Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

For August 25th, 2026, if we could go and have Supervisor Mullins do the Pledge of Allegiance, followed by the prayer from Dr. Frazier.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for

Let us pray. Most gracious and loving Father, dear God, we thank you for this opportunity to conduct the business of our county. Thank you for our peers, my peers on the Board of Supervisors, dear God. Thank you for the administrative staff and those who serve our county. our first responders. We thank you, dear God, for our citizens. We thank you, dear God, for the Sponsor League and Little League softball team that's here with us today. We thank you for all those who are with us to share with their concerns, dear God. And we ask that whenever we present, we do it that will honor you and we will have civility and decorum. All these blessings we ask in your son Jesus' name we do pray. Amen.

Okay. Um, we do have a quorum and I was previously contacted by supervisor lane, uh, letting me know that he would not be able to physically attend the board meeting today due to an unplanned family medical concern. He may be calling to participate remotely from Mary Washington hospital in anticipation of Mr. Lane's joining remotely. I moved at the board approved supervisors, a remote participation in tonight's meeting. Go ahead and vote.

Yeah, there we go.

Yeah, let's go ahead and re-vote.

Five yes, motion passes.

Okay, please note that Mr. Lane's remote participation when he joins requires roll call voting. Until he joins, we'll go with electronic voting. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Good evening, members of the board. Your first item of business this evening is the approval of the agenda. And if I can have the floor computer, please. There is one additional item for your consideration this evening. That's the appointment of Glenn H. Strudivant Sr. to the Parks and Recreation Commission. This is for the Berkeley District. It's an unexpired term to 12-31-29, and that will be added to your consent agenda this evening.

Okay. Thank you. Do we need to vote on that? We're good. Yeah. We'll go ahead and vote.

Five yes, motion passes.

Your next item this evening is the approval of a commendation recognizing the Spotsylvania Little League Girls 8-10 softball team. And we do have a resolution or a commendation for that, which I will read. And this is a commendation recognizing the Spotsylvania Little League Girls 8-10 softball team. Whereas the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors takes great pride in recognizing the outstanding achievements of youth sports teams within our community. And whereas the Spotsylvania Little League Girls 8-10 year old softball team demonstrated exceptional teamwork, skill, and sportsmanship throughout their remarkable season. And whereas through their unwavering dedication and hard work, this talented group of lady athletes successfully captured the Virginia State Championship title, overcoming teams from Caroline, King William, Essex, Fairfax, Bridgewater, York County, Virginia Beach, McLean, and Attlee. and earning the honor of representing the Commonwealth on the multi-state stage, and whereas the team advanced to the Southeast Region Tournament of State Champions in Clarksville, Tennessee. where they put the entire Commonwealth on their backs and pulled out a 14-0 victory over the state of South Carolina and a 14-3 victory over the state of Tennessee, the ladies' only loss coming to the eventual tournament champions. And whereas by competing at the highest level and showcasing exemplary character both on and off the field, these young athletes have brought immense pride and distinction to Spotsylvania County. Now, therefore, it be resolved that the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors does hereby commend and congratulate the Spotsylvania Little League Girls 8-10 softball team on their spectacular state championship victory, representing our community of Spotsylvania and the historic run to the Southeast Regional Tournament representing the entire Commonwealth of Virginia. And be it further resolved that the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors officially recognizes the following roster of outstanding athletes and dedicated leadership who made this historic championship season possible. The players are, and these are the championship players, Grayson Baugh. If y'all can come up when I call your name, just come up to the front, please. And it's okay to applaud. Congratulations, Grace. You can just hang right there for a minute and we'll get them all up here. Skylyn Casarotti. Dorothy Craig. Lenora Eaton. Ellie Harefield. Maggie Hurd. Harper Gresham. Rylan Luttrell. Maria Novick. Kelsey Rees. Carly Spittler. And Evelyn Tobey. And the dedicated coaching staff, Adam Grisham, Kat Gresham, and Jay Spettler. And be it further resolved that this board extends its best wishes to you players, coaches, and the entire Spotsylvania Little League organization for your continued success in all your future endeavors. And this will be adopted today, the 25th day of August, 2026. And we do have a certificate from the board, and we'll bring you up here for a picture.

So let's go ahead and vote. five yes motion passes and i do want to say um mr lane really wanted to extend his his congratulations to you all and he is so very sorry that he was not able to be here today but he wants you to know how proud he is of you all right well come on up and we'll get a picture you guys come on grace

Congratulations, good job. Congratulations, good job. Congratulations, good job. Congratulations, good job.

Thank you.

Exit stage.

Oh, wait a minute. Wait a minute. There you go.

Thank you so much.

So your next order of business, Madam Chair, is the presentation of the consent agenda. Oh. So your next order of business is the presentation of the consent agenda. And if I can have the floor computer, please. Your consent agenda is as follows. Item 1 is the approval of the minutes of the August 11, 2026 Board of Supervisors meeting. Item 2 is the approval of a contract to F.H. Passion, S.N. Nielsen and Associates for the Compost Facility Equipment Replacement. IN THE AMOUNT OF $1,301,257. ITEM THREE IS THE APPROVAL OF MODIFICATION NUMBER TWO TO A CONTRACT WITH FERAL GAS FOR PROPANE. Item 4 is the approval of modification number 6 to a contract with CDM Smith for the design of the Mott's Water Treatment Plant expansion and rehabilitation. This is an increase of $2,972,918 for a total project cost of $16,977,694. Item 5 is the approval of modification to rider agreement for emergency medical billing and revenue recovery services. Item 6 is the approval of a purchase order to municipal emergency services, MES, for FRIM turnout gear in the amount of $497,302.96. ITEM 7 IS THE APPROVAL OF A PURCHASE ORDER TO POLYDINE INC. FOR SOLE SOURCE POLYMERS FOR THE MASSAPONICS THORNBURG AND FMC WASTEWATER TREATMENT PLANTS IN THE AMOUNT OF $295,116. ITEM 8 IS THE APPROVAL OF A PURCHASE ORDER TO SHEHEE FORD FOR 10 2027 FORD EXPLORER POLICE INTERCEPTOR VEHICLES. THE AMOUNT IS $489,884.30. Item 9 is the approval of Task Order 23-16A-SDI for the South Point Water Line Improvement Phase 2, $72,080. Item 10 is an authorization for the county administrator to execute a revised administration agreement with VDOT for primary and secondary roadway maintenance. That's UPC 124691. Item 11 is the FY27 schools categorical budget adjustment. Item 12 is a reimbursement resolution for GO public improvement projects. Item 13 is a resolution adopting Spotsylvania County's non-discrimination policy and grievance procedures for non-employees. And items number 14 and 15 are the appointment that was added to the consent agenda at the beginning of the meeting. and the approval of the commendation recognizing the Spotsylvania Little League Girls 8-10 softball team Virginia State Champions, which you already voted on, according to the county attorney. And that is your consent.

Thank you, Ed. Okay, at this point in time, we're going to open the public comment on the consent agenda. So this is just public comment for any of the items that Ed just read off. If you have other public comment, that'll be at another time. So this is just for those consent agenda items. Amy, do we have anyone signed up? There's one citizen signed up to speak, Karen Prass. Okay.

Amy, can you please read the guidelines?

The guidelines for public comment on the consent agenda are as follows. Public comment is an opportunity for you to address items on the consent agenda. This is separate from public presentations and public hearings. Sign up to speak at public presentations and each public hearing is separate. Public comments on the consent agenda are one-way comments from you to the Board of Supervisors. This is not a forum for any dialogue or debate. The board asks members of the public to conduct themselves civilly in their interactions with each other and to respect the time of the speaker who has the floor. Interruptions from those who do not have the floor, including interruptions and noises that interfere with the speaker's ability to address the board, any actual threats or intimidation toward a speaker or a member of the public will not be tolerated by the board and may lead to expulsion from this meeting. To make a public comment, please come to the lectern and clearly state your name and voting district for the record. Individuals speaking on their own behalf receive three minutes to speak. One individual may represent a group and will receive five minutes to speak. Please address your comments directly to the board. Public comments are for the consent agenda only. This is not a time to make any political speeches or campaign or private advertisements, and your written comments are always welcome. The floor is yours.

thank you karen prassey courtland the county is being asked tonight to spend another 2.97 million dollars on engineering for the mods expansion while the current construction schedule does not reach substantial completion until march 5th 2027. before approving that action the board should require utilities to disclose the current cumulative demand model showing exactly what happens between Kalahari's November opening and completion of the additional mods capacity I'm concerned that Spotsylvania County may have committed more water than the public record currently demonstrates we can reliably provide The county reports that our two drinking water plants have a rated capacity of 21 million gallons per day, while current average production is already about 12.2 million gallons per day. And major new demands are arriving. Kalahari opens this November with 907 rooms. The county's original water projection was based on a smaller 770 room resort. Correctly correcting only the hotel room portion of that old estimate puts Kalahari at roughly 248,000 gallons per day on average and about 448,000 gallons a maximum on a maximum day. Then there is Matamid. Spotsylvania has undertaken a long-term utility obligation to serve at least 11 data centers in Caroline County an arrangement structured around a term that extends 40 years. Mattamead also receives temporary potable water while permanent reclaimed water infrastructure is being completed, and that's for two years. Its publicly disclosed maximum water allocation is approximately 2.85 million gallons per day, and Mattamead is not our only data center commitment. Cozner has a maximum reclaimed water allocation of about 1.81 million gallons per day. Powerhouse 95 adds another 700,000 gallons per day. Carter Store, Summit Crossing, and Hunters Ridge South are also intended to use the county's reclaimed water system, yet their complete individual allocations have not been publicly disclosed. Spotsylvania itself reported 13.9 million square feet of approved or buildable data centers as of January 2026. County staff has also publicly indicated that the initial reclaimed water system was already effectively committed. Its initial capacity is only 9.4 million gallons per day. We also have an older published drought safe raw water yield of approximately 19.4 million gallons per day. Expanding a treatment plant does not create more water in our reservoirs or the Rappahannock. And timing matters. Kalahari opens in November. Mattamed's potable water bridge begins before that. But according to the document before you today, the mods run expansion is not expected to reach substantial completion until March 5th, 2027. Using the county's own historical peak demand behavior, existing demand plus corrected Kalahari demand and a conservative Mattamed stress assumption produces approximately 20 to 22.2 million gallons per day. The county's published rated capacity is 21 million. Before this county makes another major water commitment, publish the current info.

Thank you. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak? This, again, is just the consent agenda items. Okay. Seeing none, we'll go ahead and close that. Does anyone on the board wish to pull anything?

I do, Madam Chair. I'd like to pull for explanation item six and item eight.

Okay, six and eight. All right, and is there a motion to approve the other items?

All right, let's go ahead and vote.

Five yes, motion passes.

All right, let's go ahead and take number six.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just would like to, for the public's consumption, if a friend could explain the life cycle issues with the turnout gear so people understand exactly what that is and what typical life cycle is and anything else you think is important for the public.

Of course, thank you. A couple of things with this. This order is to outfit two of our new recruit schools. So that's a first set of gear for them. The other half of that purchase, which is about half and half, the second half of that is going to be one fifth replacement for the department. which is a replacement schedule that we have. NFPA allows us to wear turnout gear for 10 years before we have to replace that, hence the one-fifth with two sets of gear. So we get 10 years out of that. If we lose anybody, we pull that gear back into storage and reissue those things. Turnout gear has drastically increased from about $2,500 to about $4,500 a set. So it's one of the highest inflations that we've seen in anything in public safety.

Thank you, Chief. Appreciate it.

All right. And is there a motion?

I think I pulled number eight as well.

Okay. We can take number eight.

Oh, we just do it one at a time?

I'm sorry. I would just do, if there's a motion on this.

I'd like to make a motion to pass item six, the purchase order agreement for the FRIM turnout gear.

Five yes. Motion passes.

Okay. Now we'll take number eight.

Thank you, Madam chair. Um, if, uh, sheriff's departments here, you could, uh, just for the public, um, kind of give an example of the, uh, lifecycle aspects or the reasoning behind, um, the police interceptor replacement. And this is just for public public awareness.

Yes, sir. So on average, we place between 20 and 30 police cruisers a year. They place about 40,000 miles on them during patrol operations every year. So if you do the math, after about three years, 120,000 miles, they'll be filtered to, say, SROs or some other ones who don't patrol the road on a daily basis. But the vast amount of miles we put on them requires that turnaround on them. So we look between 20 and 30 a year. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

What I was looking for. Thank you.

Okay. And do we have a motion on that?

Yes, Madam Chair. I'd like to make a motion to approve Item 8, the replacement lifecycle of the 10 Explorer Police Interceptors.

All right. Let's vote.

Five yes. Motion passes.

Okay, that takes us to our public presentations. Amy, has anybody signed up to speak?

Yes, sir.

The same guidelines apply that Amy just read for the guidelines for the consent agenda.

The first speaker is Lisa Amar, followed by Cynthia Statz.

Here we go. Good evening. My name is Lisa Amer. I live in the Leehill District. And I just want to preface that my forthcoming comments are my own and do not reflect the opinion of my employer. Children cannot vote, and their voices often remain unheard. They rely on us adults to protect them. As an employee at Leehill Elementary, that is exactly what I'm here to do. I am extremely troubled with the impact the Crossroads Data Center would have on the safety, health, and education of our nearly 700 students. Construction dust and dust generator fumes would create toxic air. One out of 10 children suffer from asthma. Developing lungs are highly sensitive, and this pollution would directly trigger asthma attacks. In fact, when the recent fire at Pickapart occurred, out of an abundance of caution, we canceled outdoor recess at our school. That odor hung heavy in the air and could be tasted in our mouths. Please note, Pick Apart is four miles away from Lee Hill Elementary. This data center would be 1,600 feet. Construction, generators, and cooling fans would produce a constant hum and vibration. Studies show that this chronic background noise adversely affects student learning by decreasing concentration and cognitive function. Recently, researchers at Brown University found that schools located within a mile of data centers have lower math achievement scores than those that are further away. This effect is cumulative, so the more data centers that surround a school, the lower their scores. Again, Lee Hill is 1,600 feet away from this proposed data center. We know constant noise triggers the fight, flight, or freeze response, especially in our neurodivergent and autistic students. We know it produces stress. It has been linked to higher rates of depression, sleep deprivation, and anxiety. It also drains mental energy, making learning even more challenging. The proposal to have this data center so close to a school is absurd. You are playing a dangerous game with the safety, health, and education of our children. Instead, let's prioritize learning space over service space and just say no to the Crossroads Data Center. This way, everyone will win, but especially the children of Spotsylvania County. Thank you.

Thank you. Cynthia Statz, followed by Kelly Schaefer.

Good evening. Good evening. My name is Cindy Stotz, and I live in the Lee Hill District. Over the years, I have lived all around Northern Virginia. Before that, I grew up moving, and then I married a military man, and we moved more. When it was time to finally settle down in one location, we chose Spotsylvania County because we did not want to go back to the hustle and bustle of Northern Virginia. We wanted a quieter, more rural area to raise our children. We chose Spotsy specifically because of the location, beauty, and life the county offered. For most of this time, we homeschooled our children, and we were able to spend copious amounts of time outdoors and enjoyed all the perks the county has to offer. Our time here in Spotsylvania County is the longest I have ever lived in one place, and now it feels like home. I understand progress is needed, but progress for progress' sake is not it. Data center development, because of a misguided sense of FOMO, is not it. We need thoughtful, deliberate progress that highlights the core values of the county. We should be focusing on industries that will bring jobs, but also maintain the rural beauty. We could be leveraging our heritage and history in thoughtful ways, instead of selling out to developers that want to make us the next data center alley, while erasing what makes Spotsy so special. I hope every day that my children will want to stay and raise their children here, but I don't want my grandchildren raised next to data centers, and I will absolutely encourage my children to leave and find better places to live if that happens. And make no mistake, I recognize my unbelievable privilege in being able to say that. Not all families have that luxury. As I drive around the county canvassing for Safeguard Spotsy, I have been struck by how many homes, farms, and land have been in the families for generations. I have a deep sadness that in just a few years, these families will be subjected to noise and air pollution. They may lose power for days. Their views will be of concrete buildings instead of fields of grass or corn. Their view of the open sky will be polluted by buildings that hum incessantly. I recognize and acknowledge that our planning staff, planning commissioners, and board of supervisors have an extremely difficult job of finding balance, of making sure our county can provide for its residents, but also maintain the reasons most residents live here. But failing to enact a cap on data center development is tantamount to negligence given the power issues. The enormous need for power has absolutely no realistic hope of being met for decades. Why would we continue to approve projects and court an industry we can't possibly power? A cap is one way to help the county maintain responsible development that does not put its residents at risk of blackouts or of requiring on-site power generation. A cap would allow for a pause so that the power grid can catch up. Last night we heard that large load projects are equal to one power plant's worth of power. Is the county really ready to entertain power plants with each data center approval? This is the definition of insanity. The board has the power to do the responsible thing by enacting a cap. I urge the board to consider what the overwhelming majority of county residents want, which is the preservation of our land, our natural resources, our homes, and our way of life. Do not trade these in the name of progress and money. Do not trade our futures for an industry that has zero accountability and zero interest in the well-being of the residents that live here. I'm asking each member of the board to find the moral courage to do what is right by your fellow Spotsylvanians and for the many generations to come that will love this county and want to call it home. Please cap data center development in Spotsylvania County. Thank you. Thank you. Kelly Schaefer.

Followed by Karen Prassy.

Hi, my name is Kelly Schaefer, and I'm a Leehill District resident. I've spoken at the Planning Commission meetings and here before, and although sometimes it feels like we're making great strides, I still don't believe this board is pushing back hard enough. I felt as though I'm in one of those dreams I know we've all had, where I'm speaking and screaming, yet no sound is coming out. These data centers are a nightmare to this county. And I know you know this, because if I were to tell any of you that one would be going up 300 feet, 500 feet, even 1,000 feet from your homes, you'd immediately reject its placement. You'd vote hard on a square footage cap, you'd set specific ordinances, and you'd fight tooth and nail to keep it away from your home. So why then should any other family have to accept it? I often hear from the staff in this board, why all of a sudden are people caring? Well, I'll tell you why. My family and I are originally from Nova, but we chose to build our forever home here because we believed in the life that Spotsylvania offered. We've intertwined our lives into the workings of this county. My family is part of a local CSA at a local farm. I'm the president of my kids' local cooperative preschool. I'm a baker by trade, and I own my own company as a cottage baker within this county. My husband continues to commute to Arlington every single day just so we can have this life in this county that we love. And speaking as a millennial parent, we are in the thick of it. Our mornings start with wrong clothes, missed lunch boxes, rushing out the door for school, and end with hard afternoon crashes, meltdowns, and celebrating when our kids eat a single carrot. We are in survival mode, and we love every messy, exhausting part of it, but that's exactly why we elected you to be our voices. So that when our heads are down on the grind to just get by every day, to put good food on the table, to rest tiny eyes for long hours at night, we look to you to keep our best interests in mind. So when I find out that my best interests were not kept in mind, With eight already approved data centers and 11 more in the pipeline, yeah, I show up. The movement towards a cap within the comprehensive plan and votes for stronger scrutiny on the projects are steps in the right direction, but they're not enough. We were told these projects would diversify our tax base and bring millions into the county, but what good is that money if we create a county where young families no longer want to live? You can have your money, but it won't mean anything when you have nothing left to save. And please don't mistake the number of people sitting in this room with the number of people who care. There are hundreds of people working behind the scenes who simply cannot leave dinner, bedtime, or work on a weeknight to sit in this room. But they are listening and they are watching. the vote on a cap among this board is our second step in a somewhat right direction but we have many more feet to go these data centers don't fit our county they are a burden to this county and your people this cap matters the square footage number matters and the decisions you make now matters for generations to come so i'll end it by paraphrasing delegate cole if we can't change your mind rest assured we'll change your seats thank you thank you karen prassy

Karen Prousey-Cortland. I want to talk tonight about Kalahari and specifically about a question residents should have been asking from the beginning. Where's the money? The first performance agreement gives Kalahari incentives for 20 years after the resort opens. During that period, Kalahari receives back 100% of its tangible personal property tax through an incentive grant, and that's 30 days after they pay it. Kalahari also receives back 100% of its BPOL tax. For meals taxes, the agreement gives Kalahari three percentage points back. At the 4.5% rate used in the agreement, Spotsylvania keeps only 1.5 percentage points. For the transient occupancy tax, Kalahari receives five percentage points back. At the 7% rate used in the agreement, Spotsylvania keeps two percentage points. The agreement also provides a 100% grant for certain newly adopted taxes specifically applicable to Kalahari. And Kalahari is reimbursed for qualifying permit fees and water and sewer connection and availability fees. Then came the second performance agreement. That agreement added tourism development financing and identified potential qualified gap financing of up to $221,250,000 with public revenue streams used toward debt service. Then in 2025, the county approved another $1,712,000 contribution toward regional water and sewer improvements associated with the Kalahari project. So when we hear that Kalahari is expected to generate millions of dollars in annual tax revenue, that is not the number that tells taxpayers what this deal is actually worth. The real equation is taxes collected minus 100% of personal property tax grants minus 100% of BPOL grants minus meals tax grants minus lodging tax grants minus other tax incentives minus reimbursed fees minus financing related revenue streams, minus county funded costs equals what Spotsylvania actually keeps. The public agreements do not give residents one simple guaranteed annual net revenue number. So I'm asking this board to publish one for every year of the Kalahari Agreement. Show us how much will be collected, how much will be returned, rebated, redirected, or spent, and how much will actually remain for Spotsylvania County. We have heard the investment numbers and the projected tax numbers. Now give taxpayers the net number. Where's the money? I also sent an email out, and I will share it with you.

There are no other citizens signed up to speak. Okay, great. At this point in time, is there anyone in the audience that would like to come up and speak? If so, if you could just queue up in the aisle there, that would be great.

Hi, my name is Catherine Williams and I am in the Lee Hill District. I have spoken to this board for the past few months about supporting our community's need to stop data center development, which includes crossroads. I mean no disrespect by what I am about to say, but I left the last meeting feeling not heard. At last month's meeting, many members of the community left here also feeling let down. We look to you for guidance, to have our backs, to save our neighborhoods from data center development, especially crossroads, to keep spotsy green, including our wetlands wildlife. You chose to renounce yourselves from the moratorium, excuse me. And then next, members of the board also, it felt as we were being belittled by some of us saying that data centers are, or that the comment about data centers being scary, excuse me. Data centers are scary, but for different reasons than was stated last month. You know what is scary about data centers, the 24-7 noise that we would be impacted by, the energy drains, and having an industrial building in the middle of a neighborhood. Would you want an industrial building a half a mile from your house? I don't think you would say yes to that. That is where crossroads will be, a half a mile from my house. I can see it from my bedroom window. I assure you, I mean no disrespect, but we have done our research and are not here to incite a revolution, but to voice a truth, a truth that data centers rob our neighborhoods of peace. They take away our land. They put more strain on the electric grid. I will never be in support of a data center. I could not let my family down and disappoint my community. My wish is for no data center, but I know that money to the county is a driving factor in all of this, and I am only one member of my community. It's time to stand up. but for caps, for height restrictions. Crossroads is set to be seven stories. Our community would not like to see a data center from our bedroom windows, as I said before. Conduct a current noise study. Look to Loudoun. Let's not be like them. We can do better. More is not always the solution. Sometimes, like now, less data centers are better. I spent the better part of my life, 30-something years in Northern Virginia with helicopters, noise, and hum. We, like many others here, came to Spotsy and made a home. Seeing that be destroyed is very upsetting, but I thank you for your time tonight. Thank you.

Good evening. Connie Prassey, Courtland District.

Can you... Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

There you go.

Good evening. Connie Prassey, Cortland District. A county-related report published earlier this year described 17 project sites where data centers were either under construction, in process of rezoning, had a site plan, or had already been approved by the Spotsylvania Board of Supervisors. I attended the planning commissioner's last public meeting on August 5th. What I did not hear during their discussion was an objective analysis explaining why 20 or 17 is the appropriate number of data centers for Spotsylvania County. I also attended the last supervisor's meeting where a financial report was delivered outlining the potential revenue to be received by Spotsylvania County associated with the Amazon MetaMede project. The county needs to determine what our actual carrying capacity is. There should be a capacity study conducted and published before any further construction takes place. I want this county to establish the numbers scientifically and financially based on Spotsylvania's actual capacity. This board should not elevate additional data center development solely on projected tax revenue without fully accounting for long-term costs impacts and commitments associated with that development and it is concerning that Significant financial information was being presented at the last supervisors meeting after substantial development Excuse me has already been approved. Thank you.

Thank you

Hi, good evening. My name's Dawn Hernandez. I'm with Lake Hill District. I don't really have anything to say about data centers tonight, but I do want to make an observation. I've been watching the whole time. People have been come up and speaking, and those whose districts that data centers are directly impacted in, I thank you for paying attention. The rest of you, shame on you for looking at your phones, for looking at your computers, and not listening to the people that are coming up here talking. These are your constituents. These are the people that... are voting for you. These are the people whose lives you're impacting. Shame on you. Pay attention.

Thank you.

Before we begin a brief point of order, Madam Chair, I want to apologize to the members of the board. It was my intention to provide every one of you a copy of that portfolio, and I am more than happy to provide all the information that I'll be describing as well at your request and at my own expense. That said, good evening. My name is Tony Hernandez. There is an old saying, if you wish to make God laugh, Show them your plans. When I first met you, Lori, I asked why, in a period of hyperinflation, would you all continue to pursue this plan? Those were the good old days. It is my understanding that someone's been telling you that the data centers in question will not be in some inexplicable way even handling AI. First of all, a little housekeeping, AI is a marketing descriptor. Large language models or LLMs are not AI, rather the result of a belief that pouring vast amounts of data into those models will somehow result in artificial general or artificial superintelligence. Second, you would have a better chance of scraping all the sugar off every flake in a box of Frosted Flakes than you would have removing LLM from general computing, let alone all cloud storage. The board should be insulted that they're even trying to put this past you. LLM cloud computing is cloud computing. The very purpose of data centers are to handle the obscene amount of compute LLMs require. The portfolio I provided to you, I hope, demonstrates that the pursuit of these data centers, really many are small data towns in our community, are the equivalent of investing the county's resources into Bitcoin or an NFT. LMM companies are loaded with debt and financially untenable at best. Billions spent by governments to subsidize data centers cause massive debts. Hyperscalers themselves are offering better bond rates than the government to build even more data centers in debt, causing government to increase rent interest rates even more. Private equity investment in AI puts every pension and 401k at risk. Investors are increasingly leaving this debt product as it did during the 2008 financial collapse. Wall Street is even buying insurance against the AI bubble. Unfortunately, Virginia is most over leveraged state in this bubble. Analysts estimate that anywhere from 30% to 50% of 2026 data center projects are delayed or being canceled. Microsoft, for example, has been observed quietly canceling numerous data center projects. Well, according to the contractor, Elon Musk hasn't made a payment on his Ohio Colossus 1 and Colossus 2 since 2024. What would an incomplete or abandoned data center mean for us? Let me introduce you. to the new Transylvania, or excuse me, Spotsylvania County. Don't worry, there won't be a vape store in sight anywhere. This county is dreading, one possible lawsuit will not have the wherewithal to enforce and engage gargantuan financial entities that sound like, you sound like a five foot two drunk.

Sir, your time has expired.

Thank you.

Thank you.

hi jamie ashton lee hill district um i first and foremost want to thank all the firefighters who worked on the pick apart fire last week and that brings my concern to we always come to you before apartments and such are being built and ask you to please consider the surroundings there's been a couple fires if i believe correctly at pick apart pick apart over the years um but that was before it was surrounded by apartments I'm troubled that the previous speaker earlier referenced the school about four miles away having to divert recess. I never saw anything sent to the residents of those apartment complexes about the air quality, about potentially evacuating or leaving while that fire took about 24 hours to put out. Again, it's not the first fire there. If we have an issue with a salvage yard catching on fire multiple times, I'm not a fire inspector, but hey, then what are we going to do if, God forbid, a data center or this lithium battery storage facility that's going to be heard later catches on fire? what i'm asking you to please i don't know who would do it but work with the fire department work with somebody and come up with a plan for those residents and those apartments that are surrounding pick apart because clearly it's an issue there's going to be more fires unfortunately it seems i believe the reporter said there was over 100 cars involved in that what would have happened if there was an explosion now that you have surrounded pick apart with apartments We don't need data centers. We have enough problems that we're sitting on that we can't fix because we're not even looking at them and they're right in front of us catching a fire every day and our kids are breathing that air. They deserve better. They deserve clean air at a minimum. Thank you. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Kelsey Payne, and I'm in the Lee Hill District. According to the county website, the comprehensive plan provides guidance and vision for the future of the county within a planning period of the next 20 years. My understanding from attending multiple of these meetings in the past few months is the county is concerned with the tax mix, and they want residents to pay a lower ratio of taxes compared to businesses. And the solution they've come up with is to embrace data centers to provide immediate tax revenue, even if at a much lower rate than neighboring counties. But the board's plan to hinge our economic dependency on one industry does not seem like much of a plan at all. The evidence at this point is growing that data centers are very detrimental to residents in the surrounding environment. They increase utility bills. Look at Enrico County. They could lead to lasting blackouts. Look at Gary, Indiana. They can contaminate water supplies. Look at Wyoming. It's less of a 20-year plan and more of a two-year plan. Capitalize on tax revenue for a couple years until the technology moves on and then what? We're left with millions of square feet of outdated facilities abandoned by tech companies. And in the meantime, we deal with excessive dust, noise, water pollution, air pollution, increased utility bills, power outages. The list really goes on from there. There are concrete measures that we must take now in order to safeguard Spotsy for the next 20 years. There must be a cap on square footage, both to prevent over-dependence on a single industry and to mitigate the effects on residents, our natural resources, and utilities. Safeguard Spotsy has proposed a 28 million square foot cap on data centers with a pause once 70% of the construction is complete to evaluate the impacts. There needs to also be a plan for decommissioning so that residents are not left with the expense and burden of empty, outdated facilities once the industry inevitably moves on. Solar facilities have a surety in place equal to the cost of decommissioning before they're able to begin construction, and the surety amount is regularly reassessed. The same should apply to data centers, which are at least as disruptive. The county doesn't seem to have a real 20-year plan, but let me tell you mine. I plan to take my three-year-old daughter to our neighbor's third annual chili cook-off across the street so she can play with the neighborhood kids. I plan to send her to kindergarten in two years at Cedar Forest. I plan for her childhood to be full of bonfires in the backyard, splashing in the neighborhood pool, riding her bike down the street with her friends, free from dust, air and water pollution and excessive noise that a data center right next to her house or her school would cause her. I ask the board have similar foresight and consider the resident's well-being. What kind of neighborhood do we want our children to grow up in? Plan for the next 20 years and not just the next two by imposing a 28 million square foot cap and implementing a decommissioning plan with accompanying surety into the comprehensive plan before we get to the addendums. Thank you.

Thank you.

Test, test. My name is Trillane Blahr from the Lees Hill District. I read some comments that bothered me in the newspaper at the last Board of Supervisors meeting. To be clear, the data centers and Amazon are not doing us favors. They are not giving the county things or helping us out. That water line to keep banging on about isn't a gift. One, they need it to service their buildings. Two, the county has to pay for it. Once it's complete, we will be reimbursed by Amazon from the tax incentives that we gave them. We are paying for that waddle. So no, they are not helping us or doing us favors. The data centers are here to make as much money as possible. It's the only reason they exist. Any claim to the contrary is deceptive. The reality is that the data centers were good neighbors. Nobody would be here complaining. So far, they have not shown themselves to be good neighbors, either here in Virginia or in the daily litany of data center horror stories in the news. I would suggest the county seriously consider the cap in the concept of a plan and a pause in approvals until we can ascertain for ourselves how good they are as neighbors and not ourselves be taken advantage of any more than we currently are. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Robert Slowinski and last week on August 19th, 2026, I have found multiple flock cameras within the Central Park Shopping Center. Now, the Fourth Amendment is in its text described as the right of the people to be secure in their possessions, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures. The Fourth Amendment, these flock cameras violate the Fourth Amendment because every six months, I pay my property taxes for my vehicle while I am in my property. This is an unconstitutional search against my property. And it also brings about the same culture of communism that my parents in Soviet-occupied Poland have left. There is a quote directly from Laurent La Verity Beria, Stalin's director of the secret police. In English, this means, if you show me the individual, I will show you the crime. When I see these flock cameras, I am not thinking that... I am not thinking whether or not I am in a safe place, whether or not this is secure. I am casing this out as if I was robbing a bank and paranoid whether or not a crime happened within the same parking lot. These need to be removed because these are a violation of my constitutional and God-given rights. Thank you.

Thank you.

uh i would like uh five minutes because i represent the uh the homeowners association of this park okay madam chairman and members of the board now for something different for the past two years We have been working with our supervisor, Mr. Jakubowski, toward a remedy.

Sir, is your microphone on?

I don't know. Is it on now? Yeah. Okay, good. We have been working with our supervisor, Mr. Jakubowski, for the past two years, and we have demonstrated several times to this board and brought to the attention of the county staff uh, a costly situation, uh, due to the apparent inadequate oversight and inspection services during the development and construction of Virginia Heritage between the years 2004 and 2024. I must point out that the information we have provided has not been refuted or challenged in any way for its accuracy. I'm here to express the disappointment and the frustration of approximately 1,300 residents who are standing right behind me. Active adults who reside in Virginia Heritage, we are deeply concerned that this board would not allow our issue to be placed on the agenda for discussion at tonight's meeting. We believe we have been cheated out of the opportunity to hear this issue openly discussed and thereby bringing the resolution and bringing this matter to a resolution. We do not agree with the premise that if relief is granted to Virginia Heritage, other homeowner associations who believe they have been wrongly served will also seek relief. To the contrary, we cannot think of any other homeowner association that has endured our situation over the past 20 years. When construction began in 2004, Lees Park was one of the largest residential developments in the county. and we question whether the county staff were prepared or possessed the experience to effectively oversee and inspect construction at this scale. Based upon the documentation previously submitted to this board, it became obvious that many site elements in Virginia Heritage were not designed or constructed to code and yet the county continued to approve them rather than require the builder to reconstruct, repair, or bring those elements into code. What the county did instead was release the builders' bonds in 2024. And of course, at the time of bond release, the responsibility and burden of cost for any reconstruction or repairs to those site elements fell upon the newly formed Association of Virginia Park Home Owners. The documented total cost expended by association for the reconstruction and repairs to those site elements is well over 1.4 million dollars. However, we are seeking relief for only two of those site elements. The first, at the direction of the county, was the installation of a $92,500 cast iron sleeve to to protect the sanitary sewer line, which was located 13 feet below the surface of the gravel access road under construction to a stormwater management pond located in Pond B, Section 1. The second is the redesign and reconstruction of the Hazelnut Court cul-de-sac. The design of the cul-de-sac was approved by the county, although it was shown to be not in compliance with county or VDOT regulations at the time. Over time, the asphalt surface of the cul-de-sac failed. The association, then contracted with a paving contractor to make the necessary repairs to the asphalt surface at a cost of $105,000. However, the geotechnical engineer retained by the association determined that an asphalt surface would not be suitable given the design flaws and instead recommended concrete. The Spotsylvania Utilities Department confirmed on April 24th, 2020 that concrete would be acceptable and that the repairs can go forward without going through the site plan process. However, as a result of a subsequent meeting held on October 2nd with a group of With the group of residents, the county personnel, and a member of the county board of supervisors, the county changed its position and instead required the submittal and approval of an erosion and sediment control plan, site plan, permit fees, and a performance bond. The cost for this additional work to the association, $13,600. Bringing the total cost for that hazelnut court cul-de-sac to $118,600. Sir? Yes, sir?

Your time has expired.

Yeah, I know. It's important to note that the county should have required the bill.

Sir, your time has expired.

Thank you, sir. Thank you. Just push the button.

There you are. All right, back at it. Hi, guys. I'm back. Shamgar Connors voting to 663. But today I'm here as my new identity is the Pride Pool Party Princess. And that's because I'm here to talk about my favorite school board member, Jennifer Craig Ford. I love you, Jen. Woo-woo. You know, Jen actually has been holding drag queen shows at her house every year and posts all the pictures publicly. We love that, Jen! Especially when they're in, you know, public access. Anyone can get it. So when we have all the children that are in schools that look up her name and see all these things online, everyone gets to see it. That's exactly what we want. Listen, these kids... They're not going to indoctrinate themselves. And by the way, we can't reproduce. We can only recruit. We need more people to join us in the LGBTQ movement. So we have more people to date. But anyway, I'm here to talk about this because she is my favorite.

Ever in the whole world, I love, I love Jennifer Craig Ford.

Okay, now I wanted to show you guys, I brought some pictures to show everyone of my favorite person. So here's Jennifer Craig Ford posting herself. This was herself and her son dressed up in drag where they were dressed up as characters from Rocky picture horror film. And by the way, those two characters did the whoopty together and it wasn't consensual. And oh, here.

Here's Jen Ford's pool with all the drag queens. I really want to get invited next time, Jen. Please invite me.

All right, here's the drag queen. This is so stunning and brave, guys. It's so stunning and brave. Okay, look. Oh, here's the newest drag queen show at her own house. This was two weeks ago, by the way, guys. And if you see, there's Jen Ford. Here's their big thing on the wall. It says, Jen Ford. Yeah, vote for Jen. And then, oh, there's my best friend, my sister in sequins. howdy, Dante Brighton, you stay clean. And he's over there handing out dollar bills to drag queens. You know, we had, oh, there's more to this. And then here's, don't forget, there's Jen and Dante. We love them. You know, by the way, Dante is actually on the Parks and Rec board meeting. He does the board meetings. It's so great. It's so great. Oh, I forgot. Here's my friend, Jakubowski. Let me drop the thing. Jakubowski, you're running for the commissioner of revenue. You need to own the name Taxabooski. That's awesome. I would own that in a second. But anyway, there's Yakabooski with my friend, my best friend. Oh, here's Bryce Weebs. Bryce Weebies. I love you. You know, he actually endorsed Jen Craig Ford. He loves the drag screen shows too. Oh, now, by the way, there was this one.

Mr. Conner, part of the guidelines is political attacks.

Oh, he ignores her. This is a public post. She posted it. Yeah, she posted it. It's on her page. And then here's this guy. He's a drag queen member, and he got arrested in Casanova because he was found inappropriately texting a kid. So this is just totally great, guys. Totally great. Oh, here's the pride parade in Stafford where kids were, drag queens were twerking on children for money. Ah, it was so great. Thanks, guys. I hope everybody can come to the next pride pool party.

OK, is there anyone else in the audience that would like to address the board? OK, seeing none, we'll go ahead and close the public presentations then. All right, so we are going to go on to the county VDOT report.

Good evening, Madam Chair and members of the board. My name is Paul Agnello. I serve as the county's transportation director. I'm here with VDOT tonight to give a joint report. I will start and give the county transportation report, and then VDOT will give their report. So the first project we have is the Chancellor Park Drive sidewalk. This project is the one that's the furthest along of the projects we started a couple years ago. THIS ONE IS ABOUT TO GO TO ADD FOR CONSTRUCTION. BASICALLY THE TARGETED COMPLETION DATE OF THIS IS BEFORE THE 2027-2028 SCHOOL YEAR, HOPEFULLY BY AUGUST 1ST OF NEXT YEAR. THE SECOND PROJECT IS THE SMITH STATION CHAIRED USE PATH. THIS IS FILLING IN THE GAP WITH THE CHAIRED USE PATH SYSTEM BETWEEN COURTLAND PARK AND SPOTS VENUE PARKWAY. This project is in the right-of-way phase. Third project is the Route 217 and Lansdowne Road Extension project. This project is early in the process of preliminary engineering. We're doing pre-design to look at basically what the cost would be. To basically set the stage to develop additional funding. The purpose of this project is to provide better access to to the bowman center to support potentially future development in that area uh fourth project this is a um a unique project the the county owns one bridge over the po river for the roxbury the roxbury mill bridge which goes back to 1915. the bridge is in failing condition uh this project would uh would not construct anything. It would remove basically the bridge safely and basically we're targeting completion of this project by 2028. Next project is along Lafayette Boulevard. We basically have a strategy to try to basically complete the sidewalk along the east side of Lafayette Boulevard from roughly the Harrison Road area up to the city line. Uh, this would help complete a section of that, uh, from basically, uh, roughly Harrison road up to butter net drive. And, uh, the project right now we're, we're in preliminary engineering. Our next project is, um. At the Route 217 and Jim Morris intersection, this is a significant intersection project to improve safety in this area. Today, a lot of people come to this basic intersection. They're routed there by GPS. And also, there's no signal. It's difficult to make the left turn. This would make a one-lane roundabout to create a safe way for people to basically make that turn. And also, when 95 and Route 1 are backed up, A lot of people do head this way. This project is in the P stage and this we're trying to set it up for future state funding and smart scale. And here's kind of a blow up of that project. Our next project is basically route 17, widening and shared use path. We are seeking to widen route 17 to 4 lanes divided between Cosner drive. And mass politics church road with the shared use path running along it, we have a pending smart scale application for a 25.5 million dollar projects we're also working with the developer on a cost share for the southern leg basically the mass politics church road route 17 intersection. Our next project is the Germanic point drive sidewalk this was carved out of the much larger Germanic point drive extension projects. This project is just started the preliminary engineering phase. We're aiming for completion in 2031. Our next project is route 1 in Hodgins drive the quarter from Hodgins drive down to Hill Street. This section has some documented safety issues. We're looking into some targeted safety improvements as well as potentially a small amount of sidewalk and shared use path to improve safety. in the intersection areas. So that VDOT does have a bike pet project running down the west side of Route 1 in this area. This project would complement that larger VDOT project. Number 10 is basically, this is at the, it's focused on the Route 28 Smith Station intersection. I include the study of that intersection also looking at the route to a foster road and the Smith station road foster road intersections to look at kind of the operational and kind of safety improvements that could be done in all three of those intersections. Once the study is completed, which is targeted for next year, we'll basically pursue funding for those improvements. The next project, this is the biggest one that's basically under the county staff. This is the Harrison Road widening phase one. We basically have a plan to try to widen Harrison Road basically to four lanes between Salem Church Road and US Route 1. This is the first phase of that, which would go basically from Salem Church Road to the east side of Harrison Village to Carriage Hill Lane. This project basically is now fully funded. We're working with VDOT to start PE. This basically a graphic is showing a overview of Harrison Road phases 2, 3, 4, and 5. The study of this is almost completed. We're in the process of starting to basically generate funding for this large improvement. Right now we're basically working on phase 2, which is the orange section basically at the left. The next project is the old Plank Road and Endora Drive roundabout. This project we have is basically fully funded right now. We are officially targeting a 2029 basically completion dates. We're hoping we're a little bit ahead of the schedule that we can maybe accelerate that to be completed in 2028. The project is in 90% design. We just received comments back from the county parties, and we're just waiting for the comments to advance to the next step. The last project, this is a bit of a unique project. We've had a number of rail safety issues in the mine road, basically benchmark road, kind of rail crossing area. And we basically pursued a grant funding through a federal grant called the Railroad Crossing Elimination Program. The program doesn't maybe have the best name. It can actually do more than railroad crossing eliminations. It can also just do safety improvements or intersection improvements. At kind of rail crossings and we're looking to probably have something like quad gates with maybe some traffic signals attached to it potentially. Some intersection turn lanes to improve safety in the area, the primary area is kind of the mine road benchmark road intersection. There's also a spur, though, across Benchmark Road we'll look at as part of this study. And then there's another basically crossing at Lansdowne Road and the CSX. This basically project, basically when you get a grant agreement, it takes about a year to actually get the grant agreement executed. We're very close to getting that, and we're hoping to basically start this project this fall. And this concludes my presentation. I will turn it over to Vida.

Thank you, Paul.

Welcome good evening chair vice chair members of the board and county staff. Um, my name is Walter Burke. I'm here to represent, um, tonight and provide you a quarterly update on some projects we have going on within the county as well as some maintenance and operations improvements. Um, so the 1st project we have here, um, in the battlefield district, um, is the 95 exit 126 design build bundle. I did comment on this on my last update, so I won't go too far in depth, but basically this project is a roadway widening project that was funded through SmartScale. It's currently in the construction process. If you're traveling through the area, you may see some work that's going on. They recently just opened the second left turn lane going southbound on Route 1 to southbound 95. And then if you're traveling along 95, you may see some sound wall work that they are doing to install sound wall barriers along. The next project we have here in the Battlefield District is the Route 128 multimodal improvement project. This is an intersection improvement project that is going to provide some turn lane additions and extensions at the intersection as long as some pedestrian improvements This project is in the preliminary engineering phase. We just did receive notice to proceed for right-of-way acquisition. And then basically the right-of-way acquisition process will take up to 15 months. And then following that will be utility relocation, which will be about an 11-month process. We're still on track for a timeline completion of 2030. Moving over to the Chancellor District, we have a Route 3 guardrail improvement project here. This was a safety improvement project funded through our Highway Safety Improvement Program, also known as H-SIP. This project has been advertised. It has been advertised, and we're looking to have bids back in September timeframe. Basically, what this project will be as it describes, there's several sections of guardrail along Route 1 that will be replaced. Next project we have here is the Route 3 Clear Zone Improvement Project. This is also funding through H-SIP and is similarly to the project before a safety improvement project. This is in the preliminary engineering design phase right now. Project timeline on this one is completion early 2027. What this will entail is removing some median trees within the clear zones of vegetation. What's kind of Constraining us from that timeline is basically time of year restrictions for tree removal. Basically, we have a window from November to April time frame, so that's when you'll see most of that work coming up and then following some of the slope work that'll be going on as we approach 2027. Next in Challenge Chancellor District still is the Harrison River Reconstruction Project. This is a roadway widening project. Again, I discussed this one in depth in my last meeting, so I won't go too far into detail, but this project is in construction and it's approaching completion. So we're targeting completion still for fall 2026, still targeting September timeframe. So in the coming weeks, you can expect the new signals to become activated and the existing signals will be removed. And then in September, they'll also be repaving and striping. That'll be done over all the work that was completed in there. Moving over into the Berkeley District, we had the South Roxbury Mill Drainage Improvement Project. This was a hydraulic improvement project that was funded through the Secondary Six-Year Plan, also known as SSYP. This project listed there as construction. It was actually completed back on August 12th by our State Forest crew. So they went in and reestablished the ditch line there, as you can see in the image, and basically ensured the drainage was flowing where it needed to be instead of on the road surface there, and then relined and stabilized the ditch with some riprap stone there. That has been completed, and from talking to our staff, it appears to be working well. Also in the Berkeley District, we had the Part Low Road Roadside Improvement Project. This is a safety project that was funded through the Secondary Six-Year Plan as well. What this entails is doing some clear zone and vegetation removal to kind of improve the site distance for this portion of Part Low Road. Similarly with what was mentioned on Route 3, we had that time of year restriction for tree removal, so a good portion of that will be being done between November and April timeframe with some of the additional slope repair work being done up to the summer of that final completion date. Also in the Burtly District, we have a part-load trench widening project. This is a safety project as well funded through the SSYP. This trench widening project, you can see there from the images, is the intent to extend the roadway width to provide a safety shoulder that is a paved surface asphalt, and then we will overlay that with a full layer of asphalt to provide a smooth riding surface for travelers on the roadway. Completion for this one is tentatively scheduled for fall of 2027. Moving over to the Leehill District, we had the Route 2 and 17 roadway improvement project. This is a roadway widening project along Route 2 and 17 up to the Shannon Airport. This project is still in the design phase. Looking to have utility field inspection plans in the coming weeks, so things are progressing towards that completion date of winter of 2030. Over to the Cortland District now. We had the Route 3 Operational Improvement Project there near the mall. This is basically a project to adjust the travel lane reconfigurations there for that right turn lane when traveling westbound on Route 3. So this was a project that was funded through the revenue sharing process. This project is actually looking to get ready to go into construction. I have it listed there as construction. We're looking to basically provide notice to proceed August 31st. It's coming up very soon and then they'll have from that time to the completion of summer 2027. Kind of what that product entails is there's several bump out islands on that stretch of Route 3 that we'll be removing and basically taking the existing right turn lane and making it through right turn lane to improve capacity through that section of Route 3. Moving over into the Livingston District, we have the Route 652 Belmont and Days Bridge safety improvement project. This was funded through local funds. On this project is in the preliminary engineering design phase and kind of what this entails is to improve the site distance for motorists that are traveling from belmont road. From the days bridge and we intend to do that by removing some vegetation coming back from slopes again as previously mentioned a lot of this portion of the vegetation tree removal will be done from that November to April timeframe i'm still on track for completion for this project of fall of 2027. Moving over the Salem district, we had the Salem church road levels road and Harrison road improvement project on this is a roadway widening project I commented on previously on this project is still in the preliminary engineering phase. Right away authorization looking to happen late 2026 and they're still on track for the completion of fall 2029 so things are progressing on as expected for that one. then kind of looking at the whole county in general from multiple districts we have our 2027 trench widening projects that we're currently preparing on the push down to our central office to compile the contracts for this upcoming year so this is a project that's a safety improvement project that was funded with local funds um estimated at about 3.23 million dollars for these local road improvement projects and target completion will be fall of 2027. And I do have a list here. I know we've discussed on this list in the past. I won't go too far in the detail. And I did show an image there on the right. But kind of intent is to extend the roadway with surface there to provide a safety paved shoulder. And then we'll resurface the roadway with a continuous layer of asphalt to make it safe for motors traveling on these roadways. And then also in the multiple district section, we have a rural rustic improvement project. These are progressing as intended from the last time I provided an update to you all. The Route 687, Shirley Road, is going through its construction phase. We're doing utility relocates right now, looking to have that completed this year. And then once that is done, we will start Route 759, Houston Lane. That will be completed this fall. And then the next projects in the pipeline are Route 754, Hayden Road. On the design will start on that in the fall of 2027 with construction tentatively plan to start in spring of 28 and then right 697 will do lane is scheduled to start with design and fall of 29 and construction scheduled for spring of 2030. kind of moving over in the maintenance operations side or has I want to provide two brief updates for you all. As far as the mowing i'm sure everyone here on the board and their travels and i've seen some more moon operations going we've completed our first round of right away mowing. And kind of this is the second cycle that you will see occurring this year. So we have our primary high volume secondaries. That second cycle will begin late September with our low volume secondary final cycle to begin in October for the year. We do also have our manicure mowing that's going on twice a month and we will extend that to the end of the year until mowing services are not needed anymore. And then just want to talk a little bit on the resurfacing schedule and your travels. I'm sure you've also seen some of our paving operations going on throughout the county. I have about over 150 lane miles that are going on between primary, secondaries, and subdivision roads. I did not want to include the whole list for you again, but if you need a copy of it, please feel free to let me know. I'm more than happy to provide that to you all. I'm happy to take any questions or comments that you may have.

Thank you so much for your presentation. I appreciate it. Supervisor Guzman.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Yeah, thank you very much for the update, as always. I absolutely want the list, so please send it. And just... Just wanted to for for the public's, um, sense to talk about a little bit about the, the trench widening. So, what was the amount of trench whiting? We did in 26.

26 over this year as far as funding.

Yeah. I mean, you know, what roads on how many roads we did? I don't have them off my head, but it's a pretty low number. If I recall, right?

I mean, Paul, so if I may, I think it just was 1 Robert Lee.

Yeah, and in 27, we have a list of, I don't know how many are on there, a pretty long list. Um, so, so I want to emphasize we've been, I mean, commend Paul and VDOT working together, the transportation committee, um, we've been working for, for years now to get this done. And, uh, and, and the result has been now that we can get more trench widening done because we coordinated schedules between the county and VDOT and save a lot of taxpayer money, about a third, it's a third of the cost for the county now by doing this. And now we're getting more roads done. So as you, you know, so again, As you're out there on the roads and you're seeing all the paving work going, and by the way, I really like some of the new roads that are getting on 208, but oh my goodness, I don't know how you scheduled to do those in the piecemeal like it's been done. It's crazy. But I do like the fact that most of the work is being done at night. But if you're going home late after the meeting tonight, you'll run into that. I do every night. But I just appreciate all the work that we've done, though, and want to make sure that, again, constituents realize that there is a lot of paving going on now that we weren't successful in getting done before because we couldn't afford it. And the same way with the bond referendum, we've set aside that $10 million for rural road type things so that that'll continue to get some of that trench whiting out in the rural roads. I know we've had some issues out in Livingston here this past week, some more traffic issues out there in the Stubbs Bridge area and stuff like that. So, you know, I know I want to mention that for Jake since he's not here tonight. But I know that's something that we're working on. So we're trying to get, you know, and I get calls all the time. Where's my roads? They're not on the list. But there's a lot of surfacing that's going on that's not necessarily on the list. And that's why it'd be really helpful anytime you have a schedule, whether it's a weekly schedule, a monthly schedule of what roads are being done, we can help get that word out so that constituents understand that there is work being done. Sometimes they find out late when they're on their way to school or something and all of a sudden they get stuck with a one-lane road. We like to be able to get some of that out to people so they can make arrangements. But I appreciate the work and just want to make sure that people understand that we're making headway in doing more trench widening and things like that because of the planning that you guys are doing. Thank you.

If I can add to that, Supervisor Guzman, I mentioned this a little before in my first court update with you all, but the collaboration efforts that the county is doing with VDOT for these trench widening projects is very unique. Through my rotations in different parts of the department, Culpeper District and NOVA, I've not seen any other locality kind of collaborate with VDOT on this, and I think you are able to do a lot of large-scale projects with these out in these rural roads that we maybe wouldn't be able to accomplish for several years with our pavement schedules, so we do appreciate the collaboration efforts.

Thank you, dr. Fraser Thank you first I want to say that The reason that we get a lot of that done is because we have a wonderful transportation department That's really aggressively looking at grant opportunities For us to take care of our roads so that our citizens are safer I'm glad to see that we're widening the shoulders on the roads because as our young drivers get on the road when if it's not that way It is not a safe travel for our young drivers navigating that. So thank you so much. I appreciate both of you getting back with me about the sidewalk. I do have some further questions about who maintains that road, especially Chancellor Park Road. So if we could get together and just talk about what we can do to move forward with making sure that that's taken care of, I would appreciate it. But thank you for what you've done. And Paul, as always, happy to partner with you. And if you see opportunities, especially around the schools where we could apply for safe school grants, let's do it. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Yes. Supervisor Mullins.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks, Paul. Again, I echo what Supervisor Frazier said about your department, transportation department is stellar. And you're a savant when it comes to finding all these ways of making this happen. Appreciate it. And Mr. Burke, apologize for not being able to do our meeting on Monday and drive around, but we'll get to that. Your Route 3 operational improvements, the bump outs, Will that be like a sequential thing or will they be happening? Do you even know yet how that will be?

So we don't have a timeline yet from them. Okay. Once the notice proceeds on the 31st, we should get a little more information as it trickles into us on that. And I'd be more than happy to share that with you.

Dave Kuntz, Thanks appreciate that and i'm just curious I know there's been various projects in the area that developers have proffered to some of these things does any of that come into play, are we looking at doing this in a different as far as.

Dave Kuntz, As far as this project here.

Dave Kuntz, This one yeah I know that some people have talked about that or.

As far as I know, I believe this was just the full fund of revenue sharing.

Okay. It is revenue sharing. I got you. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Okay. Thank you very much. Appreciate all of the information and all you guys' hard work, too. So thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah. Thanks for coming tonight. I know we don't have any public hearings this evening. So... Let's take can we take like just a like a four minute break? Yes, ma'am. Okay, you're in charge Time with the four minutes, but we had a little technical difficulty, so We'll go ahead and go ahead go ahead and start I push that button there, pull it close, and there's a button to push.

Can we have the floor computer, please? Yeah.

Does that work?

That's worked. There you are. Oh, and there it is. OK, wonderful. God bless computers. What would we do without them? Thank you all so very much for the opportunity to come and speak with you all tonight. My name is Megan Cotter. I am the executive servant leader for Micah Ecumenical Ministries. We are here, and I say we because I have a lot of friends here with me. I'm going to ask them to just stand so you can just see we have a lot of folks here with us. here tonight, all folks from churches in the county, people who live in the county who are really here in support of this project and what we are doing to address homelessness across the region. So I want you to know who's in the room tonight. So a little bit of background about Micah Ministries. Micah's been around about 20 years. We started out of the hearts of the downtown churches in Fredericksburg because there were people literally at our doorsteps needing anything from food, clothing, showers, people to help them figure out their paperwork. And for 20 years, we've been leaning into what it really means to care for neighbors, not just in Fredericksburg, but across the region when people end up living literally outside. And what that has meant for us is developing any number of different ministries in all aspects of human flourishing, which you can see. on your screen, and much of the work that we've done has actually led to a 56% reduction in chronic homelessness since 2010. Chronic homeless is people who've been homeless a year or more and have a disability, so it's the hardest to serve people in our community. What you don't often see about our impact is the number of people on an annual basis that we sustain in permanent housing. There's about 170 people that once lived on the streets somewhere in the region that live indoors and are supported by our many different ministries that you don't see because they are stable in housing and are doing well. The biggest thing that we have learned over 20 years is that people don't become homeless when they run out of money. People become homeless when they run out of relationships. And that has been a really pivotal understanding for how we respond and how we lean deeper into caring for this community. So that is the sentiment by which Jeremiah Community, which is a project I'm here to talk to you about, has come from. Jeremiah Community has a goal to help us move in a direction of becoming a community where no one has to sleep outside, which might sound like a really bold statement, but it's really actually fairly simple when you have the capacity and the supportive services to go with it. You lift people off the street, you get them indoors, and you wrap the support services around them to care for all the ways that people need in order to flourish. The really great news about this region is we are not LA, we are not Washington DC, which can count 60,000 or so people on the street or in a shelter in a given night. We are the Fredericksburg region, and we can count roughly 178 people on the street in a shelter on a given night, on average, there's about 60 to 80 people who have difficulty problem solving their way out of their homeless situation, and they stay consistently so. That's really the heart of your chronic homeless population. And that's really the heart of who Jeremiah community is trying to target. There's all sorts of people that are in and out of homelessness on a daily basis, but there's a consistent group of people that but for some kind of greater intervention, they're going to stay there. I will specifically mention, consistently so, and especially as this region urbanizes, About a third of our homeless population comes from a last fixed address of Spotsylvania. And increasingly so, there are a number of people who live literally outside in Spotsylvania County. We are tracking right now about 22 people. And the really big reality there is that 20 years ago, I never would have told you that people lived outside in Spotsylvania and Stafford County. Generally speaking, historically people migrated to the city and that's just not the case anymore. There's more and more of people being able to survive in other parts of our region because a lot of other resources and development is happening in other parts of our community. A really important thing to emphasize is that there is a cost if we do nothing. you are already paying for police time, fire, rescue, hospital time to not have any kind of intervention get involved in helping get people off the street. The national average is it costs $35,000 a year to keep somebody on the street. And there's all sorts of public services and things that I'm sure I don't have to tell this group are involved when someone lives on the street. When you move somebody indoors and you provide support services, it costs a little over $12,000 a year. And that's the kind of impact the Jeremiah community can have by being able to bring units online with appropriate supportive services and actually save taxpayer dollars. It really makes dollars and cents, literally. Something else that's really important to understand about the street homeless population, our statistics show that about 78% of people who live on the street have one or more disabilities. And that's anything from physical health issues to trauma, to mental health, to addiction. People are often surprised to hear that there are about 20% of our population is actually people who are in special classes in school. And they lived at home with mom and dad. But when mom and dad died, there was no plan for where they were going to go. And they show up at MICA or they show up in the woods in Spotsylvania County. So there's a lot of different dynamics that come to play. The story behind, you know, what is Jeremiah? Why Jeremiah community? Yes, there's a wonderful prophet Jeremiah, and I won't belabor that point tonight, but there's also a parable of our city that really got us thinking really critically about the kind of support that that was really needed by our street homeless population. The man on your screen, his name was Jeremiah. He graduated from North Stafford High School. He was a veteran, deployed to Germany a couple times. Somewhere along the way, he was affected by schizophrenia, and he ended up living literally on our streets for 27 years. One of our churches developed a relationship with him by getting him to come in to meals We helped him apply for Social Security and were able to move him into a better state of being. When we had unprecedented resources during the pandemic, we were actually able to keep everybody we knew in this community in a socially distanced hotel for two and a half years. We were a community where no one had to sleep outside. Jeremiah was one of very few people who turned us down. And we just weren't going to have any part of that. And so we actually rented a house. And every night for six months, we went and we said, Jeremiah, we really would like you to give this a try. And one night he said yes. And he's been housed very successfully for three and a half years now. And so the Jeremiah story has been a huge inspiration to us because it's helped us to see if we can house Jeremiah, we think we can house anybody. And so that's the excitement that I think is behind this project. Jeremiah Community is about creating housing. We are in the process of site planning on a property that we have rezoning in place And we are in the process of a site plan. We're actually going to get approved for 80 units. We're going to start with 50 because this is a big deal. And there will be an onsite community center with a lot of support services. workforce development opportunities, and ways that people who live there can be engaged in the life of the community. And the third component, if you remember, people become homeless when they run out of relationships. And so this community is built around the idea that we find ways to build relationships and restore relationships in people's lives so that they can be successful. We house people already. We are supporting 170 people across this region indoors that one time lived on the street. But we have case managers that are traveling all over the place. They spend most of their time going from place to place. Our housing market increasingly lacks units that the limited resources we have and the limited resources of our people can afford. And one of the hardest things that happens when you move somebody out of chronic homelessness into housing, they become very isolated in ways that and they begin to struggle in new ways that they never struggled on the street. And Jeremiah Community is about trying to address those things and really create a better landscape where we can not just house people, But we can care for them well. Here's the fun part. Here's a couple pictures. And I've passed out a packet to you that has a lot more pictures and information in it. But the community center is the building at the top there. The units are about 522 square feet. They're single units and duplexes. They all have a front porch so that people can be in community when they want to be, but also have their own space and be separate. when they need and want that as well. This is the inside of the unit. You can see they're small. There's a bedroom. There's a living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom. They're all ADA compliant so people can age in place and whatnot. And then this is the inside of the community center. And I like to show the inside of the community center because it's not just about the supportive services. There's offices for professional staff and there's gathering spaces. There are secret workforce development opportunities baked into this building. There is a community, a full commercial kitchen so that we can, so that people who live there can not just benefit from meals prepared there, but they can learn skills that can then be transferable to many of the hospitality jobs that are in this community. There's an industrial laundry room. There's a lot of small businesses, we've learned, that need help with laundry service in a tangible way. People who live in Jeremiah community can be great at doing laundry and helping support the small business community in our area. You can't see it on here, but there's also a basement which will house our maintenance and groundskeeping and also for the community. But SAWS, which is the organization that builds wheelchair ramps for folks in this community, is actually going to co-locate in the basement. So the people who work in Jeremiah community can actually work with them in building the parts to go out and put ramps on people's houses. This is an aerial view of the site plan that we're right now working on with the city. We are almost there, and we're projected to start site work in November of this year. Just to locate you, 95 is here along your left-hand side of your screen. Fall Hill Avenue would be down at the bottom. It's behind the Central Park townhomes. just before you cross over the bridge to go to Wegmans. This is not something that we just made up. It's something that we've studied. The neighborhood style of supportive housing is increasingly becoming a solution for people with disabilities, people who have a hard time with shared walls all across the country, and there's a couple different examples there on your screen of places we've been to and we've studied tremendously. We are in the middle of a $17.5 million capital campaign. We have raised a little over $12 million of that, still have about $5 million to go. But a lot of that is coming from the private goodwill of this community. We are as much as it feels like we're urbanizing in a lot of really tangible ways. There are some of the traditional funding sources for affordable housing period don't exist yet in this community. And so we're having to be really creative about how we do that. And first and foremost, is leaning heavily on the private goodwill and and local resources to really get this thing thing moving. there's a lot of partners involved. This screen is not even big enough. This PowerPoint is not even big enough for the way that all the people have come together. Two big development partners that I know are no stranger to Spotsylvania County, Tricord, they bought the land and gave it to us. They are our development partner to do the site work. Atlantic Builders is really championing bringing a lot of trade partners and people together to really get this thing happening. And then Mary Washington Hospital, Virginia Housing. The city of Fredericksburg has committed $2 million to this project. Stafford Economic Development has committed $80,000 so far, and we're still having some conversations. And we have another nonprofit that's out of Northern Virginia that actually their whole purpose is around networking the building community to make projects like this happen. So a lot of partners involved in this. So the million dollar question is how can Spotsylvania help? First and foremost, I want you to celebrate with us. I want you to recognize that this is a regional accomplishment. It's something that I think we will be able to say that we're proud of. There is an invitation. You all should have gotten it in an email, but I stuck one in your folder as well. We're going to build a prototype in 72 hours in partnership with the Oberle Academy, the kids that are there that are at the Oberle Academy. And we're going to celebrate that with a kickoff event on September 10th. And you're all invited. And I hope you will come and celebrate and see for yourself how cool this project is going to be. Second, I really hope this is the beginning of more conversation. I know some of us have already had some conversation, and I hope to have much more conversation with you about helping you understand who your unhoused neighbors are in your community. And shout out to Mr. Guzman, who came on our bus tour. If you have questions about it, I'd invite you to ask him. But all of you, I would love to see you come on our bus tour and really spend a little bit of time with us and really see some of this in action. A huge way that Spotsylvania can help, of course, is investment. And I really do believe it is an investment. When you think about what it costs to keep people on the street versus what it means to take care of people well, there's a lot of opportunity for how Spotsylvania can consider being a part of helping us get to that $17.5 million. And I really would like to have the conversation about what that might happen. And last but not least, I think this is the long game. There is long-term dialogue that I think we can have, not just about how we do this project, how we make a tangible difference in our community, but how we look at how we really build a continuum of, we say continuum of compassion, um, for all people, um, in, in our region and including Spotsylvania. So we'll take questions.

Wonderful. Thank you so much for, for bringing this and explaining it. Um, does anybody have Dr. Frazier?

Thank you. Thank you, Megan, for doing this. I remember you following your dad when he was just a little girl.

I forgot to mention I was born and raised in Spotsylvania County.

You're all grown up. I wanted to ask, and it might not be, but with the families who are living, say, on the street or... in the woods or wherever, are you finding that initially they have children with them and when you find that they're kids, do you take priority in that and trying to find a place for them?

So we focus on individuals, and this project is, to be clear, is about individuals that are living on the street. But homelessness doesn't discriminate. And we oftentimes run across families. A lot of times it's during the wintertime and they show up at the cold weather shelter. And our strategy generally is to get them in a hotel as quickly as possible. And help get them into Hope House oftentimes as quickly as possible. Hope House is the regional family shelter. And so our participation with families is oftentimes when there is nothing, they land with us. And then our job becomes navigating them to the resource in the community that's best suited to them. To work with them.

And so you take the entire family. If it's a dad, mom, children, you don't leave the dad out. You bring the whole family.

No. And so we're not heavily shelter based. There really isn't a year round shelter that kind of encapsulates everybody. But when we run the cold weather shelter, you know, family, you know, however you present as a family is how you how we handle it. We put that whole family in a hotel and then we work to to get them into the next thing.

And my final question is, I know that there are individuals that have a multitude of concerns, but how do you deal with, say, someone who is homeless and present that they have a substance abuse problem? How do you navigate that? Do you seek help for them before you bring them in or you bring them in and try to work with them?

So the harder they are to serve, the more they are specialty. And we do a lot of meeting people where they are. And, you know, that's one of the things I think that's really evident when you take the bus stop. or the bus tour, you see all of these different resources that are baked into all of our spaces. So we have an outreach worker from the community service board that has an office in our building. We have a doctor who comes to our office to see people, but that makes it easy for them that we just try to make whatever people need we make it easy for them to access it and then the biggest thing that we really believe in is that the sooner you can get people into housing even if they're still struggling with their mental health or addiction all of that it's really hard to have a conversation about recovery of any type until you have a stable place to live and so our approach generally is to get people indoors as quickly as possible

Thank you. Thank you, Megan. Great job. Supervisor Guzman.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Megan, thanks for bringing this to the board. I absolutely enjoyed the bus tour and I would encourage any of my fellow board members or even those in the public that are interested to come and do that. It's an eye-opening experience. It's very... Interesting to see how you work with so many other agencies to meet the need, as you said. And I think I really want to put a plug out to those that are listening that have small businesses or the corporate side of the county. Here's a great opportunity to invest in a need in our community. to help bring some of that, you know, get those families into some kind of stable housing. And I think it would be a great investment for folks to contribute to that, to help to meet that need. You know, it took me out to the site where those are going to be built. It doesn't look like much yet, but clear a few trees and it'll be right in there. So excited to see how that goes. But, yeah, I just wanted to kind of, one, thank you for the bus tour. Very good eye-opener for me. And just, you know, encourage others to get involved. You know, look up Microministries Jeremiah Project and see where you can get involved. Thank you. Thanks.

Supervisor Mullins.

thanks madam chair thank you so much megan for this presentation i've been hearing about it on and off at gwrc and some other things and and really to see the presentation it's really impressive um it's interesting three plus years ago when i was running i went to the fredericksburg area builders association and they grilled me on like okay what's going to be your solution for affordable housing What are you going to do about that stuff? And we had just come back as a family from Asheville, North Carolina, to go see the Biltmore. And we stayed in this little tiny home community, which at the time I said, well, you know, we just came back from this. trip and i told him about tiny homes but they were tiny home community for people that were you know couples or they're at that stage in their life right and this reminds me of uh i'm really pleased to see this i'm wondering if when i brought that example to mike jones and them if that was part of the genesis of it or not Because it looks just like it, right? But I think this is wonderful. And I did have a question. I think you partially answered it, and it was the desire to end state that you're going for. Like you have the population that you're putting in these dwellings. And without going off into a whole psychological past of my own, when you isolate yourself or find yourself isolated, It can just destroy you as a human being and it affects everyone. It's not just people walking on the street. It's some of us who've been through that before ourself. And the idea of getting people together in a community base like this, that's how you're going to heal people. And that's how you're going to get them to go to wherever they need to go. But back to my question. I guess looking at the floor plans here, you could probably put bunk beds in a room if you needed to, if you had like a couple little kids or something like that. But can you explain kind of how you're going to approach who goes into what and the desired kind of end state?

So as a very active member in our regional continuum of care, which falls under George Washington Regional Commission, as you know, There is a by name list. There's a list of everybody we know and not just who Micah knows, but everybody our community knows that is homeless as a given time. And they're prioritized based on vulnerability. So we look at a lot of different criteria, you know, diagnoses, you know, different challenges that people are having. And there's a score that helps us to understand, you know, what who's most likely to die on the street. And that may sound weird. Really drastic, but that's literally what we're looking at in some of these situations. And so that by name list right now has 178 people on it. And so the ability for us to bring 50, 80 units online, imagine what happens to that list overnight, at least within a month or two. When you add that kind of capacity to what's already happening. And so there's already a process to make sure that we're assigning people who are literally homeless to beds in our community. And what I'm offering is the capacity to do so.

So these are the cases that they don't have another option.

They are literally living outside.

They have to, they need the shelter and they need the community. They don't have family. They don't have another social option or structure. So you're rescuing them essentially in a good way.

We believe – and I'm sure that any of us, any of you up here have people in your own lives that have struggled in any number of different ways. And maybe they become homeless. Maybe they didn't. But if they didn't, it's probably because you or somebody in your family or your close social circle – was able to get involved. And sometimes that's having resources. That's sometimes knowing the right person to call. It's social capital. And people end up on the street when they run out of those relationships for whatever reason. Our two fastest growing populations right now are between the ages of 18 and 24 and 60 plus. And you think about the two times in your life you most need relationships is when you're learning to be an adult and when you get old. And so, um, I generally think you don't end up on the street, you don't end up in a shelter, but for relationships. I think sometimes we forgot that as a society. But this is about creating an opportunity for people to not just have a service solution, but a relational solution. And we see many times once people get back into housing, the healing begins, the community forms around them. they actually can begin to reform a relationship with their family too.

Again, thank you very much. And truly, I mean this. God bless you guys.

Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Guzman.

Yeah, I'd be amiss to not to recognize the folks that you brought with you because some local churches and local groups that have thrown themselves into that. And that kind of was missed a little bit of the presentation. But I remember from the bus tour and that was, you know, just even from setting up rooms to making meals and schedules. And I think there was like eight different churches in downtown Fredericksburg area that have banded together to kind of make some of this happen, you know, real time every night. for families, and commend you folks, and there's many that aren't in the room that are already stepping up, and I just want to thank them for that.

Our governing board is made up of the nine downtown churches, but we are connected with over 260 churches in some way, shape, or form all over this region, so thank you for that.

Supervisor Yakubowski.

Yes, thank you, and thank you, Megan, for the presentation, and I'm sure you didn't mean 60 and old. I speak for other members of my We want you to have relationships too, Chris. Well, I know people that are 60 and older and, you know, they're older, not old. My quick question is just under the funding for the 50 units, the 17.5 million, is that for 50 or is that for 80?

So $17.5 million funds the first 50, the community center, and seven years of operating costs.

Okay.

And that gets to like we don't have the subsidy and the things that oftentimes in an urban environment we could tap. So we got to build our own.

Well, you know, I'm just thinking with trying to interconnect all the things that are going on in our communities and we have these big companies that are moving here with their data centers and they like to promote charitable. gifts and i know on amazon you can buy teeny houses for you know a decent amount i mean it never hurts to ask and see what what they can contribute also to the effort and um and uh maybe even build that out a little bit more so but thank you very much do appreciate it and um look forward to this um being a great success for our community yeah thank you thank you

Thank you, Megan. I appreciate it, too. Just a couple of things. I think on this one slide it was talking about rent, right? So I'm assuming that when you have somebody that comes into care with you all, you are trying to find, you know, set them up with disability and get them the services that they need and that sort of thing. and teach them some skills. So is your vision that these citizens of this community would eventually be able to go out into other housing to open up other spaces? Or are people in a situation where, you know, we used to have places for people to go, right? And we got rid of that because we thought that it was better for them to be served in their community without any safety nets, which was not a good idea, you know. But are you thinking that this will be sort of a foundation for them to go out and get – another housing situation so that it kind of helps the situation or do you envision some people like Jeremiah I mean he will most likely be in your care into perpetuity right right okay so both I have a lot of hope for your 18 to 24 year old who ends up on the street and maybe never had stability in their whole life and gets to live in Jeremiah community and

and gets to normalize what stability looks like and what that trajectory can look like for them. Your 60 plus folks, even when you've lived on the street, it literally takes years off your life. So even 50, 55 even can feel like 70 at different times. So the hardest part is that the average stay in our permanent supportive housing program is usually about three to five years. a lot of times that it's whatever time they have left. And so the turnover we expect will be often But we hope how whatever that trajectory is, that it's the most flourishing life possible. And I say that I have people that I've been with Micah for 19 years. And I have people that I've seen come from living five years on the street to buying a habitat house. And I have people that I've seen move in and, you know, they die a week later because the streets beat them up that badly. So it's all of the above, but the idea is always to move people on to fulfill whatever their potential is, but also not to put a time limit on it where they're arbitrarily subjected to what if it's three years and they need five years. Time is really person by person.

Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for coming tonight.

Madam chair the next item of business is a board announcement of all persons being proposed For the interim appointment to fill the vacancy of the Chancellor district supervisor Including resumes and any other supporting documents and I believe mr. Holston is going to take care of that Yes, madam chair members of the board you may recall at your last meeting with the vacancy occurring in the seat of the board's representative for the Chancellor district and

The board acted to invite citizens to submit their name resumes and any other documents to the board. So the board can consider making an interim appointment to fill the chancellor district vacancy. The board received a number of submissions. Virginia law requires that the board at a public meeting, at least 7 days before making an appointment, announce the person's being proposed for such an interim appointment and provide their resumes and any other documents required by the board. This agenda item, presentation, and provision of documents should suffice as that announcement and meet the requirement. Three individuals were determined to not be qualified to vote in the Chancellor District, therefore their names are not included in those proposed. All others who submitted their names and resumes were included in the list of those individuals proposed for consideration, and their names and resumes were listed on the agenda in preparation for tonight's meeting. Today, Mr. Charles Washington contacted the county and withdrew his name from consideration. Therefore, now, those 12 individuals being proposed for interim appointment are as follows in no particular order. Brooke Cunningham, Dawn Shelley, John Charles Winkler, Scott P. Foster, Jeff Shattuck, Justin Bernier, Janet Gordon, Amanda Blaylock, Laura Catalano, Tim McLaughlin, Steven Cronberry, and William McEwen. And as I mentioned, I believe that resumes, Amy, are available for the public. Where are they, Amy? All right. There's a QR code that's been made available. But if you would, please put the resume packets up at the dais for the public. And that should suffice. This is the first time I've put together an announcement. So I'd ask that the board, just to avoid any uncertainty, just please vote to confirm that announcement and that'll be it.

And I'd just like to say that on the screen, you have a QR code that you can scan. There's also a webpage address you can go to to look at all the resumes and stuff that were submitted. You can scan it on your smartphone. And just on a side note, if you have a smartphone, you can access the board agenda and all the backup documentation associated with the agenda as well.

Okay. Mark, can we, so this will be on our website.

It's already on the county webpage. Okay. It's in the news scroll at the bottom of the main page. And if you go to the chancellor district supervisor webpage, it's also available there.

Okay, great. So you need a vote.

Yeah. Just to confirm the announcement, if you would, please.

Okay. Thank you.

That brings us to our next presentation, and that is data center development, and Kimberly's here for that.

All right. Thank you, Madam Chairman, members of the board. Tonight is a follow-up presentation from your last meeting. I'm going to review some of the same material from the last meeting just as a refresher and for the benefit of the public, and then provide the follow-up information that the board had directed staff. So as a refresher on how we got here, data centers have been identified as a targeted industry for the county since 2011. Prior to the 2025 code amendments, data centers were within the definition of office and they were a permitted use in all of the non-residential zoning districts. It was widely permitted use in the county. Comprehensive plan amendment was initiated and approved in 2023 to establish land use policies specific to data center development. Those policies today we use to consider and analyze rezoning applications and SUP applications to ensure that mitigation, the appropriate mitigation is provided through committed proffers or SUP conditions. That addresses location, construction impacts, environmental impacts, noise, infrastructure, view shed. And I will say that all of the approved data centers in the county to date have gone through that enabling process via rezonings. So we have proffered conditions that are in place. They're legally enforceable. Proffered conditions are always above and beyond what's required by code. And so, you know, there is oversight. There is accountability. These projects are being monitored well beyond during the construction and then post-construction. And then finally, prior to February of this year, there were, of course, the code amendments that required SGPs for data centers. It eliminated all buy-write development potential for data centers. And at that time, that was the acreage that would have been on the table for buy right was 3,452 acres. I will caveat that that acreage amount, that was an estimate that was provided by staff where we were targeting, you know, what we thought were viable data center sites. So we had based that on an assumption of 25 acre vacant tracks. So that's why that number is a little different than what I'll be presenting here following. This map, I know that we've seen this map a lot. This is on our website. We continuously update this as things change. This map identifies those data center projects that have been approved and that are under construction. Like I said, all of the ones that are approved and under construction went through the rezoning process with the board. You also have some that are identified here in yellow that are approved but have not moved forward to site plan or the construction process. Some that are within the site plan process currently. We have Crossroads Tech, of course, which is a pending SUP. And then those in purple are the pending rezoning applications that you have. we did just for the sake of you know we've had pre applications on these in red those are sites that we don't have an active application on we have had the kicking of the tires and so we do have those on the on the map but that by no means you know is identifying all of the industrial acreage that could potentially come in and with a future application It's important to note that everything that you see here, it really is mostly on the eastern side of 95. All of these have been in the Berkeley and the Lee Hill districts. All of them are within the primary development boundary, or at least within that one mile buffer of the primary development boundary. So to date, here's a breakdown of this square footage of data center development. So all those projects that have been approved, so those that are under construction or in the site plan stage, or those that have just been enabled but haven't moved forward, were just over 12 million square feet. This does not include that Mattamede campus, the portion that was approved within the county as a support site. It's for infrastructure. to support the data center that was approved in Caroline County. There is other acreage that was approved for data centers potentially. So when they went through the rezoning process, they identified a number of uses that they could develop as, and data center is among them. If those did go data center, you'd be looking at just over 3.2 million square feet. data center and then the total pending applications comes to 16.4 million square feet of data center so just as a recap from the board's meeting on August 11th Becky for he was presenting alongside me that night I'm not going to go over any of those projections but she provided some revenue projections I did attach the August 11th PowerPoint presentation to this agenda item for reference if anybody wants to go back and review that information during that presentation Becky did recommend that the county you know further explore how we can reduce the revenue risks and and by doing so that would certainly you know want to bring in our financial advisors and maybe other third-party consultants to provide additional analysis on that that point we discussed establishing land use guidance for what the ideal targeted amount of data center development in the county would be and the board I think all agreed that there's a desire to have a healthy economic base a healthy diversification of that economic base and there was some discussion of well what is that how do we get there What's the methodology? And so that was what the board directed staff to go back and come up with some ideas. You know, coming up with a specific square footage number is just very challenging. There's so many moving parts. And so that is not the route that we went as far as identifying a specific square footage. We mimicked the similar methodology that we employed when we established land use policies for solar energy facilities outside of the primary development boundary. We went the direction of more of geographic area. And so I'll get into more detail on that. But it piggybacked nicely with what we did present at the last meeting, which was talking about the geographic areas. within the primary development boundary. There's land use support for data center development within the primary development boundary and within a one-mile buffer. What staff had recommended is that we scale back that area, specifically eliminating that one-mile buffer all along the western side, mostly because what we're seeing is the data center development has occurred more on the east side we have the purple pipe on the east side the infrastructure is there and so that was our recommendation and the board unanimously agreed with that so we have moved forward with that And here's the map that depicts that. You'll see that this was the original, this red hatched area of one mile buffer around the primary development boundary. And what we've done is we've shrunk that. So that will, with the comp plan update, it's what we're moving forward with where this has all been scaled back to only this eastern portion of the primary development boundary. So here's the draft proposed policy language. And I will read this, and then I have more detail to back this up. It is the policy of the county to support and encourage a healthy diversification of the local economic base, reducing reliance on any single industry or sector. Through strategic planning, data-informed initiatives, and collaborative partnerships, the county will maintain long-term economic resilience and ensure its ability to adapt to changing conditions, emerging opportunities, and unforeseen challenges. One way this goal will be accomplished is by designating 55% of the county's industrial zoned acreage for data center development. This acreage includes both existing industrial districts and acreage to be rezoned to industrial classification. So here's the breakdown of what that looks like. The total undeveloped industrial gross acreage within the county is 5,874 acres. So that's where I want to make the distinction between what had been presented back in February when we were looking at what was the available acreage for by-right data center development. It's because that estimate had been provided looking at larger tracts that we thought were the most viable for data centers, the 25 acres, or more. What this figure is showing you is all undeveloped, vacant, industrial-zoned land. We did want to take into account that, you know, this area can have constraints, whether it be environmental, you know, floodplain, wetlands, steep slopes, and so we took a 25 percent discount to account for that. And the net of undeveloped industrial acreage in Spotsylvania is just over 4,400 acres. So with that and in addition to the 1,756 acres that have already been approved for data center development, we're at a total of 6,162. So if we're going, so our proposal is to designate no more than 55% of our industrial acreage to data center development, that would be 3,389 acres. So based on all of that, the available data center acreage balance would be 1,633 acres. I will note that the county's total undeveloped industrial acreage inventory accounts for only 2.22% of the county's entire landmass. The proposed language goes on to say that the county will reassess the suitability of the 55% industrial acreage designation at the next scheduled five-year comprehensive plan update or upon the initiation of construction on 75% of the entitled data center projects, whichever threshold is reached first. Additionally, the county would continue to collect data and, when appropriate, obtain third-party analyses to support initiatives aimed at mitigating revenue risks. And so this 75% threshold of the approved data center square footage we have, it's just over 15.4 million. And 75% would be once over 11.5 million square feet was under construction is when that would trigger a reassessment or with our next five-year update. So with next steps, our current five-year update has been well underway. We had our final work session with the Planning Commission on August 5th. We're targeting a public hearing with the Planning Commission in October, and then hopefully having public hearing with the Board in your November meeting. So if the Board does desire to incorporate this additional language or other policies, we do need that direction tonight. in order for us to stay on track with our public hearing schedules. But if additional consideration is needed, which is understandable, we would recommend that we just peel this off as its own separate standalone comprehensive plan amendment. And with that, that concludes my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions.

Okay. Supervisor Mullins, thank you, Kimberly.

Yeah, thanks, Kimberly. Can you – I know we talked about a number. The 75% threshold of square footage, what was the number that we guesstimated it would be at 100%? Was that like 30 or something like that? Is that what it was or something? Like when you total it all up.

I'm sorry, Mr. Mullins asked me that again.

Okay, I know that the square footage aspect of things can be variable. Like, there's a lot of factors that go into it. It's not... the the sites the limitations all that although the acreage might make people think that you can build on it when you incorporate the guidelines or the standards and everything else that shrinks the footprint down and then you have wetlands and terrain and all other kinds of things so they actually developed the actual potential for some of these sites the the square footage could be a lot less um But in our discussion, I think we we were looking at because the public was concerned about an actual number of data center square footage and what we're trying to do is get into the weeds. with how you calculate this as staff so that people understand it's not just a rote, hey, this many millions of square footage. So I guess my question is the 75% threshold, that's the seventh inning stretch or the pause and reassess as to the trajectory. And at that point, it could be that it's 27 million square footage or whatever it is. Is there any amplifying information? I'm trying to take advantage of the opportunity so that those who are in the audience or listening who are concerned about the issues, that they understand we've looked hard at the modality to use and acreage and percentage of developable acreage is a much more relevant way of looking at it. Is that correct?

It is. I think that with just looking at a square footage, It was, again, that was the most challenging. I think the message staff heard certainly from the board was, you know, what was the best plan for the county? What provided the county with, you know, a diverse economic base? We're not putting all our eggs in one basket. You know, one way to look at it was to say, okay, well, you know, how much – for any zoning district, for your non-residential development, you have a floor area ratio. That's how much can you build on an acre of land. If I did that calculation based on the available vacant industrial zone property, it came to about 125 million square feet. Well, That was not reasonable. So, again, we went down a lot of rabbit holes. And so, you know, I think that everybody agrees we don't want to put all our eggs in one basket. And going the acreage route, it allows, again, for each case that's going to come before you, to stand on its own merit. It establishes a guideline for, again, that we don't want just one industry in the county. It speaks to the finance department's message of revenue risk. That's not the right way to go, is to put all your eggs in one basket. And so this establishes a parameter that will help the board in your decision making for each one of these projects on its own individual merit, but it also gives you a seventh inning stretch to say, okay, well, wait a minute, was 55% the right number? Because maybe the board does pursue additional studies that looks at What is the best diversification? Is 55% correct? But we need more studies. And that's not something that we believe in-house that we're capable of providing you in this short amount of time.

And the last thing, would you reemphasize the 2.2%? Because that's an important number as well.

Yes, that the 5,874 acres of industrial land that we have currently, it represents 2.2% of the county's entire land mass.

And we've got the approved $1,756, and then minus that, it leaves $1,633 available. Yes, sir. Okay, thank you.

supervisor guzman thanks madam chair so so kimberly in your opinion then looking at it from an acreage standpoint does that become a more conservative than policy for us versus going purely by square foot i mean is there an advantage to us by doing it by the acreage

would say yes because it speaks to what we heard the board discuss at your last meeting of that you weren't against data center development but you also did wanted to not have all your eggs in one basket you wanted to you didn't want to take up all of your industrial land for just data centers and so picking a square footage think it could have been a little bit arbitrary it was just and again it was just couldn't nail down a good methodology to say 30 million square feet is the correct amount 15 million square feet is the right it was just it's too many factors honestly and you know given the board's decision in February to require any data center to have to go through the enabling process this approach to scaling back the one-mile buffer around the primary development boundary and focusing on your industrial inventory, your zoned inventory, and saying you're earmarking this is the right amount for data center development and leaving the balance to other industries. I think it just further supports the board's decision to eliminate data centers by right and let each case stand on its own.

Yeah, thank you. And I think that is the message that we were trying to get at. You know, we were struggling, as you said. You know, we've heard numbers like 28,000 square feet. We've had other lower numbers banded around, you know, saying maybe that's right. But it's still an arbitrary number. We wanted to come up with some methodology. And so I do applaud you for the methodology you've used to use the acreage. And I think that could be something. And again, I want to make sure that the public's hearing it because, again, You know, it is going to limit, you know, based upon some percentages and things like that, that gives the board some leeway. But at the end of the day, it does come down to board decision board action for every, every project that comes through to vote yes or no, regardless of what's in the, in the comprehensive plan. But I say that because at the same time, as we hear that we want to slow things down, and we've said that from the dais, we still have that ability to do that. And that's what the SUP allows us to do. And yet we can advertise to industry and to the sectors out there, this is what we're looking for. So as we start looking at these things, and we know we're not too far from that. Now, honestly, you know, and as we get the ones that are being built, when we get to a certain percentage here of, you know, we can reevaluate again. So I think it allows us some some planning and some thought to do that and still meet the need that we have to say, let's let's figure out how much is enough and have some methodology behind it. So I absolutely would support getting this language into the comprehensive plan so that, again, we can move it forward. And then and like everything as as we go, As things change, you know, we can amend it again later. But I think it's important to get this in for this review. Thank you.

Dr. Frazier? Thank you, Kimberly. We really appreciate your presentation. I wanted to just ask, you gave us the percentage of undeveloped industrial acreage. I'm wondering what is that percent of the approved data centers based on the county landmass? Approximately like point six percent Point six percent of the entire county that has been developed for data set point six. Thank you.

That's that's all the questions that I have. Thank you. Supervisor. Yeah, thank you.

And, um, thank you for trying to get to a methodology that we can actually put into the comprehensive plan. To be a guide. And I think I had said before, you know, what are we trying to accomplish by limiting data centers? And I think then we need to work back from that. But first question I do have, because that was interesting, that 2% of the land mass is industrial zoned. Is all the industrial zoned land in the PSD?

You have a couple of outliers, but the majority, yes.

Okay, so 2.2% of the land mass, but what percentage of the land in the PSD is industrial land? Because what we're doing is we're congregating all of them into the corner of the county, but saying it's only 2% of all of this. So that to me is not apples to apples. That's a little bit of, I just don't think that that's a percentage that I want to rest anything on. Secondly, I would... also say that the um question i had then if it's 55 what do we do with rezonings and so if you have a rezoning of let's say let's just do big numbers so we don't have to so if we have 2 000 acres that we can do and that that's the 55 let's And 1,000 acres comes up that is already zoned industrial and is in the process. Somebody else comes up with 1,500 acres and wants to rezone it. I mean, are they not allowed to? Do I have to wait for the other one? I mean, how does that sort of work? Because the 55%, just like any square footage, is an arbitrary number. And so what I'm wondering is, because one of my biggest concerns with all of this, when you get past the height, the noise, the view shed, all of that, is the fact that a lot of this seems to me to be speculative purchasing of land. And they're not going to move on this stuff for a very long time because, and as we're finding out, the electricity is really the core to all of this. And so then if electricity is core to all of this and somebody comes in and says we want to build a data center, but yet their timeline to get the electricity to their site is 10 years, why are we even considering it? I don't understand that part. And then the other part, too, is that if... They are told that their energy is going to be there in a short amount of time, but then that gets moved. and now they have to then consider doing on-site generation of power how much control over that does the county have because you can have a lot of these places that you know energy might not be there for 10 years the county doesn't have control over the energy but we've already rezoned it it might be 10 years out they come up with a you know new technology whatever that might be now all of a sudden that's powered up and it's ready to roll So there seems to be a lot of questions, or I have a lot of questions, of how these types of restrictions work in the real world. Because quite honestly, I mean, I would be fine with just saying, You know, if we do square footage, and we already have what? 15,000,000 approved. Is that what roughly we have? Just say 20,000,000. There we go done. And at that point, anything beyond that is up to the discretion of the board to see if it is a project worthwhile to even approve. Because remember, the comprehensive plan is violated all the time by the board. And I say that just so people understand that it is a guide. It is not gospel. It's something that changes. I mean, the PSD boundary has been moved. A rezoning is a change to the comprehensive plan. So it is a guide, and I would like to know what that guide. What we're trying to accomplish with that guide, because for me, what I would like to accomplish is, as we had passed last time, the moratorium request from the state based upon energy. Because if we don't have energy for these things, why are we passing them? Number one. Then number two, if there is another way for them to generate energy and we don't have control over how that energy is produced on site, now we have all of these that we have approved that now get powered up immediately. So I would rather have a lower number of square footage or a lower number of acreage percentage And then if it is a worthwhile project, then we can change it and change our mind. I don't know why we would set it up here, set it down here, and allow us to make those tough decisions later on and not just have a ton of these things just sitting there waiting to go. And in fact, during the presentation, When Kimberly had said that there were several of these things that were, you know, there's not 8 sites approved by the county. There's 8 potential sites that can be there. We did not approve data centers for every single 8 sites. And in fact, I can think of 2 of them where and. And what I'm saying is the ones that came forward and said, we're going to be data centers was not 8. The ones that can be data centers is eight. And that's why we changed the buy right to get away from that ability for them to slip it in. And those had already been approved, but I will tell you the one that is down in Thornburg. And if you look at that and you go back to that meeting, which I have and watch it and listen to it and even hear my own comments, data centers never showed up as a potential in that whole thing. And so that is what we're trying to get to, learning from our Northern Virginia neighbors that The buy right was something to take away, and we did it very, very early in the process, which was, you know, leaps and bounds ahead of everybody else. But now we're dealing with, well, what can we do to limit the... These projects are coming in here and just sitting idle. And I guess that's really what I'm getting to is a lot of these are just going to sit idle. I remember talking to some of the Amazon folks at first, and they had told me this is a 25-year plan that they have with the initial stuff that they've done because they haven't touched the other two. They're working on a couple of them, but the other two are just sitting there. And so if these are long-range plans, why are we jumping on doing this right away?

Supervisor Mullins.

Not to directly address what you're talking about, Chris, but this was a starting point based on public's concerns and wanting to get this into the comprehensive plan staff needed guidance and direction and this is a first step in doing that this is a a measured approach that allows us to assess we can assess at any time you know it's not not like we have to wait until 75 percent's done But this is in the big picture, it's a conservative thing. And I know people can debate that, but we had to start somewhere. So by slapping an arbitrary number, hey, why not just 20 million? You know, you're kind of defeating the whole purpose of development, in my opinion. So at any time we can say, you know what, let's look at this again. So I appreciate the hard work staff's done, you know, How do you even address the square footage thing or even the acreage aspects when each site's going to pose its own challenges? So I think this is a great way to start. And I almost forgot. To answer your question in three words, special use permit. OK, special use permit allows the seven of us here at the board to be the moratorium to kill a project, to make changes, to scale it back, to get more proffers, to say no or not. So that's this is where we do the work. And at any time, you know, we can say, hey, I think we've had enough or whatever. But each project allows us the opportunity to to do that.

Well, if I can respond to that, 20 million square feet, if it's arbitrary, so is 55%. These are all arbitrary numbers.

Actually, they're not arbitrary numbers. We tasked staff to come up with a methodology to that, and Kimberly just explained it. It's not arbitrary. It was a starting point. You have to start someplace.

But it's an arbitrary number. There's no methodology behind saying 55% is the correct number to have. That's the arbitrary nature of 55%. That's my point.

It's 55% of the industrial acreage designated. or rezonings no yes yeah the rezonings that are part of industrial reason or that could be potentially yeah that's right it could be right and so that doesn't add on top of it that's that would become part of the the the number right so if you looked at rezoning so if you would be make you would be you would be eating up some of your potential acreage you wouldn't be adding to it

Right. So my point, though, is that if it's not arbitrary, then why is it 55%? And if it's not arbitrary, then why don't we pick a number that is lower? Why are we opening up even more ability? Because what this does, just like the comprehensive plan in any regard, says, for instance, this corridor is going to be, you know, residential mixed use. And somebody comes in with a residential mixed use project, and they say, well, we're following the comprehensive plan. So the point to putting in these limits is to say to them out there, this is the cutoff point. Okay, we're done. We can always change it. We can always rezone it. We can always look at an SUP, and we can always approve it. But to lay out the carpet, I would like it to be a short carpet and not a really long one so that they think that they have a big vacuum to fill of projects to come into the county if they are this wonderful why don't we wait till some of these are actually paying taxes and and operational and and working along so that we can get a good sense of it so i would rather a lower number i'm not against the number i just say let's do a lower number And then as it materializes, we can see whether that number was correct or not.

So to that point then, and we don't have to play tennis up here back and forth, but we have approved data center square footage of 15.5.

Okay.

Right. And 75% threshold is a starting point. The other factor is also the diversification of our revenue portfolio. When we ask staff to, hey, how can we be conservative about going forward? And there's other factors than just... us grabbing a 55% number that went into deciding, or at least starting point of doing that. So we can disagree on that. I mean, I feel like staff's just trying to get it in because we have a deadline to get the comprehensive plan updated. So that's

Yeah, and so, right, Chris, so this really is, if you have a counter to that, you know, we can certainly entertain that, but there was, from some input from the community, some of these numbers were discussed, and it's almost like a two-fold thing. where it's like the industrial zone land and then that 75% kind of cap type of thing, and we were trying to come up with a way for it all to make sense. And because we discussed the square footage cap, and that was going to be difficult to really manage around that, that's why we did it this way but if there's another i don't necessarily think anybody disagrees with we want to slow this down you know kind of slow it down take our time get our breath that sort of thing and again it is the comprehensive plan it's just the guideline so um you know If there's another suggestion, I mean, by all means, that's what we're up here doing right now is we're discussing it so that we can figure out how to put it in.

You know I have suggestions. You know that. This doesn't go on for a while. But my point is that 55 to me at least seems kind of high. So if it is much lower, then it would say that we still do want – You know, to be business friendly, we don't want to close the door and slam the door and say, absolutely not, never, never, never. But what we do want is we want that to be reined in kind of tight so we have more control over it. It seems like 55 allows a lot more.

Okay, so do you have a counter to the 55?

Well, I'd have to do math, but I pull out 40 just because it's a nice even number. Okay. But I would pull out my calculator because we already have a certain amount that's already designated because it's already zoned and ready to roll. So if you take that from the land that we already have zoned industrial, what would 40% do? I don't know.

She's doing the calculation. Where's Becky when you need her, right?

Yeah. Oh, wait. Julie's there.

Julie's just letting Kimberly dangle.

And, you know, this came before the Planning Commission, right? And this was debated on the Planning Commission side. And they went back and forth and back and forth and tried to kind of come up with what they thought would be the best thing. And so in an effort to try and make sure that this was in the comprehensive plan, That's why we wanted to get something going.

So Madam Chairman, 40% would be 2,464 acres. So with what's already been approved to date, it would leave an available balance of 708 acres. Yeah.

And I'm sure so, so I'd support 40, 40%. I mean, let's, let's set it low, you know, let it work itself. So it's a number, I mean, you know, we put a number in there at the end of the day, as, as drew, as you mentioned, it's an SUP, you know, it's gotta come before us. Uh, we're gonna make a decision based on, on there. Um, you know, I think we've learned a lot in the last few years watching what's going on. Um, you know, we've got several of them out there that, that are zoned, that shouldn't have been rezoned like they were, and they're gonna, they're gonna hang out there on us. Um, You know, but future ones coming through, you know, those that come through that don't have an end user. I mean, we got to start saying no. I mean, you know, I think we've learned that. So we're not going to get those in the future. You know, and again, you know, 700 acres left in the I mean, that's. That's fine. I was even thinking 35%. But 40% is fine. I think it gives us a chance to at least have a number that says, look, maybe less than half of our industrial is going to be data centers so we can show that, hey, we're not going to overly commit to data centers. And it gives us a number to work with. We can reevaluate as we go. We could probably play tennis and I'll be in the middle here on the number, but I'd be fine with 40%.

Well, and this is what we need to do up here is have these conversations, right? I mean, somebody has to serve the ball at first, and that's what this was. And now we're going back and forth trying to come to a consensus. And doing it in the public eye so everybody can see it. It's out in the open. Drew. Drew.

So what would be the 700 plus acres? What is the pending idea, pending acreage for rezonings? Do you have an idea on that?

I don't have the total amount. I'm sorry, off the top of my head, but I'll say, you know, you have a couple of projects that are pending that are 600 acres each. The rest of them are much smaller sites. I know nobody asked, but I was on a roll with my calculations. 45%, if you went the 45% route, that's 2,772, and that would leave you a balance of 1,016 acres. What about 50%, please?

Did you have something, Jacob, you wanted to add?

No, just for the board's sake too and for the public this evening, that is reflective of project-wide acreage. So it's not necessarily just the acreage devoted to data center buildings and the limits of disturbance or any accessory buildings and substations. That's the entire project acreage. So that is inclusive of open space, buffering, vegetation. Some of the projects that we've seen have left tremendous amounts of land area on the table that are not data centers so that it would be inclusive of all those things.

I think you kind of cleared something up because that's where I was concerned. It's not like we're saying things can't change. This is where we stop and pause and evaluate. So when you're looking at acreage, like you said, Crossroads is 600 and something acres and the footprint's under 200, I believe, due to limitations. So To Chris's point, it is arbitrary in the sense that you don't know what the actual site will allow you to do. But if it's too restrictive, well, then, you know, how do we manage that? I think that's where I was. All right, you got it. Okay, you got it. So, Kimberly. I'm filibustering for you.

I'm sorry, Drew. I didn't mean to. Can you give us the – you did the calculation for 40, 45, 50, and 55, right?

I didn't announce 50%, but 50%, it leaves you a balance of 1,181 acres. Okay, and then 45? 45 gave you a balance of 1,016 acres. And then 40? A balance of 708 acres. Okay.

Okay, and 1,633 was the 55. Okay. Yes, ma'am.

33? Okay. Okay. So...

Is there consensus from the... I'm trying to get there. I'm trying to get something down here.

Just real quick, because there's been a lot of talk about pausing, and this is a good time to pause. We have stuff that's approved. We have stuff that's being built. We have stuff that the energy that was supposed to be provided is now being pushed back. We have a lot of issues that are now we can look at and evaluate what that's going to look like in the future. My concern is by rushing in and approving a lot more of them down the road, it will get out of hand and it's already approved and that takes away our power that we have as a governing body to determine what is what in the future.

But this is the comprehensive plan that we're talking about. So you're talking about two different things. I just want to stick with getting – because staff really needs to move forward with this. So I really want to get something in the comprehensive plan that is – I get what your point is. I understand that. But they need something that they can start moving forward to get in the comprehensive plan.

And that's why I was shooting for a lower number because it also does, you know, in theory sort of slow things down too. And so I'm not opposed to a 40%. Okay.

Yeah, so, Madam Chair, I agree. So, you know, one, half these data centers are in my district. My constituents are saying, slow it down, lower numbers. I would be in favor of saying 40%, and let's cap it there. And now we have something to play with, a number that we can work with and evaluate as we go. We still have all the authorities we have up here anyway. It's a comprehensive plan. But now we're at least partnering with our community, and we're hearing them and saying, hey, we want to see a lower number. So let's put a 40 in there. Let's keep it a little bit lower, and now we have something we can play with.

Dr. Frazier, did you want me to? Okay.

Okay.

I could be supportive. I could support 45. Okay.

Dr. Frazier. I don't mean to put you on the spot.

No, I'm up here just thinking about the dialogue that has taken place, and it's all arbitrary. If we really look at it, we have to make a decision of where it is. And I would say that one of the things that we cannot afford to do, we cannot afford to undermine staff. When we send them on a task to look at bringing us back whatever it is that we've asked them to do, and our discussion is rich, I don't disagree with that. But when do we trust what has been brought before us? And if that is really that we're going to say that this is the number, then we need to then don't ask staff to do it. Basically, we are asking our staff, we've tasked them with the opportunity to go and look at what we've asked them to do. And yes, the final decision is ours. And I'm not being critical of our debate because that's healthy, that should be done. But when do we trust our staff to bring us back the reality of it? And what we're hearing loud and clear is that the footprint of and don't lose sight of that the footprint of the the project is really the meat of it there's a lot that is considered but when we look at the footprint of what has already been done i think if we want to be transparent to our community our footprint of what we've approved already is much less than what we have initially approved. So I want there to not be this notion that a lower number is the right thing. What we need to look at is past approval of data centers. What has been approved and what is the actual footprint of that? That is where we are. And so I would say that's my comment. And that's the reality, not made up.

All right. I know. I still think 40 is the right number, you know, based upon input from the public. You know, we've sat here for months now, almost some of you are longer than that, you know, debating numbers and how do we slow these down? How do we stop them? We've heard all that. You know, I'm all for, you know, let's take it a pause. You know, let's let's look at what we've got. Let's see if we can get some more of these approved and operating and see what kind of revenue it's going to be. Let's see some reality in it. And I think if we set the number too high, it sets a wrong message for those. Industries coming in on the comprehensive plan side. You know, I think I think it's been loud and clear from the, from the, from the public that they want to see it slowed down and we've talked about it. So, I think, you know, um, again, you know, yeah, we can say it's an arbitrary number, but, you know, we can, we can then. Put some confidence in that, you know, 1, we're listening to those that put us up here and and we're going to still get to make those decisions based upon each 1 that comes through because it's an, so they all get to get to be evaluated and we can go up or down from that. If we get something, that's absolutely a great deal for the county. But I still think I'll support 40.

So, okay, and I'm glad we all have a chance to weigh in on this, okay, because I think it's important. I think whether it's 40% or 55%. I'm fine with 40%, by the way. I'm good with that. But whether it's 40% or 55%, just by the mere fact that we're doing this is sending a message. I just want to make sure that everybody knows that, that this is part of the bigger picture that has to be out there, right? And so if we want to do 40%, I'm good with that, knowing that... that this is a message that we're already sending. We are so, pause for this commercial break right now, but we are so far ahead of our neighbors on what we have done. And I know you all don't feel that way. I know you don't feel that way. But if you just look at what the mess that they're dealing with, because they did not do the work that we've done in the past year, couple of years and what staff has done three years ago three and a half years ago when they were delving into this we are so much farther ahead than our neighbors on just making sure that it's being done right so I just want to all right we're back from commercial and so if if if we can do 40% on this now the other part part of that calculation where are we good there Kimberly, do you want to go over that just one more time? I'm sorry.

No, that's okay. The other part of the calculation, like the 75%, is that's just when you are going to reassess. I'll say, frankly, 11.5 million square feet, it's a lot. I think that next five-year update to your comp plan is most likely going to occur before you hit that 75% mark. Okay. And, of course, any element of the comprehensive plan can be considered and adjusted at any time.

What would 75%, if we stick with that number, on, is 40% the 1,016? 40,000. Or 40%. Sorry, 40% of the acreage. That gave you a balance of 708 acres.

Oh.

So what's the 75% part of that? Right. But we have a number here in the draft. That changes, correct? Yeah. So we can keep that number the same. Is that it?

Because that number was just purely just identifying the threshold of when you would reassess if you thought the 55% was right or the 40%, wherever you land tonight.

And I'll just add to that as well, to Mr. Yakubowski's point about some of the Amazon projects that we've had. not all these projects necessarily immediately go to construction. And I'm going to go away from data centers for a moment, but go to some of the projects that were approved, mixed-use projects that were approved back in 2010 and 2011. Alexander's Crossing, Nye Village, some of those projects, Heritage Woods actually has never even started yet. Alexander's Crossing, we've gotten... pieces of that constructed in recent era, and the rest of it, the balance of it went to the Amazon-Cosner Tech campus, and some of it has to be rezoned again because the remaining parcel won't meet the project. Nye Village is considering going by right after all these years. Some of that build-out that we may expect with all this acreage that we're talking about may not actually occur anytime soon. So in a sense, you kind of close the door based on acreage, and you may never... Who knows when you meet that that market driven build out that's the only concern that we would have on the build out on how that actually relates to the implementation of these acres that have been enabled.

Right that is a good point to to make because we do have. If we look at residential, look at how many are enabled, but they just kind of sit there and don't do anything. But those got approved, too. You know what I mean? At the time. I mean, the market changes, whatever. So, okay, so you all need us to give direction.

So... Yeah, I need more time to... digest it because we worked on this with staff for quite a while and we're spending 30 minutes and there's a lot of other factors that go into it so I just I'm not against you know adjusting this at all but okay but they're kind of and I don't mean to be like pressuring but I they're what is the latest that we can give because I know you got to go to public hearing and all right is this the latest

This is the last meeting that we have with you before, yeah, we are up against our advertising deadlines to get this to public hearing.

Okay.

I will say one thing of just as far as why did staff come up with 55%, that was based on us looking at what you do have available. in the pipeline, in the pending status. Our goal is to give you all of the resources, all of the information to make the best decision you can. we want to set you up for success. I don't want to recommend policy language that you would have to contradict with a land use decision, with the denial or the approval of a rezoning or an SUP. So frankly, by setting it at 40%, you're potentially saying we're only going to approve one more. Okay? Which is, okay, I just want that to be clear. The 55% It was a little bit of a middle ground. That did not assume that every single pending case was going to get approved. It was just a middle ground. It gave you some buffer. Again, that recommendation is to set you up for success and not put you in a position where you have to contradict policy language that you have in your comprehensive plan. It's, you know, with every case that you consider, you know, is every single policy, goal, initiative in the comp plan checked? No, it's not. Because some contradict each other within the document. You can't have a fiscally positive project, residential project, but it also be an affordable housing project. Right. Those two don't exist. But again, if you're setting these thresholds, I want to set this up for success where, again, you can make the decision based on the project and its own merit and not set it up so restrictive that it forces you to have to contradict yourself if you do have a project that is a value add to the community that you do want to approve.

And then to Kimberly's point, I want to piggyback on that one more time as well. So to Kimberly's point about potentially giving room for one more project, data centers, as Kimberly had noted in 2011, were identified as a targeted industry in this county. So unless that changes, we have a targeted industry that by land use we're suggesting we have room for maybe one more project, and yet we're still a targeted industry. To me, in our view, that kind of creates – conflicting messaging. We want to target industry, but one more project. So in that sense, it at least provides a little bit more wiggle room to that percentage point. Beyond that, if this methodology and percentages and the means, I know from the last meeting that I had attended, From finance side, there was a suggestion that there was additional financial study needed to figure out what that magic diversification mix would be. And until that study has been commissioned and those numbers have been realized, I don't know that we have anything else really to provide y'all as a recommendation for that kind of magical number. To accommodate it as a target industry that's potentially welcomed here, but also... Not essentially creating a land use based moratorium that says we don't we close the door on it while we're also trying to attract it at the same time. So that's that's kind of the staff concern that we have right now. It's it's kind of conflicting messaging. Okay.

Okay, so we have a project that started out as buy rights, was moving down the road, checking all the blocks. They went through a data center ordinances and standards evolution. Let's put it that way last year. And then now they're going through an SUP process. Um, that's a 600 acre, uh, plus, uh, hit on the acreage. Um, If this was something we were going to do, I mean, to be respectful of the process, there's an applicant who's going through the actual process right now. We have the potential of, again, moving the goalposts on things and then affecting anything that comes after it. So if we're going to be fair, I don't even like to use that word. I think it's misused these days. It should not affect that particular project. So if you're going to look at 40%, it should be fair. something that's coming afterwards it's that is actually going to be in the sup process in my opinion second it the the percentage should be also of what footprint is actually usable like when the plan comes before us the actual usable portion of 600 and something acres is going to be 200 let's say so if that acreage

IS TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT I THINK WE HAVE A MORE EQUITABLE UTILIZATION OF THE ACREAGE OF 40 MY INITIAL SUGGESTION ON THAT WOULD BE MORE BASED ON LIMITS TO DISTURBANCE AND THEN LEAVING ALL THE FORESTRY BUFFERS AND KIMBERLY IF YOU HAVE A DIFFERENT POINT ON THAT UM I WOULD THINK KIND OF THE PROJECT FOOTPRINT WHAT WE VIEW AS THE EFFECTIVE AREA OF IMPACT WITHIN THE DATA CENTER BUT THAT'S ALL I CAN REALLY THINK ABOUT DOES THAT

Does that suggestion make sense to my fellow board members? So rather than just penalize someone because they bought a big parcel and now, you know, they come before us knowing that, you know, here's the footprint. Then the SUP process happens. Then they go to the planning commission. The negotiations happen, you know, understanding that like, hey, before we call timeout, The applicants have to do their diligence. And I think that's a more academic, more realistic way of appropriating the acreage in a more usable way.

uh david sorry yeah thanks madam chair so so drew i agree i think you know and and again crossroads a great example 600 some acres they're only doing 200. they shouldn't get penalized we shouldn't penalize ourselves even for that 400 acres without being disturbed because one it can't be used anyway you know so it should be you know we could use those numbers in our calculations to give us wiggle room and in some of those numbers i think i'd be fine with that You know, there's no reason to assume that every acre that is on the parcels get developed in the data center.

Yeah, so if we're looking to try to find a way to get to a decision, you know, that's where I sit, you know. Don't penalize an applicant that's in the process right now of going through the SUP process. And then apply this comprehensive plan number. Going forward and also apply it in a judicial way towards the actual footprint that would be disturbed.

So I think if we use the actual footprint being disturbed, we get some different numbers. You know, in the in the available amount, you know, for going forward, which again, just give something in the plan to work with for future other things. But, you know, But I think I still think 40 is still a good number because I still think the numbers will work out that well. And again, and I keep saying that because my constituents would be fine if there were no more data centers. You know, I mean, just be honest. But again, we're being realistic here. We're providing a framework in the comprehensive plan, but still still giving the idea that, hey, yes, you know, we want to take a pause. This is how we're going to do it in our comprehensive plan. And it's not that it's not, you know, We don't want data centers. Some people do don't want them. But again, it's we look, you know, we want to take a pause. We want to evaluate, see where we're at, look at some of these studies that we need to do. You know, you mentioned about doing some other studies. You know, there's a time to do that. And so, you know, I think setting the numbers so that they're a little bit low, I think is is sending that right message both to our constituents and to the industry to say, hey, you know, let's let's just take a pause here in Spotsylvania.

And I'll end with this one. 70-30. Okay. We're trying to get to 70-30. You know, we're... Industry, commerce, everything is paying, is carrying the brunt of taxes in our county. And right now we're like 18% or something like that, I think. And it stresses us, you know, whether it's, you know, how are we going to... So I want us to not lose sight of our comprehensive plan designates trying to get to 70-30. So all these things come into play when we're trying to make these kinds of decisions. It's not just, you know, arguing over an actual number. So I'm actually trying to stay focused on what we're trying to solve here instead of just blanket numbers, blanket acreage, things like that. So I think, David, we're approaching some agreement there as far as how we'd allocate whatever the 40% of usable acreage would be. So thank you.

And the comprehensive plan, this is the five-year update, which has to be done by 1-1, correct? So what we're talking about right now doesn't really go into effect until January, correct? I mean, we're still going to have public hearings and stuff, but I guess it has to be done before that time.

It would go into effect the day it's adopted.

So that would but you still have to have public hearings. We're not there yet.

Yeah, we're so meeting November, November.

Okay. So I think where we are

is looking at the land disturbance is that what is that what we're talking about um dr frazier are you okay yeah i would like us to consider what is the actual footprint that's being disturbed instead of looking at the total acreage What is the footprint print of the disturbance of the line?

The biggest difficulty with some of that is those projects that we talked about earlier that were approved for potentially data centers, but also a number of different things we had, like, the broadest rezoning that had. warehouse distribution facilities that could potentially also be data centers. And I think that was for economic development purposes to allow a broader array of potential industrial uses in an employment center land use area, let the market decide. In that case, we don't necessarily, from the GDP, I don't know how much confidence we have in the limits of disturbance at the rezoning stage for a project like that, because there is some flexibility in those GDPs. And I don't know if Kimberly has any...

I think it just gets to again that you would That would be considered with each project that comes before you and I would say if what I would recommend is that maybe we Edit the the draft language floor computer, please perhaps we get there by saying one way the school will be accomplished is by designating 55% of the county's industrial zoned acreage, I was going to say developed. We can caveat that it's the actual developed land area, not just total acreage, but developed land area. And I think that speaks to then when these projects come in and are identifying what they're disturbing. Because, yeah, we've had a couple projects, or there's the one pending that's proposing 40% of open space. Not everyone is going to do that, but that's one element then that can be considered with each project on its own. So we could revise this to make it clear that it's the actual developed industrial acreage that we're looking at specifically, not total

Chris, but is developed acreage is only at site plan. It's not GDP because that can change, right?

So you're with every case that's been approved to date. There were proper commitments of what the maximum square footage would be. Right. So you would know that.

But with that taken into account, even substations and roads and stormwater, all that kind of stuff, we could calculate that to a precise number at the approval stage?

Yeah, and all your GDPs identify disturbed acreages. They identify limits of development, what's going to be set aside as open space. So, I mean, all of that is identified at the rezoning or the SGP stage.

Okay, well, if we were to do something like that, then I would say that 40% number has to go down because then what you're doing is just opening up for more data centers. And I'll say, because I've sat and listened very respectfully. is that in 2011 and years after that, when it was a targeted industry, I would challenge anybody to think 15 years ago that we would actually be sitting here now with all of this. Um, it was talked about with solar when the solar farm came in that hey, data centers are coming next. Don't you worry? And nothing materialized. It came in very fast 3 years ago. Nothing has even been voted on for a year. I think his last data center was last year sometime. Um, August or so, so nothing has been done in a year. We have these sites that are approved that. For actual data centers and to potentially be data centers and so for us to. not at least pull back and say hang on one second we have all of this stuff that we've already approved we don't know what the heck it's going to do to our county how it's going to look what it's going to how it's going to affect the the revenue numbers for goodness sake you know how we were we were you know told oh geez don't you worry that's a does billions of dollars going to be rolling in now we see it's like 1.3 million per aws um building 1.3 million? I'm sorry, isn't that like a Walmart? You know, this is the thing. It's a lot of promises that are made and then reality hits. And I think that it is about time that we can just, it's the comprehensive plan. As has been said a million times, an SUP can be voted on. We can do it. It doesn't matter. And I understand that we don't want to be set up to do that, but it can be done. So I don't see the harm in scaling it back, limiting it to send a message that, hey, we have a lot right now. Let's see how it all shakes out, and then we can go forward from there. Not doing that, I think, just opens up that or keeps that door open for stuff in the future, and it really does bother me that the – power side of all of this is not being addressed, refuses to be addressed, and might be addressed by on-site power generation that we're not even, as a board, discussing, limiting, talking about. What does that look like? What powers do we even have on that? So until we can get a better handle on what is going on, gee whiz, let's just limit it for now. We're not stopping any building that's going on right now. The things that are going to stop that is the lack of electricity, and that's out of our hands. So I would like to limit it to the point that we can get control back. SUP still gives us the power to do whatever we want, to approve whatever we would like, and so we're not saying no to anybody, but what we are saying is we need to take a breather, pull back, and figure this out right now.

Okay, and thank you for that. And, I mean, I'm just going to say the same holds true for residential. You know, we've got a bunch of stuff out there, too. I just want to say that because there's been a lot of residential that has come through here, and it sits there, and the schools are overcrowded, and this is that, and everything, and that goes back through, too. So what you're saying I totally get. But it doesn't just apply to one thing. It applies to everything. So can we come to a consensus, or do we have to punt this and peel it off separately? Because if we punt it and peel it off separately, we got zero. So we need to have a consensus on something. Or we don't. But, you know, we can debate it another hour or two.

I'll make a motion to take staff's recommendation but lower it to 40%. Okay.

So we tasked staff. They came back with this number, with 55, et cetera, which at the time seemed fairly deliberate and conservative, and it had some metrics associated with it, something that we can work with and assess. I'm all for us being unified in what we decide to do. That's my most important thing. thing i'm not running for anything i'm not in favor of a moratorium i'm not wanting to stop right now i voted against that so i don't want to come across as being supporting a moratorium and basically that's what this would turn out to be and that's why i'm trying to compromise which i think is greatly i think 40 is too low but i'm willing to do it as long as we identify the acreage as we've been discussing so um if it's if we can't agree on that then You don't have my support.

One last question to Kimberly. You mentioned earlier that you were trying to set us up for success in your analysis of what you were looking at and not have us to contradict our own comprehensive plan. What are we... If we didn't go the 55% and we're seeing that 40% would back us up, would back us into a corner with contradicting and not being really truthful about what we have decided on as a board. Would... how would 45 or 50%, is it a better scenario from where you sit? Because I wanna get, I don't wanna put you on the spot, but from where you sit and what you all have done in this equation, would, since we are not coming to consensus with the 55 and 40, Would the 45 or 50 set us better up for success? And also send the message that we're listening to the community, but also we are... we're standing behind our word and we're not flip-flopping because it seems as though that's the space that we're in right now um what would it be for us i do think a higher percentage than 40 does give the board um

cushion and I would not have that opinion if there was by right development potential for data center but there is none so every single case has to come through the enabling process that was if that was not true then I would be more conservative with the recommended percentage than than what we came in with but because we don't have the by right

we are flip-flopping and we're going back on what we've decided as a board. I know you don't wanna use those terms, but I can say that. I will say it for you. So I think we need it. We've heard it from our staff that 40% is too low. Can we come to consensus that it would be 45 or 50?

If I could just add I mean staff will support and implement whatever the board decides so I mean You know, it's up to you all to just provide guidance and direction to us as staff On this issue and we'll certainly support whatever you all decide So

Any last-minute discussions on that?

Okay.

Madam Chair.

Yes.

So, yeah, you know, I was willing to look at how we look at the open space, you know, with the 40%. You know, I'll keep saying it again. Half these data centers are in my district. Half of them are in your district. Our constituents are saying slow it down. You know, I want to listen to my constituents. I've never flip flopped on where I stand on that since I got on the board. That's why we got an SUP. So but I'm also willing, though, to look at say, OK, let's make sure that we're being fair to all the projects that come in and look at how we count their their their square footage or their acreage. And that's what we're going to use for the for the thing. So I'm I'm fine with saying let's let's make sure we have a fair calculation for those projects so that we're actually accounting for where the data centers are and how much is being used. but still send that message that, you know, we want to slow it down.

So how about this? Because this has still got to go to public hearing and everything, right? So how about if we did the 40% and you guys go back and do some verbiage, whatever you need to do on taking into consideration the piece that is open space and all of that, and then that gets presented. Would you guys be, would that be, because we still have to, this isn't the end of this discussion. This is giving, I thought we could maybe come to a consensus on this tonight, but it sounds like the only part that we're meeting on is if it's 40 with the open space piece kind of baked into it, So would that work for you all? We could work on that piece? Would you guys consider that?

madam chairman not to drag this out any longer i i have a motion if discussion is done i'd call for my motion and then people can do what they would like um i certainly don't mind being in the minority i've done it many times i'll continue to do it and and in fact i've not flip-flopped on this issue at all nor is it because it's an election year it is simply go back and look for my three years of standing up here and being a no vote multiple times maybe it's a five to two or a or a six to one and And I have no problem with that. And so I will continue to do that. I think that it is a good time to pause. Now, this will then go to staff. Staff will then take it to Planning Commission. Planning Commission will then take it back. We still will have a public hearing on this. And so I understand your desire to get to a consensus. And I don't mean to be not playing nice for no reason. I'm just sticking to what I believe I should be voting And, um, and I will continue to do that. So I don't want to drag this out any longer. I do enjoy the verbal tennis match that we've been having. It is always enjoyable. And I think it's very important for the public to hear what we think, because we are. There's just five of us right now. Sorry, I was going to say seven individuals, but there's five of us discussing this, and they need to understand that this is how it gets made and this is how it's done. And we'll go on to other issues where we'll have a consensus or other people will be in the minority at that time. So I have my motion on the floor and would call the question if there's no other discussion.

Dr. Frazier has something that she would like to say.

Let me be clear. I never said anyone was flip-flopping. I said based on a comprehensive plan. So if the onus was that that was felt, then you felt that on your own. I never said you, you, you, or you. I said based on our comprehensive plan, I will not be misrepresented. Words will not be put in my mouth. So let me clearly articulate what I said. I said based on our comprehensive plan, it appears that we are flip-flopping, not any individual, but what we have put in writing. That's my final comment. Okay.

All right. Drew.

So there is a motion on the floor. I'd like to... I'll probably butcher the words, but I'd like to make a substitute motion for using the same, based on staff's making things clear to us as to, they started out, they did all the work, they came out with 55%. We've been bantering back and forth. So a true compromise would be, I'd like to make a motion for 45% using the same metrics that we've been discussing.

all right so i guess i have to take that first all right taking the substitute motion first um so we'll call the question on the substitute hold on a second i'm so i'm so sorry i i i thought you were You're just, but you want to take into consideration the, the open space.

No, it disturbs. So it's, it's, it's between that and that's.

Do you know what that would be? Kimber? I'm so sorry.

The difference, I'm sorry, the difference between 40% and 45%? Okay. 40% left you a balance of 708 acres. 45% left you a balance of 1,016 acres. That's where we're landing. That's where we're landing.

And, you know, then we would, as Dave and I kind of came to consensus on looking at the disturbed footprints.

Yeah, that's different. That's different.

Yeah. Okay. So if you'd like me to amend it to not just be straight numbers, I'm willing to do that.

Just 45% with the straight numbers. No, no. Right. Okay. You'll amend that. Okay.

Reluctantly, I'll amend that.

Okay. All right. Kimberly, are you clear on what that is then? Okay. Okay.

All right.

Three yes with Mr. Jakubowski and Mr. Guzman voting no. Motion passes.

Thank you, Kimberly. Appreciate it.

Okay, Madam Chair, that takes you to board reports.

Okay, Dr. Frazier, would you like to go first?

Well, I certainly enjoy, I want the public to know that I respect my peers on this board and we have worked well together and we do not want to ever leave the space letting anyone think that we don't like or care for each other because that's not where we are. We serve a greater purpose, we serve a higher being than what we're doing here. And at the end of all of this, we need to check in with the true master, the one who matters the most. And if we're doing things that we feel is right in our heart, then we're okay, whether that is a disagreement or not. So I wanna leave, I don't wanna leave the space without saying that because there's a lot of turmoil in our world that we can blame others for everything. But I feel that we have a greater service to do in our community and we don't ever want to lose sight of that. Again, I would like to thank all of our constituents and our residents who have shared because that is what we wanna hear as well. We also have to keep in mind that we are, we're having to make some tough decisions that does support the policies and also the guidelines, the regulations that we've put in place. And that's important as well because all of that is public record. What we have set forth is public record. So when I said flip-flop, I'm not singling out anyone. I'm just saying that in our public record, what we have done in the past matters because that's what we draw on to make our decisions moving forward. So my peers, to all of you, we're going to continue to work together. We may not always agree, but we're going to leave this space knowing that in our hearts we're doing the right thing and that's what matters most. And I would like to say especially to our first responders and those who serve our community, thank you for what you do. It's so important that we can feel protected in our community. I think we always take it for granted. We can go home, put our heads on the pillow and know that somebody is patrolling this community and keeping us safe. Thank you. And to our staff, Ed, To you and your staff, thank you for putting up with us, putting up with me. Don't say me. But we appreciate the work that you do. And Kimberly, we know you sit in a very delicate space, and we want you to know that we appreciate your work. So I've said a lot, and I love this community. And I'll serve until my master says it's not enough. But no one else will decide that other than him and me. Thank you.

Thank you. Chris?

Yes, thank you. And thank you to everybody for the discussion. It's always good to get that going and for the public to see that we do have different points of view. and i i do appreciate it and yes um deborah we will remain friends there's there's nothing personal at all um because as i was told a long time ago you're on an island with seven people and if you take off three of them too long you'll never get anything accomplished and then it's not it's not worth being up here because you're up here to to serve and make sure that that things get done for those who you represent It doesn't mean you don't take stances and vote the certain way, but you have to get beyond that and go on to other issues. Um, and dealing with other issues, we do have September 16th. VDOT is going to be discussing the latest, um, Masoponics fix, um, that just got approved by the smart scale. And I think got funded by CTB and it's going to be a fast tracked. So on September 16th at AMB creative event, um, their location i do believe it's 4820 south point but i'll double check that and and put that up on my facebook page um from five till seven there will be a public uh discussion about that i'm assuming it's the way that vdot does it which is they have their their boards up and you get to come and walk around and look at it and uh and talk about it because this is going to be a uh a big undertaking as soon as the other improvements are done in south point there'll be more so the traffic will continue and the orange cones will just be moved down the road but don't worry once this one's done everything will work perfectly because that's what VDOT told us So without any more sarcasm in my report, I'll just also say thank you to the first responders and doing everything that they do. And I will tell you that this board has backed the first responders for decades. And we have, I would put up our guys and gals against anybody in the state and we'll beat them because we have the best that there is. And that's why we have so many people coming here and wanting to be part of our team because you do want to be part of the best team in the state. And that's also leads me into our schools. Our schools are back in session. Remember the cameras that you've been speeding through all summer are now going to be taking your license plate number and you will be getting a bill. So please don't speed. You shouldn't be speeding anyway. um but just remember that school's back in session uh it's august it always feels odd to have it back in session um but yes it is and remember for the uh the kids that are out there waiting for the for the bus that you don't speed through your neighborhoods keep an eye out for everybody and just um let's have a safe school year and i wish all of the students and parents well thank you david

Thank you, Madam Chair. And Dr. Frazier, absolutely nothing personal taken. We are professional up here. We all have our opinions. August 25th.

Oh, really?

All right. And that's the beauty of being up here is we get to have the debate. whether we agree or disagree, and we'll come to a decision at the end that's, again, hopefully going to be the best for our citizens. I absolutely appreciate everybody that came out tonight and spoke. It's always good to see a full house. And, you know, whether we agree or not, sometimes with some of the comments, you know, we're listening. We are. We're having conversation up here because of conversations that you bring to us. And at least I know I am listening. I did want to talk a little bit. I went to a VACO summit down in Richmond, got some updates on some of the stuff getting ready to go into session, you know, because that's coming up as well. I had a FAMPO meeting, first time in the seat at this one. Those are fast and furious, by the way. Something that I think will be of interest to a lot of people is the I-95 study that's coming up to open up express lanes both directions. from all the way from up north down south. Big undertaking, probably very expensive. Most of us won't see it in our lifetime, but they're starting a study. And then I went to the Fredericksburg Regional Area Alliance First Responders Appreciation. So we talked about appreciating our first responders. There was a whole room full of folks and saw some awards given out. And it was good to see Spotsylvania represented there and a lot of awards. Our sheriff and our fire chief both got lifetime achievement awards for their service for both retiring. And then transportation committee meeting was this past week. Had to talk about the CIP. It's projects that are going in there. Of course, Paul, as always, does an excellent job bringing stuff back here to the board as well as VDOT. We're really working hard to get some of these projects done on the rural side. And we're seeing some some progress out there. Upcoming, there's a Lake Anna Advisory Council meeting this Thursday that I'm attending for Jake because he's got some other, he's going to be going out of town. And then I'm hosting another Berkeley Town Hall. So on the 3rd of September, 6 to 8 p.m. at Spotsylvania Middle School, I'm hosting a town hall for the Berkeley residents to come out and talk about what's on your mind. I look forward to that. This will be my fourth one. First one in the courthouse area, so hoping to gather some different folks to that session. And then lastly, just wanted to kind of publicly thank Dante for his service on the Parks and Rec Board. He stepped down to pursue some other things. And then Glenn Cernovant Sr. has actually taken the position. One of the reasons why I wanted Glenn to come on was really to start listening to some of the things that the seniors have been bringing. So from a Parks and Rec thing, we think a lot of times about all the sports, but that's also where all the senior activities kind of center. so again i've asked him to kind of take a take a view to kind of bird dog some of the things for community center going forward and some of the issues we have so with some of the community services for our seniors so i wanted to put a senior in there to do that so you'd have some representation um let's see other than that i think that's about it drew

you madam chair um i always start out with what what's going on today august 25th and we got choices it's either national banana split day national park service day or i think this is the one i'm going to choose national whiskey sour day after after this so um might be hard on the whiskey too um yeah i don't have a lot to say the kids are going back to school right now um my son uh He aced his first, like, geography test. So I'm, you know, takes after his mother, which is great. Yeah. So be mindful. Kids are going to school, and it's just a great season. Chairman Hayes and myself attended the GWRC meeting last night, and I'll just briefly touch on something that was kind of ancillary to this discussion was data center tax rates. And The region, Caroline, King George, ourselves, Stafford and the city, originally kind of banded together to establish a tax rate to attract the industry to come to us. But we're recognizing that. to be quite frank i feel like we're being hamstrung at the current rate dollar 25. um we we deserve a better uh return than that and but what we don't want to do we're trying to be really mindful of the cooperative regional aspect of of things in that we don't want to splinter off and go our own way because some of us are bigger than others and you know we It truly is. We joke about it a lot about regionalism, but it's important that we try to work towards a solution in a unified way. And GWRC is a great venue for that. And so I want the public to know that we're trying to find out the proper metric to propose going forward. How do we get to that point? And Laurie might have some more details on that, but we're working on that because if we're going to ultimately trim our data center footprint in the future, which it sounds like a rational thing to do with all the uncertainties with power and whatnot, then we need to maximize our return as best we can on the taxes that we can collect. One of our other jobs is to participate on other commissions and committees, and that is to work on these problems from a lot of different angles. So we're trying to do that as a region so that we can benefit ourselves and take care of the obligations we have with schools and infrastructure and so on. So I just want to let you know what we're trying to do there with the region. And thank you all for coming out and putting up with me.

I want to thank everybody for coming out and those watching on TV tonight. Just to piggyback on what Drew was saying about the $1.25, last night when we talked about, like a month ago when we did GWRC's meeting, we asked GWRC to come back with some sort of methodology. We kind of were looking at the inflation rate and applying that to 2019 is when this rate was put in. And it came back at $1.70, which was a little disappointing, I think, to all of us. We were thinking, eh, that's... That's not enough, right? So I think what Chip is now tasked with, and Chip is the executive director of GWRC, is to go back and come up with some new methodology in whatever way he sees fit. I think probably looking at what the other localities are doing and the the land um amount you know how the land values the you know budgets whatever he can do he's going to be doing so that will come back around um next month at gwrc we're not going to let it slip we're going to keep pushing forward on that because that's really important but we want to make sure And regionalism is important in this realm, but there might be a couple of localities. I heard maybe Caroline County wasn't wanting to play, and maybe King George wasn't wanting to play. I don't know. It might just be, you know, Stafford, Fredericksburg, and Spotsy. But we'll work that out. So we're definitely going to do something with that. Okay. So stay tuned on that. When we're talking about kind of getting the tiger by the tail on this thing, it really is a multi-pronged approach, right? First you have the SUP, which we're doing. Then you have the comprehensive plan. And as Jacob mentioned, the economic development arm, right? Right? When that plan was made in 2011, 2010, I think, Ed, this was a target industry. And we have had discussions about, okay, one of the targeted industries was tourism. Check that off. We got Kalahari. Medical half check it because we got the VA clinic, but we really need something out by Lake Anna. So that's kind of their Technology well, there's a lot of other arms of technology besides data centers, right? so we have to we that's another element that I think we have to look at as a board and maybe with our EDA and see What's out there? So I have had meetings with the EDA, with the chair and the vice chair of the EDA, trying to – they want to get the board's input on where we want to go. And I said, you know, in order to give you input, we need data. You know, decisions are made – best decisions are made when you have factual data. And so we've talked about them getting data from different – organizations on what are the emerging technologies out there. You know, what are the industries that we could use? So, rest assured, that third leg of the stool is something that I'm personally working on to tackle this whole issue as a whole. I do want to say that I appreciate all the phone calls I've gotten, the long conversations I've had, the collaboration and the grace that I've been given. And I give it right back, too. And I appreciate each and every person out there. I live right next to you. I'm not that far. So I'm not in an ivory tower over here. I understand, and I am here to serve, and I'm here to do that collaboratively with you. So thank you. I'm here. Call me anytime. During GWRC, Drew, if I get the name wrong, I think it's Christian Medical Services. So when Moss Clinic closed... It left a void there. But there's another medical, I think they're Christian health care. The doctor got up and he kind of was talking about, I think there might be a little disconnect because they put in for funding like what Moss got from us. But I think that people didn't understand that they sort of took over that. That whole thing. So I just want you to be, when you see that coming up, look at, yeah, because nobody funded them at all. And that was, so that Moss Clinic sort of just dropped off. They're making up the difference, but they got no regional funding at all on that.

Didn't the doctor say that they basically absorbed the moth's staff? They did. I don't know where they were in that process, but maybe monies that had been allocated or dedicated towards moss didn't make it their way.

Right.

Right. That's what it was.

But I think there was just a disconnect in how that whole thing kind of merged over. So if we can look into that, that would be great.

We would be heroes if there was money out there that we'd earmark towards them and towards Moss.

Well, we probably can't do it now. It's too late. It's too late. But for next year, I feel like we should probably have that as a tickler.

We'll have to look at to see whether or not. Right. Okay. Right.

We might need to look and see where that money went. I mean, I would want to know who's got the money. So if we could look into that, that would be great. And did go to FAMPO with my colleagues here. Good meeting there. And very excited about the 95 expansion that could possibly happen. There seems to be some steam behind that. I think that would be wonderful. So, again, reach out if you have any questions, concerns. I'm here to serve. And thank you for hanging in there tonight. Appreciate it.

Yes. Just want to remind the public that the first information session on the bond referendum is taking place on September 10th at Riverbend High School.

You stole my thunder, but that's okay. The second one, there's actually three community meetings that are going to be held for the four questions that we have coming up. on the November 3rd election, four questions for general obligation bonds. And Dr. Frazier, you are correct. It is on September 10th from 6 to 8 p.m. at Riverbend High School. And then the second meeting is September 29th from 6 to 8 p.m. at Spotsylvania High School. We added that, Mr. Guzman and Mr. Lane. And then... The third one is October 21st from 6 to 8 p.m. at MySaponix High School. That's all I had. I'm sorry, Dr. Frazier. I didn't know if you had all three of them or not.

Okay, so now we're going to closed.

No, no report. This is your resolution to adjourn the closed meeting. Whereas the Spouse-Fading County Board of Supervisors desires to adjourn a closed meeting for discussion, consideration, or interviews of prospective candidates for employment, assignment, appointment, promotion, performance to motion, salaries, disciplining, or resignation of specific public officers, appointees, or employees of the county, specifically regarding the consideration of candidates for appointment to the Board of Supervisors' vacant Chancellor District seat, And whereas the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors desires to adjourn the closed meeting for consultation with legal counsel employed or retained by the county regarding specific legal matters requiring the provision of legal advice by such counsel, specifically regarding a land use matter. And whereas pursuant to Virginia Code Section 2.2-3711A1 and 8, such discussions may occur in closed meeting. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors does hereby authorize discussion of the afore stated matters.

So moved.

Somebody might want to call Jake and see if... Five yes, motion passes.

Okay. This convened a closed meeting on this date pursuant to an affirmative recorded vote in accordance with the provisions of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. And whereas section 2.2-3712D of the Code of Virginia requires a certification by this board that such closed meeting was conducted in conformity with Virginia law, now therefore be it resolved that the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors hereby returns to open meeting and certifies by roll call vote that to the best of each member's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion convened in the closed meeting where heard, discussed, or considered in the closed meeting.

Dr. Frazier? Aye. Chris? Aye. David? Aye. Drew?

Aye.

And the chair votes aye.

That brings you to your new business. The next Board of Supervisors meeting is here in the boardroom September 8th at 5 p.m. Okay, great. Motion to adjourn?

So moved.

All in favor? Aye.