I understand where he's going though, the particular business we're talking about has been closed for a really long time and it's got a mini junkyard outside. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe not. I'm not sure about that. I know I was just told the other day that that person is still working on Yeah, looks like they have been cleaned up. They work in the dark. Never that. They're still working on stuff. Okay.

I don't know if that's true or not. I' I've got an idea. Um, I I've seen some ordinances where the county administrator can deem something um a hazard to health and then we can send a letter, give them an opportunity to clean it up. If they don't, the county can clean it up. If the cost becomes a lean on the real estate there ways to get at this, I'll come up with some options for you. Thank you. All right. So, switch over. Yeah. Wait. So, I'm definitely in favor. for me. Is this the will of the board? Have them expend resources to come up with some options. I think he just said he would. I just want to make sure it's in consensus. Okay.

Yep. Good deal. After budget. Okay. Yes, sir. And it has to be a zero sum game. You can't charge budget party here, right? All right. Over to the county administrator's report. You know, I think I've talked enough tonight. Um, hey, man. Thank you. I am going to relinquish 20 seconds to Senator Stewart, though.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Smolick. Um, just very quickly, I wanted to advise the board, and I wrote all this down so I wouldn't make a mistake. On March 18th, 2026, Porter Group USA LLC appealed to the King George County Circuit Court. um your um approval of the reszoning and special exception regarding the application by Green Energy Ventures LLC and its plan for a data center complex along Bloomsberry Road in Route 3. The complaint was officially served on the county on March 27th, 2026 and it alleges a number of things which are fairly traditional in these types of um cases. I I will decline to comment on whether or not I think there is merit to those claims cuz kind of like giving your war plan to the enemy in advance and I don't want to do that if that's okay with you all. But I will tell you that I will file an answer timely. Um GEV has counsel. I have uh talked with them already and I've also talked with the individual who has filed the appeal on behalf of Hoarder Group and I just wanted everybody to know that and that we're taking care of it and handling it.

All right. Thank you, sir.

Wh why you're providing update sir? Is there any update to the Hopyard Trail? the um no other than I think I told you all they filed a motion to reconsider. So the judge ruled in favor of the county some time ago. They filed a motion to reconsider the judge's ruling. I believe that is set in May. And again, forgive me cuz I'm just getting back into my schedule. Um but they have declined for whatever reason to discuss any sort of possible resolutions and and I suggested a couple um to they have two attorneys, one that represents the uh developer, one that represents the HOA. I have proposed to both of those attorneys a potential path to try to get that resolved that I think would benefit the county and the citizens and the people who live in Hopyard. not they've not engaged in those discussions. So we'll plan to appear and the court and argue the uh same thing we argued before.

Thank you sir. All right. We'll move on to a secondary public comment to address meeting items only. Comments will be limited to three minutes per person in order to afford everyone an opportunity to speak. Please provide your full name and district when submitting your public comment so that it can be properly recorded and included in the public record. We have anybody would like to make public comment at this time.

Thank you.

Um, my name is Dwight Brown. Uh, I want to be very clear. I am not a part of any of the Ralph Bunch Alumni Association or the other group. I represent a different group and uh we're proposing uh to build a new Ralph Bunch Educational Center. Um, you know, as architectural designer, I have to say that that's the the Ralph Bunch High School has no architectural significance, but the historical significance is in the people who went to the school, went to the classrooms, uh, who taught there. But we're at the point now where we start to lose history. So, my group uh would like to propose building a new facility with no county funding. This be strictly private. We're in a process over the past several months. We've came up with several designs, several models, and every time we do one, someone else comes up with another idea. So I would like to give you this proposal to review and hopefully come back within 90 days with a set of plans that we can construct in the county. The only thing that we require from the county is someplace to put it. So um but that's all I have. Uh I I would I would love you to look at this. Uh again, you know, as a former teacher in King George, I have watched that school stay empty for better than 30 years, and I I don't fault them. I applaud them for what they want to do. But we have a vision that we feel that

will benefit the county. Uh the fact that the educational center we're proposing has four components. It has a component for Ralph Bunch and the Jim Crow history of Virginia. It has a component for the history of King George and the Northern Neck. It has a component for local artists. It has a component that allow King George public schools art students to po to uh post their artwork. And we also have um a research center that will allow students to come in and do research on different projects. Uh the museum that we propose will have interactive uh displays. Right now we have two architects, we have a structural engineer, we have an interior designer, everybody working together. Um, but I will say that again, this is privately funded and we feel like if we get your blessing, we could probably have this thing up and running by 2029 February, Black History Month. So, I'd like to leave this with you,

Miss Jackie. Okay. And if any questions, I will gladly answer them for you. All right. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. All right, it's about that time. We have a motion for German. One more.

Oh, sorry. I'm getting ahead of myself. U Renee Parker, um 7144 Peppermill Road. Um just coming in tonight to address the board again and reiterate our hope that we uh representatives from the Ralph Punch Alumni Association and the Visualize and Rise Foundation can address you with an update on your April 22nd meeting. Um the differences um that have been presented. I I think most of you have probably been approached. What I want to convey tonight is how we've all in King George seen so many things that distinguish the county. Everything from students with academic and athletic superiority to historical buildings to this particular thing. Yes, somebody can come in and pay you and take it off your hands. Yes, they could do that. Some of you and and certainly previous board members would welcome that with open arms, but that is that is not the feeling we get from you. What we lose in this coming ju just you being able to wash your hands of it and other people being able to make money off of it is the legacy, the fact that it's a state and national landmark and was a part of Brown versus Board of Education. It's not just a thing that distinguishes King George. It distinguishes the nation. So, I'm here just to reiterate, we have a vision. You're aware of the vision. We've given you the paperwork. We've given you the data. We have an update for you hopefully to present on the 22nd. And we just are super super greatly appreciated for the revitalized interest that you've shown in the past few months. We greatly appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you, ma'am. And yeah, the plan is free to be on the agenda on the 22nd. So, um, and I apologize for trying to get ahead of myself there. Is there other people in the audience that would like to make public comment? What's that? You have any correspondence? Mr. D, you got anybody online? Yes, Mr. Chairman, we have a CJ, which I believe could it be called Jordan? Miss Jordan? Yes, it is. Go ahead.

Good evening, everyone. Um, for those who don't know, I am Claudette Jordan, the president of the Ralph Alumni Association. But first and foremost, I want to add some clarity. When I spoke before, we talked about grant writing. And I never, Mr. Smolick wanted to give the impression that you weren't doing your job because when we first met, how enthusiastic we both were about what you were going to do and all the things that were laid out for you. and you do have excellent skills in grant writing and as we both know your plate got full so it moved to a platter. That's how big your responsibilities were and never once when we approached you for anything including a resolution or um tours or even getting a signature from you for a grant that we put out. Did you not respond you or your staff? So, I wanted to clear that up and also just to second or echo what Renee just said. But most importantly, the county and boards before you um we paid $65,000 for the Wally Wilson plan that is still a good and viable plan and we all agreed on it. We did on it and we'd like to go forward with that. It's not just a building. It's the heartbeat of King George and a lot of people blood, sweat, and tears work to get it there and um we can do so much. It can help with the revenue because the places that you're renting can go in that building. We even talked recently about the King George History Museum that seems to be homeless and will need a place to go. There's just so much that could happen there. So, thank you for all that you've done and uh your cooperation. Miss Bender is the oldest,

not the oldest, but the longest serving member of the board of the board there and uh she's she has history and has been part of it. So, I I thank all of you for your participation coming to the events that we've done. And it's not just a museum. If the school itself isn't renovated and getting all the aspesus and mold out, then there won't be any museums. So, we're working very hard with some of the Congress people, you know, Congressman Vinman and then Tim Kaine, he passes by the school so much I thought he was just going to pull in and pull, you know, put up a puck tin or something. But we have a lot of people who are interested in what King George and Ralph Bunch represents and also it's in the congressional record. So, we want to preserve the history and all that it represents. I don't live there anymore, but I sure cut my teeth on it. Born and raised there, and I'll do everything I can and support that effort. So, thank you very much and have a good evening.

Thank you, ma'am. Anybody else? Mr. D, anybody else online? No, Mr. Chairman. All right. Can we get a motion? That would be you. I make a motion that we adjourn the board of supervisors to Wednesday, April 22nd, 2026 at 5:30.

That was motion we adjourn the board of supervisors to Friday, April the 10th 10th, 2026 at 11:00 a.m. in the boardroom of the Rivercom building. Second probably second. Any discussion? All in favor say I. Any oppose? Chair. Motion carries. We are adjourned.