Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

George County Board of Supervisors to order.

I'll call this meeting of the King George County Service Authority Board of Directors to order. Thank you.

Please join me for the invocation and the pleasure of leaving. Gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day that you've given us. God, I thank you for each one of the people in this room, for the people that are online. Lord, for all the people around our county that work so hard to take care of our facilities, our children, just our... Our resources here. God, I pray that you'll be with us tonight as we make some decisions. Father, I pray that we have discernment and that we make these decisions for the betterment of our county. And you'll just give us wisdom as we go through this. And I pray that our conversation will be filled with grace, edifying to one another, and glorifying to you. We ask all this in your name. Amen.

and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

All right. Do we have any amendments to the agenda?

Yes, sir. Go ahead. I have an item that last board meeting I voted to support the reaffirmation for the support of the Dahlgren Heritage Trail. And I did that to allow me to bring it back up for reconsideration tonight as a matter of procedures. And by the vote that was taken last board, I felt somewhat ambushed by it because I didn't have anything to read in advance. I didn't know what I was voting to support. I had not seen what the resolution had. and also knew that we were down a supervisor with supervisor Davis not be a president. So like to bring that back up tonight. And I'd like to make a motion that we reconsider the last vote or.

Okay, we have a motion on the floor to reconsider the reaffirmation of the

Let me rephrase that I make a motion that we added to the agenda. OK for tonight.

Second. Motion properly seconded any discussion.

The only thing I would say is this has been voted on 3 times in the last 6 years and it is just a letter of support.

The other discussion. All right all in favor.

All those opposed.

Chair votes motion carries. Okay, any other changes to the agenda. All right, open the floor to 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 public comment so that it can be properly included in the public record. First up, we have Pastor Davis.

Thank you. I am Pastor Davis. I vote in the Dowdwin District, and I'm here because I love you. In the Gospel of John, chapter 3, or chapter 2, excuse me. Scripture says, now, when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover, in the feast day, many believed in his name. And when they saw the miracles, which he did. But Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men. And it needed not that any should testify of man. For he knew what was in man. This is called fickle faith. That's what I call it. They believed in him because of the miracles. They were really unsaved believers. And Jesus had no faith in their faith. He goes on in the next few verses explaining to Nicodemus the new birth, being born again. He says in verse 5, and Jesus answered, Verily I say unto thee, except a man be born of water, and there are those who believe that means water baptism, and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Well, if you read the next verse, it explains that verse. It's not talking about water baptism. It's talking about that which is born of the flesh. That's the natural birth. I was talking about when mama's water breaks, that's called the water birth. And then he said that which is born of the spirit is spirit, which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. And so Jesus talks about the new birth or being born again, or born again believers. What the Jewish folks kind of had at that time was what you would call cultural belief. Same thing America has today. We have cultural belief. Anybody who talks about Jesus and says, Jesus, they must be a Christian because they talked about Jesus. But we must be Christians because we live in what used to be called a Christian nation. We're not Buddhist. We're not Muslim. We're not whatever it is, the religion of that religion. We're good old Americans, red flag, totem flag country boys, and we love America, and so we must be Christian. But... That's what people believe. That's called cultural believism. Jesus talked about born again, being born again, birthed in the family of God, a spiritual birth that takes place to be part of the family of God. Nicodemus speaks to us about the futility of religion. He speaks to us about the necessity of regeneration and the reality of the new birth. Jesus says nobody can see the kingdom of heaven, nobody can go to heaven unless they have been birthed by the Spirit of God. Like I said last time, I believe that we are body, soul, and spirit. The body is what we see, the soul is what we think with, and the spirit is what we listen to God with. And so when a man is born again, he is birthed in the family of God by the Spirit of God.

Thank you, sir. Have a good evening. All right, that's all the people that we've got who signed up. Is there anyone in the audience who would like to make public comment? I don't know why I can't speak tonight.

It's going to be a long meeting if I don't get this under control.

All right, I see nobody in the audience. Is there anybody who has correspondence you'd like to read out? Sure, I have some emails.

Okay, this email, these are all constituents of the James Madison District. The first one is from Brittany Lilly. Hello, I have some concerns regarding the local trail becoming a state park. My property borders the trail and we've already experienced issues with people trespassing onto our property as well as people using the trail after 10 p.m. With the expected increase in visitors, I am concerned these issues could become more frequent. With the increase in visitors that a state park is likely to bring, I'm wondering what plans are in place to address security and protect nearby property owners. Will there be increased patrols, park staff, or other measures to help prevent trespassing? How will the park enforce boundaries and respond to complaints from adjacent landowners? Are there any plans to acquire adjacent property or easements? It is essential to keep adjacent property owners informed of upcoming decisions and any plans that may affect their properties. Clear, timely communication allows landowners to understand potential impacts, ask questions, and provide meaningful input before decisions are finalized. I appreciate any information you can provide. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you, Brittany Lilly. The next one is from Mrs. Jones. Dear Board of Supervisors, Below is an email I wrote to the board 14 years ago opposing the board's endorsement of the Dahlgren Railroad Heritage Trail. In the last paragraph, I stated that I learned of that issue very last minute. Flash forward to 2026 and it appears we once again find ourselves in similar circumstances, as I learned from a family member just this afternoon, that you consider, or perhaps vote on, an issue regarding the Dahlgren Road Heritage Trail at tonight's meeting. My family member did not know the specific details, and neither do I. I understand that DHRT-related vote occurred at your last meeting, but again, I do not know those details. In an attempt to educate myself, I consulted the board materials published on the county website. I found that, one, the minutes of your last meeting are not yet available. Two, there are no DRHT items listed in the agenda for the last meeting, but you voted anyway. And three, the DRHT is not mentioned in the published agenda for tonight's meeting. this begs questions what are you doing what drht issue was voted on during the last meeting will you vote again tonight to me voting on an issue which will impact county residents without any record of that issue is in the published board meetings is entirely unsatisfactory as stated in 2012 my property does not entire does not directly above the trail but the properties of several family members do three households none of us are aware of the issue at hand regarding the trail is there a proposal to make it part of the virginia state park system part of the patam characters trail are there conceptual designs for its future use what will the impact to adjacent landowners have their many conversations with the landowners whose properties are about the trail what is the deal no one seems to know given these factors particularly absence of official documentation is absurd that the board vote on issue at the juncture although voting tonight as well as last week's vote may be alive with board protocols from my perspective it certainly does not allow it appropriate constituent representation andrew jones this email is from mrs joy d bernard Dear Mr. Stroud, I apologize for missing tonight's meeting. I'm writing to address concerns regarding the potential sale of the Dahlgren Heritage Trail to the state. As a property owner on both sides of the trail, I believe it is essential that adjacent landowners understand the impact of this decision before it is approved. Specifically, we need clarity on the following questions. Will the state acquire portions of our property for additional parking? Will 24-7 security be provided on the trail? Will the trail be strictly closed to trespassers after hours? This sale will significantly impact local property owners, and our concerns must be considered before any final approval is made. While the current owner, Mr. Brinkley, a former Virginia state delegate and state park director who purchased the property in 2006, wishes to sell, the voices of adjacent landowners need to be included in this process. Thank you for your time and consideration. Sincerely, Joy D. Bernard. I believe that's all I have, sure.

Thank you very much. Did you guys? Okay. All right, and I actually have a couple that I was asked to read into the record as well. So I'll go ahead and knock those out. The first one is... Dear members of the Board of Supervisors, I'm writing as a local small business owner to respectfully ask that you reconsider repealing Ordinance Line Item 5, which provides a discount for businesses that pay their taxes on time. While the discount may seem small from the county's perspective, it makes a meaningful difference to small business owners like ours. Every dollar matters when operating on tight margins, especially as we continue to manage rising costs for food, supplies, utilities, insurance, and labor. Our business has always made it a priority to pay our taxes on time. We appreciate that the county recognizes and rewards businesses that meet their obligations promptly. The discount serves as both an incentive and an acknowledgement of responsible business practices. Eliminating this benefit would have a greater impact on the small business than it might appear on paper. For many of us, these savings are reinvested back into our businesses, our employees, and the local economy. Small businesses are the backbone of our community. We create jobs, support local organizations, and provide services that make our county a great place to live and work. I respectfully ask that you continue supporting businesses like ours by keeping Ordinance Line Item 5 in place. thank you for your time your service here to our community and your thoughtful consideration of this request sincerely shelly coquinas owner of mythos cafe and the other one is mythos cafe it's on base it's a little uh lunch place on base it does really good wraps and sandwiches all right oh well yeah sorry And this is from Mr. Larry Kessler. Mr. Sullins, I won't make the meeting. Hopefully someday my work schedule, oh, sorry, I'll skip ahead. Board, my name is Larry Kessler and I reside in the Dahlgren District. I've read through or watched the meetings on the data centers or solar farms over the last two years and have heard a ton of we didn't know comments. Comments were recently made that people just need to watch and be more active in a community. While I agree that people need to, it's extremely hard for a lot of people. I think that's due to how many people don't work here in King George. I have a two and a half to three hour commute every day for work as well as many of my neighbors and friends in the community. I struggle consistently to try and even find time to download the minutes and read them. This coupled with our current notification ordinances really leave many in the county blind. Notifying property owners who are right next to the property that is about to have a project built on it doesn't work since the project produced sound issues that can carry for over three miles and the construction can carry issues for people miles down the road as well. Kathy Bender mentioned something about maybe changing your notification distances and I believe that the board should move to do sooner rather than later. This will produce better community input. Thank you for your time, Larry Kessler. And that's all I've got. online correspondence. Mr. Downs you have anybody online.

Yes we have Mr. Jeff Stonehill. Go ahead Mr. Stonehill.

Can you hear me?

Yes sir.

My name is Jeff Stonehill. I'm in the Dahlgren District and I own Machodik Creek Marina and Cafe. uh i am calling to oppose repealing i guess it was line item five the seller's discount for meals tax filing i have spoken to almost every privately owned restaurant in king george i did not get on base to get to meet those cafe because i can't get on base but every single restaurant that I have spoken to opposes the six percent meals increase there was very little notification about that most of the restaurant owners said they knew nothing about it so there was no other way to to come speak out about it and the other is the timing at 5 30 restaurant people are getting ready to have a dinner rush so there's no way they can get to a meeting or much less phone call in So we have loosely formed a King George Restaurant Owners Association, and we're going to try to put out information and speak as a group. But most likely that will be done either through petitions or through letters. And all of them and myself oppose the repealing of the seller's discount. That's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Stonehill. Mr. Dines, have any more?

Not yet, Mr. Chairman, but hopefully some of the people that were probably trying to call the other number will try to call later if they have a chance to get through. Okay. I'll let you know. Thank you.

Okay, thanks. Mr. Dines, am I still there?

I'm sorry?

It's Mr. Stonehill again. Am I still there?

Yes, you're still on.

i'm sorry to interrupt everybody again but i did hand out that original number to all the restaurants and emailed and text them the original number which is not working so this might be something that you want to skip over so they can all properly call in or get to the meeting i forgot to add that thank you we have a second comment period all right thank you

at this time i'll close public comment and we'll move on to the reports of the board members mr chair before we do that do we have a number you can mention on so if people are watching online they know what number to call in yes ma'am 605-313-9656 is the phone number and there's a code

that you need to put in after that is 349-4564 and then hit the pound sign and then that will put you into the queue and we can unmute you so you can give your public comment Mr. Dines is there there's a comment section on there right is it possible to put it in the comment section well this is coming through a totally different something different okay Well, I talked to Steve Lynn from Emergency Management. He's going to put out a KG alert to the residents just in case because they still have another public comment session. They can, two of them that we have, so.

But you're right, I can put it in the description on the YouTube feed as well.

Can one of you all gin up a quick PowerPoint and have that blasted while we're doing the projected while we're doing our board reports? All right. Over to board reports now. Mr. Stroud, do you have catcher's keyed up?

Yes, sir. Today, I attended the County Emergency Operations Center planning meeting hosted by the fire department. It was conducted here in this room, which is also the alternate EOC, which is normally at Firehouse One. Captain Lynn, he's our deputy emergency manager. He did an awesome job with the, it was a briefing, a training event, and with a simulation exercise, simulated exercise. um so i'm really proud of the teamwork that we have between the county and the other agencies that uh participate in that and it really helped ensure that our county's ready so it was it was a good event uh one of the questions that came up today during that event was during a board meeting if there's an emergency what do we do with with the people in the board meeting uh if we're here like right now if there's an emergency and uh so i think the first thing we do is assess what it is we're not just gonna start running out the exit door but you know if something happened we do have an exit door and you'll go to a lot of meetings and stuff and they tell you you know what the emergency evacuation plan is and such and we don't do that currently um but we'd assess what the problem is and then provide direction from from there um also uh this time of the year is whenever we need to used to prepare for the storms the hurricane season and such like that and there's uh various websites like the fema ready.gov the american red cross that provide a checklist and such for preparation and uh i couldn't find it on a website but uh chief moody actually sent me there on our website it was a little hard to find uh we provide that and uh it's under severe weather safety on the King George website. On there, there's different things you can click on and it'll tell you, provide you some pretty good checklists in there. One thing that I think would be beneficial is if we did a flyer or a one-page or something that people could print out, that provides a checklist but also provides their contact numbers that they need because if power goes out and they can't access or you know their computer or whatever they have something they can stick their refrigerator or whatever usually you put about a phone but that doesn't work anymore but uh with that information and then uh the other the other thing i was going to mention is the

the some of the inquiries that i've gotten that we're going to talk about later so i'm going to hold those for right now thank you sir all right thank you sir mr mattis uh thank you and thanks for putting up with the technology issues uh at the last meeting uh my call in there um i'd like to start with uh some some good work i'd like to make a motion to appoint ellis elody should jenna guy to the Citizens Transportation Advisory Board. Several of you may have met Elodie. She's the current Vice Chair at Landville Advisory Committee and has helped us on some other volunteer efforts in the past. Second.

Motion properly seconded. Any discussion?

Yes. Is that for GWRC or FAMFO?

FAMFO.

FAMFO. I just wanted to clarify. Yeah.

Any other discussion? All right. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Chair votes aye. Motion carries. That was I. Yes, I muted myself there. Apologies.

So that said, I did go to the last landfill advisory committee. Just as a resident to observe, I am short person on that one. We are currently looking for two openings on the landfill advisory. If people are interested, I recommend they get on the website and submit an interest form. And I do believe, according to the email, we do still have one additional opening on that citizen transportation advisory board. It's my public service announcement. Attended the fireworks show and the event on the 11th. Excellent work to the county employees that helped put that on. I think everybody had a great time. I did get to talk with Congressman Vindman. He was there and spent the afternoon meeting constituents. He talks about how much he enjoys coming to King George. I thought that was a good story for us. I met with a couple of constituents. I've talked to several people and one gentleman from the Claydale subdivision actually got to meet with and sat down for an hour talking through data center concerns. Really number one concern that I hear over and over is noise and noise buffering or lack thereof noise buffering. This gentleman had actually visited some of the Sterling data centers. Now they build them right up to the edge of the roadways. You do have to look at how we've approved ours. The big concern there is, you know, in other localities, developers have changed the plans as they've come through siting. And sometimes that means coming back and changing the proffers. And, you know, so he cautioned us to make sure that, you know, we hold the developers to what they agreed to. And I am all for that, right? He was concerned about the lack of buffering on the backside of Dahlgren West to the Claydale neighborhood. Maybe that is something if they do come back, we should discuss, was there any lack of proffer there? But we can go back and take a look at that if it were to ever come up. I told him, I said, I'm not interested in changing any of our agreements that we've got. I thought we had a pretty good Set of proffers, there is a way of measuring noise that he brought up that is a little bit more informative for the low frequency noise that data centers can generate. Also met with a group of citizens from Fairview Beach and Potomac Landing. We covered a number of topics from taxes to security to water debt. there's goods and there's bads, kind of a pretty balanced outcome across all of our work that we've been doing. Everybody sort of understood The positions we took on taxes through the whole budgeting session, everybody had an input on the budget. And it was interesting to hear because we were in a group session or group together. And so even amongst a couple of citizens, you know, we don't always agree on the top priorities. And so when you come out of that, you're like, okay, we kind of understand the balanced positions that we took. I'm sure it's going to come up later, walked the school board office site and the Quonset hut and the issues we had there the other weekend. And yeah, thanks for that input, Mr. Stroud, about the public awareness. I know I was at that power this morning. It made me think about Am I really ready if we have a weather emergency event? And I would just caution everybody, you know, as we learned during the snow, don't wait till the last minute to call to get a generator serviced or make sure your fuel tank is full.

So that's it. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, sir. Mr. Robotham.

i have nothing for the group but i will add on to uh mr metz and mr stroud there for the uh emergency issues and you know so i believe september upcoming here is emergency preparedness month and everybody should get ready for that but speaking from the water uh water authority side you can't live without water so make sure you have uh you have some extra stores of water and things like that in case of an emergency there are companies that sell 5 10 and 25 gallon kind of bladders you can fill uh fill your tub with and things like that keep that you know clean so you're not drinking water from your tub right at least it's coming from a from a plastic container so uh with that that's that's all i got sir thank you all right thank you very much

Yes, I have a few things. Well, I wanted to once again echo thank you to all the staff who put on the 4th of July celebration. We always get good comments about what a wonderful event it is. So thank you to all the staff in our fire, EMS, and sheriff's office that helped out with that event. So thank you. I wanted to point something out and ask you, Mr. Stroud pointed this out to me a couple days ago, and I've just received these letters and just thrown them in the trash. But there is a letter going out that has the Dominion Energy letterhead, and it's been going out across the county trying to get people to sign up for a water and sewer line insurance policy. So I need to, I made a copy of it because I've been throwing them out. Mr. Stroud gave me his copy. I made a copy to give to Mr. Hamilton that maybe we can send something out to tell people that it is not the county and it is not the service authority. And I don't know if it's a scam or not, but please be aware that it is not coming from the county. And if you have your own water in sewer, you know, your own septic tank and drain field and your own well, there's really no point in having that insurance from Dominion especially like me who's on the Northern Neck Electric I don't even have Dominion as a carrier so just be aware that that letter is going out and put it in your recycling bin just kind of like I did if you want if not you could call and find out about it but it is not coming from the county of the service authority but Next thing is, I took quite a few phone calls from different topics and concerned citizens, but one of them I wanted to bring up, and I called the sheriff's office about this, is I didn't even realize the e-bikes and how fast they can go. about people riding on them but there is no regulatory action because you know we are a dillon rule state and stated under the dillon rule a local government has only the powers that the state has granted and so e-bikes are not even classified in the state of Virginia so you can't ban and put ordinances in for things that aren't even classified by the state so I just wanted to make that aware of anybody else I thought it was a good point by the citizen and kind of a learning lesson and so that's just something put out there One of the couple other things I wanted to mention, I know I gave the fun facts last meeting, so I got some more fun facts for you guys. Now, we're going to go in the Wayback Machine here. In February of 1872, the Magisterial Districts of King George were Potomac Township, The Rappahannock Township, which went to vote at the courthouse of said county, as was in the document, and Shiloh. So Shiloh is one of the original voting districts of the Board of Supervisors. I just thought that was an interesting comment. Another one, this was from a newspaper article from 1931, and it was entitled, Judge Emery Discusses County Administration Consolidation of County Governments And it's kind of interesting because topics we bring up today were brought up at different times in our history. So it said, as proposed in the interest of economy and efficiency, the cost and burden of local government constantly mounts and multiplies, particularly in the counties where live the people least able to pay the bills. Salaries raised to unprecedented heights during the war have not come down and rarely do, if ever, come down. I thought that was just interesting. It's kind of some of the same issues and problems that have come up or have been in the past. And then I have two more. One is just a newspaper article. This was from 1984. shows how when people talk about property values and reassessments, this comes up every time. Values double in King George, and this was in the Freelance Star. They went up 48 to 50% with Dahlgren being the fastest growing and the highest raised. And then the last, going back to our roots, America's founding, Colonel Joseph Jones, who was the uncle of James Monroe. He lived on the Rappahannock River, almost near the Stafford Line. And he was a member of the Committee of Safety, a delegate of the Continental Congress and Convention of 1788. and a member of the U.S. Congress. His special contribution was his fight to have Virginia relinquish her Northwestern territorial claims to the United States. So I don't know, in some eyes he might be a villain, in some eyes he might be a hero, but that's just one of our, I guess, founding fathers. So that's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you. And I believe I remember reading in some of the earliest minutes that they also debated data centers and solar farms back in the day. Mr. Davis.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. First, I just thank everyone for being here. Second, I apologize for my own self not being here last week. It was probably the first time in my life I ever experienced what migraines were and I had it for about five days. So if you suffer from migraines, I know people that do all the time, I feel for you. I was sucking down BC powder, but even that wasn't even helping me. Usually it does the trick. But I apologize for that and I appreciate the patience. And sorry, I missed some of this stuff. Thank you again for being here. A couple of things that came up to me, and I was hoping I'd heard some people from the school board might be here tonight. I haven't seen anyone, but I had told some constituents I'd talk about this. I've had several complaints about certain areas that belong to the taxpayers being shut down to them. One of those being Potomac Elementary Park, their playground there. For some reason, all the other playgrounds from all the other schools are open for people to visit and go to anytime they want to go to. For some reason, they locked the gate. at Potomac and I get parents call sending me emails and called me over the past couple years going why is this happening what's going how come I just want to take my kid over the playground so I'd like to see some of those things being accessible to everybody you know the other thing that I get a lot of comments about and this goes back to when I coached middle school football team when they went to go put a new track in they decided that we weren't allowed to practice anymore on the football field And I went to a school board meeting back then, and Mr. Collins was the chair, and I didn't know him. But I went there, and I was like, since 1967, this piece of property right here was designated for football. And all of a sudden, you're telling me that I can't. I've got to go practice over here, and I've got to take all this equipment all the way out to the baseball field, and with 35 kids with two coaches, take it all the way back. So, of course, there's just disciplinary things that happened in that, and they ended up going, okay, fine, you get to go use it. But it used to also be here, and the track was a totally different surface back then. but the track was opened up to the public just like everything else. Our tennis courts at the high school are open for tennis, pickleball, soccer fields. Things are open for all the constituents that they pay for these items. They take care of these items, but for some reason we'll look at them and say, you're not allowed to be on this, on the surface. And so I think that there's ways that we can do to work with our community as far as... And it used to be, if you grew up in King George, if you went to the track, if the middle school used to be the old high school, there could be 40 or 50 people out there. You'd see three or four moms walking together. You'd see their kids playing in the middle. You would see people running. Kids would come up from college that were stars at our school, and they would be running on the track. It would just... full of people all the time and then you know that decision back then wasn't made by a board to not allow the football team to practice on the field because the track it was just made by the superintendent at the time so he wasn't real happy with me he's no longer here when i went against them and just said why are you doing this without any input from the public and you know miss bender and myself and we're always talking about input from the public and what does the public you know can think about these issues and I'd like to see it. And people are like, well, it might get torn up. It might. But the taxpayers are the ones who pay for this thing. It's there. The schools and everything that we owe belongs to them. It's there. The courthouse, the people's building, right? And so I'd like to maybe, I just want to put this on record. I told people I would. and just to um talk about it and say what can we do and hopefully the school board listens out can i bring it up to open up some of these things to people to use maybe it's not all the time but maybe there's days of the week whatever we do but i think our constituents should be able to enjoy the things that we have here and the things that they pay for just a little bit and that's all i have to say

All right. Thank you, sir. And for me, I'll just keep it quick. Just thanks, everybody, for showing up tonight. Thanks for the folks that are online and joining us. And I want to bring it up that our next meeting is supposed to be on the 4th of August. That is an election night. Traditionally, we have tried to avoid having meetings overlaid with major events like graduations and elections and whatnot. So I just wanted to bring it before the board and see if y'all want to leave it as is or move it around. What day is that? Tuesday August the 4th. We have a primary election going on that day.

I'd like for it to move. So either the 3rd or the 5th do you want to file with me?

Is that a motion?

I make a motion that we move the 4 August board meeting to 5 August to avoid the election you're moving to a wednesday or monday does it matter to you it doesn't matter the third or the fifth but this okay it's not okay okay okay then the third will you be here on the third that's typically what we do is we move in on monday so to amend my motion that we move the four august board of supervisors mean to three august to avoid the election that's taking place on four august

second motion probably second do we have any discussion looks like Mr. Metz wants nope okay all right all in favor aye any opposed chair votes aye motion carries we are going to move that to the August 3rd all right and you're going to let the ERP guys know thank you sir oh good point yeah all right and we'll move on to the consent agenda do I have a motion

I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented.

Second. Motion properly seconded. Roll call vote. Mr. Stroud. Aye. Mr. Metz. Aye. Ms. Bender. Aye. Mr. Davis. Aye. Chair votes aye. Motion carries on the constitutional officers and Ms. Puckett would like to address us.

Good evening Mr. Chairman, members of the board. I'm here to request a public hearing for land use concerning the annual revalidation and this is something that Mr. Stroud had brought up to my attention King George County maintains a land use program which allows our locality to assess qualifying agriculture horticulture and forest lands based on their use value rather than their fair market value The primary goal is to provide a property tax relief to landowners incentivizing them to preserve rural lands and continue farming rather than selling for commercial development. To qualify for this program you must have a certain amount of acreage. Agricultural and horticultural requires a minimum of five acres. You must produce a product utilizing the five acres such as hay, corn, soybeans, wheat, etc. Cattle, horses, chickens, and other animals are also considered qualifiers. Landowners may also qualify if they participate in the Conservation Reserve Program or CRP by working with the local USDA Farm Service Agency and the Natural Resources Conservation Service . If you have a house on the property, you're required to have a minimum of six acres one acre for the home site and five qualifying acres. Forestry requires a minimum of 20 acres. If you have a house site, you must have 21, one acre for the home site and 20 qualifying acres. You will need a forestry plan. You can obtain a customized forestry plan, also known as a forest management or stewardship plan, by contacting the professional forester at Virginia Department of Forestry, VDOF, or you may work with the Commissioner Revenue Office to create a forestry plan. Each year my office spends many hours preparing land use applications for mailing. Our current ordinance is based on an annual revalidation of land use applications. I would like to recommend that we update the King George County Ordinance to extend the revalidation to every sixth year. Under the Virginia State Code 58.1-3234, we impose a revalidation fee every six years. So the six-year extension of the revalidation applications will coincide with the state code regarding the fee. This change creates a saving and printing cost for ink, paper, envelopes, and postage, as well as staff hours to include preparing and filing the returned applications. Currently we have around 1200 land use applications. The estimated total hours currently put into land use is around 960 hours. This change also benefits the land owners as we have had several requests to change the annual filings.

Thank you.

All right, thank you. Go ahead.

Well, i don't want to make a motion that we vote on tonight but i'd like to have it on the agenda for you know our future meetings go ahead do you want me to draft an ordinance to bring for your consideration with that regard yes please that'd be great i'll take care of that thank you thank you all right are there other other constitutional officers who would like to address the board tonight

All right, we will move on to the Board of Directors Consent Agenda.

Thank you very much. Can I have a motion for the Consent Agenda of the Service Authority Board of Directors?

I make a motion to approve the Consent Agenda as it presented.

Second. I have a motion properly seconded. Any further discussion? By roll call vote. Mr. Metz? Aye. Mr. Solins? Aye. Mr. Davis? Aye. Mr. Robotham? Aye. Chair votes aye. Motion carries. Next up, we have Imboden's monthly report. Mr. Mark Imboden.

Good evening. I almost said good morning, but good evening, board of directors. Good to be with you tonight. You guys have been issued our report that we give on a monthly basis. Nothing really to bring to you guys' attention other than a few things. We have the Canterbury interconnection, and then we also are going to be hopefully decommissioning Perkins here soon and diverting all flow from the Perkins wastewater treatment plant over to Hopyard. Bryce and some other members of my staff and Dan have been working diligently on this, and it's an exciting time. And we'll be decommissioning Perkins. I will also note that as far as wastewater treatment and plant performance goes, all treatment plants met all their permit effluent limits for the general VEPTI's permit. There's always ongoing issues with the Dahlgren facility meeting its nutrient limits, but that is being addressed actively currently right now. For the month of June, for the Dahlgren facility, we had Bowman Engineering out there doing an assessment of the EQ basin. They had a drone boat doing an assay on that lagoon, and findings from that assay and that study will be coming out But nothing else to really report. Happy to field any questions if you have any. But overall, it was a good month.

Does anybody have any questions? Thank you so much. I appreciate it. You're welcome.

I got a question. Oh, go ahead. What do you think the timeline is right now with Perkins Corner?

Soon as in next week.

Okay. We'll be working through that. As soon as government could be next year, you understand? Very true. I've learned that.

But we have no choice. It has to be done by November 1st.

That's right. Right. The process will be starting. Okay, good. Thank you.

It is correct. It is a little detailed of a process. It is very detailed.

And it's a systematic approach. We can't just shut a valve and send 100% of the flow. There's tank drainings. There's decommissioning of the actual treatment plant. There's a systematic process that our operations team, in conjunction with the King George County Service Authority maintenance people and the county's engineer and the general manager, Dan, we're working through a process. But the process has been initiated and will be starting likely next week.

Is there going to be any effect to the constituents that are connected to that right now? None that we can see. Okay. Nothing foreseen, but there always could be. Okay. I didn't know if there's some kind of notice that was sent out letting them know that this is going to be taking place and they might feel a pressure change or whatever it is.

Yeah, this is on the wastewater side. So they won't see anything at the faucet. No change in water quality. Thank you. Yeah.

And then one other thing I want to clarify for the public, this is all with regulators involved and there's testing and all that.

Yes.

There is a process that you have to follow.

There's proper oversight by state regulation.

And then this has to be done because of our ARPA grant by November 1st. So that's part of the problem. Thank you very much.

You got it. Not a problem. Thank you all. Take care.

All right. Next up, we have our discussion and ratification of the no cost change order for Hopyard wastewater upgrades. Mr. Hamilton.

All right. Good evening, folks. I emailed this afternoon a copy of the board report as well as a copy of this change order. I did not send this out earlier and include a link to it or a hyperlink. I wasn't under the impression that was necessary. In fact, this was a no-cost change order. It was related to the work at the Hop Yard wastewater treatment plant upgrade slash Perkins Corner decommissioning project. There was some fittings identified that were failing in the existing plant equipment. some months ago and we received basically a quote to repair and replace that item and it made sense to do that now while we had the plant kind of under construction. The exact costs, forgive me for one second, I have a piece of paper in front of me. Here we go. $13,189.75. We received a recommendation from the consulting engineers at RK&K that we use contingency money that was unspent to fund that change order. We felt that it was necessary to move promptly on this work, again, because the project is underway and had we delayed that until we could have had a meeting to discuss it at a board level and approve it, would have likely added to the cost or made it impossible to do the work. So in any event, after consultation with the chair, we agreed that this was a no-cost change order, that it would be funded by contingency funds that were unspent on the original contract, of which there were $36,400, related to things like silk vents and other equipment or materials that haven't been used and we don't anticipate will be used. between now and the end of the contract, which is in fact, I believe, October 23rd. So we processed this as a no-cost change order, but the finance team did ask that we bring this up at the board meeting and make sure that the remaining board members were in agreement. It also did not add any time to the contract, so Again, this really is funded under the original contract. It's just changing around categories. I would suggest that maybe in one of these future meetings we consider a possible delegation of authority to me where we formally agree if you all see fit that I have the authority to process no-cost change orders without having to bring it to the attention of the board.

in any case I don't know if you need a motion I think you might Kathy any motion yeah yep I want to get discussion from any board members or questions first does anybody have any questions question but I would concur with you on a no-cost change order you should be able to have the authority to make those decisions without I'm sorry you said you had a question about that or you can no I concur with you my friend thank you yeah just for I reckon I was on my vacation when he uh

we spoke and then I had to make a quick decision to make sure we got it done to meet those deadlines so is there anything else any other questions do I have a motion by anyone yes towards that topic oh just the change order one I make a motion that we uh authorize Mr. Hamilton the general manager to um or grant him the authority to approve no cost change orders i think we have to wait on that one this one is just on the uh the hopyard wastewater upgrades project that one on essay 0703 so just the approval of that one what he's talking about in the future that would be a future another amendment yeah or another motion

I make a motion to approve the item SA07-03 the no-cost change order for Hopyard upgrade project.

Do I have a second?

Second.

I have a motion properly seconded. Any further discussion? All right and I'll do by roll call vote. Mr. Metz? Aye. Mr. Solins? Aye. Mr. Davis? Aye. Mr. Robotham aye Chair votes aye motion carries and then I would get consensus on that maybe the next agenda the one afterward we have that discussion about giving Mr. Hamilton the authority there be an agreement yeah the only thing I yeah I want to get the reason why the motion why I would say that because if we tied Dan Hamilton's name to it then what happens if Dan leaves or you know then you have to you guys so it would be the general manager general manager yeah or the chair

I think we could add that in.

So maybe for the next meeting Mr. Hamilton or the one after?

perhaps I draft up some proposed delegation of authorities and circulated it and we put it on a future meeting agenda maybe not the August one but soon right and have Mr. Stewart check it out it wouldn't hurt to run it by the folks from Stantec are doing the rate study too there may be other things that they might anticipate but Mr. Saltz it would it would speed up processing and we already have another item which is a thousand dollars which basically we intend or are likely going to fund out of contingencies and again I don't want to hold things up.

I think it's a good idea to go ahead and delegate no cost things like this. I would like to restrict that to make sure that it's incorporated in the other board report just so that we know when changes are being made.

I believe I didn't make a note in the board report today about this change order.

I think that's just all in the future if we make that oh yeah yeah I think when we delegate this I want to know about it yeah absolutely yeah thank you for translating it's all good all right all right next up is the general manager report Mr. Hamilton

Yes ma'am again I emailed you all this afternoon the written report it's a couple pages long I'm going to just give you a briefing from it first off though I do want to address the issue of the letter that was received you said from Dominion Electric regarding insurance I will send that to you have you seen that I have seen it and in fact I've worked with this company before I'm familiar with them in prior places I've worked I don't want to spend too much time on this. I know there's a lot on the agenda, but I will say this. I believe the company's name is HomeServe. They have linked themselves up with other utilities that I've worked for in the past where I didn't have the authority to put a stop to it. And in fact, at some point, what they did was usurp the logo of the utility and starting sending emails to customers offering them insurance policies. The only thing I can formally state at this point is I don't know how they got linked up with Dominion and Dominion put a bill insert out there that referenced the fact that they offered insurance on your water or your service line. Those repairs can be expensive. I'll just say simply this, this is a for-profit making company. So you might get lucky and buy insurance from them and have a claim and they'll pay it. You might not. They approached me since I've been here in King George County. They were so aggressive that I had to send an email telling them to stop reaching out, demanding an appointment, that it was harassment. And I've never heard from them since. And then they found Dominion. So I'm sorry that's happening and I'd be happy to talk to anybody about it. Feel free to contact me. I don't mean to disparage them, but I'm very suspicious of the way they do business. They claim to be linked up with the state of Virginia and the Virginia Rural Water Authority and other things, and I think it's deceptive. In any case, as far as my report goes, I'll be brief. I do want to point out Patty Norris Baker, who's our Executive Administrative Assistant, has been with the Service Authority, I believe, formally for 32 years, which is almost the entire time the Service Authority has existed. She will be retiring at the end of next week, at the end of July. And her retirement celebration is scheduled for next Wednesday, the 29th, at 3 o'clock We've been able to make arrangements, thankfully, with the County Parks and Rec Department, the community center meeting room, and we would welcome anybody that would like to come and attend and congratulate Patty on a well-earned retirement, I'm sure. and thank her for her service. Again, that would be next Wednesday, July 29th at 3 o'clock. There will be some light refreshments. We have no idea how many people might attend, so I can't guarantee there'll be dinner for everybody, but there'll be some food and a big cake and some cheers to Patty. And I personally want to commend her for that kind of commitment. She has an extraordinary amount of institutional knowledge, which I wouldn't have expected. The kinds of things she understands from an administrative assistant point of view is remarkable for somebody that hasn't spent a lot of time in the field. In any case, moving on, we did submit ARPA reimbursements for the second quarter to both DEQ and Department of Health. Those are being processed. um there are two position postings on the board right now the pump truck operator one we're going to be conducting interviews i'm hopeful by the end of next week we've experienced some delay there related to other issues now we've also posted the executive administrative assistant position and within a week we got 17 applications so i'm not sure who it was from human resources or maybe it was mr smolnick who told me there would be a lot of interest in positions like that but I'm expecting to schedule interviews within the within the next two weeks as I've been reviewing those resumes already there will be an additional posting for maintenance positions as far as the engineering projects or construction engineering construction projects Mr. Imboden already mentioned the progress at the hop yard wastewater treatment plant upgrade slash Perkins corner decommissioning project we are coming very close to the end of that however we're probably only about 80 to 85 percent done the decommissioning portion of it in which we will be changing the direction of flow in the sewage system is going to begin happening next week and in fact the first properties that is going to impact and customers will not notice this are the buildings across the street the sewer service that feeds or collects sewage from the courthouse and the animal control building has to be redirected in order to make all of this work once the work we begin next week happens almost all of the flow will go to hop yard and as Mr. Imboden pointed out if we were to just simply one day send it all there it would it would overwhelm that plant so we're having to do that in phases and we're beginning that process but we're becoming very close to the point where we can stop low to the Perkins Corner wastewater plant, which is the ultimate goal, that consent order, which I believe the deadline for the consent order itself is January 1, 2027. In order to get reimbursed for all this, the work has to be completed and paid for by November 1, i.e. the reason to be pushing through no-cause change orders and keeping progress happening out there quickly. um the water main and force main project is basically 99 complete the folks from wc spratt have done an outstanding job we added in a couple of small things at the end of the contract including some state highway entrances and a few other things those are going to be connected in the next completed in the next couple of weeks and i anticipate probably by the time we have the august meeting we'll be able to say that job is done doesn't mean all the money will be processed but it's essentially done The Arnold's Corner Pump Station project, we were having trouble with the contractor, Mr. Davis. I know you had asked about that. We were able to get them back out on site. They have made some significant progress. They're supposed to be done by the end of this month. I don't know that that's going to happen. It's not going to severely impact us if it's not, but it is a contract and there was a contract term and they're approaching the end of it. Other than that, I feel obligated to at least bring up the fact that over the 4th of July weekend or a few days before the 4th of July, we did have a fairly serious leak, water leak over in the Owen system, which serves 38 customers down near Dahlgren. Unfortunately, the location of that leak was one where it surfaced in the roadway and where the actual leak was was separated by over 1,000 feet of abandoned pipe that no one knew has existed. and therefore the water when it was leaking out of the pipe that actually burst was showing up a thousand feet away. After a tough couple of days and a lot of help from Inboden and some other folks we were able to get it fixed but due to the outage we had to issue a boil water advisory that was required by the Department of Health. We did deliver bottled water to the 38 customers that were impacted by this. and hand-delivered notices to each home, and we were able to withdraw that advisory the following Monday after some lab tests to make sure that everything was correct. That's unfortunate, but we were erring on the side of caution. We do not take anybody's health lightly. Obviously, water is necessary for life, as somebody said early on. Other than that, I think that's probably the worst of it. There is a meeting tomorrow with Chair Bender and myself and then Bowdoin and the Department of Environmental Quality to discuss our water withdrawal permit applications. This is kind of the next step in the dance. We had to have those in by June 3rd, the application. They have to be reissued by January 3rd. and we're going to meet face to face to discuss some details so i'll have an update next month and unless anybody has any questions i think that concludes my report have any questions

I do want to shout out to Imboden and our maintenance staff and just our staff and our finance department and coordination between a lot of parties to notify citizens and take care of that water leak. So I just want to publicly thank everybody that was involved in that process. And I think Mr. Hamilton told me that a lot of the residents actually thanked us for the way it was handled. Is that correct, Mr. Hamilton?

I frankly did not receive one complaint. There were people who were concerned who'd been away and received the letter on their door. But yes, a lot of folks know that it was that weekend where it was about 100 degrees. And of course, it was the 4th of July. We didn't want anybody to be out of water. Unfortunately, it's an old system and it just was what it was. one of the positives that came of that is we've identified an interconnection that we can make can make almost immediately between Dahlgren and Owens which will give us a backup source if this happened again we would be able to supply water at least a part of the community and resolve the issue so you know there's a slight positive but anyway the Imboden folks and the maintenance staff worked very hard there was a couple of long nights there and thank you for the acknowledgement

Well, thank you. Next up, we have our secondary 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 public comment so that it can be properly recorded and included in the public record. Now, if anybody would like to come to speak, this is just on the service authority, so I just wanted to make sure that everybody knew. So anybody in the audience would like to speak? Did anybody get any correspondence while we were here? Mr. Dines, I saw your hand up. Is there somebody online who would like to give public comment?

Yes, Madam Chair. There are three people, and I believe they might be wanting to speak about like what Mr. Stonehill talked about earlier. They're at work, I think, and so they were trying to see if maybe we could squeeze them in, kind of bend the rules for them just this time so they could get their public comment and not wait for after.

I would have to look to the chair. yeah the only problem is we have a closed session so that's why would that be okay could we close and reopen or believe that's for the public hearing but the board has discretion to to do that if you want to I don't mind closing then bringing back just for our closed session Mr. Sollenson what do you think about that so they could give public comment especially if their their businesses are this is the only time they can speak sure right so can I have it and this has to be a motion to close it and then reopen it correct right can I have a motion to close the meeting and then we will reopen it after you're closing the meeting of the board of directors right

Sure, I make a motion that we adjourn the Board of Directors for an hour. Give a time frame so they can speak. It's only 10 minutes, I guess, but. Five minutes. Five minutes. Okay. For five minutes and we'll reconvene. Well, if you have three people that need three minutes. So 15 minutes.

Yeah, we'll go 15 minutes.

And we'll reconvene at 7, 7, 10.

If you say 15 minutes, you have to wait 15 minutes. If you say 5 minutes, it's okay if you start up 7 minutes later or 8 minutes later. Does that make sense? Yes, it does.

Would you like to remake your motion?

If you're going to adjourn for 15 minutes, you can't start the meeting back up until that 15 minutes has elapsed.

Sure. So I'd remake my motion to adjourn the Board of Directors for 5 minutes and reconvene at 7 o'clock. Second.

We have a motion properly seconded. Any further discussion? All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Chair votes aye. Motion carries. Mr. Solmes.

All right. I reconvene the Board of Supervisors. Mr. Dines, I understand we have some people online who want to make public comment.

Yes, thank you very much, Mr. Chair and Madam Chair.

So I'll reopen public comment. Public comments are limited to three minutes. Please state your name and address for the record in your public comment. Go ahead.

It was great to be part of this. What's the purpose are you still there. This is going to be really good. We're going to be public comment.

She does that.

Yes, you know.

Okay, thank you. The only one left now is doing was to keep her is are you still there was to prevent.

Mr. Chair, Madam Chair, if you can't get hold of them right now, you can let them know that this is coming up as a public hearing. They'll be able to speak then. There will be a time set aside if you can't get hold of them right now. If they can't, then I understand.

All right. We're going to take a five-minute break and we'll reconvene at 7 o'clock.

Imagine waking up to the sounds of nature. Then your adventure begins. Explore the banks of the Potomac. Experience the bounties of the Rappahannock. Unwind and reconnect with nature. Uncover stories of innovation and transformation. Challenge yourself to exhilarating trails. Nature history trails. Find it all between the rivers. Welcome to King George, Virginia, where rural charm offers an escape from the ordinary. Enjoy the charisma of a local coffee shop and delight in authentic diner classics. Sip and sample the many flavors of the farmers market. Snack on locally grown produce at a farm store. If you share, you may just make new friends. Discover hidden treasure And spark a new passion along the way Expand your palette with global flavors made from local ingredients Gear up to reel in your own big catch Or indulge in fresh river bounties without the wait kick back and relax with a crisp cider or a refreshing Riesling enjoy great company over a superb glass of wine and refresh yourself with a chilling slushy recharge with the perfect slice experience new events and meet new people unwind with the coldest draft on tap breathe in the country air and raise a glass to unforgettable moments in King George County Eat. Drink. Shop. Enjoy it all between the rivers. Imagine waking up to the sounds of nature. Then your adventure begins. Explore the banks of the Potomac. Experience the bounties of the Rappahannock. Unwind and reconnect with nature Uncover stories of innovation and transformation

Mr. Dines, did they have any success getting back on the phone?

No, Mr. Chair. I think they probably got busy at their work, so they probably hung up.

okay we do have a second for anybody that's online listening we do have a another round of public comments coming up later so rather than going back and forth like this we'll just hold off until that time at this time I will reclose the board of supervisors and hand it back over to Ms. Bender for the board of directors well thank you and we will start off by I'm looking for a motion to give me to close meeting

I move that the King George County Service Authority Board of Directors convene in closed meeting pursuant to section 2.2 TAC 3711 sub alpha 1 of the Code of Virginia for the purpose of discussing personnel matters involving the performance salaries or employment of a specific employee of the King George County Service Authority. I invite the general manager as needed because he is deemed necessary and or their presence will reasonably aid the board in its consideration of one or more of the topics to be discussed pursuant to Virginia Code section 2.2-3712 . Do I have a second?

Second. I have a second. Do I have further discussion? All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Chair votes aye. Motion carries. We are in closed session.

Imagine waking up to the sounds of nature. Then your adventure begins. Explore the banks of the Potomac. Experience the bounties of the Rappahannock. Unwind and reconnect with nature. Uncover stories of innovation and transformation Challenge yourself to exhilarating trails. Plan for unexpected memories in King George County. Nature, history, trails. Find it all between the rivers. welcome to king george virginia where rural charm offers an escape from the ordinary enjoy the charisma of a local coffee shop and delight in authentic diner classics sip and sample the many flavors of the farmer's market snack on locally grown produce at a farm store if you share you may just make new friends Discover hidden treasure. And spark a new passion along the way. Expand your palette with global flavors made from local ingredients. Gear up to reel in your own big catch. Or indulge in fresh river bounties without the wait. Kick back and relax with a crisp cider or a refreshing Riesling. Enjoy great company over a superb glass of wine. And refresh yourself with a chilling slushy. Recharge with the perfect slice. Experience new events and meet new people. Unwind with the coldest draft on tap. Breathe in the country air and raise a glass to unforgettable moments in King George County. eat, drink, shop. Enjoy it all between the rivers.

Rachel Scott.

Imagine waking up to the sounds of nature Then your adventure begins explore the banks of the potomac experience and reconnect with nature uncover stories of innovation and transformation.

All participants are muted and they can unmute themselves. All participants are unmuted.

Plan for unexpected memories in King George County.

I like this whole thing. oh i don't think there's a message Welcome to King George, Virginia. Enjoy the charisma of a little coffee shop.

and authentic diner classics. Sip and sample the many flavors of the farmer's market. Snack on locally grown produce at a farm store. Share. You may just make new friends. Discover.

I'm going to find out what you're having.

I'm going to find out what you're having.

I'm going to find out what you're having.

I'm going to find out what you're having. I'm going to find out what you're having.

Oh, really? Sorry, how about you? But I mean, it's a good hobby. Oh, no. Yeah, I do sell my little tower to people. I realize it might be a little bit funny. It's a little bit good butter on it. Yeah, that's one of my go-to breakfasts.

I don't know.

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That's all right. That's okay, yeah. Sorry. Yeah.

Oh, my God. People like me in the kitchen. Oh, no. That's okay. That's okay. Oh. It's more like. imagine waking up then your adventure begins explore the banks of the potomac

Experience the bounties of the Rappahannock Unwind and reconnect with nature Uncover stories of innovation and transformation Challenge yourself to exhilarating trails. Plan for unexpected memories in King George County. Nature, history, trails. Find it all between the rivers. Welcome to King George, Virginia, where rural charm offers an escape from the ordinary. Enjoy the charisma of a local coffee shop and delight in authentic diner classics. Sip and sample the many flavors of the farmers market. Snack on locally grown produce at a farm store. If you share, you may just make new friends. Discover hidden treasure And spark a new passion along the way Expand your palette with global flavors made from local ingredients Gear up to reel in your own big catch Or indulge in fresh river bounties without the wait Kick back and relax with a crisp cider or a refreshing Riesling. Enjoy great company over a superb glass of wine. And refresh yourself with a chilling slushy. Recharge with the perfect slice. Experience new events and meet new people. Unwind with the coldest draft on tap. Breathe in the country air and raise a glass to unforgettable moments in King George County. Eat. Drink. Shop. Enjoy it all between the rivers.

Are we ready Chris? Okay.

I move that the King George County Board of Directors return to public meeting. Second.

I have a motion probably seconded. Any further discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. Motion carries.

I move that the board certify by recorded vote that only those matters identified in the motion convening the closed session were heard discussed or considered during the closed meeting and no action was taken.

Second. Have a motion properly seconded. Any discussion? I will get roll call vote. Mr. Robotham.

Aye.

Mr. Davis. Aye. Mr. Solins. Aye. Mr. Metz. Aye. Chair votes aye. Motion carries.

All right, we are supposed to say so-certify.

Yeah, we were supposed to say so-certify. Can I have everybody just say so-certify again?

So-certify. So-certify. So-certify.

Chair, so-certified. We are back in session. Do I have a motion for adjournment?

Make a motion that we adjourn the Board of Directors to Tuesday, August 21st, 2026 at 5.30 in the multi-purpose boardroom of the Sheriff's Office located at 10445 Government Center Boulevard, King George, Virginia. Second.

Motion properly seconded. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. Motion carries. All right Mr. Saunton.

All right. It is difficult isn't it.

All right we need a new motion there on that or

Do we need a new motion for that one Mr. Stewart? Can he amend the current motion? It's the August 18th.

Withdraw that and or you can offer a motion to amend that motion with the right date.

Would anybody like to make a motion? We have someone to amend the motion, please.

I'd like to make a motion that we amend the previously approved motion and change the date from the 21st to the 18th of August. Second.

We have a motion properly seconded. Any further discussion? All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Chair votes aye. Motion carries. Mr. Solmes.

Thank you, ma'am. I will take it I take it back up with the public hearing item 0, 7, 0, 8, King George County code chapter 14 article 8 meals tax the proposed ordinance amendment will repeal section 14 dash 1, 8, 0, discount of the meals tax ordinance eliminating the current sellers discount provision which allows the sellers to retain 3% of the meals that collect tax collected and timely remitted to the county draft ordinance will be presented by miss Regina pocket commission of the revenue.

Regina Puckett, Commissioner of Revenue. The County Administrator and a few members of the Board of Supervisors have asked, have requested a presentation to repeal the 3% seller's discount under the current meals tax ordinance. The 3% seller's discount allows restaurants and food vendors to retain a small portion of the meals tax they collect to offset the administrative and collective collection cost provided they file and pay their remittance on time. Monthly remittances paid after the due date are not eligible for a discount and are subject to penalty. Gross receipts from businesses range from $184 to $500,000. The tax on gross ranges from $11 to $30,000. The seller's discount on the tax ranges from 33 cents to $900. The majority of sellers are closer to the lower end while only a couple are at the higher end. When subtracting the seller's discount from the tax on the growth, it will still provide the county with revenue. The example being $30,000 minus $900 equals $29,100. Keep in mind that the discount only applies when paid on time or early. Many of our small businesses take advantage of the seller's discount. I would not want to discourage the small business owners that pay in a timely manner in order to receive that small discount. The job of the commissioner of the revenue is to enforce the code that is put into effect by the state of Virginia and or the local board of supervisors. Sometimes collections of meals tax can be difficult. The seller's discount is in place as incentive for the business to remit the mills tax on time. There are a few businesses that seem to rather pay penalties than take advantage of the seller's discount. Due to this issue, I would like to meet with the county attorney to discuss what type of recourse we are able to put into place in addition to the penalties when businesses do not pay on time and are consistently out of compliance. It has been stated that King George is not small business friendly. It would be my recommendation to keep the seller's discount in place. An alternative to completely repealing the seller's discount is to place a cap of $200 on the amount of the discount. The discount is 3% of tax due or $200, whichever is less. Payments received after the due date will not be allowed this deduction and will be subject to penalties and interest. A meals tax example calculating. Restaurant A sells $1,000 of food and beverage during the month of January. The meals tax is due by February 20th. The amount due is calculated as $1,000 multiplied by 6% equals $60 less the 3% discount of $1.80 gives us $58.20 meals tax due. Restaurant B sells 150,000 of food and beverage during the month of January, multiplied by 6% equals $9,000, less the discount capped at 200, 9,000 times 3% is 270, but 200 is the total discount allowable, equaling 8,800 meals tax due. The revised updated ordinance for King George County would then read, for the purpose of compensating sellers for the collection of meals tax imposed by this article, every seller may be allowed 3% of the amount of tax due and accounted for in the form of a deduction on his or her monthly return not to exceed $200 for a month provided the amount due is not delinquent at the time of payment. Thank you. Any questions?

Any questions before we go to public comment?

Yes, ma'am. When was this put into place?

When was the original ordinance put into place? That is an excellent question. I will get back to you on it.

Do you know what the total amount per year this generates in terms of revenue? I'm sorry, let me back up. What's 3% the total for a year?

no real way i could figure that out that's why i gave those examples of the um the low end and the high end because you don't have a rough order of magnitude yes we because it just depends on we we did not keep track of who's paying on time and who because it doesn't always work is that the same people pay on time okay so we have not calculated that

Yes ma'am do we do we provide this discount to hotels or any other businesses when they pay taxes on time?

This is just an ordinance for meals tax it's not an ordinance on the transit.

So no other businesses get this could take advantage of this?

Correct. Go ahead. Our meals tax, so meals tax are paid monthly as revenue. What's the total, so maybe for last year, do you have a rough order of magnitude? What was our total meals tax revenue?

I can get that for you.

I think we could take that as, now that it was at the 4% rate, not the 6% for this year, but I think that would give you a good estimate of what the worst case um or best case depending on whether you're looking at it from revenue or the business's standpoint um for what that discount would be right it would give you a characterization of that um now what's the penalty for non-payment penalty is not non-payment but late payments right it's um 25 i have the sheets with me

Do you want me to go find that now?

It might be in our packet. The whole code is there, right? It's all right together. If you know where it is, you can find it real quick.

25% not to exceed 25% in aggregate with a minimum penalty of $2.00. Okay. Yeah, I see that. Yeah. Thank you. That's section 14, type 183, subparagraph A.

I know Mr. Smodek had a whole thing broke down the budget, the increase and all that.

So yeah, Mr. Davis, thank you for bringing it. So when you looked at, we did our budget, FY25, when you look at the revenues, FY25 collection of meals tax, $1,976,109. So just shy of $2 million. And whatever we we calculated revenue additional revenue for that for 27 budget which is began the removal of the 3% sellers discount that was buried at $75,000 of leverage in the county budget.

I think we're good. All right any of the conversation before open public comment. All right, I will now open the floor for public comment. Upon completion of public comment, I'll bring the matter back to the board for consideration. Public comment is going to be limited to three minutes for speaker to ensure everyone has an opportunity to speak. Please state your name and address before your comment. Is there anybody in the audience who would like to make public comment? And this is only regarding the public, okay.

Nathan Hoy, Shallow District. I don't own a restaurant, but I can kind of sympathize with some of the smaller restaurant owners in King George. And I understand that, you know, in order to, we talked about it at a previous board meeting of taking advantage of people that work on base going out to eat. And that's why we were increasing kind of the tax on that. So I would kind of, I don't know, I don't want to put words in Mr. stroud's mouth but i understand that we're not extending you know the breaks to any other businesses but i would also say that we're probably not doing the same tax increase on the other businesses and then um maybe there's a way where we could say you know if you're a non-franchise owner and your primary residence is in king george maybe you don't have to deal with this tax increase that's kind of my thoughts on the matter thank you thank you sir mr bella come on up

Terry Bowen, Nantz Attico Lane, King George, Shiloh District. And I promised my wife and everybody that I'd keep my mouth shut when we open Creekside and I've done my very best to do it. The problem I have here is that my background is my mother was, my upbringing is my mother was an English teacher and my father was a lawyer and a circuit court judge. So I have a real problem with raising the meals tax from 4% to 6%, okay? That's a fight that I didn't choose not to get involved in. You need to do something to help small restaurant owners and all small businesses. But the issue I have with this whole thing is, is that we collect those meals tax, okay? Our customers and patrons pay it. And then through this convoluted process, we're not going to turn it in. And that's not right. You've got two issues here. There shouldn't be any credit for doing the right thing and taking someone else's money and giving it to the government. There are plenty of penalties of which I have run afoul many, many times for collecting other people's money and not giving it to the government. And that's proper. but you should not get a credit for collecting other people's money, okay, and then turning it in early. So this thing needs to be repealed and at the same time, a mechanism with Mr. Stewart's guidance put in place that does make sense and is proper, okay, so that the meals tax can be lowered. If it's $75,000, it's offset here out of $2 million. Okay. Then maybe take it from 6% to 5.85% or 5.75%. You follow what I'm saying? I have no problem with the numbers, but I have a huge problem with the fact that we are in fact collecting money and at the county and the state's guidance and then the county and the states are saying to the patrons of Creekside, oh, by the way, if Creekside does a good job, we're going to give your money to them. that's the way I read this and that's not like I said my mom was an English teacher that doesn't seem proper to me now I'm sure there's another way of looking at it somebody who created it that's the way I look at it so let's lower them let's get rid of this and then lower the meals tax to offset the $75,000 or do something else but either way this needs to go thank you anyone else

All right, does anybody have correspondence they would like to share, I believe?

Yes, this is from a business owner who was here this morning, this evening and had to leave to serve the dinner rush. So it's, dear sir, madam, I want to express my strong opposition to repealing the seller's discount under the meals tax ordinance. Small businesses, especially locally owned restaurants, are already operating under significant financial pressure due to rising food costs, labor expenses, utilities, and other operating costs. Increasing the meals tax from 4% to 6% has already placed an additional burden on both businesses and customers. Eliminating the seller's discount on top of that would be another unnecessary financial hit to restaurant owners who work hard every day to keep their business open. Accounting should be encouraging and supporting small businesses, not creating policies that discourage entrepreneurship and make it even harder for restaurants to survive. Local restaurants create jobs, contribute to the community, and generate tax revenue. Penalizing them with additional costs sends the wrong message and risks driving businesses away rather than helping them grow. I respectfully urge the Board of Supervisors to reject this ordinance and retain the seller's discount. Supporting small business is an investment in the county's economy while removing incentives only weakens the local business community. I hope the board carefully considers the real impact this decision will have on hard-working restaurant owners and their employees. Thank you for your consideration. Sincerely, and I, if I butcher this name, I apologize. Durga Shisting, he's the owner of Taste of Himalaya. I know a lot of people like to go to that restaurant. Thank you.

All right, any others? Mr. Dines, do you have anybody online? Okay, we got three online.

I guess Mr. Chairman we have try to have Jay Prevez again. Mr. Prevez would you like to make your comment?

Can you guys hear me?

Yes. Yes, sir.

Good evening, guys. My name is Jay. I'm the owner of Roma Pizza, 5293 Pettywater Drive. I'm speaking today to express my concerns about the recent increase from 4% to 6%. my restaurant already operates on a very thin profit margin as you guys already know with the raising food costs labor expenses and all the other bills that go with it has increased in the recent years this tax increase makes it difficult for small businesses to continue operating and growing and Roma Pizza has proudly served King George for 40 years and we hope to continue to keep serving, but this increase makes it very difficult for us to keep operating as this increase is now even higher than regular Virginia field tax. And this kind of encourages customers to send their money elsewhere in a different county or even state. I respectfully ask that you consider this increase that it has a really big impact on small businesses like ours and that'll be it for me.

Thank you.

Next up we have Catherine Romaine. Ms. Romaine would you like to give your comment? I'll put her on mute and we'll try her a little later. Next up we have, oh that person just left.

It's not listed here.

Oh that was Durga. Durga's on the call as well. But you just read his statement. Mr. Shrestha? Are you there, Mr. Shrestha?

Okay, hello.

This remain are you still there are you available for public comment. Okay, she doesn't actually that's all we have was the chair.

all right thank you I'll close public comment at this time and bring it back to the board for a consideration and I'll close public hearing at this time as well any thoughts any discussion I have a concern to maybe table any decision to the next meeting especially since we've had people online that have struggled to get on and there was some confusion with the phone number I we've heard tonight from several of us read emails and from the public want to be make sure they're informed so concerned making this decision without the opportunity for some folks that might have tried to to dial in that's just my two cents so you want to wait till the next meeting to vote on it's all you're saying yes all right yeah okay go for it

I share those concerns in my conversations this week with a couple of small business owners. You better believe they watch every dollar. We used to work with businesses and we were applying labels and, you know, a 15 cents label, if you mess five of them up, you know, you're out a dollar, right? And that's a big deal because businesses set up their annual business plans as they roll into the into their fiscal year and here we are in the middle of the fiscal year we just gave them a two percent additional meals tax which is paid for by the customers but we're even all of us as customers are starting to watch our pennies and where they're being spent these days and so I am definitely concerned with the impact for our small businesses and a lot of them are restaurants and what do we hear time after time after time we need more of We need more local business, more local restaurant options for people to go to. So I'd rather encourage small restaurants in our community. And I, you know, this one kind of, it came out of our budgets because it was a very tough budget year and it's 75K. It's not chump change. It's not a huge dollar amount either. And given the troubles we've had tonight, I definitely support moving any vote to a future meeting. I guess I would also like to ask Mr. Stewart, would it be legal for us to put a lower bound limit on the discount we have today, which is, you know, shall not exceed more than 200 a month?

um i've not researched that issue but i do not see any reason why you can't the the statute allows you to give up to a certain percent so i would think that you could do that okay i also liked mr bowen's comment um because you know the math of this just isn't right right i know when i sign my bill and there's a tax at the bottom i think of that entire amount going through the county i

I kind of had that same thought as well, like, well, can't we just set the overall rate the, you know, 1.7 instead of two. But then I think we would have probably had to have considered that back when we voted on the meals tax rate, or we would have to revote on that. So definitely need to think about, you know, not what we can do, but what's the right thing to do for the county. So that's my two cents.

Do you have thoughts?

yeah so I have no problem you know delay the vote I think that Mr. Bowen did a very good job of articulating what's wrong with this I don't have you know the 2% increase we've discussed this before I support the 2% increase because nobody makes a decision when they go to Fredericksburg to get something to eat, they don't say, oh, you know what? I'm going to stay in King George because I'm going to save $2 on every $100 I spend. $2, okay? What they cost you to buy a Coke at a gas station. You can't even buy a Monster for that. And this is going to shut the business down. And, you know, I just find that very difficult to believe. And it doesn't stop people from going to Fredericksburg to go to dinner and also find it you know because Mr. Metz is bringing this up that he wants to save this two cents but he was the one articulating a two percent across the board higher increase on taxes for everyone so you know I really don't have a problem if you don't delay the vote but I think we've also discussed it quite a bit thank you any more comments over here go for it I mean first and foremost

I hate meals tax. I'll say that. Not just because I own a restaurant in King George, but because I know that it hampers, you know, and some of the things that will come out is, you know, most small businesses fail within the first three years and how King George is tough on businesses. But something I think that we should look at this is when a restaurant opens up, especially in the first three years, what are we doing to help them be successful? And maybe we could look at it during the first three years. We don't charge them a meals tax because they get to get their feet under the ground. I mean, they need the help from their community to get there anyway. I know it would have helped us a ton. But there is also the, you know, I have to weigh into the fact that we are collecting money on that receipt from that restaurant. It says on their meals tax. That's what it says that money's going to. It doesn't say it's going and as a restaurant owner, I got no problem keeping the money, you know, because you have to pay people $15 an hour and things like that now. But I think that we can, people see the budget. They see that money has to be generated. You know, say people, we got to pay teachers and firemen. We got to pay, all these things have to happen. and you know the way that this has been presented was you know this is most of the people that are eating here are coming here from other places and the people at davent are going to eat they're going to go to the chick-fil-a they're going to go to wawa they're going to eat food here they're going to eat the restaurants and cafes on the base so the the clientele is there um I do think that we need to look at ways to help our businesses grow and help them be sustainable. Because anything that, you know, my old thought is whatever we can bring to King George so people don't have to leave town in order to do that. But also at the same time, I can't take all the burden and just keep putting it on the everyday taxpayer who owns their house, who owns their cars, and just keep making their taxes go up to pay for all the roads and all the infrastructure and everything else that you have. So I can see both sides of the story on this. I think that's all I have to add.

All right. Thank you. And I'll just make a couple of comments too. Just a reminder that this whole public hearing is about whether or not to repeal the 3% rebate. It's not about the 2% tax increase. That's already been voted on and done. So I appreciate the comments, but that's not what we're voting on. And I agree. Let's put it back to the next meeting because I really want to make sure that folks get a chance to talk about this. But I'm okay with keeping it in place for a couple reasons. We've talked about helping small businesses, and I do think it's a small amount of money, both for the county, it sounds like. The 3% isn't that big a change, I don't think, for us. But for some of the small businesses, it may be a huge thing. But also, I've got to ask the question, how much money are we wasting chasing after the people that are delinquent? You know if we take away this incentive to be on time or if not early, you know they're going to make even more people be delinquent with it, you know how much money we're going to waste if we go that route so I think this is one real small impact nice thing that we can do for the small businesses in the county, but that's just my opinion we'll talk about again I guess in a couple weeks. you want to leave the public hearing open that is correct okay thank you because I do I did actually actually closed that before so we will leave that open for the next period I did I mentioned it before we started our discussion up here that I was going to close it so I think I got a little bit out of order you're right okay So yes, we will reopen the public hearing.

What's that?

Continue that. Okay, yeah. We will reopen the public hearing to be continued on 3 August. There we go. All right. Moving on to presentations. Public information update from Ms. Amy Southall.

Good evening, members of the board. Mr. Dines, could you get that one? Nope, left. That one. Yes, please. Thank you. So I'm going to start off with just a brief overview of the audience that we have through our different communication channels. So we have almost 600 subscribers for our events calendar on the website, 550 almost subscribers for our public meetings calendar on the website. 1,150 or so subscribers for our community news on the website and then 530 or so subscribers for Parks and Recreation news. For our KG Alert for our citizens for updates about government, we have 6,268 subscribers. We have 3,500 followers on Facebook, 650 followers on Instagram. We have 6,376 members on Nextdoor that we have access to send information to. And then our YouTube has 1,555 subscribers. And I pulled all these numbers yesterday, so pretty accurate. So I'd like to start with one thing that we've done. We have placed flyers in little stands at every public facility we could think of. I still have to add to social services and the VCE office tomorrow morning. But all of them will have, if you scroll down, Mr. Dimes, I mean, you can click, but I also just embedded it in the file. So it'd be easy for people to see. So this flyer is outside of every department's public basing portion of their office. And then we also have cards, which I left them at the when you walk in the table for anyone to grab as well. And those cards are if they don't have time to do that while they're standing there and doing their business with that department, they can take the card and learn more when they go home. And so that has QR links to everything that we have available. And it also does a little bit of an overview of how local government works and things like that. And then we do already have a organizational chart that shows the connection between all of our different departments and agencies. and that flyer that I have we need to update that because we've had some public facilities move and things like that so here is on the website and then if you read all through and you might find more about the information about that specific department if you click that box it'll take you to their page to learn more about them but we will also be adding these to all of those public facing departments as well with the printouts just like I said it needs to be slightly updated because on the back of our printout is a map of all of our public facilities and like I said namely the courthouse has moved since I printed those so that's a brief overview of some physical media that we've updated and then For the website, our public hearing page, some of this is information that was already on there and some of it is information that we've added. So there is a link to the Fredericksburg Free Press and their notices. I did just find before the meeting started and I can't get a direct link for it to add it to our page. but if you go to that link for Frederick Free Press there is a column on the left that allows you to sign up for notices that come from King George County so any of our public hearing updates yes so on the left right there if you click get alerts Mr. Dines and then if you scroll down to notice type you'll put in your information obviously but notice type you can go down and select public notice King George County and that will send residents um notifications for when we do have public hearing notices as well so that is an added um not only are we saving money using for expert repress but also that's an added bonus that the public if they just want to know when we have a public hearing is they can get a notice directly through for expert repress uh so that was something i just found uh in preparation during the meeting i can move on to the next part um All agendas are in the agenda center. I know that it was one board member's request to go over the new structure of the minutes that Ms. Fish has been working on. If you could go to the 20, it's going to be in 2021 because it just happened for this one. Sorry, July 21st. Can you click today's agenda, Mr. Dines? And then just open the minutes link for today's agenda. That the board just approved.

And find the minutes.

Yes.

Would you click that?

Is that, was that not it? That's service authority. so because the minutes haven't been approved yet they're not up on that column but you do see that column every time the minutes get approved they get added to that meeting so the minutes for July 7th are the ones that are up for approval tonight and now that they've been approved they'll be added to that column tomorrow morning which is why they are embedded in the agenda because they were part of the consent yes thank you um so this is a new version of the minutes and the intention behind this that it will allow residents to get a snapshot without having to sit through the entire board meeting either on youtube or in person and get a snapshot of what happened so if you for example want to click pastor davis's link That will take you directly to his public comment on YouTube. It's time stamped. So if you're interested in what public comments are said, it'll take you here. So you can hear that he's talking there. You can close out of that. I just want to use that as an example. And those links are now linked throughout the entire minutes. So you will see that as Mr. Chair Davis and then Sheriff Giles. So Ms. Fish worked really hard on getting these all to have timestamps. So each board member's report, that starts, that link starts when they start talking in the meeting. And then additionally, if you scroll down and get to, and it keeps all the links for the agenda as well in there. So all the items that were a part of that agenda are still linked in there too. So you have context. And then what's great is the action. It's just a brief overview of how they voted. And then you have access to the board report for that action item. You have access to the school board. Yep. All of those things that are in the original agenda, you have context for those. So this is a little bit of a shift from what we were using before, before it was verbatim. And some of them would be up to, what, 70 pages, 100 pages. and the only way for you as citizens to really easily be able to find things is just control F and searching so now I mean this meeting is four pages I believe instead of close to 100 pages which it would have been so this hopefully will be a lot more easy and accessible for citizens that they just want a quick snapshot of what happened in the meeting so we've made this shift And then if you can go back, thank you. So that covered that link. The virtual meeting participation has just been updated. And then obviously, tonight, we may have been updating that process as well. So this is linked on every meeting for the Board of Supervisors. But this is also what we have available for the public. So that's what I just added while we were in this meeting and that information changed and sent out KG Alert and Notify Me notification. Mr. Hans, you wouldn't mind going back to the document. Slight change with these email addresses. These were all groups. So we actually just created a form that you can just fill out automatically. And then when that form is filled out, Yeah, so it's going to take you to an email that slightly updated while we're before this meeting for the virtual participation. So now instead, it's a form. And if you can't make it, you just fill in your information, what meeting date that you're looking to provide your public comment, and it'll submit automatically email everybody on the board as well as the clerk. And that'll be put into record. Now what we added that's new is we have a list of all of the public hearings on the public hearing page. And then underneath of those public hearings, you have the agenda that that public hearing took place in and then also as well as the affidavit or advertisement depending on how we have access to that link and then just some additional information to be available to the public on the side of that page is everything that's listed here as well which is direct links to the agendas for the board supervisors board of directors zoning appeals all those different ones and then a direct link to the meeting calendar and our current projects map which I will go into detail later uh additionally it's got direct links to the table for our project map and all of our ordinances resolutions and proclamations the YouTube page and then I've also created YouTube playlists where everybody is organized into one area and we'll go into that as well later Mr. Dines just wanted to show everything that's an overview on the public hearing page so if people need information it's all in one place one other additional thing that we added is when we sent out our notices from the website for all of our meetings we're adding if there is a public hearing that this is an example for today today's meeting so we're adding public hearings so Ms. Fish before she sends it out she's saying okay the agenda is up here and also there is a public hearing in this meeting and then when you get that text message or email that link takes you to what's below that I screenshotted Mr. Dines to that part which is the event specifically for the meeting that is today and here's where you get the information for the quick links that take you to where you can find your agendas every agenda for the board of supervisors where you can find the youtube page where you can find information about participating virtually and then additionally if you go to the right corner of that Mr. Dines it's not going to work because of the screenshot but like on the website when the agenda is posted it gets added and so the top where it says download agenda that is a link for each so every time you get that notice and click that link that you get the notice from The agenda is already right there. You have the information about where the meeting is, when the meeting is, and how to access and participate either online or in person. so that's that so all that was already being done all we just added is that public hearing is taking place another thing is we do have commentary on the search bar what we did is we added every time you do search something into the website it automatically will pop up with the advanced search options so this example is if you you can do this at any time in quotes you can look for an exact phrase so this example is data center but this at least has a very plainly in plain language if you put it in this field it will look for that exact phrase across the whole site and so some of the examples that pulled up some of those documents that are directly below again for the screenshot example so there's that and then the next one is projects map so we made some slight changes to the projects map so just to go brief overview again these are just screen grabs to make it quicker and easier to navigate but In the right column, when you go to the project map, this is where you'll see the layers. You have the ability to click and you'll see it at the bottom of the screenshot, Mr. Dines. You can click on and off the little eyeball right there. Yep. So that's on the right side of the screen in the column. And if you click the little eyeball on and off, that's how you view the layer, yes and no. So that gives you an overview of if you want to just look at smart scale projects or you want to look at residential development, you can tailor it to your interests. So there's that feature. And then if you'd like to scroll, this is the project near me tool. I used where we're at today as an example. So if you click the in the left corner of the projects map, you click the little magnifying glass, you can type in your address, it'll pop up. And then if you immediately click the pin so scroll down Mr. Dines step two yep and then you'll click the pin icon next to it and it'll take you to this and show you any projects that are happening in your area so this is a one mile radius and showed two CIP projects that are happening in this area and the two CIP projects are the building for the service authority not for the sheriff's office and I believe general properties So that's something that you can do. So for example, the main advantage of the project map is let's say you're driving along and it's 301 and you're going 65 and you see a sign for a public hearing or a project and you don't have time to see exactly what it is and it's unsafe for you to stop, you can go to the project map which is linked on the home page of our website and go in and be able to see what projects are going on in the area. You'd be able to go, oh, I know I was in this area and zoom in on the map and figure out where you were. but let's say you maybe don't like using maps you can also easily access the data table and just read everything that is in the map in this format so that's also linked in the public hearing page as well as in this document and then this is what we changed and or added so this is I just scrolled down a little bit. We just used the most recent public hearing as an example. So this is the project information section. So you still, like, we were looking at the project map and selected that we wanted to look at the, how, reach, I don't know how to say those things and I apologize, rezoning. uh project and this is where you get the project name the description um the owner of the property the project status which it was approved by the board of supervisors after last meeting um you can view click the link for the site plan you'll be able to click the public uh the planning commission agenda and that will take you there and again this is a screen grab so it's just for sake of showing you guys what it looks like uh and then the board of supervisors agenda and then you have the county contact for that project because there's some that are on the project map that might be engineering because it's a cip project and things like that so we just want to make sure that you know which department to ask questions about the application and updates so that's that and then lastly another small update is and I'm still slowly working through this because it maxes out how much I can change at a time but I'm working through all of the meetings that have been recorded on our YouTube ever and adding a little not little but like thumbnails so it's easier visually to see that this is a planning commission meeting this was a service authority meeting things like that so this is being done and then if you scroll down Mr. Dines That's where I also took every meeting and turned them into playlists. So let's say you're only interested in catching up on the last few meetings for the Planning Commission. You would click that playlist and be able to see the last meetings, the most recent meetings for the Planning Commission. And again, this is a slow thing because YouTube only lets me edit like 100 at a time. So I have about 150 left.

I do have a quick question because I know I've looked up YouTube. Is it now organized by year because... I remember you could look up the Board of Supervisors and there would be a meeting for 2020 and then 2023, 2025, and then back to 2021. Yeah, we can share an example.

So Mr. Downs, could you scroll up and click the playlist link where it just says playlist. That's a link to it. Yep.

Because I know we go back to January of 2020.

It's supposed to be a link. Did it not work? It's supposed to be a link. Try it again. If it doesn't work, I know the URL by heart, so it's fine.

When it's in the playlist mode, it does it in order. When you're just on, like, the home page, it uses the algorithm, so it'll give you random ones.

Yeah, so I was going to show you some different ways to kind of navigate. I like this stuff. So for example, the playlist. So if you click it right now, it's going to play immediately, but you can sort over on the right where it says sort by and it'll do it by date, but also per playlist. At the bottom, it'll say like view full playlist and that's where you can see all of them in order at one time, which is a little convenient.

Sorry, Jeff's going to help us navigate. Yeah, click one of those. Thank you.

And that's where you can see everything broken down there as well. And then I do have like a little description for all of them. And it's supposed to make the links automatically work so you can take to the agenda center and things like that. Once I get them all uploaded, I will also be able to override all of them to have links to the website so that in the description of every video, it's universal. Mr. Voigt and Mr. Drines are already changing that moving forward, a standard description on all of them so that they have links back to the website so people can have contacts if they stumble across the meeting. But just because this has been going on since 2020, there's years and years that have not had this like standardization. So that is what it looks like if you go to the playlist for your appointment sender from the home page of this the YouTube there is a way to navigate them a little bit but it's a little funky I don't disagree that it's confusing I appreciate this this looks wonderful you know I mean I know it was a lot of stuff that hasn't been done in the past but it's takes a little bit to catch up yep trying to standardize so hopefully this will help a little bit more with some navigation and things like that and like I said all these playlists I've linked the full list on the public hearing page and you can get to our YouTube in various different ways. The bottom of our website at the footer, it's linked as well as all of our socials. Another thing that was the first time that we did it today and it'll probably take forever to load is the informational slides for breaks in our meetings. I created kind of like a commercial break and so if you go back and watch the meeting today when you guys were in closed session it was playing so this is just a pdf version of it but it's a full linked video about 10 or so minutes long and it runs through different slides of hey this is how you find out about organizational chart how do you look at the agendas how to do that and then I broke it up on every seven or so slides I did a shameless plug of our Visit King George videos. So like our businesses get some love and some of our outdoor assets get some love. So it's not just slide, slide, slide. There's a two minute little fun video in the middle. There's a lot in this, so it's probably gonna take a while to load. So I apologize. But if you go back to today's meeting, you can see that they were running on YouTube. So that was really nice. So now whenever you have a closed session or a break, those will start running and we can change those out and add those with different things. And then I plan to change those into story format so that we can have highlights on all of our social media that do the same thing. So if people stumble across us, they can go through the highlights, reels, and be able to click quick links to our website and find more information about just the standard where to find information at. And then lastly, I'm slowly working through making video tutorials on how to use the website. The first one went out this week, which is the one, scroll down, Mr. Dent. which is linked with the notify me. The other ones are the ones that I plan on making moving forward. Yes.

a news story is updated or a public meeting is posted you'll receive an email or text message based on your preference to learn more click setup or modify notify me account notify me helps you stay up to date on county initiatives meetings projects programs and more there are four notify me categories you can receive notifications about kg events and kg public meetings from the calendar you can also receive notifications for kg community news and kg parks and recreation news under newsflash to set up an account click notify me sign in then click sign up Here type your email, name, and create a password. Then click Create Account. Now that you've created an account, you can decide whether or not you want to sign up for text messages. If you do, select the checkbox that says I would like to receive text messages on my mobile phone. Then type in your phone number and click Save. Now select which notifications you'd like to receive. Each category you subscribe to will send you a confirmation message either by email or text message depending on your preference. Make sure to confirm these preferences either by email or text message to ensure that you receive notifications. If you're ever unsure about what notifications are being sent, you can always go to the home page and scroll down to the news and events section. Items in yellow boxes are the community news notifications. KHG events and public meetings are notified through the calendar. you can see these here click view all events to go to the calendar here you'll find all events going on across the entire county we'll dive deeper into the calendar in our next video next on stay connected with king george county government ical links stay connected with king george county government through notify me short so just keep playing don't turn it off So the plan is to do like a series of just general things that people can use to access on the website.

And so it'll take some time to do this, obviously. But the idea was starting with notify me because the advantage of notify me is that anything that is on the website automatically we can say send it to subscribers we don't have to create something separately and in addition to that it makes sure that there's always somewhere for residents to link back to so for example when these are sent out like the one i showed you with the text message about today's meeting it links directly to the website so if we made changes and they got that notification they'll also click be able to click that link and get the updated information from those changes so it's something that's constantly living it doesn't it's not limited to the time that you sent it out so that's the reason why i wanted to start with notify me and then we'll move on to the ical links for the next one because that's how i will go over how we can show the public that they can link our calendar to their personal calendar and be able to easily click that and be able to see when there's a public meeting and i'll take them to the website So I think I have that linked for some of you already on your personal calendars for the county for public meetings so that you guys get those updates. But that's something that you can do as well for the public and you just add it in and you can organize it based off of which calendar you're looking at and things like that. Anything that I missed or any questions?

This one's going to be quick. I think this is great. I think this goes back to how do we get the notice out to the public. I think I would suggest that we, you know, work with Parks and Rec, maybe grab their message board or one of our emergency services message board when it's not being used, stick it at Route 3 one day, maybe over on 301 another day, say go to King George Alert period and like stay informed um because not everybody watches our youtube channel we do thank you for creating the playlist we can listen to ourselves every day now um but yeah the things you're doing are exactly what what we need to get the word out um you know as we talk about taxes and stuff really our our job here is to help make for good community and part of that is supporting our local businesses and connecting people to those businesses so thank you aging job thank you ma'am i just want to say thank you again and i i do appreciate you putting it all the places so people can use the qr code and uh

sign up and get more information. Of course.

I'm not going to take the full credit. This was a team effort. Kyle Conboy in GIS was a huge help for updating the project map, as well as Kelly LeDuc and Miss Fish. So definitely team effort as far as getting that updated. Labor of love for Kyle making that map. But thank you all.

And I want to thank you especially for the projects, linking all the agendas and items so somebody can come

and go back in time maybe i know you're not back way in time yet but you're working on it and that at least going forward that each project that comes up has the information system we can look at yes great point anything that is a live project has been updated for about like 30 to 35 or so in there um so anything that's like still under construction or still under review with planning commission or board of supervisors is updated with every planning commission agenda link and board of supervisors agenda link that it's ever discussed uh so that's been updated and welcome to feedback at the bottom of the website for the public online at the bottom of our website in the footer there is a link to let us know about any issues with the website please feel free to use that form and let us know if there's anything that's a dead link or something that you can't find anything like that please let us know because it's you know it's constantly evolving information is constantly evolving and it takes a village to keep everything running across our 15 plus different departments and offices

thank you um i guess the number one thing for us is that you did i mean it's a great job but i mean it's a very small percentage of our community signing up for it there are 30 000 people so we just got to figure out a way and i mean we gotta figure out a way to get more people engaged in it some of the links especially the tutorial link on how to sign up can you send that to me link about how to sign up for notifications and all that stuff and i'll i i did a facebook invite to everyone who knows me to join the king george page years ago and a lot of people did sign up and this is something that we just got we have to keep putting it out there on different king george forums and if we have to do that going hey look here just reminding you this is where just keep putting it out there in front of people until people do it and see how easy it is so if you can send those type of links that'd be good for me yep see what i can do to help thank you all so much

All right. Thank you. All right. Moving on to action item 07-10, Participation in Phase 2 of PFAS Class Action Settlement. Mr. Stewart.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So I don't know how familiar you all with a chemical called PFAS, but it's PFAS and PFOAs. They're called Forever Chemicals and they were largely in cloth clothing that was waterproof. They're in Teflon pans. They're in dental floss. They were very much in firefighting gear. We were identified recently by a large law firm that has a class action suit and there is a settlement, I think it was $15 billion. And we were identified as one of the folks that may be eligible to receive a payment under that class action suit. And I apologize. Matt and I were back and forth about it. And I thought Matt was going to tell you and he thought I was going to tell you. so the upshot of it is if you all are interested in participating in this i would ask you to adopt the resolution that should be in your packet and i for some reason my ipad won't connect to the internet but i know we did a resolution and sent it to jackie and i'm sure she put it in there what this does is we would join the class action suit with the firm that is currently conducting that suit there is no cost to the county um however if there is a recovery and we don't know what that would be they get 40 of the recovery and the pro rata share of the upfront cost that they put into this we tried to negotiate that fee and they won't budge on that fee and that's the same thing they're charging all the other localities um it it appears that the old courthouse water system uh there is evidence that that was contaminated with PFAS or the forever chemicals and that's what makes us eligible to participate in this. So I'll answer any questions or I'll try that you all have. I apologize Mrs. Bender and I talked about this the last meeting. We adopted a rule in the General Assembly and I affectionately called it the T.C. Collins rule where if something doesn't appear on the agenda and it just comes up to the table you have to wait And this is sort of in the same category, although it was on the agenda. But you have the ability to vote on it if it's an emergency or exigent or something like that. And our timeline is running out. So we need to tell this firm if we're going to participate or not. I think tomorrow was the deadline.

So any questions?

I'm sorry, what? I can't hear. I'm deaf. I said I just want to know what you've been doing with all your time. I'm just kidding.

You know, it's funny because I've operated under the theory that we need one person in this county that knows everything that's going on. So I told my associate to send it to Matt. Matt thought I was talking to you all about it. Meanwhile, neither of us were talking to you all about it. And finally, I said, we got to get this on the agenda. So we did. cool so we can vote tonight yes sir we because we're at a deadline yes and it is no cost they take their cut out of whatever recovery uh they make okay any other questions i do have one just for clarification is

I guess nobody wants that answer. Is this about the service authority or just the courthouse building, the PFAS?

They identified the county. They did not identify the service authority. It was the county, as my understanding, as being the eligible recipient based upon this potential contamination.

And why I ask that is when I first read it, it kind of was the phraseology that's used about the courthouse system for the service authority, so I didn't know which one it was.

This law firm identified the county as the proper person to participate.

Right. Thank you for clarifying.

All right. Do we have a motion?

I'll make a motion to participate in phase two of the PFAS class action settlement case number 218MN2873RMG as presented.

Second. It was second. Any more discussion? Is this a roll call or a... This is a roll call, right? It doesn't have to be. Excellent. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Chair votes aye. Carries. All right. Thank you, sir. Move on to Discussion Item 07-11, Quonset Hut. Mr. Smolnik.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. So with some of the recent rainstorms we've had, my staff was called out, I think it was last Monday, to the Quonset Hut. Look at some of the flat roofs and how they're holding water. Some of the water is coming into the facility there. I invited the board members. Some of you are very familiar with that. Others, you know, looked at it maybe for the first time or in a greater in-depth view of the facility. I've talked to you all throughout the week and I've got Mr. Muncie, Mr. Young here and Mr. Clark. You're representing the Parks and Rec General Properties and Engineering to help answer any questions that the board may have. One thing I wanted to just talk about the discussion, you know, get the discussion going. Back in February, February 11th of this year, we did the capital improvement exercise using Microsoft Whiteboard, where we kind of categorized where some of the major projects will be, and we used that as a starting point. You know, we've got capital projects underway right now that were approved and appropriated for FY27. And I just wanted to have a discussion with the board. This may be later on, but do we want to go back and look at, reevaluate some of those projects on that list? I know the CTE building, we're off and running with that. We've got interviews scheduled with our A&E firms. I think we had nine firms respond to RFP. We've got those set for early August. The CTE building, we're off and running with that. I just wanted to talk about the condition of the Quonset hut. What do we do? Maybe some wheels of the board, any direction. I know there was talks about, can we tear down parts of the half wall? We've got structural engineers on call. Do we get somebody here to look at that? Is it worth saving? You know, this was a facility that was given to the county by the base late 50s, early 60s. I know Ms. Bender provided me with some photographs. I think, you know, Mr. Muncie had, you know, some of his family go to school. They're remembering going to gym class there, you know, back around that time. So 58. So this is a building that has definitely outlived its lifespan. And, you know, we inherited it back in the 50s. And you've seen the condition of the building I just want to have some conditions or some some conversations and maybe some direction from the board of what you would like us to look at investigate with this facility or your facilities as a as a whole for the county so I'll turn the floor over to the board and again I've got staff here if there's specific questions that I cannot answer Mr. chair yeah that property including the closet that belongs to the school

That is correct. Yes, sir. All right. So my thoughts on it is that definitely something's done, but it should include the superintendent and the school board in the conversations being it's their property and how they see things going.

So the Kwanzaa Hut, in 2012, there was a lease agreement from the school to the county. Now, we found a draft of that, an unsigned lease agreement, and the last clause in the lease agreement says it shall be recorded in the clerk of the circuit court and land records. I sent Ms. Fish down to the, well, Ms. Fish volunteered to go down, as she always does, always looking to help out, and lo and behold, nothing was recorded in the clerk's office. so yes it is a school property and the the draft documents of this lease to the county for a period I believe 50 years and I've had conversations with with Dr. Boyd as I was meeting with you I've you know chatted with him we walked through that building and it's just not really it's not the quantity over there you've got the old the old high school and that gym is now being used as a storage facility for what was in the CTE building and as you walk down through those hallways I mean I think every roof is leaking falling in and then you've got the the older part of the building where the school board and the school administration offices are and this board two years ago well four of the five the board collectively said we're not going to put another dime into that building due to you know all the upgrades that are needed so Trying to look at this, and I think I've told you this before, it's you're setting your chess board up and you got five pieces in your hand and you look down and you got four squares on the board. How do you get everything? And there's a sequence that needs to occur here. This is not a full-blown discussion for tonight, but I wanted to get it on your radars and to start having these discussions. We've raised two buildings here in the last 15, 16 months. There's several others on this site that could be raised, but then what do we do in its place? How do we do it without interrupting services for a Parks and Rec program? These are all questions that need to be answered, and I just wanted to stimulate your minds, and if there's any guidance that you all have, my staff would be more than willing to hear it.

I'll jump in because... those that don't know in 2019 I put together an infrastructure report because I got frustrated because nothing was done and so I put together a report and brought it in front of the board to see if work on it. It's been my dream out there all these different pieces some of them we've already addressed some of them are still but I've always wanted to do something with that property maybe have a new citizen center there's a lot of property there it's 47 acres and as I sent to Mr. Smolnick the picture of the 68 year book people don't realize there's some open space there, especially on the other side of where that playground is, not the one they took away, but the one near the old ticket booth. There's actually a field that was there in 1968. And I talked to some people that were on the football team and that at that time, they said, yeah, we used to practice over there. And some of the elementary, some of that were elementary at that time said, yeah, we used to go run the 600 on that field over there. So there's room to add parking or something else. But I'm going to go back to our original list and I know Sedell Brooks Parks has been mentioned to take that off for the the bathrooms but that is a need that we really need because we have a park out there we encourage people to come we have porta potties and it's the only real park we have that has porta potties and we should have an actual bathroom facility so I wouldn't want to see that be taken off or something like this but we need we need to think about maybe moving up some things and figuring it out because if we did do something with that we would have to finally have some place to put all our stuff that we've put in every abandoned building for years you know maintenance some kind of inventory building whatever you want to call it storage building for the county service but we need to have these conversations because of years of things we can't control that people didn't do they're kind of all coming to a head now we've got to figure out how to afford them and so that we don't tax the citizens but we need to make sure we take care of our citizens too any other thoughts questions

yeah i think that we have to look at that property where that is and so discussions need to yes it's easy to say well we need a new thing for the parking regs is that the property for it is that the best use of that property that's over there in the heart of king george is that the best place to put something like that and all this is kind of coming into what's the Where is the downtown King George going to be created at? What are we going to create to get people in the King George County, not in Seelston, but get them in the King George County where they buy gas, spend money, and all those things, and it's convenient for everybody in a central location. It's just, you know, really, what's the best use for that property? If we start digging into this, about that building, that building has to come down, we have to also look at where the school board would go right we have to look at all these other components they have fiber that's run there just for them if i if i'm thinking correctly so that's going to have to be rerouted and then you know and something me and miss bender talked about and probably heard before but when i came on the board was i was talking about a field house you know like to have out and up by shannon airport something that could hold all the facilities could hold parks and wrecks all those type of things is that the best use or is it a venue place where you're going to have you know an outdoor concert venue and large events is that a better place for that so those are all the things that we can't just look at this i don't think as what do we do about the quantity it's it's everything and what's the best use and that's where the things i think the heads of departments mr clark things like the school board we need to come together and paint a pit and get that picture together what it's going to look like all right did you have one

yeah so glad to see Mr. Clark here how many square feet are in the Watson-Hutchins roughly ten thousand and we're also using the we get this right the old cafeteria space right now for a combination school and parks and rec facility is that correct Yes, so we use the cafeteria space as the location for us to do our karate program. And I think the schools are sharing that with us. We are sharing that with us.

Our karate instructor met recently with Master Sergeant to figure out how they were going to work around the ROTC shooting program because they use their computer thing.

Roughly how many square feet is that area? That one, I'm not sure. Another couple of thousand square feet. So I think I'm sitting at the, it would appear to me, and we've had this discussion separately, kind of as we went through the CIP discussion, we are under our needs considerably for what we need in a community center, field house facility, right? Combined together. The combination of properties that between the board and the school owned there's some sequencing that would need to occur. I would hate to displace all of those programs without having a place to put them. And then we had separately acknowledged through our budget discussions that over the years we've built some reserves that are for one-time use activities and particularly CIP. I think that's where my mind goes to this is a much better facility for Parks and Rec, maybe then revamping the current community center to office spaces and then reimagining what we're going to do with the pit in that facility because there is a lot of community heart in in that location and the things that we could do there um that's interesting because as we were walking and touring the buildings i said that looks like a ticket building and that so apparently that was the ticket office as you walk past going down to the pit so um yeah and i said um mr smolin has the picture from the yearbook you can see all the pictures so if you can find that out there everybody it is a great facility it's a great area to to reuse so i think It's chess pieces on a board. I agree with you there. It's a little bit of, and now we've got to put it to the dollars we have, either in savings or how we would finance this, and what our square footage needs are. And I didn't forget about your storage building. You keep telling me we need a place to put old records. Yeah, we've got to make sure that's included in this conversation.

All right.

Thank you. thank you mr chairman all right uh we did uh vote to add something to the end of the agenda tonight um i miss fish i just put it down as 0712. i don't know how we need to record that but reconsideration of the uh the dauber heritage railroad heritage trail um mr uh scott i'll turn it over to you thank you sir so what i

The request is reconsideration of our vote in support of the reaffirmation for the Dogger Heritage Trail. And again, the last meeting I felt like, you know, kind of ambushed because I was being asked to vote for something that I had no idea what it was. I mean, I know about the Dogger Heritage Trail, but I had not seen the resolution. that the previous board had signed so i have a copy of it here now um and neither had my constituents they were unaware of what we were supporting because a number of them don't support it and you heard from a few of them tonight but the original resolution um that i'm just going to be part of it whereas the dog Railroad Heritage Trail has been developed and utilized as a recreational trail for walking, jogging, hiking, biking, cross-country skiing and horseback riding to the enjoyment and satisfaction of thousands of King George County citizens and visitors and it is desirous that such use flourishes and it continues on. So at this time horseback riding was included So this is why I felt like we were misled, we have been misled, because horseback riding was included. But I went to the Trill's rules and regulations on the website, and the fourth bullet, horseback riding is not permitted. So the existing resolution that we supposedly voted on supporting had horseback riding, but they don't allow it. So on top of that, there's this handy-dandy handout. I picked this up some years ago before I was on the board. And this is the Trailways Feasibility Study. Somebody paid for it by the Berkeley group. They're not cheap. So the Berkeley group did this feasibility study. And I've just marked a few pages. So on page seven, It says, users of the trail are currently required to obtain a free permit for access which accommodates bicyclists, pedestrians, and equestrian users. That's horseback. So this is from March the 24th of 2018. Why do I feel misled? This other page back here. It's got design standards. Then it's got on-road bike lanes. But it talks about reconfiguring intersections, pedestrian timed traffic signals, park and ride lots for cyclists. It's got shoulder improvements or widening the pavement. Incorporate a minimal four to six foot of pavement for bicyclists. These improvements are for high volume and high speed primary roads, including routes 3, 301, 205, 206 and 218. So, where does that property come from? These are what, why people are concerned, okay? Because people that own property adjacent to the trail, and some people probably on both sides of the trail, how is it going to impact them? um there's a number roadway reconstructions proposed intersection improvements and so forth bicycle racks that will need to go somewhere there's a number of things so then there's this page on funding and implementation a perpetual funding strategy is required to design build and maintain a trailway pedestrian system This includes one-time capital costs, but most also consider ongoing operation and maintenance expenditures. As well, King George County must rely on external funding sources to implement a comprehensive trail network. It is important that the county integrate a comprehensive system into the comprehensive plan to demonstrate public and community support to funding agencies. The county should prioritize the most important projects in the Capital Improvement Program, CIP. So I mean these are just some things so this is this was just the study right some again somebody paid for it I don't know the county paid for this or if somebody else did I don't know.

I can speak on it at the end when you're done.

So there's a number of concerns that Is the state going to use eminent domain to take land for the landowners to broaden the trail or to create parking lots? People using the trail at night, you heard that in some of the emails, because there have already been some issues with that. And I'm not saying it's authorized today, but that doesn't keep it from being done. Creating public access to a property owner's property that is normally out of sight So people can use the trail to access that. I've reported that previously because people use golf carts to access the trail to access their property. I've had people hunting use the trail to access my property and said, oh, well, we thought we could do this. Carrying weapons, they're not even supposed to be there. I did have signs up. There were no trespassing signs, but the Friends of the Dog and Trail took my signs down. That's personal, my personal. Increased the security risk. So all these concerns, who's negotiating for the landowners to the state. So we're trying to get the state to take this over. Right now, who's doing that? Because the property owners, such as myself, we are not sitting in those negotiations. Okay? Who's negotiating on our behalf? The people that are already giving us untruths, that are already changing the rules after it's been signed, after we've already agreed to it, are those the people that are negotiating on our behalf? Personally, I like to negotiate on my own behalf or have my attorneys negotiating on my own behalf. But there are people that can't afford attorneys. And right now, they're just uninformed. So whenever somebody comes to build a solar project, they want to do a solar project or build a data center, what do we do? We require them to go and talk to the local property owners, communicate with them, demonstrate to us that they've communicated with them, and even post signs. Well, nobody's communicated to the property owners. I've never been reached out to. Nobody's reached out to me and said, hey, here's what we're proposing. Here's how we plan on doing it. What are your concerns? This is what we're proposing to the state, okay? Nobody's done that with me, and they certainly haven't done it with my constituents. So the adjacent property owners have a dog in the fight, but nobody's looking after their interest. There's a number of issues that I could go on about. And I understand that a lot of people use the trail, and I'm not against creating that habitat or creating that. But I don't feel right now it's being done honestly. I know it isn't done honestly because of what I've already demonstrated tonight. So...

you spoke about that that trailways study that was a study and that was back if I remember my recollection that is back when the owner of the trail tried to offer it for the county to buy and that's when that was done so that's something that's long and not because the county was not interested in taking over the responsibility and the liability as you mentioned Mr. Stroud for the trail so Mr. Brinkley, I'm sorry, I got the name, I forget, had approached us in purchasing it, and we didn't purchase, but that trail, that study was done because several organizations, including GWRC, has promoted it as an asset of King George's, and that was all part of this whole study that's been done over the years, and Chris Clark could probably even, because you were here when it was done, talk a little bit more about it, but it was never, those were all things that the county owned it. The other thing that I think about too is unfortunately this land was taken for World War II effort for the base. I wish they had given it back to all the landowners because that's what they should have done, but then they sold it to a private entity. So my question is an illegal question. Do the landowners next to it even have any say in it because of how the land was acquired in the original way? It was eminent domain a long time ago. So that would be a question I would have, but yeah well no in the future when we talk about it again because is there even be unfortunately the way the land was acquired i know i lived through an experience where a whole communities got taken over with eminent domain and those folks didn't get their property back or even have a say in anything it was just taken and made it into a national park so and that's a true story it's called the tox island dam project you should look it up online because it's a sad story about eminent domain for a federal project that never occurred and a lot of people lost their homes And I lost a lot of classmates in third grade over it. So, you know, those are my questions I have. And we voted it in the past because it was just, you know, if the state is maintaining it, good for them. It's an asset. It'll be never developed. the state would take steward issue but you know bringing it back the agenda and having further discussion I know I reached out to Ms. Schlem for more information to to prove the the information that she had spoken about that there is a process ongoing there is one document that I think still has to be signed by somebody who's on vacation so that would be at a further date but I just wanted to put those things out there who's Mr. Brickley He owned it originally it was given, Mr. Stewart help me on this, originally it was sold to the rail company right and then the owner and then it would pass down to several owners?

It was it was taken to support the war effort to take munitions from Dahlgren and then it was subsequently sold to private owners and then through a series of transactions Mr. Brickley Obtained it from Joe Williams, and there are some issues there with easements and other things. I can tell the board unequivocally that the state has no interest in it. There are a number of reasons. I've not taken a position on it because it runs through my property, so I feel like I have a conflict. But DCR has no interest in it. The state has no interest in it. I think what Mrs. Schlimm was talking about was the trust for public land, holding it or doing something else with it. At least that was my recollection of what she said that night. But just as a point of order, Mr. Stroud would need to make a motion that essentially goes, having voted on the prevailing side of the issue to support the Dahlgren Trail. I move to reconsider that vote. It needs a second. And then if you all take it up, it's back before you. But this is one of those issues that I call the T.C. Collins rule. When it comes up at the table, it should be put on the agenda for future meetings so that the citizens know they see it on the agenda and they know what's coming up and they have the opportunity to inform you all of how they feel about it.

That law was just passed, correct, and went into effect July 1st? That law was just passed, right?

It's July 1st, it's in effect now.

So how, the bylaw that allows him to bring this back, the next meeting and the next meeting only, how does the TC Collins rule play into this, because that would be the second meeting.

He is allowed to make that motion, if he gets a second, and you all vote to reconsider the vote the matter is then back before you all and then according to the new FOIA rule you should put that on the agenda for the next meeting so that the citizens know that you're taking this issue up that sounds good all right you have a motion so hold on i installed discussion if we're in the discussion phase so um partly because i i

Mr. Stroud inadvertently offended the second of the motion anyway you know that right well we haven't had a motion right I guess flaw for going down the list you know my family uses that the trail and I do think that by and large all the users of the trail that I have interacted with use it nobly and I think you said it was they're being using it dishonestly I don't know I'm sure you've probably got examples and I think I heard your concern last meeting about equestrian use. And so we aren't making a decision on the trail. This is a letter of support that says, we think it would be best not to be in private hands. And that we would support a governmental agency taking that trail to put into, I think as brief last meeting, What she said was the plan was to move it into the oversight of Caledon. And so I go with some of those issues that you have listed there very specifically are an enforcement problem. And that actually, to me, moving it into another organization like Caledon would provide an enforcement mechanism. And some of the issues you pointed out with that 2018 study and the expenses that go with it would be not borne by King George County. You brought up other... special exception permits right and that's because when property changes certain uses you get to reconsider this nobody's talking about changing the use of the trail so I guess that's my I'm not interested in reconsidering I think I think the you know what we voted on was not an action it was a letter of support right and those are allowed to go through I mean that's not a It's not a done deal even when we say we support that. So it just says that we're sticking with the agreement that, what, three other boards have signed on to? And from a business standpoint, that's good business.

I think his point, though, is, yes, three other boards have signed on to it, and you want to stick to that. But his feeling, and I tend to agree with him on this, is, the organization that supports the trail has not stuck to that because they originally it indicated that equestrian use would be a thing but it's not now I'm in favor understand I'm in favor I'm cool with the state taking this but I really think this needs to get ironed out before we go forward with it what what are you asking to be ironed out that the agreement is between a private landowner and a governmental agency that's not King George County

We're just simply saying we support that transition if that private landowner wants to do so. Nowhere in that agreement does it say what the use is. I mean, what you did read that our intent would be, and I think that intent still stands. We do want equestrian use on that trail. I hope Caledon would continue to support you in that.

Mr. Stroud. I think what he's saying is they're not supporting him on that. And that The letter itself, what we supported, the trail itself is not supporting. The other thing that comes up is, I mean, I appreciate the gentleman who bought it, but let's not be confused that this was not just bought to preserve the trail, but it's also bought because he's going to make some money on it. Okay, this isn't the first thing he's done like this. This is an investment for him to make money. I love the Heritage Trail. My family spends a lot of time on it. But I also know... That we do not live in a democracy, which means the majority don't get to rule over and just negate everyone who is not voted for in this republic. So there are people who are, it sounds to me, and I've talked to several people that have land that is bumping into that or the trail runs through their land, and they have had some issues with with difficulty um mr shroud talked about his signs being taken down there's other cases where they come out there and put like little orange sticks and say this is the only place you're allowed to cross our trail so you got churches like the church in owens that allows the trail just to get people to walk right through their property yet the people who own the trail aren't given the same privilege to the landowners they're being treated that yes make yourself at home But you can only cross between this little barrier here on your 200 acres. You can only, this is the only place we're going to allow you. And it's like, no, we'll cross the trail wherever we want to, to get to our property, if that's what we want to do. So there needs to be a, with data centers, with solar farms, with everything else we do, we listen to make sure, and Ms. Bender's very big about this, We listen to every constituent because in their own words, every constituent needs to be heard, not just the majority of people. And I'm a majority person who likes the Heritage Trail. But if I hear that someone over here feels like their rights, and I swore an oath to the Constitution of the United States of America, the Constitution of Virginia, if I feel like their rights are being infringed upon, then I have, even if it's 500 against one, that one person doesn't lose their rights to their property. And so something needs to be ironed out here to make this a more trustworthy deal to where those landowners are being self-assured that they're not going to be infringed upon. So if that needs to happen, then that needs to happen. Right now, we know that we have Lake Cowden, which I went out and toured it, loved it. It's beautiful. I'm glad we got it. State can't afford to do nothing with it. Just sitting there. So if the state does take this over, but doesn't want to put any money into it, who's going to take care of it? Who's going to maintain it? State owns it now, not a public firm, just the state now. And if they don't have the money to go out there and actually do anything with the trail, clean the trail, fix the trail, make sure things are going good on the trail, who's going to do it? But they own it and we're going to do it? Those are the things that need to be ironed out. I have no problem writing a letter of support, but I want to make sure also that the people, this has been going on for years. I think sometimes we got to take a fresh perspective on it and really talk to those people. Why are they against the data center? Why are they against the solar farm? Why are they against this? We do that in every other aspect, but in this little aspect right here, we're neglecting some of our citizens that we represent. and saying why are you against this what can we do to reassure you that if we as a board support this that you're going to be secure and taken care of so maybe more than just a little letter of us going we support this maybe we need to see the whole picture maybe this is something Mr. Stewart and his assistant can help with as far as going what is it that's going to going to make those landowners comfortable with this trail going in. I don't even know if the state will bother buying it because we're thinking $40 million in debt or something like that in the hole on the budget already. That's why he's saying that they have no need or want to buy this trail. And I understand we're just writing a letter of support. But when I write a letter of support, that's going to my representatives in Virginia saying that we are fully behind this as presented is how I look at it. Like how it is, that's we're for it. And some people don't feel like that's a good idea. So I think that we need to look at this. And I love the Heritage Trail. I've walked it. I spent plenty of time with my family on it. i would love to see something to where all those people right there we can do something to make them feel comfortable make them feel like their land's not going to be taken away i think at the the boat launch that we have down there they were talking about one time taking a piece of property and putting a parking lot on it just so people could park their boats down at uh down by um back porch but then they'll stand up wilmot wilmot so then all of a sudden they get that then the um the government is looking at parking and taking someone's land to put in a parka so i understand the concerns on that and this is something we have to look at the whole picture and not just do i love the trail but who is this affecting why don't they like it and what can we do to win them over and their support to make sure that everyone is going to be protected in this in the whole ordeal not against the trail but i think before we put out a letter i want to know mr charles brought some good points there's some details that we have to outline and go this is why we support it and not just because we support the trail is a great idea i think i don't know if in 100 miles of here where someone has 16 miles of horseback riding trails where they can take their horse out right now if you keep your horse at lagrange you get to go ride around in a circle inside the building then you go back home That stinks. People are complaining about a dog park. The horses are a lot more expensive than your dog. And I think you'd like to take it for a ride somewhere sometimes. So I think that the people that run the trail right now would show good support to take that no horses off and toss it. And I've heard the complaints, well, it's because they don't want runners. It's not called the Virginia Heritage Running Trail. okay so it's not just for runners it's for everybody and so i think that we need to be more inclusive in that and make sure that we're meeting everybody's needs and i'm all for the heritage trail just making that point known but i think that we also it's our job to make sure those people that are tied to it what can we do to reassure them that their rights are not going to be infringed upon so mr davis i

I can appreciate all of that go back and watch the YouTube from the last meeting that question about equestrian use was specifically addressed and the fix for that as presented two weeks ago which is one of the reasons I'm very supportive of this letter of support was that the intent of a state park is to allow equestrian use in addition to walking running I just you know it seems to the state we it's not coming back on us but they're not doing it now

And I think it would be a good faith to support for them to do that. But that's not the only issue I brought up.

My point is it's a private landowner. They could turn around right now and just shut down activity altogether, right? I think it's a super tourist activity in the county, right? Look at the thousands of people that come for the Sheets to Sheets and the other events that go on there. I want to make sure we continue to support those. And this is a vehicle in which we can ensure that that support continues because my concern is having a private landowner that owns those 16 miles can turn around tomorrow and do whatever private landowners want to do with that as long as it's within their zoning that they have today i think they sound good at that presentation too they showed i thought one of our concerns is the church on owens and they've worked out an agreement with the uh um with the property there on how to reroute around the um the back side of the church there so anyway enough said we did that's where i get on the trail mr metz and i like it's like i'm going to reinstate not against it

But I think what Mr. Stroud is asking is, what are we supporting? And he wants to make sure that before I go out and say, I'm going to support this, and then you're gone off the board, I'm not on the board, and five, ten years from now, they start taking people's land in order to make things more accessible, whatever else they want to do, then you're going to have a bunch of people that are mad about a trail, whether you like it or not. So I think that we need to, in order to make those people comfortable, we need to look at this thing holistically and say, what are the safeguards you're putting in place to listen to those constituents as well as the ones who want it? What can we do to listen to them and make them happy as well? That's all my thing. Totally for it.

I would ask that this be on a future agenda because also too I would like Mr. Stewart to find out the legal question if we can we can even have any negotiations for the landowners there next to it because it was done a long time ago you know I mean the eminent domain issue and all that that would be my question some more legal review.

Well if we ever get to a motion and get it passed

it will only be voted on at the next meeting anyway at the earliest and i also want to make sure we have all parties here to be able to defend their side also because i mean i'm i'm reading the room and whether i said mr metz and i would probably only on one side so let's have that discussion and further let those those folks come to speak but i also want to understand we have been using this in our promotional videos we've been showing it for tourism for years and I know Amy has made videos with it and then we one of our King George tourism we had people walking on the trail and we keep promoting it I want to make sure we keep promoting it and show that we do support the trail and not you know that trail waste studies was done a long time ago as I said it was done because we thought we might purchase it it didn't so I'm not gonna look at that document and take it a hundred percent because that was done a long time ago and it it's kind of that the information is not valid in my opinion anymore because we didn't do anything we didn't buy it so that wouldn't you know it's just my opinion being on the board previously one more thing Mr.

Chair Ms. Bender Mr. Metz I am also for the trail so I don't want that to be said but i'm also for and you're big about this mrs fender and i listen to you on this with solar farms and things like that i want to make sure that all i want to make sure is is that those people who have property that adjacent who aren't happy about this in king george i want to make sure that they're heard and i want to make sure that their that their concerns are being addressed before we do it because i'm in support of the trail but i'm also in support of the people of king george county

and what can we do to make them comfortable with it that's all I'm looking to do if that makes us time to put something more in writing so that they can be more okay this is more friendly to me whatever we got to do no I see that I understand that I'm just looking at from my perspective I understand I voted for it before I still support it I just thought a letter of support was didn't know it was going to be this complicated I understand what you're saying it's just that's why I asked the question for Mr. Stewart to come back is

I mean even in a negotiating posture what can we even do because of the way this land ended up in private hands all right so I know you're worried I think you've got five people up I think you've got five people up here that like the idea of the trail but I think there's definitely some questions that need to be ironed out there's some concerns you're right future agenda we can't vote on it tonight anyway but we can vote

to put it on the agenda for reconsideration is that correct yes all right do you have a motion sir require that motion having voted on the failing side by which that letter was passed I move to reconsider that vote so so everybody's clarifying what they said and you know the people that use the trail that come through my property use a trail I haven't ran into anybody that has been bad. They've all been very respectful and they've all been good people. So I just want to make sure that that's clear. And I haven't done anything to inhibit them or anything because like I said, they've all been good people. If anything, they'll keep an eye on things. So I haven't had anybody misuse the trail for that purpose other than the people that are using it to access my property to hunt or maybe to look for war relics. um but that's the concern that some of my constituents have also that right now uh they can they have property on both sides they can access their land um but i've been told by part of the crew there that i can't access my land only in certain places and what i can access through there so The rules, well, I mean, so I have the ability to hire attorneys. I have the ability. So I know I can cross that trail anywhere I want to, any way I want to. If I want to cross it on a horse or a goat or a four-wheeler, it doesn't matter, okay? I can cross the trail legally. There's nothing to prohibit me from that. But everybody doesn't have the resources to deal with that. And dealing with Right now, under the current ownership and the way that the property has transpired so far is one thing, but dealing with the state is a whole other level. And I really don't want to have to go to court against the state. I never even had a chance to, you know, this transaction takes place and I have no idea you know what is negotiated in there and that's my constituents they have farms on both sides they have property on both sides and that's the deal so I make the motion that having voted on the prevailing side in the previous meeting that we reconsider the vote that matters is that sufficient if Mr. Stroud will let me help just a little bit I think the motion needs to be having voted on the prevailing side

by which the item to send a letter of support for the Dahlgren heritage railroad trail passed I move to reconsider that vote so stated so moved so moved second okay we have a proper second and further move

Do we have any other discussion? For discussion this has to be on the next agenda. The next agenda.

Right and also too that the interested parties have a chance to come up and speak and not just the three-minute comment since we're trying to hear from like the Dahlgren Heritage Trail if we're going to put it on the agenda they have to be allowed to come speak about it so they can answer questions.

A representative but I don't want 15 different people. I mean if you want to make public comment go for it but a representative gets to speak.

Sort of like in the same thing we have a developer who comes up and then we ask them a question because in public comment there's no give and take so we can't ask them a question. So I would at least want that.

Yeah, I agree completely. Cool. Any other? All right. All in favor? Aye. All opposed?

Okay.

Chair votes aye. Motion carries. We'll see you in two weeks.

I'm going to have a migraine again that night. Okay.

Oddly enough I have one tonight. We spent more time on that than we did the public hearing. A non-punitive letter of attaboy took more time than a public hearing. Okay. Let's see what's up next. County Administrator's report. Thank you Mr. Chair. Very brief report.

I do have a couple of very important items. We're talking about tonight getting information out to the public. i'm in receipt of an email so as you know the old gibson solar farm was denied july 15 2025 state code requires one year before an application is resubmitted to the county so i was i'm in a receipt of an email from mr isaac leuthold senior project manager for hanwha renewables llc mr leuthold was here i think it was two meetings ago speaking to the board And he sent this requesting that it just be read to get the information out to the public. Hanwha Renewables would like to provide courtesy notice that a special exception permit application package has been submitted for the Gibson Solar Project. Hanwha Renewables will go above and beyond the ordinance requirements for a singular open house in conjunction with the application. In order to maximize availability and convenience for the public, there will be two open houses. Both will be held at L.E. Smoot Library. The first is in the evening from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursday, 6 August 2026. The second over the lunch hour from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Friday, 7 August 2026. So this is, and I talked to Ms. LaDuke, the application did in fact come in and they were vetting all the property owners. There were several properties with this project. My last communication with Ms. LaDuke was they were vetting to ensure that all the property owners were up on their taxes. before officially submitting the application so did want to let the board of supervisors know in the public know that this application has been submitted to the county it will follow the same format as before administrative review through our staff and then the outside agencies such as vdot and then it will require public hearing at the planning commission then public hearings at the board of supervisors

chair i did i did have some folks reach out to me because somehow they found on the freelance or maybe they learned the little tool that amy found about looking at the public hearing and they saw a notice that was in the free press and so i just want to make sure that the citizens have information about this community meeting so if they come out and want to talk to the representatives or and get questions answered that we get the word out because the system was very upset that we had they saw it in the free press but we didn't have anything about it

And then I know in my conversations with Mr. Luthold, they will be launching, if it has not already launched, a project website, which we'll make sure we put out there also, but just to get the information out there. So this is notice that an application has come in. A couple of other items, Mr. Chairman. So comprehensive plan update. Mr. Sullins and I were part of a call today with EPR, the firm who was selected to go ahead and overhaul the comprehensive plan. I want to say Ms. Flatley from the chair of the planning commission also attended that meeting with several staff members. EPR will be at the board meeting for an initial presentation. It's your first meeting in August, which we now know is Monday, August 3rd. um so just some general information comprehensive plan uh question that was asked today it's 18 to 24 month process very public it is very important for all those you know the the citizens to to come out to all these public meetings epr will talk about how many when and you know the format those As far as the Board of Supervisors, we talked about a steering committee, eight to 12 members. And like Mr. Sullen's suggestion, and I wanted to put it for you all to consider, and this is just to get you guys thinking before EPR stands on the podium in a little under two weeks. So eight to 12 members, the idea would be two representatives from each Board of Supervisor members appointed to the steering committee, and then two members from the planning commission. Much like we did with the ZOTAC, we found somebody in real estate, a builder, certain aspects, certain facets of the community. I think that's important with the steering committee also for comprehensive plan. You don't want to have, I'm just saying, 12 bankers on that. You're not going to get a good representation of how this plan needs to move forward. My ask for the Board of Supervisors is to begin thinking about two members from your district to represent you on the steering committee. And the goal will be to have that roster by the end of September.

Yes, sir. I was going to say, when we talked about it, I wanted to bring it before the board, make sure the board is okay with that. That's me making... That is correct.

Yeah, that is correct. I mean, we don't need to appoint anybody tonight, but start thinking about it if you have other suggestions. you know I'm sure Chairman Solins would be happy to entertain those and there's like I said this was Mr. Solins idea if you guys want to think about it talk about the next meeting doing the steering committee doesn't preclude any of the public engagement meetings no that's what they're for is to help recruit people and engage the people to encourage more to facilitate those exactly public exchanges okay correct I do have one other question so this would be like the steering community and then it would still go in front of the

the planning commission thank you for that planning commission then come to us so there's like many layers that it'll be vetted correct absolutely the planning commission will draft it based on inputs from the steering committee and the committee engagement and then we will take a final vote it this is a drawn out process it's not going to be a quick turn

No and then the last time I came in while it was already started so I understand that and I did get to participate in a couple of the public comment section that was interesting because you didn't think about some things that the public thinks about.

Understanding it's a drawn-out process I would like something better than 18 to 24 month turnaround that that seems Kind of crazy? I didn't say that on the phone today, but that seems kind of crazy.

I've been through several comprehensive plan updates and that's generally what it takes. If you really want to get the public involved and get all their feedback, there's some things that you can hurry along a little bit, but I'm afraid you may be cutting corners if we want to hurry it along. That's just what I've seen in my 20 plus years of local government doing comprehensive plans.

over a two-year period at a growth rate of 1.4 to 1.6 percent the face of the county is going to be completely different by the time this thing gets approved and we don't know where people are coming in from we don't know how many people are leaving we don't know what businesses are going to be here we're not starting from scratch we can talk about it next week or in two weeks I'd like to Mr. Smodic sir

have we made i know that the planning commission we've made our what we would like in zotac and the changes that we're looking to make right honestly i believe that some of those things either need to be implemented or we need to nail pinpoint what we're going to do or else what's going to happen they're going to create a plan and then we say oh yeah all this stuff and how is that going to affect your changes then we're paying for change orders and stuff on something I'm saying that they ought to be aware of, yes, there's a comprehensive plan, but the guidelines for some of that is going to be some of the work that the ZOTAC board did and the changes that we're looking to make. So are they privy to that information beforehand, before building this?

you know I'm not sure if this company is privy to all the information all the discussions that have been had and I think this is why it's important for you know strong public attendance all those OTAC members to be at the meetings to say that you know this is what we did and we can provide them with all the meeting minutes and the position paper that was drafted absolutely we can get the EPR that but They said today, we don't know your community like you do. So they can sit there and read a piece of paper, but until they hear and talk to the citizens, I think that's going to be the critical component.

I think some of those, like even maybe look at implementing some of those things before you do it, because then at least they're already in place.

I think the board voted to hold off on Zotac until the comp plane.

Yeah, in hindsight, looking back at that, I think it might be a mistake. and the reason why this may not be what everyone shares it's just because of what i'm saying they're going to come out with something and then we start changing things it's going to affect the comp plan and so now you're looking at paying for changes as as well The things that we want to implement with ZOTAC can be, it's more of a guideline for them while they're creating it, going, these are the things that are in place, or these are the things that are going to be in place.

Well, remember, the comp plan is just a guide. You know, the zoning ordinance, the laws, that's what governs. The board of supervisors can consider what was in a comprehensive plan, but it is just merely a guide.

Right, but the community looks at it as this is against the comp plan. This is this. So when they look at things, they start going, this isn't in line with the comp plan. When you talk about the solar farm shop, this isn't in line with the comp plan. They don't take it that way. They take it like this is the Bible.

This goes back to what I was saying earlier today where we've heard the complaint many times over that 91% of the county, give or take, is zoned agricultural. Therefore, we can't do any kind of development in it. But if you go back to the original plan, the reason it was done that way was to keep the taxes low, the property taxes low for those landowners at the time with the intent that things could be brought into the county, then they could apply for new zoning. It hasn't been used. I think the board has used it for planning purposes, but I think individual members who don't want Project X, whatever that might be, has used it as a sledgehammer to smack people over the head with. going back to what we said earlier i agree with with mr davis to a point but i i would rather give them the existing com plan give them the zotac stuff at least the pieces and parts that we agree we want to incorporate because some of the stuff doesn't doesn't really apply and say this is the foundation we would like to start with now engage the people and see what the people want go ahead

my two cents I concur with Mr. Davis regarding ZOTAC and moving forward that especially with the time that you're talking 18 to 24 months but also I would look at kind of a hybrid and hybrid being that the steering committee you know I really like the steering committees ZOTAC I like you know the equalization board i think they were all very effective but we have the steering committee have them take the current comprehensive plan review it take guidance from us what our concerns are see how if where the com if there's any conflicts or how it can be implemented in in with the county staff right gis you know the people um planning commission uh um so but but take that and look at the take the current existing comprehensive plan say okay these parts are good these parts are where we may want to change it then you know we make the edits we can have our own we can have our own you know uh community boards with a steering committee And we can invite the community in to get their inputs.

So as somebody who participated as a community member in the last time, I mean, I think 18 months is very average across several communities I've been in updating comp plans. I don't want to mislead. This is the public's guidebook to us. It should not be us telling the public what we think they need. So that's why I brought this back to the steering committee I think is a good idea. I think it helps sort of discuss some of the maybe the critical issues that we've had in the last five now six years since the last comp plan was updated. But the key and the benefit of doing a comp plan update is having some facilitators go collect a significant input from the public. If they do this right, it's five of us, would you say 10 to 15, 8 to 12 on this committee, but it's going to be hundreds of public comments. I'll be honest, I'm expecting the output to be a lot of what's in the existing comp plan, right? So I'm kind of with you. I mean, you're always, consultant, first thing they did was probably download the existing comp plan to see, you know, what is it we're, what county are we going to go bid with? So I want to encourage early and often engagement with these community engagement opportunities. But I'm ready to sit back and listen because I think that's what the purpose of this drill is about.

So we're going to get a brief on this in two weeks. including their schedule of uh all the the community engagement at various levels in various ways so i'm going to ask that we table our comments for now because we're this is literally an agenda item in two weeks that we're going to address this is the warm-up for the knockdown

thank you Mr. Chairman so following up from the July 7th meeting with the two resolutions that were passed to initiate the abandonment of right-of-way this was the the 909 plan we had in the county administration presented to you I think now three meetings ago so school board passed mirroring resolutions at their special meeting yesterday morning Ms. Fish sent all four of those resolutions on to VDOT summaries of both the county and school resolutions for the notice of intent to abandon will be posted on the doors of the courthouse notice of intent to abandon will run for the next 30 days in the free press and then that gets us just then even after 30 days we're still in the middle of this process and really what these notices state to the public for 30 days and down to the courthouse if you would like to have a public hearing on it you need to inform the county administration office and then it's the information how to notify the county administrators office is there and then whether or not we get a request for a public hearing that will dictate the next step in the the flowchart as outlined in state code so just want to let you know that's where we're at following up from the July 7th meeting I received an email this afternoon from Mr. Beale regarding the, what is this, this is the 615 bridge. This is Berry Hill Wharf Road off of, I guess it's off of Windsor, up over Windsor and 301 meet. So, there is a bridge out there over Deep Creek. It's 9 tenths of a mile from 218 and 2 tenths of a mile. It's a dead end road. Barry Hill, Barry Wharf Hill Road is a dead end. So, this also went to Sheriff Giles and Emergency Services Department and the School Transportation Department. VDOT's going to revise the load posting on this bridge for weight. the the current posting is 37 tons for emergency vehicles the new posting is going to be 23 tons for single unit vehicles 39 tons for multi-unit vehicles and 28 tons for emergency vehicles there is a process outlined in state code whereas emergency vehicles can apply for I think it's a it's a it's called a low determination giving them access to cross that bridge in the event of an emergency. Now this is looking at the end of Berry Hill. There's not much down there. There's some ag fields. So this is not a heavily traveled road, but I did want to make the board aware of this. We'll put this out there also for communications to the public of the new weight loads for this particular road. The And the only other thing, Mr. Stroud did a wonderful job on the EOC meeting. Just one thing I wanted to add, the tax-free, the state tax-free holiday this year, I think is what they call it, from August 7th through August 9th, and that's for school supplies, clothing, footwear, hurricane and emergency preparedness items, Energy Star and WaterSense products. So as Mr. Stroud said earlier, You know, don't wait till the hurricanes come to think, do we have enough water, you know, at home? Do we have propane for everything? Start preparing now. And I know I got an email during our meeting from Chief Moody where they have those flyers we're going to be putting out, blasting out during our emergency preparedness month and even before that with flyers, checklists for citizens to make sure that they are prepared. So other than that, that's my report, Mr. Chairman.

thank you sir and i just want to remind you to check into that bus that's been out there for ages yes sir thank you yeah all right we will open up the floor to secondary public comment this time 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 they can be properly recorded and included in the public record is there anyone in the audience who would like to make public comment at this time

Yes, sir. I will. And I'm just going to ask IT to flub on hitting that button. I got about 30 minutes to filibuster to keep you guys here a little longer. I'll be fast. This won't take long. But in some of the presentations I saw tonight, I just wanted to say a few words. So I'll just say we got some great staff in this county. Things that I saw tonight from Ms. Southall and Ms. Fish, the whole team in general. 15 years ago when I moved here, the only good thing on the county's website was the GIS. That was the best thing the county had to offer. But with, I mean, the site we have now, the projects you can see, the board meetings, the meeting minutes, how you guys are sectioning everything in the YouTube videos for people. As a constituent, sorry, I'm James Madison District, I'll add that in there. As that's actually added in there, that's going to make it, I think, phenomenally easier for people to actually review, see things that we talk about here, which has been a challenge. and going through uh meeting minutes that were 300 pages long when mr collins was still here um that was that was a challenge so um so it's uh very very very well off for the county and uh just just for myself i just wanted to give miss southall some applause so thank you i certainly appreciate it and i know a number of members in the county appreciate it so thank you that's all i got and for the record that was mr lee robotham

the one the only anyone else do we have any correspondence online Mr. Dines do you have anybody dialing in excellent I will close public comment at this time and entertain a motion to adjourn remember we're only third not the fourth yes sir I'd like to make a motion we adjourn adjourn the Board of Supervisors to Monday August the 3rd

2026 at 5 30 p.m in a multi-purpose room with the sheriff's office located at 10445 government center boulevard king george virginia second properly seconded any further discussion all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed here what time motion carries we are adjourned