Board of County Supervisors - Regular Meeting

All right. Good afternoon, If we can take a seat. I'm calling this meeting to session at 02:01. Before we begin, let's start with a moment of silence. Thank you so very much. All rise if you are able for the pledge of allegiance.

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

Thank you so very much. Our clerk is getting the sheet for the public comment time. While they're doing that, I just want to let people know for public comment time, have people, they stand at the back of that microphone. Please make sure you adjust it so that we can hear you. And looks like we don't have anyone in person. I don't think we have anyone online either. Nope. All right, so we do not have anyone signed up for agenda item number three, and that is public comment time. I am going to move on to the fourth item on our agenda and that is county executive. Mr. Shorter, the floor is yours.

Thank you very much, madam chair. Good afternoon, board members. I'm going to go over just a few updates. First, there were no directives issued in your meeting last week. There was one directive closed since our since the meeting last week.

That directive was to prepare a resolution to dissolve the racial and social justice commission, and that was included on the February is included on the February 17 board agenda, which posted yesterday. Earlier today, I sent the board a memo with an update on several initiatives from our office of human resources implementing the well, really updates to our county's recruitment process. Also with an update on the career expo and just all of the great work around the career expo and some of the some of the follow-up from the career expo. Really wanna thank director Washington, Susan Washington, just in the entire HR team for the just phenomenal work around recruitment and what they will be doing with our agencies moving forward. I also sent the board the board a message on upcoming community engagement events being hosted by our planning office.

First launching the first phase of the community engagement for the sustainability and resilience comprehensive plan amendment that is next week. And then a joint event with transportation regarding the mobility chapter update, and that is also next week. Let's see. And in terms of updates, that is all for me, madam chair.

Alright. Thank you so very much. Does anyone have anything they would want to comment that mister Shorter said? I don't see anyone. So we are gonna move on to agenda item number five, and that is county attorney time.

Thank you, madam chair, members of the board. This afternoon in closed session, we will have consultation with legal counsel and briefings by staff members regarding the following actual litigation. Katie Burke et al versus board of county supervisors et al, circuit Court case number CL 24Dash334 Court of Appeals record number 2025Dash24Dash4 Oak Valley Homeowners Association Inc et al. Versus Prince William County Board of Supervisors et al. Circuit Court case number CL24Dash375 GW Acquisition LLC et al versus Oak Valley Homeowners Association et al Court of Appeals record number 1584Dash25Dash4, Board of County Supervisors of Prince William et al versus Oak Valley Homeowners Association et al Court of Appeals record number 1590Dash25Dash4.

H and H Capital Acquisitions LLC et al versus Oak Valley Homeowners Association Inc Court of Appeals record number 1592Dash25Dash4. Underwood Family Farm LLC versus Prince William County, Circuit Court case number CL 24Dash005849Dash00. Pageland Farm Associates versus Prince William County, Circuit Court case number CL 24005849Dash01. Thomas Ackerley Junior versus Prince William County Circuit Court case number CL 24005849Dash02. Hishamana Alhusen as trustee for the Ajaj Alba Hundson Trust versus Prince William County Circuit Court, CL 20 four-five 840 nine-three.

100

Syed Ali versus Prince William County Circuit Court, case number CL20Four-five4904.

David Mitchell is trustee for the Kimberly and David Mitchell twenty twenty one irrevocable trust versus Prince William County circuit court case number CL24005849Dash05. Paitland Limited Liability Company versus Prince William County circuit court case number CL24005849Dash06. Barbara Brower versus Prince William County circuit court case number CL24005849Dash07. Gary d Lawson and Mary e Lawson versus Prince William County, c l twenty four circuit court case number C l 24005849Dash08. Frank e Surface and Sandra h Surface versus Prince William County.

Circuit court case number CL24005849DashO9. Garland Williams and Melanie Williams versus Prince William County. C l 24005849Dash10. Kenneth S. Bland and Nicole S. Bland versus Prince William County, circuit court case number CL 24005849Dash11. Paige S. Snyder as trustee of the Paige S. Snyder revocable trust versus Prince William County, Circuit Court case number CL 20 400584Nine-twelve. Phyllis W. Thompson as trustee of

the Thomas F. Thompson and Phyllis W. Thompson joint trust agreement dated August 2635 versus Prince William County Circuit Court case number CL 20 Four-five 840

Nine-thirteen. Maryann Gadban as trustee for the Maryann Gadban revocable living trust of 11/07/2001 versus Prince William County Circuit Court case number CL 20 four-five 840 nine- fourteen. Faye M. Howard is trustee for the Faye M. Howard Trust Agreement dated 05/31/2017 versus Prince William County, Circuit Court case number CL twenty four zero zero five eight four nine dash fifteen.

William Becker, trustee, et al, versus Prince William County, Circuit Court case number CL25Dash2434, along with the accompanying consultation and legal counsel and briefings by staff members regarding specific legal matters requiring requiring the provision of legal advice by such counsel pertaining to land use law and litigation, where such consultation, discussion, or briefing in an open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining position, negotiating strategy, or litigating posture of the public body. And these items are appropriate for closed session pursuant to 2.2 dash thirty seven eleven a seven and eight of the Virginia code.

So moved. Alright. We're gonna need to authorize this. I moved it. Does anyone wanna second this?

Second.

Alright. Let's go ahead and take our vote.

Motion passes five to two. Supervisors angry and voting nay.

All right. Thank you very much. We are now going on to agenda item number six. Mr. Shorter, if you'd like to tee us up.

Yes. Thank you very much, Madam Chair, members of the board. So first presentation item 6A, you may recall that we gave several updates last calendar year about PwC Works and the engagement that is happening on that platform. I just really as Nikki Brown, our director of community communications and public engagement comes up, just really wanna thank the entire team. Many of our agencies have now put initiatives on this platform.

They've used it to engage with community in different ways. I think I've heard from a number of you board members about your engagement on the platform. And so wanted to use this as an opportunity to just update on a few of the initiatives that are being highlight that is being highlighted on the platform today and just want to commit to continuing to update the platform as we go forward. And so with that, Nikki, I'll turn it over to you. Hopefully, if the technology works for us.

Madam chair, members of the board, Nikki Brown with communications and engagement. While the site is being pulled up at and there there you go. Just wanted to take a few moments to really say how excited we are, about the the success of this of the site and be able to share some information with you all about how we're using it and how we plan to use it in the future. Really before I get started, I wanna thank Mina Habibi in my office. She has been amazing about setting the site up.

It's really due to her creativity and her kind of desire, I think, to really see the site succeed that it's to the place that it is. So I really wanted to to thank her for that. And with that being said, I just wanted to give you just a little bit of data about the site itself. Since we launched in September 2024, we've had nearly 25,000 total site visits and more than 2,000 contributions which means people engaging in tools that we have on the site across eight surveys and two maps. Our top project visits are Minnieville and Old Bridge study which Rick's gonna talk about here in a minute, the residential and commercial parking initiative, the strategic plan, and the Vent Hill small area plan.

Our top five contribution stats, these are tools that we have on the site. Again, Minnieville Road and Old Bridge Road intersection study survey with more than 600 contributions to that. Then we have our residential and commercial parking survey, our strategic plan survey, our comprehensive traffic safety plan survey,

and

our residential and commercial parking issues map. Our top three news feeds, these are when we put a story with the project as an update that's considered a news feed, is the community kickoff meeting for the Vent Hill quarter small area plan, the poverty simulation for no wrong door, and the board adoption of the strategic plan. So I think like what does this mean? And I think it means that people really wanna engage with their county government. And this is just one tool that allows them to do it.

It is not the be all end all, but I think it's a great way to get people to engage with us, to provide feedback, and we are really excited about what's to come on the site. So it's a tool to tell people what's happening, but also to hear from people. And we're not done, so I'm gonna grab this real quick. You can see since the last time that we have presented to you, we have added projects such as a sustainability and resilience comprehensive plan amendment, some transportation projects, the agribusiness and agritourism study, as well as several others, and then we have closed our archived projects as well, which is great because they stay up on the site so people can still access them. We're gonna be adding more projects which we are definitely excited about, but really excited and really wanna thank the planning office for their vision that allowed us to do our first hub on the site.

A hub is a way that we can organize the content and the information. So we have our first hub, which is a small area plan hub, which I believe Tanya and team will go in to, but just wanted to show how excited we are about this. We're working with transportation on a hub. So really see that the site is getting used, really excited about the engagement and the fact that people are engaging with this site, and just really excited of what's to come. So if there are no questions for me, I'll be happy to turn it over to planning.

Good afternoon Madam Chair, members of the board, Tanya Washington, Director of the Planning Office. We're very happy to be here today to give you a walk through of the small area plans hub on a PwC Works website. The hub currently houses three small area plans that are in various stages of launch or initiation or scoping. One is a Vint Hill Corridor small area plan, which we've already launched, working with a supervisor Gordie and community members last fall. And then we have two new ones to come.

One is a Fetler Park small area plan, which we are bringing to the board next week for initiation, followed by the Yorkshire Small Area Plan, which I will note was initiated a number of years ago by the board, but we are in the stages of getting that one launched soon as well. So I want to turn it over to Keisha Hall, who is the Assistant Planning Director of our Community Planning and Revitalization Division, to walk us through the hub so you can see the types of content we have on the project websites. And Keisha is also here with her team from that division. This is the division that is responsible for developing new small area plans, as well as working with county agencies and others to track the implementation of adopted small plans. With that, I will turn it over to Keisha.

Thank you, Director Washington. For the record, Keisha Hall, Assistant Director for the Planning Office. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, Mr. Vice Chair, Executive Shorter. Really excited to an overview of the three small area plans that we have.

And as you all know, we've got more in the queue. And so but before I get started, I want to give a special thanks to the executive communications team, specifically Nikki, Shane, and Mina, who has tirelessly assisted us with our out of the box thinking. We have, like we can email or call her anytime and say, hey. We've got this idea, and she helps us kind of bring it to life. So wanted to just give a special thanks to the executive communications team.

And then secondly, I also wanna thank my team, the community planning and revitalization team. We are a team of five. We are small and mighty. But since our plans do take longer to bring forward to the to the board's attention, we may not see you just yet. So I just wanted to take this opportunity to introduce the team.

But just for the public's awareness, small area plans are smaller focused geo geographical plans. They're community driven, community focused. So these are the plans where we really get a chance to meet with your h o HOAs, your religious leaders, your community, civic groups, school children, and anyone who will listen. And so that's the special unique property about a small area plan. And so as Director Washington mentioned, we do have three in the queue.

And so I'd like to introduce Yolanda Hipsky, who's the project manager for the Vent Hill Small Area Plan in the Brentsville District. We have Jonathan Rodriguez, who is the project manager for the Yorkshire Small Area Plan, which is in the Coles District. And myself, I've already introduced myself, Keisha Hall. I will be running point along with Jasenia Castaneda for the Fetler Park, Fetler Park small area plan, which is in the Potomac District. And last but not least, we have Danica Blunt who assist us with all of our projects, all of our needs, but most importantly, she runs point on engagement.

So we, not only engage through these small area plans, but we volunteer in your communities. Specifically, our most active project right now is the Vent Hill project. Danica has helped our team not only go to school events, cleanups at Patriot Park, and we've also just most recently, during the warmer months, painted at a women's shelter in the Brentsville district. So I just wanna give her a special shout out. Alright.

So let's let the magic happen. We're gonna start with Yorkshire small area plan. As director Washington mentioned, there we go. This effort was initiated by the board quite some time ago, but we're really excited to get this one going. So we have some preliminary information because as you can see on the milestones, we will be kicking this project off this summer.

So around June 2026, we'll have our consultants onboarded and selected and introduced to supervisor Vega. We'll take that time to examine some existing conditions, evaluate stakeholders, and, and onboard the consultants throughout the summer. It is our hope to, kick off with the community in fall twenty twenty six. And moving forward a few years from now, we anticipate that the project should take about two years. In its entirety, we'll have a series of community events as well as community service events, but we are hoping that the board will adopt this small area plan in the 2028.

And just for public consumption, here is the map of the the adopted small area plan limits. And so we will be working with the stakeholders, business owners, civic groups, as well as county agencies to discuss not only land use and connectivity, but site activation, reinvestment, and just an opportunity to really connect the physical environment, but also connect directly with the community. All right. So I know most of you know this image here. It's the Yorkshire Diner.

So we look forward to meeting with as well as Eavesdrop Brewery. Those are those images selected. We really do look forward to working with the business community. But on the PwC worksite, it outlines the main goals of our plans and our objectives. And as I mentioned before, it's our goal to not only connect the built environment, but connect with the residents within your district and within this small area plan.

On March 3, we will be appearing before you to discuss the HAP grant. Housing is is important, and, I don't wanna spoil, the upcoming presentation for Jonathan, but housing is a major component of the Yorkshire Small Area Plan, and we look forward to discussing, some preliminary endeavors that we've already started to pursue. Our next project that I will be coming before the board on February 17 is a request to adopt the Fetler Park small area plan. Initiate, excuse me, not adopt. Initiate the Fetler Park small area plan.

This map will display the proposed study area, and within the red, if you recall, the first act by supervisor Bailey was to initiate a market study. So we already have some foundational information that's based off of real world market conditions that we can use that to melt into our existing conditions and really take a look at if we're utilizing our sites to their fullest capability, if there is historic significance, what sites need, reinvestment and activation, and what sites need preservation, as well as the unique thing about Fetler Park is each of these communities from Ashland, to Montclair, down to Furlano, and then down to Batestown and Brittany, all of these individual communities are very active within their HOA. So this is gonna be really exciting, because we'll have an opportunity to bring them outside of their communities and together as one. I think I lost let's see, let's go back here. Just a moment.

Ah, there we go. So in terms of milestones for the Fetler Park, small area plan, once it is initiated on February 17. Once again, in June 2026, we hope to onboard, and select or select our consultants and onboard them, review the existing conditions throughout the summer, identify stakeholders, and work with supervisor Bailey as well as our esteemed board members and kick off, do a community kickoff in the fall, and, hopefully present the findings and, recommendations for a board adoption in 2028. What is spelled out on the Fetler Park small area plan PwC Works page is some of the main goals that we'll be presenting, on February 17 if initiated. We've already received some exciting development at the far western side of the small area plan, if adopted, which is Ashland Square and their new grocery store.

But really want to celebrate place making, activation, reinvestment, and celebrating the parks and open space that make this community as a whole super special. So I look forward to coming before you on February 17 and our team updating you through the progress of this particular small area plan. Last but not least, as Nikki noted, we're getting a lot of traffic with the Venthill small area plan, who Yolanda Hitsky is the project manager. We did a community kickoff November 17, and we had over 80 attendees. I think we sent over 2,000 postcards, and about 60% of the participants either participated in the survey on-site or went afterwards and continued to provide their feedback regarding what their vision is for the Vent Hill area.

We are looking forward to reconvening with the community in the spring, late spring. We're thinking about April, May time frame or May time frame, to kind of go over what we heard, the existing conditions, and start talking about the, community needs from more of a, social needs perspective. So we do look forward to reconvening with the community in spring. And it's it's definitely our goal to acknowledge, the existing industries, the agritourism potential, and ensure that as the area grows mindfully, that we're thinking about the built environment and how to maintain that rural nature, but also the modern aspects that come along with new investment. So blending those two and elevating the community voice as we endeavor that is our goal.

We are super excited to connect. If you have an organization, a civic group, specifically one that is interested in all things rural or tourism in that area, please reach out to us. We are also working on an online survey that we presented at the community kickoff, but it's a Mentimeter survey that's meant to encapsulate the essence of the community. Two key questions that we discovered was, what do you call this area? We got very mixed results in our initial findings.

So this Mentimeter survey is meant to be a prominent area where citizens can answer two questions throughout the life of the project, and we will probably on a monthly basis unveil a word cloud so that you can see what the community is actively saying about the community, about what they love, what they wanna preserve, and how they how this what this community means to them. And with that, I think I have highlighted, most of the elements. We do have recaps and newsletters on the site. There's a a host of information, but I won't go through each item. Just super excited to keep the community updated, and I thank you so much for your time.

Alright. Thank you. Don't go anywhere because I think we have some people with some questions about your presentation. Did anyone jump in the queue? Alright. Supervisor Bodhi Vega Bailey.

Thank you, madam chair. Keisha, Nikki, everyone else on the team, thank you so much for your hard work on this. Every time we talk about PwC Works, I you sing your praises. It's been a really great tool that has allowed us to really up the ante in terms of engagement. As Nikki said it several times, you know, projects in my district, we've really pushed out the pages for it and the interaction there.

And I will say that from my at least my constituents, having the capability to get re to receive text and email notifications on highlights, on events and meetings, even just updates on the site itself as well as the individual projects on it really helps get them engaged because far too often, they may put something on their calendar and they forget about it. But they get that text, they get that email, it helps reengage them. So I wanted to say kudos to that. I do have a couple questions about the small area plans, Keisha. For Yorkshire, because that area is sort of sandwiched between also the cities of Manassas and Manassas Park, are they gonna be part of the stakeholders you'll be talking to?

Absolutely. And as as we unveil on March 3 more details about the HAP grant, we'll be able to convey how much, they are, an active participant in shaping that area. So definitely wanna have their voices at the table as our as our, municipal neighbor.

Appreciate that. And then in terms of Fetler Park, again, kudos to Supervisor Bailey for all of her work on on that one, will you be engaging, marine based Quantico?

To some degree, yes, especially as we out, as we evaluate maybe if they have housing or other needs, primarily through our conversations with the town of Dumfries and Mayor Wood. I think there's some some synergies that we can work together to highlight what our community needs are in this specific area. And then if there are, applicable tracks of land that meet the needs of the base, we might be able to kind of in interweave them in those discussions as well as due to our proximity to I 95 with the Defense Corridor. There might be some synergies there in terms of government contracting and things of that nature.

Appreciate that. And last one, in terms of the of the, Vent Hill, are you all going to be engaged with the soil and water conservation district on that one?

We definitely can. We have a long list for Bent Hill, I can't identify every single group, but I'm pretty sure that they're on the list. If they're not, my team will make note of it and we'll get in touch with them.

I appreciate that because, one of the commissioners, Jenny Reed, who also happens to be one of my constituents, cares a lot about, especially that one and everything everything rule and agricultural, as you said earlier. She was actually mentioning to me yesterday how there's been interest in looking at maybe having a model farm program or something like that out there. So just wanted to highlight that. And, again, she's a constituent, so she'd probably yell at me if I did not at least mention it during the board Thank you so much.

I see them taking notes. So

right. Thank you. Supervisor Vega.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Hi, Keisha.

Hi, Eva. Thank you for

the presentation. I'm doing great. Thank you. I see that we highlighted the brewery and the restaurant. Where does Orchard Park fall in this small area plan? That is one of our pretty cool assets, I think, right there. And I just want to make sure that it doesn't get lost in the planning.

Absolutely. That is definitely a site within the plan, and as you know, we are kicking the plan off later this summer. So it's a site of interest, but we haven't evaluated the area, but we do know in speaking with you as well as surveying the community that is an asset that we plan to include.

And it might be a good idea to also talk to Seth because there's a lot of projects surrounding this particular park. The cricket community is growing in Prince William County, and it's drawing a lot of attention and interest. And so I certainly wanna make sure that we capitalize off of that as we did with pickleball courts throughout Prince William County. We also know that we have quite a challenge in this corridor because of '28. I do see Rick here, and I do wanna ask Rick or Apollo you guys pick who wants to come up and talk a little bit about that.

This is, one of the most congested roads in the Commonwealth Of Virginia that handles about 57,000 to 60,000 vehicles per day. I know that housing, you mentioned, is one of the biggest focuses, but I don't wanna lose sight of the transportation challenges that we have in this area. We did vote to, do away with the bypass, but it is an issue that I constantly get questions, about, And I just want to make sure that those that are here and watching at home and for the media, for their reporting purposes, when they go and report about the small area planning Yorkshire, that transportation is at the forefront of those conversations because there seems to be little bit of ambiguity, if you will, in regards to what's going to happen in terms of improving that traffic challenge.

Absolutely, and that's a fair comment and I'll defer to Rick. Primarily I mentioned some of the other exciting aspects of the small area plan because they don't typically get the amount of highlight and love over the more challenging subjects of the small area plan. Transportation is definitely a key element of this plan and I'll allow Rick to speak to that.

Thanks. Rick, you don't have to get into the weeds of things because I know we're still, but just give like a quick overview of what your team has been working on. Yes, ma'am. Thank you.

Madam Chair, members of the Board, Rick Canizalos, your Director of Transportation. Supervisor Vega, thank you for the question. It is a very important element of the Small Area Plan. Me and Director Washington have been discussing it as we went forward with this. As you know, you passed the CPA to to change and remove the bypass and add the widening of Route 28. When this was being done, we had conversations with planning, long conversations about how to approach this. And what we decided was that we were moving forward with the CPA to say we needed the six lane the road, but it had no design elements behind it, and we were looking for this study to help us out in designing the road, making sure we were incorporating the road appropriately and with context into the small area plan. Thank you. I

think that is a very important point. I'm moving on to Supervisor Bailey.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Keisha, good afternoon to you and your team. Thank you so much for all the hard work. I love the continuity from the market study to the small area plan and the adjustments that you made, particularly in your neck of the woods, Montclair and Jefferson, I really appreciate that because that's an area that needs a lot of love, so I appreciate that. The question that I have, and it goes back to something that Supervisor Boddy said, if you do integrate the Quantico base, because I'm thinking that they're part of the Triangle Small Area Plan, So will that interfere with the plans that you have there, or how is that done?

I think we are going to have to evaluate the priorities and the goals as we start to create the scope because we are not there yet. As I mentioned before, there may be synergies. For example, if there is some type of housing endeavor or contractor endeavor or some kind of commercial endeavor that there's if there's a synergy between the base, that's a great conversation starter. They're absolutely a stakeholder. The the Fetler Park area as a whole, is home to many of our, many of our service members and their families. Mhmm.

So by

de fact, there is that involvement as well, but that's beyond Quantico because they also matriculate to different bases. Yes. But we definitely will include, our armed services as a part of the process and as a stakeholder because there are services in addition to lane use and commercial that benefit our service members and their families. We want to make sure that we highlight that during the process.

Yeah, because one of the discussions that we had in reference to that is because a lot of our service members live in the Fetler Park area. The other thing that I wanted to highlight and I appreciate is the fact that in the Fetler Park area is a lot of our senior citizens that live in that area. So that was really one of the drivers. The 4 Seasons area is in there. That was one of the drivers for this small area plan.

I certainly appreciate because that is a targeted area in terms of demographics that we need to address in our communities. So thank you so much, all of you, for your hard work and for just shopping it with everyone. We really appreciate that you keep us abreast every step of the way. Thank you, Madam Chair.

All right. Thank you so very much. Supervisor Gordy.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just kind of circling back to PwC Works, and appreciate the work that's being done here to highlight these programs. I was wondering though, I mean, we've got also have redevelopment studies taking place. Are we is that sort of a next step? Are we looking at at creating a hub for the redevelopment studies that we've got ongoing in the county?

We're almost about a year out from when we did the tap for the Sudley Corridor and just, you know, trying to create the next steps in in in in keeping that in the forefront to the community on where we're going. So, you know, and again, I love the fact that we're creating these hubs, and but, you know, I think the redevelopment is also a great opportunity to create a hub on the site. So I'll let you tackle that.

Thank you. I think that's a really great idea. Noted, Ashley, as think you noted earlier, we have the area plans hub for the small area plans, but we have other planning office projects on PWC that are not specifically small area plans. So that's definitely something that we could, you know, work with communications to create sites for these other additional efforts so that we can capture that and provide that information as well.

Excellent. Yeah. I really appreciate that. And then the just, you know, kinda going back to some of the conversation that was had, you know, when when you look at Fetler Park, you know, we talk about Quantico. I think, you know, one of the also the important things to understand the tenant commands on that base.

We have a tendency to think about the base, but it's the tenant commands that drive the funding that goes to that base. And they're the ones that create the jobs, and they're the ones that that attract the businesses. So having a better understanding of what's on that base and what will serve to attract the economics within that area to drive the economic development, I think that's also a very important element that could be very beneficial. With that, Madam Chair, that's all I have. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Supervisor Boddy?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just very quickly, I appreciate, Surazor Gordy, what you just said about the revitalization redevelopment corridors. I was actually going to come back in for my second round to mention that. So thank you for that. Second, thank you for bringing up Route 28. I know that's sort of, like you said, a key part of a lot of consideration and challenges in the Yorkshire area and what have you, which is part of the reason why I asked about Manassas. Manassas is part because we share that entire corridor in that part of the county. So we can't move forward with whether it's housing, businesses, development, or really 28 without bringing those partners. So really appreciate that. My question, and this isn't PwC work specifically, it's small area plans specifically.

I appreciate, director Washington, you staying up there is, you know, we adopt small area plans. And what I've always appreciated about small area plans is near the end, there's an appendix that has a bunch of action items and things like that and has who's responsible for what. But I will just say a little critically that we often don't actually do anything with those. I'll just be frank. As we go through these new processes of developing, engaging, of course, smaller plans, how are we really going to make sure that we have a follow-up to especially those appendices that are the real action items that actually drive as opposed to being reactive to people just coming in and saying, oh, well, we see the small area plan, this is our development. Like we don't really do a lot of that. Can you talk about that a little

Sure. The great thing is we've been working on that. One of the fundamental pieces is the fact that we actually have a team as part of our community planning and revitalization division. The board supported adding FTEs to this division that has enabled us, frankly, to be able to create these new small area plans. The other piece of it that I mentioned earlier is that this team is also responsible for assisting with tracking implementation of small area plans.

And so Keisha's team has actually already started to do that work, starting with the triangle small area plan. And the team has worked and met with multiple departments that are tasked with responsibility for various action items for that area plan to find out what has happened in terms of implementation since adoption as well as to collect data on metrics that we can use to help to evaluate the implementation of the small area plan. And so that will be they are actively working on that, so stay tuned. We will have a report on that. But I also have talked with the team, because we have other adopted small area plans as well, and looking at doing either some either annual or biannual reporting on sort of the status of implementation of those adopted small area plans.

So we are very much just as we are focused on working on creating new small area plans, we are very much looking at what has the county and other partners done in terms of implementing the adopted small area plans, reminding departments that, hey, you have an action item in this small area plan so that they can be mindful of that as they are pursuing budget requests, for example, particularly with the CIP, which I know you all will be discussing later. So that is something we have a team in place now to really focus on that and to work with departments on the implementation piece.

Appreciate that.

If I

could, Madam Chair, just last comment. Thank you for that. Because to your point, we adopt small area plans. And then like I said, the development community responds to them. I know there is some work that planning and your your staff does to work with folks to make sure they're they're, abiding by and can sort of conforming to smaller plans. But, again, there's all these other actions, whether it's transportation, public works, parks, all these other things that go into the other stuff in these smaller plans. We don't really do a great job. I'm really glad to hear that you you you've dug in that. You have a team that's gonna be doing that. The last thing I'll say is in terms of the existing small area plans.

I know that we're we adopted the new comp plan back at the 2022. We're going through the zoning ordinance update right now. I would love for, at some point, for us to talk about making sort of technical updates and things of the small area plans knowing that, one, we have up we have the small area plans that were adopted before the zoning ordinance update and before the comp plan, but also knowing that, you know, even the small area plan in my district and superiors of Angry's adopted back in the the late twenty teens, a lot has changed, frankly. We have some keynote achievements like the courts district that are actually cornerstones and and and sort of capstones for the small area plans, but there are other things that have changed a lot for those. So to me, we shouldn't just have the small area plans along the range use as just sort of static when we adopt them. I think we should really look at those as time goes on as well.

We are also looking at that as well. For the point that you just noted that we have small area plans that were adopted before the last update to the comprehensive plan, there are some land use designation categories that have changed with the last comprehensive plan update that we need to make sure is reflected in the earlier small area plan. So yes, that is something that is very much on our radar.

Thank you so much.

All right. Thank you. We don't have any more questions. So I know our next group, our next friends are coming out.

It did. Got it. All right. Well, good afternoon again, Madam Chair, members of the Board, CXO Shorter. Thank you for the time this afternoon to talk through the projects that transportation has on PwC Works.

I think this is an excellent tool to be able to get out to the community. What what I really like about it is it lets us engage outside of the normal process that we do with a lot of in person meetings that we have in transportation, a lot of public hearings, public meetings, public information meetings for each individual project. It lets us engage with people that can't come out to those and make sure that they understand what's going on with the projects. We have four projects that we're going to talk about today. I'll get through them quickly, as you know, I do.

But the first one we wanted to talk about is the one that has been completed, which is the countywide comprehensive traffic safety action plan. And the comprehensive action plan was a project that was started back in July, September 2024 with looking at the counties overall what we were doing with safety. And I think what we wanted to accomplish with this plan is making sure that we accomplished either Vision Zero for cities and urbanized areas or towards zero for our more suburban and rural areas. What we were trying to do also here was make sure that we looked at all the components that the Safety Action Plan needed to look at, which included leadership and commitment, planning structure, safety analysis, engagement and collaboration, equity, policy and progress changes, strategy and project selection, and progress and transparency to our process. I think what is important about this tool is that we were able we went out to the community on this plan.

I know that the safety folks had two meetings that went particular to the comprehensive action plan, and then we had three overall meetings that we had county wide about transportation that they piggy back on and talked to those individuals that wanted to talk about safety in those meetings. What was great about that is that, again, in those meetings we probably had about 50 participants, maybe, about 50 participants. But when we looked at our comprehensive action plan and put it on PwC Works, we had almost 200 participants. We had about 100 comments on specific on the map that was happening. And we had 1,500 that's 1,500 visits to the site looking at this project.

So as you see, engaging individuals and engaging a large mass was easier done with PWC Works in this instance than it was going out to the public consistently throughout the year and trying to talk to them face to face. Some of the public engagement highlights that we did receive from those from this effort was that we needed an educational campaign, that we needed greater enforcement, we needed to better our pedestrian and bicycle network, We needed to deal with dangerous intersections and curves. And we needed additional lighting and signage around the county. They also provided comments on road diets, which is taking away a lane from a big road that has the capacity and using that for either pedestrian, bicycle or parking. Finally, we the great thing about PwC Works is that after every project, it asks you what are your goals, and we talked a little bit about the goals, but then it goes to what's the success criteria, and what does success mean for that particular project.

As you see there, the Comprehensive Safety Action Plan is to better traffic safety, have strong interagency collaboration when we're dealing with safety, have public engagement and education efforts, as well as get some evidence based countermeasures to deal with safety strategies and be able to implement those measures. And at the end of the day, once we've implemented those measures, we also have an accountability power where we are looking at what we're doing, the progress, and evaluate how those measures work. So, having that success criteria be put out for the public literally tells the public what we're trying to accomplish with this plan. Our next steps with this plan is actually we have incorporated this into the strategic plan. We have created we're going to create a working group that deals with safety.

We're currently implementing the program and getting grants as we speak and currently pursuing funding for the additional projects that the plan identifies. With that, we'll go to our next project. The next project we're going to talk about is the Minnieville Road and Old Bridge Road concept design study. This is in the Occoquan District. Supervisor Boddy has been very involved in this project and we're looking at it.

This is a study to get a concept of an intersection improvement over there at Minnieville and Old Bridge. The study purpose is to develop alternative solutions, collect and review existing data that's out there, analyze the future condition and the current condition, evaluate the alternatives that we have, and then develop an estimate for what we think this improvement will cost. That it would be a planning level estimate with this concept plan. The completion date for the study is this spring, this summer. We have evaluated obviously.

We have been able to get through the study, but the important part of this is that we did have a public hearing on this study and we had individuals show up. Wasn't too many, but on PwC Works, we were able to survey individuals and like and as was mentioned earlier, we had 600 participants in that survey. And the survey was crucial to let us know exactly what the public was looking for as part of these improvements. One of the questions that was asked was, What multimodal facilities are needed in this intersections? And it was with large quantities of people speaking to multimodal facilities, it was mostly crosswalk and pedestrian signals, again a safety element.

But then they wanted more transit service, more sidewalks, more trails. And that was identified through the survey coming in We also asked them what was the importance of the transportation issues created through this intersection improvement. And they told us that reducing traffic congestion and vehicular safety as well as pedestrian and bicycle safety were the three top answers there for you. Again, with the main goals, we identified the needs, we're looking at solutions and we're looking to see how we fund this project. But again, the most important is what is our success criteria?

And the success criteria is actually being able to get this report completed, being able to look at all that information you see out there, getting some public outreach, and being able to come up with those alternatives and those estimates. So then the supervisor and the Board can take action to see where we go forward with what alternative and how we and then it allows us to go look for that funding to create and finish that alternative or that project. Our next project that we want to talk about is a project right down the street here and very important the Neabsco Magisterial District, and that is the Prince William Parkway and Minnieville Road interchange project. As we know, and that's a great rendering there that we're able to put up on PWC works. As you know, this is what we call, a SPUI or single point urban interchange coming in.

We did that because of the compactness of that type of interchange. And as you see, the Prince William Parkway goes underneath Minnieville at that point in time in order to make it a fleet a free flow movement. What you see up there a conceptual design. We have this fully designed. Our schedule, as you see on the right there, is right now have just given notice to proceed to our contractor to be able to start this project.

So they're starting by moving utilities, they're starting by demoing buildings, and they're moving forward with a duck bank where the utilities will be built under before they start the actual construction of the interchange. Currently, the develop we're coordinating with a developer to come in and do the what we call maintenance of traffic roads, which will allow for people to move out of the intersection as it's being constructed and be able to maneuver through the area to get to their destinations. The schedule is set up, so we're doing this project and as you see seven phases, phase one, two, and you can read them at your leisure there, and we're going through seven phases along to the project to try to get to a construction finish date, or substantially finish date, by the 2028, and then be completed with this project by the 2028. Again, key components of the project, we talked a little bit about it. It's the road widening and reconstruction, doing the bridge underpass, dealing with traffic signals and storm drainage, doing the duck bank that we talked about.

We're doing a lot of sidewalks and trails here to complete our network in that area. We're doing the temporary road detours that I mentioned as part of the maintenance of traffic, improvements to Elm Farm Road, including a trail on Elm Farm Road, and a demolition of the existing structures that are out there today. The success criteria, which is the most important, is having faster commutes through the new interchange, safer roads through the area because of the upgraded signals, lighting, and bridge design, as well as better walkability and bicycle access, improved access to all the businesses including courts that's going to be up, as well as neighborhood relief because of we're taking that volume away, we're putting it underneath and there will be no more cut through traffic through there traffic is flowing as it's supposed to be. With that said, that's what we have for this project. And then, we weren't going to we were going to stop there, but we saw that our communications staff Ms.

Gretchen Johnson was able to get the Route 234 Suddenly Manor Interchange project up for us. This, again, is in the Brentsville District, and a very important project. We are currently and I can't say much about this because we are currently in the procurement process of this project, but we are looking at the $115,000,000 that was given to us by NVTA to create an interchange facility out in Sudley Manor and Wellington Road to be able to get traffic through there and eliminate the two signals that currently exist and have the traffic running on them. So, is the purpose of the project. The project is $115,500,000 Currently, the main goal is to improve the traffic flow of the parkway, to be able to eliminate congestion caused by those signals that are not properly spaced, by creating more inefficient interchange at Sudley Manor and possibly bridging Wellington Road over the parkway to maintain access through that roadway.

With that, Madam Chair, my report is complete.

Thank you so very much. I had a question, a couple of questions about the Prince William Parkway and Minnieville Road interchange, because I've received a lot of questions from that, including my neighbors. Actually, probably most of them are from my neighbors in Montclair. There's a lot of interest and there's a lot of concern because that is such a major thoroughfare.

Yes, ma'am.

So the project though, I believe the completion date has been pushed back, correct?

The completion date is still the 2028. That is the contract date given to the contractor.

Got you. Do you anticipate any delays on this project?

I don't am sticking to the contractor date of 2028 for substantial completion and spring for full completion. Now, there is a little bit of float or what we I'm sorry, a little bit of that's what we call it. But there is a couple of months in there that we've given ourselves a little lag time on. As you know, utilities are always a question mark because we don't run utilities. So, we have to make sure we're putting a whole duck bank together for them to run those through and actually do that work. Sometimes it takes some time, a little longer than we expect. So that's the only place I really expect any delay. It's something that we don't have control over. But everything else that we have control over, I expect no delay in the contractor to move forward with this contract, David.

All right. Be careful what you say on the record because someone might hold you to it. But you know, I mean again, it's been interesting every time I drive by to see all the work that's going on over there. I grew up outside of Chicago and we used to teach. So we have two seasons, winter and road construction. But the thing about road construction, a lot of times it was around the clock. Literally, there is nighttime road construction. Is that something that's going to be happening on this project to make sure that we are able to keep that timeline?

So, the contract does say that the contractor can use night construction as well as weekend construction. At this point in time, the contractor has told us that they are going to do extended hours and they're going to work on the road on the opposite side of the peak. And that they think that they can get to the construction date without doing weekends evenings.

And just to be clear, is all traffic going to, I guess, when they're ready to put in the traffic control implementation, traffic wise, I guess, Minnieville Road and Elm Farm, is that are they going to then close off that section to work on it, or is that section still gonna be open? The the actual intersection of Minnieville and

So the actual intersection on Minnieville throughout the whole entire time of the process will allow for the triple lefts that go from Parkway North and then take a left on Minnieville East. So that's gonna be open. The other left hand turn lanes

Mhmm.

From the other directions, they will be closed, and they will be they will use the the maintenance of traffic roads that are being developed by the developer right now. One on the Elm Farm side as well as one on the Minnieville Parkway side. So, there's there's going to be two roads, one one on each side of of of the intersection.

Alright. Thank you so very much for answering those questions. Supervisor Angry.

Yeah. And we'll stick right here. Rick, so this is a good place to be for courts because we're we're ready for our third county update, I'll call it, because we wanna get this out as as many people. But one question about this site and and concern or questioning, overnight construction. Could this be you feel for the community whether they want overnight construction or not? I think I've posed the question to them. We can either drag this out over the daylight hours with extended hours, or if we can get approved night construction, we can shorten that time to get it done faster. And it's one of the questions I wanted to pose to the group at our next update, community update on this project.

Just again, just to make it very clear, night construction and weekend construction is allowed per the contract. We have discussed that with VDOT. VDOT will approve any reasonable night construction and weekend construction that will be necessary to get the project done on time. At this time, the contractor doesn't feel like he needs to do that to get done with the project. He feels that with extended hours as well as doing work on the opposite side of the peak period that VDOT is also allowing us to do, that they can get there in time without that excess.

So the good news is, to your float time, this option of nighttime could help in case

we have

one of these snow, you know, ice storms again that kind of stop progress over that. I see progress is moving very well right now.

You said it you said it best. It it is an option that will be out there. If they start running behind, that option will be there for

us. And so for purposes of this discussion right now, the community can know that we're gonna be working on a third session. So I'll be working with you. I'll get my officers to work with you, and we'll set that up and get that out so we can give these updates. And I'm happy that we're here, because we're almost there, and there's a little ways to go.

Thank More than happy to participate, and we'll get you there, sir. Thanks.

And I would be happy to participate, too, because this is such an I mean, is a really great project that's happening for the County. Supervisor Bailey.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, thank you. Rick, first of all, let me just say, the monthly meetings that we have with your department to keep us updated on projects, and to see the flow from year to year is impeccable.

Thank you, ma'am.

It allows us to be able to, as manager said, communicate with our districts to assure that if anything happens, we're on top of it. So let me say that, first of all. The second thing that I want to say is, we know that as you're doing these projects, and the contracts, and governing the contracts, the money that's involved in that. Sometimes it doesn't flow the way we want it to flow. And so, for you to keep the contracts going, with the projects, the planning projects, that's worth its weight and goal.

So I also want to thank you for that, because it depends upon the monies that you're dealing with. Yes, ma'am. And so that also allows us to communicate even better with the community when there but the other thing I want to say, the last thing that I want to say is something that Supervisor Anger just said about the night provision that you have in the contracts, and that's something that if anything I could ask, teach us how to educate our communities better on that. So if something doesn't hit when the expectation is for them to for it to hit, we could they'll understand why. And and and I know go ahead. I don't wanna

No, ma'am. I was just gonna say, yes, absolutely. Every time we are gonna do night construction, we will inform the community and the surrounding neighborhoods so they are aware. Yeah.

Teach us how to do that as well.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay. Thank you, madam chair.

Yes.

All right, I do not have any additional speakers in queue. Thank you so very much

Thank you

very much.

All of you for this wonderful presentation. Mr. Shorter?

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Just as you said, Madam Chair, just want to appreciate the team. It is wonderful. I absolutely love that we have so much information by way of this platform for this community and for our county and that we've been able to do it in such a creative way. So just wanna appreciate all the work here and more to come for PwC Works.

For item 6B, continuing with the theme of community engagement with item 6B, madam chair, you may recall that the board supported investment in a three eleven system. Really appreciate that we're about to provide an update on that work and all of the various ways in which now the community can reach our government to get work done. And so with that, I'm going to turn it over to Doctor. Hart, Deputy County Executive, to introduce the presentation.

Thank you, and good afternoon Chair Jefferson, Vice Chair Ingris, Supervisors, and County Executive Shorter. I'm doctor Alicia Hart, deputy county executive for government operations, performance, and innovation. I am joined today by Brian Coy and Katie Hansen for excuse me, from our department of information technology to share an update on the county's three one one platform. Although three one one hasn't reached its first anniversary, it is already making a real difference in how residents access county surfaces. I am proud to share that the platform was recently recognized with the State Scoop Local Smart Award for Local IT Innovation of the Year, and we were one of only five jurisdictions nationwide to receive this honor.

Before moving on, I do want to quickly recognize our three one one call center team. During January's snow and ice event, they played a critical role in supporting emergency operations. We'll now move forward. Today, Brian and Katie will walk you through a quick overview of three one one, starting with what it is and its mission, the channels that residents can use to submit requests, and the service request process from start to finish. They'll also share key data, including overall trends and a breakdown by Magisterial District and wrap up with next steps in improving the three one one experience. With that, I will turn it over to Brian and Katie.

Thank you, Doctor. Hart. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. Yep. Thank you there. Mister Shorter?

Take your back. Thanks. Okay.

So let me start with the goal of three one one. So three one one serves as a front door for constituents to access the government. We wanna reduce the burden on common intake questions and be a single source in place to answer constituents' questions. Three one one launched back on 05/15/2025, and a lot of effort went into that launch. Months of work with all of the telecom providers from wireline to wireless so that when constituents dial 311 from within the county's boundaries, it's routed to the 311 call center.

We did an Department of IT did an in house integration between PwC three one one Salesforce platform and EnerGov for neighborhood services. Neighborhood services leverages EnerGov as their workflow management system. And to not disrupt their daily operations, we did an API integration between the system so that when a constituent opens a surface request that gets queued up to neighborhood services, it's automatically populated in EnerGov. They work that ticket in EnerGov, update their notes, and closed the ticket, and all that information is pushed back into 311 and provided back to the constituent. So there was a lot of work that went into that launch back in in May 2025.

We went live with what we call omnichannel. So we went live with four channels back in May. Those channels are a web portal where constituents can go to a website and and interact with 311 and open service requests. We have mobile apps available on iPhone and Android. We have a live call center where people can dial 311 and speak to a live agent.

And we went live with Will, is a AI chatbot who lives on every page of pwcva.gov. Following go live, we launched Willow, who is a voice AI agent. She answers calls after business hours on weekends and holidays. And then in September, we launched an additional channel, which is we call email to case. Constituents can send an email to 311@pwcva.gov to open up a service request.

Alright. So PwC three one one's mission is to provide county constituents with a single reliable platform to access county services, ensure transparency, and promote accountability. We've broken it down into four pillars. Pillar one, delivery of services. So to provide a centralized omnichannel solution to connect constituents to the correct agency or department.

You know, not everybody knows, you know, they know what challenge they have, but they don't know exactly who to speak with. So, you know, that that is the goal is to to to provide that single interface where they can just interact with their government, not know exactly what phone number to dial or or who who to reach out to. The second pillar is access for constituents, a place where they can submit those questions and concerns and they get queued up to the appropriate agency, you know, and providing that single front door for government services. Also, to improve first call resolution and so we can, you know, provide curated information to those constituents and and try to deflect some service requests that get queued up to the agencies. The third pillar is to provide automatic routing of those service requests and provide status of their request via automated email notifications.

When they submit a request, they're automatically getting an email, you know, with all of the relevant data, the service request number. We're giving them a hyperlink that they can follow to get status updates on that ticket. When agencies provide updates into the three one one platform, those updates are automatically emailed out to the constituent. And then once the case is closed, they're getting that closure email. And then the final pillar is, you know, tracking.

Tracking not just for the constituent, but also for the agency. So we we can create reports and dashboards for agencies and leadership, you know, and provide those KPIs and metrics. And then twenty four hour access to monitor service request status for the constituents. They can do that in the web portal or on the mobile app. They can go just check the status of their case.

Alright. So we talked a bit about those omni channels. Here are some some some metrics from go live back in May till till current. We talked about the emails, you know, we launched that in September. We've opened about a 100 service requests from people emailing 3011@pwcva.gov.

Additionally, you can email, you know, to open a new service request. But part of that part of that development too was those emails that are going out to constituents, you know, providing them information about their ticket used to be a no reply email. Now they can reply to it. Their emails are automatically attached back to the original service request so that that agency can consume those responses. Will, our chatbot has had over 36,000 unique interactions since May.

Seven over 700 of those interactions have resulted in service requests. So Will has kind of two main functions. Will is directly integrated into the three one one platform. So if you ask the right question, Will will walk you through that service request submission. If you ask something outside of those service requests, he provides a generative AI answer based on content on pwcva.gov website.

So, you know, over 700 requests have come from Will. Will is multilingual, speaks over 70 languages. So constituents can interact with the with the AI bot in any of those languages. If they go down the path of submitting that service request in their language of choice, it's automatically translated. And on the back end in the three one one platform, it's all in English for the agencies to consume in English.

So Willow has had over 5,000 calls after hours. Those have resulted in over 170 service requests. You know, we are constantly analyzing all of the the data from the AI agents. And we can, you know, see that, you know, people are interested in the courts and and animal control questions are by far our most popular. We get some calls that are, you know, emergency or non emergency related, and Willow immediately replies and gives instructions on how to reach out to public safety.

You know, we don't we don't handle any public safety related calls. Willow can also provide guidance and phone numbers to constituents on what agencies to reach out to based on keywords and phrases. And and Willow can also open up general requests on their behalf. We have that live call center that's staffed Monday through Friday, eight to five. We have five dedicated call takers, and Katie is the three one one operations manager managing that group.

They've taken over 20,000 phone calls since going live, and they have submitted over 1,300 service requests on constituents behalf. We have our web portal, which is by far the most popular channel. That's resulted in over 2,000 service requests. It's available on, you know, desktop or mobile browser. A mobile app that you can download from iTunes or Android, Google, you know, Google Play, and we've had over a 170 service requests through mobile app.

And so in total, since going live, we've had over 63,000 interactions through all these various omni channels from our constituents. So, you know, I think these metrics show that, you know, constituents are leveraging the platform, specifically self-service. They're embracing the digital channels and the technology, and they're they're choosing to to reach out on, you know, their preferred channel to the government at their time of choosing. Right? Because we're you know, these channels are available 24 by seven. So I'm gonna pass pass things over to Katie, who's gonna talk a bit about our call center.

Thank you, Brian. Thank you, madam chair. Thank you, members of the board. My name is Katie Hanson, as mentioned. Thank you. I'm a little shorter than Brian. As mentioned, I am the three one one operations manager in that role. I handle a bunch of hats. First of all, being I assist the project team with gathering all of our SR requirements, be that updates to existing SRs or requests for new SRs, or we have an issue with this SR, or we have a question about why this was submitted this way, and can you get it over to this other agency? All that fun stuff. I also handle the creation of most of our reports and dashboards in our three one one console. So if you have a dashboard that you already have access to and you need changes, I'm your girl. If escalations come in, my job is to try and deescalate them. So I I hope I do a good job of that. I think I have.

We get a lot of thank you. So I'm gonna say that we're doing a good job. I also handle with my team lead the triaging of every email to case to make sure that it got attached to the right case. And if it can be created into one of our existing SR types, that it gets converted. But my most important job is oversell oversight of our call center. And as Brian mentioned, we have handled over 20,000 calls. What I really appreciate is we beat the industry standard for call centers. Industry standard is twenty eight seconds for average speed of answer. My team is thirteen seconds for average speed of answer. When we started, our average handling time was at the industry standard of four minutes, but we have since halved that.

Across the board, our peak call time has remained ten to 11AM. People like to get those calls in right before lunch. It starts off pretty strong at AM, goes up, and then very slightly tapers off towards the end of the day. Sometimes the 04:00 hour is nice and calm, sometimes it is super busy. Beyond the work that my call center does with the calls, my team is also known as analysts because they don't just handle calls. They handle all of our user acceptance testing. They created the test scripts before we went live. They did all of the initial testing for all of our updates. They also handle all of the research when we get general requests. They also manage our knowledge base.

So our knowledge base articles, this initiative started last January. We reached out to every service on the PWC directory asking for their frequently asked questions and any information they needed the public to know. We got back over a thousand topics, and my team managed to consolidate that into a little over 800 articles available at launch. Since then, we've been updating it weekly or biweekly as questions come in that we don't have yet articles yet for, and we are updating the ones that exist and creating new ones as needed. So before we get into the details of SRs by month and by district, let's go over one more time the intake from the process from intake to resolution.

This always starts with a constituent coming to the government with a concern that they hope the government can assist with. They can pick any of our channels, and then they're gonna need to select a request type. Often, that's gonna be the general request cause again, we launched with a very small subset of services and small subset of agencies. Once they get into that type, they're going to provide the requested or at the very least required information. And once they submit that, they're provided with a case number, which has the last two digits of the year and eight digit number for the case number.

At the same time they're provided that number, an email goes out to the responsible agency, whether that's my team for triaging or the agency team for triaging. It's then assigned as appropriate, and usually the agency has an auto email that goes out with an update saying we're processing it. Some But agencies like to send that hand by man manually and by hand to get that extra white glove support. Status updates are provided as they are available, and constituents can call at any time Monday through Friday to speak to a live agent for us to chase additional details. They can also track their cases using that case number through the search portal on the web portal or mobile app.

Once it's completed, it is formally closed by the agency. They are encouraged, but not required, to provide external comments with a little bit more detail about why it resolved the way it was. And if that's not enough detail, constituents are perfectly able to reach out to us, and we'll be happy to provide additional detail by chasing the agency for any information we're able to provide. So let's get into the service request data. Since we launched, we have submitted over 4,500 requests, and the agencies have closed over 4,100 of them.

I think that's a pretty good process overall. We have an average of over 540 requests coming in. Our month with the lowest volume was unsurprisingly our lunch month because we only had fifteen days. After that, it was December, which we expect to be slow annually because people have more important things to do like holidays and traveling and fun stuff, which we'd refer them to enjoy, but we're here when they need us. Our month with the highest volume was July, which we attribute largely to tall grass and weeds.

That was the biggest complaint all summer. So speaking of our biggest complaints and our biggest requests and concerns, general request leads at the top. We expect this to slowly drop as we add more SRs and are able to split things out so they go to the right places. Our next three are all from Neighborhood Services. They remain our top agency for all of our requests. Tallgrass and Weez is right there in the second. They have been so pleased with the work that we have done that we have now taken over all of their intake. All of their calls come to us first. We try and give them an answer or start that intake for them. And if we are unable to answer, we then escalate to the intake team for some additional information.

That last spot is gonna be there annually, we believe, because that's for car tax questions, and that's gonna pop up every time that deadline comes around. Aside from everything there, our general request, the most popular question is about courts. When's my court date? Can I get a continuance? What's, am I available for jury duty today? Do I have to show up after hours? It's animal related requests. I found an animal. I've lost an animal. I noticed an animal running wild.

And because of that, we reached out to animal services, and we'll be developing two new SRs for them. Lastly, we have requests by Magisterial District that I will be covering, and then I'll pass it over to Brian for some more details. You will see this large number of unassigned. Those are gonna be our general requests and some of our other SRs where we don't require a location. A lot of this comes in because, again, we don't necessarily need a location for questions about courts or for questions about I need you to research something. It also comes in with the email to case. So a lot of those are just a quick question or a quick one off and then we have to reach out for more additional information. If we're able to convert it to an s r type, do try and make sure we get that location in there. And with that, I'm gonna pass it back over to Brian.

Oh. Yes. Wait, hold on. I have someone in the queue and the whole animal thing. The supervisor angry, did you wanna go?

Can can we go here? Because that was a lot. Good.

Thank you.

Okay. So mine is a technical person. I was I don't know. Maybe you can answer. Maybe we'll just come back to it. But I I'm happy that we're here with using AI and and really three in one and the whole system. So my question is on the back end of that, and I've been listening to other localities, how they have policy in place, that helps keep this information that we contain inside the county for proprietary purposes and all of that. So I know we're talking here with this, and this is great. But on that back end, far as the cover goes, do do we know if we have that in place? And if not, is that something we should be addressing?

Yes, please. Yes. Thank you. So yes. Absolutely. So we have a data data governance policy within Salesforce. So all of that data is stored within the platform. We have also, we're leveraging, you know, AWS and and and data is encrypted at rest and in transit. And so, yes, there's a data governance policy over all of this. And so, you know, these aren't public AI LLMs that are training models off of our data. This is all offline proprietary stuff.

Okay. And honestly, I have no idea how to tell you what to say. I'm not even gonna act like I do. Yeah. So I'm not even gonna act like I do. But that's my concern is just make sure we have all of those systems in place and locked down. Yeah. Just even deeper, like, all of our employees, and if they're using government phones or their personal phones, and, hopefully, they're not using personal phones and how we're kinda managing that, do all that. So just that whole level of concern. Yes. Now my real question to ask you really is on Willow. Okay. Willow is a voice assistant that helps, and I know we're way into 2025. So has that service gotten better? I I doubt you have a sample you can show us.

But as people are talking to these automated systems Yeah. I've been nothing but frustrated because they don't really work well, listen well, and kinda help you well. So has that improved? I haven't tried to call

in yet. So

so Willow, we've we've layered on a bit of additional functionality. Willow has improved, you know, marginally since launch, but we are right now in a development stage with Willow where a lot of development efforts going into her. I was going to talk some more bit about it in a bit. And then if you have additional questions at the end, we can certainly address them. But I have some Okay. Some, you know, some our last slide is kinda next steps, what we're working on now.

Thank

you. But but, yes, to to your to your question, there hasn't been a since since she's gone live, there hasn't been a ton of development in her. We've been, you know, analyzing the the the data and making small improvements along the way, but there's some big improvements coming.

Okay. Thanks. I'll

So actually, because Catherine, when you stepped away, was like, my god, she's gone. She's leaving us. So we have two more slides. I'm gonna ask cause you're going to come back. I'm sure if we have questions for you, you're right here. So ain't leaving I apologize everyone. We're going to let them be through those two slides and we're going to come back and Katherine's going to stay there. And Brian will be there too. All right, thank you.

No worries. Okay. So so we've broken out by Magisterial District. The top five or or some show six because there were some ties. But the top five service requests from each Magisterial District since going live, you'll notice that general request for every magisterial district either one or two.

And I think that, you know, that just speaks to, like, our work isn't done. Right? We we went live with 39 unique service request types, and we knew that didn't cover all county services. So we created that general request to capture any requests outside of those. So, you know, we're using data within that general request too to drive our development efforts and figure out what service requests constituents are really asking for.

And you'll notice tall grass and weeds, you know, is present quite a bit. There was a there was a lot of activity there late summer. And so next steps. So you'll see there, number one, r 25 secondurity upgrade. We actually completed that yesterday. That was, you know, to provide some routine security updates to the platform. But but r 25 also unlocks a couple new features that we're excited about introducing. One is an a console update. So that's kind of on the backside, the back end for the 301 call center analyst. Their interface is gonna change a bit.

Also, the agencies that are logging into the system that, you know, their interface is gonna change a bit for the better. Katie touched on those knowledge articles. We have over a thousand public facing knowledge articles now. They're a little bit buried in the current interface for the constituent. Part of this upgrade too is going to make those more easily consumable by the constituent.

So today, if you go to p w c three one one and there's a search bar, you can put in the word grass, for instance, it's gonna return service requests that are related to GRASS. Right? It's helpful, but we have all of this other knowledge there that we want to present to constituents. So here in the very near future, when someone types the word GRASS, they'll see relevant service requests, but they're also gonna see all of those curated knowledge based articles related to GRASS. And so the goal there is to provide information and deflect those service requests from being queued up to agencies.

Right? So, you know, providing that kind of first call resolution right there on the on the interface. Number two there, agency testing for new and updated SRs. So we reach back out to all of the, we'll call it, phase one agencies, asked them how how the system was working for them. And so out of those conversations came some changes that they wanted to make to their existing service requests.

Some were minor tweaks and verbiage. Some were different questions to ask. And so right now, in the pipeline, we have 10 of those original service requests being reworked for the agencies and a couple new ones. And so we are targeting end of this month, mid mid through mid March to have user acceptance testing started, and then we'll push those changes to production. Part of this current development cycle as well, we're introducing Spanish language to the other omnichannels.

So a constituent now will be able to submit their service request on the web portal, on the mobile app, or even on the phone talking to Willow. She's gonna start speaking Spanish very soon. And so we'll take that service request intake in. We're going to translate that to English on the back end so that the agencies consume that information in English. Any updates that they provide to the system will be translated back to Spanish, sent back out to the constituent automatically.

Number three, we're currently developing additional service requests, talking with neighborhood services for instance. We get a lot of calls about chickens and and and complaints about chickens in the neighborhood. So we're we're creating a domestic foul dedicated service request for that based out of those conversations with neighborhood services. We talked about animals. So analyzing all of the the, you know, the the the transcriptions from the different a agents in the call live call center, lots of people call about animals, lost and found.

So we reached out to animal services, and we've developed a a lost animal and a found animal service request that's coming soon. We really wanted to understand their business process around how they handle that so that we could either replicate it or improve it in the system. And I think we've come to a we've developed a big improvement to their process. So today they, you know, they if they find an animal, they kind of on an index card, they're writing down attributes about the animal, breed, size, color, goes into a box. It stays in that box for a month.

If you lose your animal, you can call in, they look through the box and try to reunite, you know, you guys. So we're going to leverage the the platform to automate that. And so animal services is going to have a dedicated dashboard that is gonna have filters and they can just drill down by all of those various attributes and quickly, you know, reunite those lost animals back with their families. So we're pretty excited about that. Number four, additional dashboards.

We've had requests. We've met with all of your chiefs of staff about a week ago talking about dashboards. We've created a couple. We're working on creating dashboards for for everyone to include, know, for the cabinet based on quadrant. So we'll be able to slice the data and and you guys can consume it, you know, based on your magisterial district.

So that's coming very soon. That's something we're working working feverishly on for you guys. Number five, communicate and educate on on three one one. And so we have a PWC three zero one one landing page on the website. We are gonna be updating that, and we will have the ability to provide KPIs and metrics out to the public. So things like, you know, what's our average speed of answer? We can provide information so that people can decide do they want to call us. And I think they will when they see that our our speed of answer is fairly quick. Right? So they you So we're going to be able to provide those metrics automatically from the system out to the public facing website.

PwC three zero one, we internally call it a soft launch. Right? There wasn't a lot of outreach about the go live back in May. And so we want to continue, you know, to promote PWC three zero one one through either, you know, opportunities internally, like we had a booth at GovFest where we set up a PwC three one one booth so that agencies and departments within the county could learn about three one one and how we can help. And so we, you know, we just are are excited to promote three one one.

I think, you know, those metrics of over 60,000 interactions since May speaks volumes considering there wasn't a whole lot of promotion for our launch. Number six is continued data driven growth. So we are constantly looking at our metrics and analyzing the data. We're using that information to reach out to different agencies on how we can help because we're getting lots of requests for things like November. We were getting a ton of questions about the election.

So we reached out to office of election. They asked us to reach back out after the November died down a bit when they had some time, but we're in we have meetings scheduled with them to talk about how we can help. We have, monthly standing meetings with the courts on how we can help them. Right now, it's just, you know, exchanging information. They're helping, curate some knowledge articles, for us.

But we're using that data, to drive where PWC 311 goes because we want, you know, we don't wanna just create service requests for the sake of it. Right? We wanna create meaningful service requests that constituents use. And so on on Willow. So another thing that we're actively developing is is is the AI voice agent.

I mentioned that she'll be soon speaking Spanish and being able to interact using Spanish and and submit those service requests. Willow is is integrated into the county mapping solutions called GIS so that when you tell the AI agent your address, it can validate your location, make sure you're within the county so it won't allow you to submit a service request if you're giving an address outside of the county. We understand that, you know, if you're calling 311 from your cell phone to report an issue, the chances of you knowing a civic address of of that are probably small. Right? So we've identified that as as as an area of improvement.

And so we're working on integrating what's called point of interest within GIS so people can just speak naturally and say, you know, there's an issue at CVS on the corner of these two roads. Willow will be able to geolocate that location and then convert that into a civic address in a magisterial district and submit that service request. So that's something that we're working on. I you know, I I said Will, the the chatbot has two main functions. He can open up service requests.

He also is crawling the county website and providing generative AI responses to questions. Willow will soon have that capability as well. So constituents can just call in and say, you know, is Central Library open? And Willow will be able to provide an answer, you know, based on all the content on our website. So there's a lot of development being focused on Willow. And so we're excited about those improvements coming. All right. So questions?

All right. I have a quick question before I go to the next person in queue. There is a page, a slide that has all the calls by Magisterial District. Occoquan has the most. I heard my colleague, Supervisor Bodhi, say because he's done a great job of publicizing it, but what do you think may be the discrepancies? Maybe in Brinsel, they're self sufficient mountain men. You know, I'm just wonder you know, they're his chickens. No. I'm just wondering, like, you know, why why do we think there's such discrepancies? He really does have chickens. I'm sorry. That's why I said that.

I'll let Katie take this because she's kind of on the front lines every day. Certainly.

So I think a lot of it comes down to some of that outreach and and publicizing more about, we're open. You can reach out to us, and we're we're happy to take your your requests. I think a lot of it also comes down to there are issues that are repeated a lot, where we get multiple reports from people in the neighborhood saying, I don't like that this exists. Can you handle it? I think a lot of it also came down to again, where specific neighborhoods, especially in the summer where there's a lot of tall grass and weeds in this specific neighborhood.

So we had it kind of you can see on the map. It's all here in terms of who's reporting. I think long term, again, it's gonna come down to reaching out, possibly sending out a newsletter or some publications and making sure that we can get more people to get involved.

Thank you. And if I can also just tag in with that, I think it's a natural opportunity for us to collaborate with communications as well to see how else we can advertise the service, the multiple channels that are available to our constituents to submit service requests, and just to continue to build upon the progress that we've made so far.

All right, thank you so very much. Supervisor Vega.

Katie or Katherine, what do you prefer? Katie, please. Katie, love your energy and your enthusiasm. It's very evident that you are passionate about your job. And so thank you for all of your hard work and for the rest of the team. This is good stuff because I love data, right? And so we have access now to data. Will this data and maybe this is not just a question for you, but also for our county executive will this data be driving further improvements? And what I mean by that is when we look at these categories, and looking at every district, I see that there is a common denominator, tall grass and or trash. We have schedules for said requests.

And as much as we would like to handle these matters in a timely manner, we can't because we are limited to our ability to get out there and whatnot. So what are we going to do with this data if we're seeing a reoccurring pattern in regards to specific issues in all districts?

Yeah, let me say thank you very much, Supervisor Vega, for that question. We absolutely, this is the exact reason that we would have such a tool. Not the only reason, but one of the core reasons. So when we talk about continuous quality improvement, performance stats, or those kinds of engagements with our workforce, that information comes from this kind of system. So yes, if the system is telling us that we're receiving a significant number of calls from a specific area in the county, that that, the calls are coming for us a very specific reason, then that absolutely tells us that we have some, work to do or that might be opportunity for us to proactively, whether it's trash collection or abatement, whether it's education for a neighborhood around around certain issues, we absolutely will begin to identify as we go forward.

I'll say in terms of system access, I know we've talked about sort of dashboards. To some extent, this may some of this work may result in liens on homes. Some of this work may result in well, maybe because of neighbor to neighbor interactions that are not always positive. So we will keep in mind how how we provide access to the back end of the system to make sure that there is confidentiality and that the staff can work to make sure that the communication between staff isn't, you know, isn't inappropriately used, and that we have the ability to engage where there is potentially a lean without pulling board offices into the witness stand, if you understand what I mean. So for that reason, we are going to be very thoughtful moving forward about how you know, what kind of reporting we do for performance around this and the kind of access that we provide.

So long answer, but yes, we will be using this information to help

with performance. And then just wanna make sure that I heard you correctly. Did you say neighborhood services? You all handle everything? Everything. Does that include when we reach out to neighborhood services?

That that's them. We handle intake and initial questions.

Okay.

So then

calling in, we're your first call.

Gotcha. So then this data is strictly from people calling you guys directly and not our offices coordinating with neighborhood services and then them reaching out to you all. Yeah. Okay. If that makes sense. Yeah. I just wanna make sure. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Good job.

Thank you.

Right. Thank you, supervisor.

Thank you, madam chair. Thank you, Katie, Doctor. Hart, to the rest of the team. Thank you so much for this. And to that last question, what my office does in certain circumstances, we actually open up tickets for folks when they call in our office, which could be part of the why there's so many in Occoquan.

My office is also part of that. But frankly, we just as soon as this launched, we just started putting in all of our newsletters, what have you, because frankly, it's a it's a so the centralized sort of processing and intake system that I know that a lot of us have been asking for quite some time. What is highlight that and say thank you, number one. Number two, doctor Hart, you mentioned one of the things I was gonna ask about is the communications piece. Knowing that, one, thank you for having it on PwC Works, but two, to me, there's a lot of good opportunities for for really reaching out to community and saying, hey.

You have a problem. Here's this great service the county now offers to allow you to really, you know, connect with the right services. You know, far too often, we talk about how some of these issues also touch multiple agencies. And I know it sort of centralizes goes to you all first, then touches other agencies, really allows for us to have that sort of whole of government approach to some of these issues that frankly touch multiple agencies. I know that my office has been in contact with you all about the fact that it takes a little bit more manual work to tag multiple agencies on the same ticket, but I think that's a work in progress and really is a testament to the sort of the desilowing of what have you.

But it goes into my my overall question is, as you continue to make these improvements, you have these data points. You also have these upgrades. Tell people are able to report. How are you gonna engage the community and let them know that these upgrades are coming and how that help really allow them to help themselves to deliver those services?

Thank you for the question, and I think that those are the types of questions that I will work with Nikki Brown and just brainstorming, really wanting to use her team's expertise in how we are reaching our constituents. What is the most intuitive way for us to reach our constituents? I was just speaking today that operationally we may think one thing is that you know, or one channel is the best way, but really wanting to make sure that we are pulling in that communication expertise because people receive information differently. They engage with our website differently. They may engage with other services that we provide differently.

So can we make an attempt to advertise through all of those different channels? And if so, I think that it will help pay dividends. So things like the newsletter, our web pages, when we are having things such as our procurement expo, which is coming up. Maybe we have some way to plug in, you know, about 03/11 there. So definitely, I think there are multiple opportunities to continue to advance this particular platform, the knowledge of this platform, and, you know, I will definitely be leveraging Nikki, and her team and their expertise on how we can continue to support DOIT in, the county with this.

Nikki's just Nikki's sitting up in it behind you, but

doctor Hertz. I think she

has something he wants to say.

Yes. Oh, sorry. Nikki, you did not know you were there.

You answered it perfectly. So to that point, I just wanna thank the the three one one team. With this data, we can start doing more targeted marketing. So now that we know what some of those main concerns are, it allows us to do some targeted messaging. So I really wanna thank Katie and Brian for that.

Also wanna thank them, and I think that doctor Hart mentioned this during the January we are in February. During the January storm, it was great because Brian was very responsive, and we were able to work with them to get information about, like, snow removal and ACE on three one one. So I think the more that we start doing that and using that system for the everyday things that people want to let us know about, the more people will start to use it. So all that to say, it is the data helps drive the messaging, and so we're really excited to continue to work with IT on that, and we'll continue to work to see how we can use it for some of those more common or everyday things.

Thank you. And so two more things, madam chair, if you don't mind. Yeah. Don't go too far, Nikki. It's probably for the group as a whole. So thank you for that, Nikki. I appreciate that. And so going to the idea that Procurement Expo, these other community facing events that we have, you know, some of the other agencies have little handouts, whether they're cards or business cards or magnets or what have you. We'd love to see three one one magnets out there at some point. Because, frankly, you know, when my office does events, we hand out things like that all the time, really get the the the word out.

So that's one. Number two, as you begin to break down so that sort of big general request, and I know that, again, my office has that big 400 something or another that there's a bunch of things. As you get to sort of break those down and sort of create more buckets, will that sort of were you gonna sort of recompile that data so the the legacy stuff that was all in those general requests will then be brought out into their new buckets? How is that gonna work? Because from a data perspective, as Supervisor Vega said, it's good data to have, but knowing this is the evolving system and knowing that there's certain requests that are in in one giant bucket now, how is that gonna play out?

Yeah. It's it's certainly possible to reclassify those general requests once a new service request is created that's applicable. So, you know, they they they come in as general requests. They may not match one of the existing 39, but the three zero one operations team, Katie and team, classify those general requests. So we have we we already have information about them.

That's how we kind of let that data drive our our development efforts. So it's absolutely possible to, after the fact, go back and and add those in so that, dashboards include those early general requests that, now we have specifics for, right? So that's that's absolutely, something we can do.

Sure. Can I take one more question and use my second five minutes for it? Just one more question.

Yeah. Yeah. I will let you use your second five minutes. We do have other people in the queue.

Just one more. Thank you, madam chair. I appreciate that. Last one. Thank you for that. Yeah. We're talking about folks that are reporting or ask asking questions from outside the county or they their their thing is for outside the county. So if I re if I heard correctly, it sort of asked them, like, hey. What address are we reporting on? It's not in the Prince William County. It sort of kicks them out. They don't get a chance to request. Do is there any kind of redirect there? Because if they give a City Of Manassas address, something like that, is it gonna say, hey. This is what the City Of Manassas.

Yeah.

And, again and so that's one and two. How does it interact with the towns?

So so I'll let me back up one step. So you can dial 311 from within our boundaries. We also have a 10 digit number, (703) 792-4311, which on the dial pad is is, you know, PWCG311. Right? And so you can call 311 from outside of our boundaries. You don't have to use the three digit number. When you're when you're interacting with one of the digital channels, you're presented with a map. You can either type in an address or drop a pin. It's interactive. If you dropped a pin in, say, Manassas City for a specific service request, you will get a pop up message.

And depending on the service request, we provide information on on who you should be contacting. And so the map is interactive, and we do provide guidance if they're if they're clicking outside of those boundaries. Now if you click way outside, like go deep into Fairfax, Arlington, we we know we don't have all of that information. But for for the, you know, the the towns and cities within our our our boundaries, we are providing guidance on on who to reach out to. Thank you so much.

All right, thank you. Supervisor Stewart.

So, you very much for your presentation. I have a question as it pertains to your AI Willow. And I know that AI is a misnomer. You mentioned large language model before. So, I called into three eleven last month, and I had a very interesting conversation with Willow, if you want to call it that. So my preferred method is calling. I don't like chatting, texting, all that stuff. I just pick up the phone. And part of that is because I'm a man of a certain age. So And it was about a traffic light.

And I kept saying traffic light, and there's no street light, no traffic light, no street And this went on for about two minutes. So finally, and I tried different combinations, you know, and I said stoplight, and it said, oh, you have a concern about a traffic light. Right? So my question is, one, do you every now and then, tech companies use this term called dogfooding, where they test their own product just to see what the user experience is like. How often do you do that?

And what sort of updates I mean, because I know LLMs are troublesome no matter what entity you call. If I'm calling an airline or Comcast or whatever, those type of things can be really frustrating. The only thing I ever really want to say is operator. So, one, what are you doing to improve to the extent that you can because they're just the overall general technology is not there yet to improve that system? That's number one.

Okay. You want me I'll start there. So so we do analyze those call transcripts in an effort to improve the product. Specifically around traffic lights and street lights, you know, we we give we give the agent instructions. That one's a tricky one because, you know, as you know, we don't handle traffic signals. We we only handle our department of transportation only handles illumination lights. Right? So so we have some specific instructions in there. There's always room for improvement. Right?

So we we do analyze the interactions, and we do try to improve the that set of instructions. And so, you know, Willow, you know, she has been in service, you know, for a few months now. And and and we recognize that there's room for improvement. We're working towards that. And and but to answer your question, we we do do a lot of testing ourselves. There's

a

lot of nuances to making all this work. Having it be able to go into a system and open service requests and know all the correct questions to ask and all stuff. There's a there's a lot of moving pieces to make this work. Right. And some of these service requests, specifically around traffic lights, are pretty tricky for her.

And so when you're interacting with the web portal, for instance, and you choose there's a there's a drop down for what type of light. If you chose traffic light, you get a pop up message that says, no. You need to call VDOT. Right? That's it's tricky on the phone conversation side, but we appreciate the feedback because we are constantly trying to improve.

Got it. Yeah. Because for my district, a lot of people, they have trouble with 311. They just end up calling us, and then we end up calling said department to to to get that issue handled.

I add on to my answer a bit?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Sure. So, you know, Willow today has a a small subset of of actions that she can take. When we layer on the ability for her to give just generative AI responses Mhmm. It will open up a a whole new realm of of of functionality. Willow would be able to tell you based on content on our website, oh, you're talking about a a traffic light, you need to contact VDOT. Right? So there's a lot of improvement coming with her. And so that, you know but we do appreciate the feedback. And and and like I said, we are doing a lot of analysis and and and trying to improve.

Right. And so to speak for the demographic that just basically likes to just pick up the phone Yep. Is there a plan long term to go twenty four hours to having a a a carbon based life form that that we can speak to?

Yeah. So we don't have any plans to have Willow answering every call up front during business hours. You know, we we are exploring the technology in that, you know, when you say operator transfer me to a live person, you know, we're we're developing that technology to be able to do it. There's no plan to put her in front of a live agent during the day. There you know, there's opportunities there that, you know, if all live call takers are are busy, for instance, and we know the expected wait time because there's a lot of callers, the expected wait time is over a certain threshold.

We could potentially offer the option if you'd like to speak with our AI assistant, you know, know, you can do so or you can remain on the line for a live agent. So there's there's options and opportunity there, but we don't have any plans to inject her in front of every call at this time. Okay. She's yeah.

So she I'll also add, if I can because I think, supervisor Stewart, if I understand your question, you're asking, if we are planning to do twenty four hour live, agent access. And I will say that, I mean, what we've heard today is that Willow, once we get through this sort of stage where we are still advancing programming, adding, that we hope that Willow will be a great option at 2AM, right, or, or on the weekends. What we will do during the budget season will certainly bring forward, an answer to the question in terms of, what it would cost us to have three shifts or, some some additional staffing associated with three one one. I don't know that I would recommend it given some of the advancements that we've now made. But we will certainly, based on your question, have the information for you and the board to consider.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

All right. Thank you very much. Supervisor Angry is up again.

Thank you, Madam Chair. All right, so we're back to the Willow piece, Chip, you cleared Willow. The EBSCO District is really an older district, and so I know this is a great tool, and so people who like technology, go to technology, to your point, I get all the calls. And one thing I love about the calls is we submit those, and we submit them as angry complaints because I'm angry. I'm going to lose that functionality here going forward, because what I'm hoping is that as we submit those, the data you're collecting, to Supervisor Vega's point, is really good, and it helps us understand more of, like, you know, the the trash pickup or the overcrowding.

Or my my most recent over the last week has been snow removal in these sidewalks, and that's literally happening right now, which I still don't have an answer for, to tell you the truth. But is there a way are you gonna are you working on capturing is there a way we can capture in the districts, you know, in our offices, the the phone calls that we get to upload or somehow I don't wanna create extra work for anyone, especially not my team who's already overburdened with most things going on. But I'm just curious if there's some way between, as I submit them into the neighborhood services, can that system talk to your system to give you more data that can then help? Because when I look at the numbers to the data of what we said think that's inaccurate for the amount of work that Neyasco District does in constituent services. So I want to make sure that we capture that right.

I like the program. I like the software. And how do I get that? Because I'll just say this. I don't think most of the elders in the district are going to go to this. So if there's a way I can capture many of the concerns that are happening there so we can create opportunities, how do we best get in there to to solve those problems.

Yeah. I think I think a good approach is to work with your offices and understand your process for constituent services and and and and find the best find the best framework to for you guys to leverage the system so that we're collecting those metrics, but you're still able to give that personalized wake of care, but but using the system to collect the data. And so we're open to those conversations and figuring out, the best way to to accomplish that with with each of you.

Alright. So we'll be we'll continue working now Certainly. With the team. Yep. Great job, by the way. Great work. Thanks. All right.

Thank you. Supervisor Bailey.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I like both of you. It's good. So good. And this is a long time coming. And so thank you very much. I I wanted to ask, one of the things that was an opportunity for us for years was the Spanish and multilingual translations, you know, and how we serve those communities. And so my questions to you with new SR types, the report, the domestic file, all of that, What is the roll out time that you've determined to to for the successful criteria of all of that?

So to just to understand your question. So what the the time frame after we roll out to understand if there's success. Is that what you're asking? Yeah. I guess I mean, we're constantly looking at our at our own metrics. So we we have a dashboard that we look at every day on on what's going on. You know, Canadian team do a fantastic job with what we call service level agreements. So we we're constantly monitoring what's going on in the system. And so, you know, after we roll out a new service request or, you know, Spanish is gonna be big for us. This is, you know, a big improvement.

We will have a lot of eyes on it to understand our people leveraging it. And so, you know, we can we'll work with Nikki and team Mhmm. To get that information out that you can now interact with the system in Spanish. We have opportunity to layer on additional languages. We're looking at metrics with the chatbot. For instance, Will speaks 70 languages. We know exactly what languages people are interacting with them and at what percentage. Mhmm. And so there is a a a steep dramatic drop off after Spanish. Mhmm.

But we do know, the languages people are are are are speaking, to the system. So like I said, we have, the ability to layer on some more languages past Spanish. Mhmm. And so those are things that we're being that we're evaluating. But to answer your question, I I don't know that there's a specific timeline where we can measure success. We just continually monitor, and we're letting the data drive where we go. Right? And so, you know, I hope that answers your question.

It it answers my question, but I would encourage, please, if once you get with Nikki to make that as soon as possible.

Certainly.

Because that is a demographic that we want to serve to, and it's been waiting for a long time, so the quicker we do that, the better off things are, in terms of our delivery service and compatibility with yours.

And Spanish should be available in the coming weeks. So it's coming very, very soon.

Yeah. Yeah. And I don't mean to rush you more than you've been rushed.

No. No. We're excited for it.

Okay. Great. So the other question that I have, I think you answered this earlier, but I just want to make sure that you also understand that when you were talking about collaborating with our offices as it relates to the plan district dashboard, so how can that help the supervisors and the residents, because we're communicating with them as well as you are, understand the trends and the bottlenecks in real time, you know, because patience is a virtue.

Certainly.

How can that help us to, you know, bring it all together?

So in the dashboards, we can present data for, for instance, overdue service requests in your district. So we can provide you data on, you know, each service request has a unique service level agreement that's driven by the agency. They provided that data. So when you open up a service request in the system, it tells you, you know, this this has a service level agreement of thirty days. Right? This should be completed in the thirty days.

Mhmm.

If that time is breached, it's now, you know, overdue. And so part of those dashboards we'll provide will show you overdue service requests in your district so that you can reach out to neighborhood services or, you know, whoever whatever agency owns that service request and get details and and try to figure out what's going on. So we can provide, you know, that and those dashboards to you. Mhmm. And, you know, the trends of the different service requests coming to us from your district.

Mhmm. So, know, so, you know, there's a plethora of data in the system, and we will work with your offices to figure out what data best suits you Mhmm. To to support your constituents.

Yeah. Because I want that trend to go. I see 375 requests. That's good. Mine's are not chickens like Brentsville, I don't know. But the other question that I had was

I'm sorry, did you want your next five minutes of time?

I do, please ma'am, thank you. The other question that I have is the top reasons for not closing something out, because that's very key is look. She says it with a smile.

I love it. Go ahead. Our top reason for not closing something out is usually that it's going to court or, again, is our our top. They provide a hundred day window and occasionally extensions Uh-huh. For the person with the violation to try and bring it into compliance with code. Because we don't want to send people to court. We want to get them into compliance. We give them that opportunity. Sometimes they don't take it. That gets us to that hundred day window, and then it's sent to summons and onward and so on. And that can take as long as the courts take. We we can't control that.

You can't control that. So so with that, so that that that is what determines your timeline?

Yes.

Okay. I'm good. Thank you, Madam Chair.

All right. Thank you so very much. I don't see anyone else in the queue. This is a great presentation. Mr. Shorter, we're ready for the next.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair, Board members. Just really I think this is their first time in front of the Board. So great job on the presentation today. This is very, very exciting technology and just an amazing platform. So just really want to thank the entire team, everyone involved in the process. So thank you.

Thank

you. Amazing also that we have done this in under a year. So last May, I think we launched softly and already we are seeing just hundreds of Prince William County residents impacted. So the next presentation Madam Chair item 6C. I think everyone can agree that organizations, especially local government organizations restructure and departments merge all the time.

What we have seen here over the last year, I think really is a testament to both Rick's leadership, his style, his approach to engaging, but also the TMO and the TMOs just support facilitating. There has been quite a process that the department has been through. You all may recall that last year as part of the budget process, we initiated a desire to merge capital construction across the government enterprise into transportation really to make sure that we were prepared as our as our CIP continues to grow. And the team has done just an amazing job pulling staff in. Sometimes what happens when processes like this launch is that staff are afraid, they are not communicated with well, and it's just not done well with the change management framework in mind.

That is not what happened here. And so we wanted to come back to the board and to the community just to talk talk through the process that the team went through. I think this is absolutely a white paper and something that our teams will be talking about on panels because it was just such a great great job done. So with that, I will turn it over to Rick to walk us through, and Mandy is here also representing TMO to play part in the presentation as well. Rick, turn it over to you.

Thank you, Mr. County Executive. Madam Chair, members of the board, remind you, Rick Canisales, your Director of Transportation. I'm here with Ms. Mandy Spina, our Chief Transformation Officer, to give you the presentation that our CXO so gratefully teed up for me there.

As was mentioned, we I appreciate the fact that last year as part of the board approval, were able to give me the movement forward to start creating this reorganization a new department. We are calling it the Department of Transportation and Capital Construction to identify both of the things we're doing here, right? We're doing the capital construction for the county as well as the transportation facilities that we have always done. Before I get started, like Mr. Shorter said, there's a lot of people that have been involved in this and have taken part in this throughout the past year in trying to plan for this reorganization.

And I just wanted to thank some of those individuals before I get started with the presentation. First, I wanted to thank Ms. Lisa Madron, who was our prior our Chief Transformation Officer for her leadership and letting her staff be part of this process. I wanted to thank Dominique Ward for being the lead on what we were doing helping me out through the initial process. I would like to thank Matt Villarreal who is not here today, but also Seth Handler Voss. Oh, Matt's here. Oh, I'm sorry. Hey, Matt. He snuck in on me. He snuck in on me.

But Mr. Matt Miller, Seth Handler Voss, who are the people that are we are affecting through this process as we go forward in putting this new department together. I also like to thank Eric Bruner, who is the Assistant Director of Facilities Construction Now under Matt, who's been very helpful in making sure that we have a clear transition with his staff coming into ours, as well as Kitab Shamut, who was initially involved, but has since we've decided that to move forward without affecting his department in the areas that they do their work. And finally, I'd like to thank Ms. Mandy Spina, who's been working with me now lately in getting to these next steps, and Ms.

Janet Bartnick, who is going to be leading us through the end of this cycle and getting us to the endpoint in which we'll be coming for you for approval through the budget process. So with that said and all those things, I hope I oh, I'm sorry. And Ms. Shana Terry, who's also here, who is our Chief Procurement Officer, who is very important to this process because she will be the lead in making sure that we are protected. And I am forgetting someone from what I'm seeing and looking back.

I'm sorry. Oh, I said Dominique. I mentioned Dominique. She was the second person I mentioned because she was right next to me through for the last eight months here, right next to me. So I appreciate her leadership and her effort in getting Team One and leading us through the initial effort again.

To get started on the presentation I went got ahead of myself there. A little bit of background, obviously, you know, capital construction delivery is currently managed by three departments. We are with Department of Transportation, do your transportation work Parks and Rec, who do your parks and park facilities as well as FFM, who does the facilities for the counties including stuff for emergency services, libraries and so on. This created kind of a fragmented approach in what we did, right? We were dealing with three different departments, doing three different capital constructions, using three different processes, using three different systems to get through these processes and using three different timelines and ways of getting to the board and being able to deliver these projects.

So the Department of Transportation and Capital Construction, we're looking to serve as your one stop shop for new construction around the county. So what we're trying to do here is make sure that we are creating and aligning the processes of design, construction, right of way, utility relocation and then the facilities and the logistics of what we're doing here with all the different facilities within the county. We're also trying to improve the transparency of what we do and making sure that we are out with the public understanding their needs and making sure that they understand what we're doing as we're moving forward with construction. Efficiencies of having this under a one stop shop and making sure that you know where to go. If you're looking for new construction, you know who to talk to and we can do it in a quicker, faster and more creative way hopefully as well as accountability.

That accountability is now on me and our department, right? That accountability comes back to us and making sure that we get these facilities done under budget, on time and making sure that we cover all the needs of the community. What I did as an organization, this is what we are looking like today at transportation. We are three different divisions. We have our division our planning division that includes traffic safety as well as inspections.

We also have our financial management division and admin division, which deals with everything in our department and getting making sure that we're making all those payments through the hundreds of millions of dollars we go through every year, as well as making sure we get our grants and we're represented in all policy and legislative items. And then we finally have our capital division, which looks at the construction design, right of way utility relocation and construction of projects, including a division that does alternative procurement in like design build projects and PPTA projects that we accomplish through those methods. What we are looking to do is consolidate, right, and restructure and create this new department. As we're doing this, what we're going to be doing is picking up a couple folks from parks so they can implement our parks projects. Parks will continue to have the mission of master planning and making sure that they're dealing with their partners in what parks does.

When they're ready to come engineer a project, they will bring that project to us. We will engineer, find the right of way and get the construction done. If that master planning effort continues to be with Parks, we will be using their individuals to be able to implement the projects and move forward with theirs. This does not mean that parks will come to us and give us a project. We plan to be collaborative from the beginning. We plan to be involved from the master planning process so we understand scope, estimates, needs and we have that going once we start the design. On the capital facility side, we're going

to have

the entire division of FCM coming to transportation and creating that capital construction group. This group is currently led by, as I formally mentioned, Mr. Eric Bruner, who is the Assistant Director. He will continue to be an Assistant Director through his functions and continue to lead his group. His group now though is going to consist of two divisions.

The division that does parks and special projects, which will include the individuals coming from parks, as well as two individuals coming from transportation. One will be the lead engineer of the group, who is both he came from Loudoun to us, where they are currently doing this and he has followed both doing facilities and now done transportation facilities with us. So he has that knowledge of doing both efforts. We will also be having a few people from FCM going into that group that do most of the construction management work, so they will be doing construction management and special projects at the same time. The next division is the Facilities Construction Division, which is the facility the division that was going to do the facilities for you.

This division right now has eight individual engineers that are part of this division. What we will do to get a leader here, we will not create a new position. We will have out of those eight groups, a selective competitive process to see which one of those eight wants to lead that group and we will then redo their position to be the engineering manager and the lead for that group. So it will not be a new position, it would just something that we are restructuring as well there. And then finally, I do we do have one new position that will be incorporated with this new department.

That will be a new Deputy Director of Capital Construction. This is the person that will lead both the transportation side and the facilities, I'm sorry, in the facility side of the house and will be over the assistant directors that lead each one of those divisions, Mr. Eric Bruner and Ms. Mary Ankers. With that, I will turn this over so we can go into the process that we've gone through in the last year to again Mandy Sveena, our new Chief Transportation Transformation Officer, who will give you the process and where we're headed. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the Board, Mandy Spina, Chief Transformation Officer. Excited to speak to you in this capacity. So I've had the really unique experience over the last year to sit on this team in two capacities. One in my former role in development services as a team member, and now through the TMO. And getting to see the process unfold has really been a fantastic work between all parties.

As Rick mentioned, the number of people just here today to support, what we're going to walk through is the process that's happened over the last eight months with the Transformation Management Office. Now any of you who have been through a reorganization understand that it is not an easy feat. So when I say eight months and you think of transportation, parks and rec, FFM, that is quite an undertaking for eight months. So really proud of the work that has been done and really proud of where we're going moving forward.

All right,

so the TMO's role as a project manager. As County Executive Shorter noted in his introduction to DTCC, typically when you think of reorganizations, you hear of anxiety and uncertainty for employees. There typically is not a lot of communication final decisions are made. There's a lot of focus on structure only and not typically on the people side. And then we're also looking at minimal post implementation support.

That's typically what happens. You did not see that here and I largely think one that's the all in effort, but also the TMO's ability to lead as a project manager. So where this TMO served in a capacity was both from a coordination perspective, when you're looking at departments, teams, and timelines, but more importantly on the focus areas. This project specifically focused on organizational structure, which you heard Rick talk about, process efficiencies, which we're still working through, the people side of change management, but then also post implementation support. So this approach was very different and that this was the first county reorganization with formal project management.

Very proud of that effort. You think of just the number of people that are going to be affected, dedicated change management support and also post implementation support. The TMO's role as the project manager did allow for a repeatable design, So you think of the times just over the past few years where maybe we've reorganized divisions within departments, departments when we were going through the quadrant restructuring, being able to take this framework and use it in a repeatable fashion. But it does set a new standard for how we reorganize inside of Prince William County. So transformation and action when we're talking about the people.

Very important here is that there was an intentional focus to the people side of change and the ability to support employees, not only those who are going to the newly created or restructured department, but also those who are within parks and FFM who will need support as we move forward as well. The TMO's role was to ensure clear communication, provide those opportunities for engagement and for input, and structured transition for support. I want to say this is probably my favorite slide in the entire presentation, is when you look at the impact. 63 employees had served as team members for this effort across 12 different departments, four teams that were working in parallel, and 35 meetings that were TMO hosted. That's not to count the meetings that were happening outside of the TMO hosted.

So again, just those numbers, that 63 employees were brought to the table to have a voice in what this reorganization would look like. Scale of effort in terms of departments that involved, you can see from top to bottom different areas of expertise, but all really sharing one vision, and that is the future of what DTCC would be. Next we'll focus on transformation and action related to the teams. We talked about four parallel teams that were working throughout the last eight months. We're going go into each of those.

While there were parallel work streams, there was one coordinated outcome as we were looking at what the future state of DTCC would be. Team one focused on the department design, the business processes, and the workflows. Just because of the sheer scope of this effort, this team was broken into team 1A and team 1B, where team 1A focused on the department design, whether you're looking at the different functional areas in the divisions, personnel assignments, the reporting structure, the org structure, or team 1B focused on the glossary of terms, commonality between the groups, the revised workflows that will also continue through, and revised policies and procedures. Team two focusing on people and change management. So a large effort into ensuring that everyone involved was made aware of what was happening multiple channels, whether that was an internal site for employees, a dedicated email where people could send their questions.

There was also a project information session held in board chambers on November 14. This entire room was packed. Just to hear the message altogether of what was happening, although they'd been hearing over the months before that to really bring everybody together. I loved being able to watch everybody come in to the board chambers and the organizational chart was outside and as employees were coming in, just people being greeted and talking to each other and getting to have that camaraderie as they're walking into chambers. And then team two also provided a detailed change management plan to team one with activities that will be ongoing over the next

few

months. Even more so, it's this Friday, the team is hosting a social so that the teams can get together to really bring about that camaraderie. Teams three and four, focusing on technology, data and reporting, facilities and logistics, they were assessing processes, tools and technology, different job roles and responsibilities, trainings needed, metrics. They did submit a list of recommended KPIs, which we will now work with Chris Watkins in the performance management office in the near future, to look at what those KPIs and other performance metrics will be moving forward. And then, that team also submitted a detailed logistics plan that you see covers six different areas.

Those focused on location, tools and technology, whether we're looking at the Mobius system permit, financials, things like that. But then, when we look at the future, DTCC really does represent a new way of us working. It's looking at how we can bring things together for a more streamlined approach to services, a coordinated delivery of capital projects, improved efficiency and transparency, it's aligning our people and our processes, but it does really position Prince William County for stronger capital delivery now and in the future. It does provide us with that proven framework as we move forward, and it does model a standard for cross departmental collaboration. So with that, I open up any questions for either myself or Rick, and thank you for your time.

All right, Supervisor Vega.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess I want to start with the you sort of already mentioned it. I assume that this will impact the organizational chart. When can we expect to see that updated?

Yeah, please.

Supervisor Vega, thank you for the question. That is available. We will get it to your office as soon as we get off this call. The new organizational chart, as mentioned in the presentation, we'll look this is a framework for it. We do have the full organizational chart. What it does is it keeps the Department of Transportation whole. It adds 17 new members from FCM. It adds two new members from from at two from Parks

Mhmm.

And one new position, which is the deputy director of capital construction.

Thanks. That's a good

If I can.

To my next question. It it has to do with that. Do you

I do. Just because I feel like maybe you you were asked so this is the this is the change that will occur for the department. There is the larger question of the change to the actual org chart online. So this won't actually significantly change the org chart online except the new name of the department. And that would be effective July 1.

Okay. And then in regards to this new deputy director of capital construction position, it's a critical position. We're just starting conversations about the budget. I know that many of us are not fans of asking for new positions outside of the cycle. What does that time frame look like in regards to filling this position? Do have a timeline?

So the board has already funded the executive director position. Okay. So you you funded that as part of last year's budget, and essentially, that gave me what I needed to start this initiate this process of reorg.

Thank you. It just threw me off when you said that there was no new positions going to be created, but there was one new position being created. And so that this position has been funded.

Supervisor Vega, no. The new position that I mentioned will be a new position. But I think I want to answer the second part of your question, which is when we plan to hire that position. And I think we will be giving some time. We will be putting the department together with the existing employees, seeing how that operation works before we start hiring a new position to see. Want to make sure that we have enough projects to keep the individuals that are coming over busy and not going over budget in anything we do. So we will be taking some time, and I've discussed this with our DCXO. We will be taking some time to fill that position to make sure that it's applicable to what we're doing.

But the funding is already there. That's

I'm sorry. I may have confused your question. I thought you were speaking to the position that leads the new department, and that position has been approved by the board.

Okay. That was Yes.

So what Rick is, talking about is the new position, that would be needed, to lead the capital construction division. That position has not been approved by the board.

Okay. And then the last question that I had has to do with metrics. I know that Mandy mentioned they're still being worked developed. Do we have any interim metrics that we're going to be utilizing for the time being?

Well, do have as you know, with the budget, each department has to put in metrics as part of their we're going to start, the foundation of our metrics is going to be those metrics. The metrics that are set for transportation and the metrics that are set for facilities. We will take those, we'll talk to Chris and we'll go through and see if there's anything that needs to be updated, added, deleted and making sure that our metrics align with our mission.

Okay. That's all I have, madam chair. Thank you.

Thank you, ma'am.

Thank you. Supervisor Gordy.

Thank you, madam chair. I want to thank supervisor Vega. You kind of went into the where I was gonna go with my questions, relegated related to the KPIs. And and do you have so I'm assuming if we start this in July, we'll have those KPIs by July and ready to go? Or is what is the estimated time frame

on those? Yes, sir. We will have those KPIs. We will be starting to actually work on those this month where we have started to set the meetings back up with to go into our next steps with our new TMO team. And those next steps, one of the first steps we're taking is developing those KPIs.

Okay. And then in terms of sort of, know, in the navy, we would call it a shakedown cruise. We send the ship out. We put it through its paces, see what needs to be ship What is your timeline that you're gonna give to yourself to say, alright. After x amount of time, we're gonna look back at this and say we need to make some adjustments or things are okay the way they are?

I'm hoping to have a fiscal year. I'm hoping at least have a fiscal year to to to get, you know, my my my feet wet there and what we're doing. But, again, this transition and the way we've been doing this transition and the way we've incorporated this, we're already starting to talk. Eric and I have meetings. I have meetings with Seth. I have meetings with the TMO. We talk about all what's going on. I have had individual meetings, personal meetings with each of the people that are coming to my department, each of the 20 individuals that I mentioned, or 19 individuals that I mentioned. We've had individual talks with them to see what their needs, what their thoughts are as well. So we're already working along and trying to make this transition as seamless as possible.

And that's I think the great thing about this process that we're taking. It's making that transition at least not only for the people that we talked about a little bit easier, but it's also making it a little easier for us and transportation as we're getting impacted the most with the new work coming our way.

Okay. Thank you for that.

Thank you, sir.

In terms of I've just got two more questions. One, so in terms of I guess this would fall under logistics, where you're gonna site everyone. Are you keeping them where they are? Are you bringing them to together in a in an office space? What's the sort of the housing of this new department gonna look like?

Thank you for that question. It's a great question because I it was very important to me to make sure that we were all housed together. In order to make a good integration in a new department, I think it's essential that we are housed together. We are going through those plans right now, and we will have something proposed for you during budget.

Okay. Thank you. And then the last one, you know, so we when I think about transformation, I think about something that's a big a game changer, that's gonna elevate us. It's gonna make significant improvements. Also, and we use the word efficiency and transparency. From an efficiency standpoint, what is the focus of that efficiency? Is it budgetary efficiency? Is it time efficiency? What is the efficiency that we're driving towards

here? I think it's both because that efficiency is going be driven through process. Right now, like we said, we use three different process to do this. As you bring them into a a one department system, we're hoping to have all those processes be more streamlined and more efficient in that way, which again gets to time and budget.

Okay. That's all I have. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you so very much. This is very informative. You are now off the hook. Thank you.

Thank you

very much. Yes, have a great night.

All right. We are moving right along. Did you have anything else before we move into supervisor's time? All right, so agenda item number seven, supervisor's time. There is no one for us to take a vote on to approve. So I'm going to go start with Supervisor Gordy, and then I'm just going to go down the line.

Thank you, Madam Chair. First of all, I want to congratulate the Bellagio team on the opening of the repeal Speakeasy at Tempo Hotel. The event that was held there last Friday evening was just another demonstration of how what a great asset the the entire Nova Live campus is to Prince William County. And just want to congratulate Marcus and his team for the great work that's done there, and appreciate all my colleagues who were able to come out, their staff who were able to come out, and the county staff to celebrate in that opening. Other than that, Madam Chair, that's all I have. Thank you very much.

Supervisor Vega?

I don't have anything.

Oh boy, there's a lot of pressure because I got a lot of stuff. Okay, I'm gonna breeze through this. I have a couple notices of intent. At the request of Human Resources and Chief Labelle, I am submitting a notice of intent to appoint Mitch Nason to the following boards. Supplemental Plan for Sworn and Uniform Public Safety Personnel, Board of Trustees, and Prince William County four fifty seven Deferred Compensation Plan and four zero one a money purchase plan board of trustees.

I would also like a notice of intent to appoint Austin Behain senior to the Hilti and Performing Arts Board to replace Heather Arum. This weekend, a lot of things were happening. One of them was the Monks Walk for Peace. I want to thank our staff, particularly our fire and our police, for all that they've done to keep our public safe. But I also want to say, the walk was very special for those along Route 1 because they were going through some of the most diverse and vulnerable communities.

And it really meant a lot to have them come through. We had people, I know some elected officials went to different spots, we had people waiting in the freezing cold for hours, hours to listen, to greet them to our county and to listen to Panrakara, who is the venerable Panyakara, the lead monk. He gave a great speech. And I did. It was great seeing you, Tom.

It was great seeing your wife. Tanya Washington, Christina Winn, Ricky O'Connor, who was just Ricky. He didn't dress up, he was just Ricky. But I appreciated seeing him nonetheless. Another thing that I want to bring up, and I've spoken to not everyone, but I think a good, definitely the majority of the board regarding collective bargaining. That is something I know that there are some bills down in Richmond. And while we may not fully agree with what's everything that the state wants to do, I think we have a really good ordinance in the county. But the ordinance can be better. And I've spoken to Mr. Shorter, I'm not sure how to proceed.

I know him and staff will get back to me, but I just want to throw this out there so everyone's aware. It may come back as directive, may come back as something else. But there is a provision in the ordinance that puts a limit on the time cards, the time that unions have to collect these cards and sometimes they're going back and getting people to sign multiple years. It's a real hindrance. So that's something that I want the board to have a discussion on.

And I know, I believe a majority of us support removing that time limit. But I know we have someone from SEIU here. I know that they've been working hard to really bring forth concerns that employees have and to really organize within the county. But with that, I'm just looking at my, I did three minutes, I think I'm good. I'm the longest person who spoke thus far. Let's see how long we're all gonna take. Supervisor Angry, wait I hear you laughing Supervisor Boddy, I don't know if you All right, Supervisor Angry?

I will be your longest. Local government day at the general assembly brought together county leaders, regional partners, and state officials to reinforce collaboration between Virginia's localities and the commonwealth. As president of the Virginia Association of Counties, I opened the program by emphasizing our shared mission, advocating for our residents, protecting local decision making authority, and strengthening partnership that supports strong communities across Virginia. The program highlighted the importance of regional collaboration through our partnership with the Virginia Association of Planning District Commissions. Leadership perspectives were provided by Rear Admiral Doctor.

Peter Cressy, whose remarks on principled leadership and the legacy of General George Washington underscore the importance of steady governance as our nation approaches its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary. Commissioner Duke Storan of the Virginia Department of Social Services provided insight on strengthening the social safety net, improving access to services and addressing poverty through coordinated state and local actions. VACCO's legislative team delivered targeted advocacy briefings outlining priority legislation impacting counties including community and economic development, education, transportation, finance, human services. Participants were encouraged to engage directly with legislators to advance local government priorities and ensure that policy decisions reflect the needs of Virginia's communities. Today concluded with the Virginia legislative reception where local leaders welcomed Governor Abigail Spanberger and reaffirmed our commitment to collaborative solution focused governance.

Overall, local government day reinforced the critical role of counties as partners in shaping policy, advancing regional priorities, and delivering effective services to residents throughout the commonwealth. Now I'm going to be traveling pretty much this year to many of the localities, so what I'll do is bring back these updates and present them to the body and to the public. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much. Supervisor Boddy.

SPEAKER: Thank you, madam chair. I was not able to attend the speakeasy night on Friday. My staff did and they had a really great time over there. Thank you, sir Ezra Gordian, your your district for your hospitality. I hope that, that's one of many of those types of of events. You know, we talk about wanting to attract more people to Prince William County. We talk about wanting to attract and retain a certain demographic of folks. And frankly, that kind of event is how you do that. So I hope that we can continue to work with Christina's team, the different business owners that were involved in that to continue that work. I was out of town on other family fun with a little, so I couldn't attend that.

But wanted to, just sort of highlight that, tomorrow night, I will be hosting my annual, dinner with my board's commissioners, and my my appointees. Really appreciate all the work that they continue to do for the residency of Akwaun District and, Prince William County at large. And, before I get to my directive, I wanted to make sure folks had on their radar, our Occoquan District will be hosting our first annual right now, it's called the next gen, events. It's a youth events that's gonna be held at IKEA. It's, designed to attract and and and be targeted towards, late stage teenagers, 20 year olds to sort of get them involved in the process.

Far too often, we hear from that demographic that, you know, they don't really know what's going on in county government. They don't really know how to get engaged. But we know that they are the ones that the decisions we make on this day is will affect a lot longer than any other cohorts and that we frankly should be engaging them in any way we can. Really appreciate the work of some of the interns in my office and my staff of really getting that going. And, course, IKEA for hosting.

So again, that's gonna be on February 25. It's going to be at 5PM at IKEA. We're looking forward to getting the word out on that and engaging young people in how they can get more involved in local government and really hearing from them on what their needs and their concerns are as we move ahead. Lastly, as I said before, have a directive I'd like to give. I did send it all to my colleagues last week, so I will be giving this now.

Madam chair, without objection, I would like to issue a directive regarding a Prince William County solar parking canopy and rooftop pilot, direct the county executive to coordinate with various county agencies, and where applicable, the Virginia Department of Transportation, Dominion Energy to explore and make recommendations around the deployment of parking canopy solar at various parking lots throughout the county, including the Neabsco Potomac Commuter Garage, as well as looking at rooftops of publicly owned buildings that were not included in the county's previous solar feasibility study, such as the crisis receiving center. This work should include an analysis of various installers that operate in the county, including Dominion Energy, structural feasibility and needed improvements to make facilities feasible for solar installation they are not currently, as well as the various funding and ownership mechanisms that exist, including power purchasing agreements, renewable energy credits, land and property leases, etcetera. Such research and recommendations should, where applicable, include proposed timelines, potential fiscal impacts, other pertinent information for board consideration. The county attorney's office is directed to review the information and recommendations for any legal issues. When the research and records work is complete, the county exec should report back to the board of supervisors with the research or recommendations during a board meeting or by memorandum, whatever is appropriate.

Thank you. Madam Pierre.

Supervisor Stewart.

So I also was down in Richmond, had a great time, and looking forward to going to some more of the meetings this year as I was recently put on to one of Prince William's three seats on the Board of Directors and that was great. And looking forward to serving with our President of VAACO and bringing the Commonwealth forward. And with that, pass the baton.

And Supervisor Bailey.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Oh, man. So, good afternoon, everyone. I was very excited to participate with newly appointed Mr. George Stewart to the Board of VACCO and our our illustrious president, Victor Angry at, VACO Day from, February.

And, it was an exciting time to engage with our delegation down in the general assembly as we support our legislative agenda that priorities that we've given to them. So it was it was really fruitful and productive as we were there. I agree with you, madam chair. Having his venerable here to serve in our community and bless our community on the Monks Peace Walk was an extraordinary experience. He brought peace.

People were waiting to have peace, and, it was my honor to bestow a commendation upon him, for his reminder of peace in the land. And so I wanna thank captain Rice and colonel Missouri for their participation in triangle with me as well as our own congressman Eugene Vindman in the walk. It was a beautiful, beautiful experience. And congratulations to mayor Wood and the council for another successful Dumfries Black History Month, on Sunday. It was brilliantly done, and, we had a great time at the, exhibit I mean, at the, program.

So on the February 14, I'll be guest speaker for Women in Community Action for their mother and daughter, Tee. The Women in Community Action have been here forever in our community serving our families and our children. And so we we really appreciate all the work that they have done over the years, over thirty years in serving us. I'll also be attending on the fourteenth Youth for Tomorrow Heart to Heart Gala, which is another extraordinary event, but also a a that takes care of our youth to to make sure that in the future, they are instituted, executed, prepared for a world that is ready to receive them with excellence. So that is all that I have, Madam Chair.

Thank you for the opportunity.

All right. Thank you, everyone. We are going to go into closed session. We have a whole ten minutes, ten minutes. I know I broke it last time, but I was waiting for someone else and looking for someone else. So ten minutes and then we will be in the Potomac Room. Thank you. We are back from closed session. I'd like to get a motion to certify.

So moved.

Is there a second? Second. Alright. It's been properly moved to second it. Let's take we might have to do it. I let's take a vote. My screen is frozen. Let's take a vote. Let's try it.

Hold on. Let's see. Anybody working?

I'm working. I got it.

Alright.

Vote unanimous.

Alright. Before we go into recess, before our 07:00 meeting, some of the board is gonna go we are gonna go out for a board dinner to Conn, and that is located near Los Tejas. I don't remember the quite address. So alright. Thank you, everybody.

I will see you. We will see you at 07:00. It is seven and we are back for part two. I am going to turn this over to Mr. Shorter to tee up agenda item number nine.

All right. Thank you very much, Madam Chair, members of the board. Really appreciate all the work that has taken place in order for us to get to this point. We have had a chance at this point to meet with you in your offices at this point, and I want to introduce and have Dave come forward to present the CIP, This is part two or I should say one of two parts. As in next week, I will be presenting the proposed budget.

This is coming after a very long process where many staff have been involved. So I just wanna, thank Dave, thank the entire OMB team for all the work that has gone into, us getting to this point. We understand that this is the start of the process and that there will be much discussion. And so with that, madam chair, I will turn it over to Dave, to get us started.

Alright. Good evening, chair Jefferson, members of the board. Dave Sinclair, director of office of management budget. I'd like to introduce, you already know, Matt Corneliusen. He's the county's CIP coordinator, and Sandra Melgar.

I wanna thank them. None of this is possible without them. So, the six year capital improvement program, as you are aware, is the county's six year plan for the provision of facility and infrastructure projects in the county. It is guided by the board's adopted policies, such as this adopted strategic plan and the comprehensive plan. It also is a funding plan in in the sense that it adheres to the principles of sound financial management as it relates to, debt finance policies, that ensure that we don't over leverage our debt.

That's very important. And also cash investment and maintenance. It utilizes many funding sources, most of which are in this table. As we'll see, a lot of it is is debt financed. But it also has a lot of cash funding in here as it relates to the use of storm water and solid waste fees, but also the general fund that is also incorporated in the county executive's proposed budget, which you will see next week.

And as always, the, proposed CIP has direct links to the proposed budget and the five year plan that you will see next week in the sense that we have to incorporate annual debt service costs and facility operating costs for utilities, for maintenance, for the services provided from the facility in the annual budget and five year plan. And I have a table at the end of this summarizing the impact of the proposed CIP on the five year plan. Before we get down to the detail of the projects in the future, we wanna celebrate the successes, and I'll tell you, parks and recreation has had a lot of them in the past year. They have been fantastic delivering improvement projects using American Rescue Plan Act funds, for I'm not gonna go through all of these pictures, but I think they're absolutely fantastic, for projects throughout the county. Splashdown Water Park, Veterans Park improvements.

You can see the improvements at Reading Park. I believe that's in the Coles District. Valley View, Trail in Brentsville. Rumsco Acre Lake Park in Woodbridge. Both these projects are in Woodbridge, I believe, including Belmont Park.

We have some transportation, improvements. I don't think there's been any really large projects completed during the past year, but we have a traffic signal at, Talon Drive in Route 234 and the Balls Ford Road sanitary sewer. These next slides focus on the county's building and facilities capital program. Four or five years ago, the board of county supervisors had a tremendous foresight to start improving the maintenance capabilities of county facilities and parks and recreation facilities. And as you can see from these slides, parks and recreation is, putting it to fantastic use, replacing an artificial turf field at Saunders Middle School and a playground equipment at Noakesville Park.

It's also been utilized to help renovate, the Forest Greens Golf Course, clubhouse, and also the Chin aquatic pool white coat. Also, included in this project was replacing the bulkhead, which helps, partition the pool for different uses at the same time. And then, of course, Rollins Ford pump track. Terrific picture at the bottom there at with the ribbon cutting. And then, of course, Allie Krieger, site improvements in Potomac.

Yes. She went to Penn State. Yes. Did. Alright. These slides focused on the fire and rescue station renovation program. Alright? This is a program that I believe started in fiscal twenty twenty five funded by the fire levy. I have a slide on this later on. There's been a lot of terrific improvements at apparatus bay floor repairs at Station 20 in, Dale City.

That's, I believe, the Prince William Common Station. And Station 515. Station 15, I believe that's Evergreen in Gainesville. In addition to the the bay floors, the program has also been put to really good use of replacing HVAC systems. You have rooftop units being replaced at Station 23 in Woodbridge, and generator replacements and replacements at Station 17 in Montclair.

In December, facilities and fleet staff came and presented, some of the fantastic work they've been doing, renovating the existing judicial center. Here's a a collage of projects, that have been completed there. And then I love this slide because it shows the magnitude of what's going on, for solid waste landfill capping. When we complete a landfill cell, we have to cap it using a a clay cap. And then, Powells Creek Watershed.

We'll talk a little bit more about, how stormwater management fees goes to improve water quality in the county. Alright. The proposed fiscal twenty twenty seven, CIP is $1,560,000,000 that it does encompass all six years. And you'll see on the left hand side that the transportation is the largest slice at almost 35%. A few years ago, it was a larger slice.

So it's what this slide on the left shows, it's more diversified investments, throughout the county, structure. And, of course, on the right hand side shows the funding sources. The largest slight there slights there is is debt financing. This slide summarizes, staff's request from the board this year in fiscal twenty seven for capital appropriations. Okay?

This slide summarizes the project. The project phase being funded by the requested appropriation and the funding source for each project. In total, staff is requesting a $149,000,000 to advance the projects on these slides. Alright? Without capital appropriation, these projects stop.

Alright. As we progress through the the four major quadrants of the county government, we'll start with the safe and secure community. We have the fire and rescue system, existing station renovation program. I showed you a couple slides on here. Million dollars is provided by the fire levy.

That is cash funding. It is not debt financed to complete, concrete repairs, apparatus bay floors, HVAC replacements, and I think it's been well received throughout the system. Last year in the f y twenty six budget, the board authorized the, centralized apparatus replacement program. Okay? And that continues in fiscal year twenty seven.

You may recall chief Labelle, presented to the board during a budget work session last year about the increasing cost to replace apparatus throughout the system. For example, the picture that you see here is an aerial unit. This unit costs almost $2,000,000 to replace, and the cost of an engine is is now over a $1,000,000. Dollars. Okay?

So what this provides is $12,000,000 per year funded by the fire levy to replace apparatus, that needs so that is replaced on time and in service in the community. And if you recall, chief Labelle's presentation, there's not a lot for fire trucks. There's not a dealer lot, so to speak, for fire fire trucks. They're built from the chassis up, and the delivery time depending on on the apparatus type can take anywhere from two to three years in advance. Moving on to fire and rescue stations.

As you may recall, the board approved the construction contract for Fire And Rescue Station 27 in the Potomac District in December. It is scheduled for completion in 2027. The reason why this project is relevant, I'm gonna give you just a sneak peek into the county executive's proposed budget next week. The medic unit that's gonna operate from the station was funded and already funded in fiscal year twenty five. The f y twenty seven proposed budget has half year step staffing in, fiscal twenty seven for the engine unit.

That half year staffing would begin in January 2027 so that they have the appropriate training and lead time so that they come online in the system when the station is scheduled to open in 2027. As we go out into the CIP, here is Station 30 in the Barentsville District. The estimated cost is approximately $37,000,000. Why is this station cost more than the others? Because this scope also includes a backup site for an emergency operations center that's gonna serve the the county.

This project is design is scheduled to begin in March, and I believe you can expect to see a design contract for the board's approval coming to you next month. As we progress further out into the six year CIP, we have a couple replacement projects for Station 3 and Station 2. These two stations are the oldest in the county, I believe. Station 3 is approximately, I think, 65 years old, and Station 2 is, I think, about 55 years old. I may be off a year or two, so I would appreciate your grace on that.

So, January 20, the board approved the land purchase for Station 3, using a combination of proffers and fire levy. For fiscal twenty seven, staff is requesting a $3,000,000 appropriation to fund the design of that Station 3 project so that project can keep moving. K? And then, of course, in the out years, design beginning in fiscal twenty nine, we have the Station 29 project in, Lakeridge that would service the the first two area in Lakeridge. On the public safety training center, it's approximately $30,000,000 project, and I'm happy to report that construction bids will go public, I think, in the month of March.

And the construction of that project is supposed to begin in May. So there's a lot of activity going on, for these public safety projects that's gonna come to the board very soon. On the judicial center renovation, we, showed slides on on the successes that have been had in terms of renovating aspects of the current facility. I will let you know that a priority of the judges is audio visual upgrades in every courtroom, and staff is requesting an f y twenty seven appropriation of $1,500,000 so that we can accomplish that. It is a particular priority of the, circuit court judges.

That would be cash financed, from the FY twenty seven budget on a cash to capital pay go basis. Aside from the renovation project, the proposed CIP includes the judicial the judicial center expansion project to address long term space needs. It is a new courthouse facility that would be dedicated for circuit court and circuit court clerk operations. It would include 12 new courtrooms, and it would be designed to the LEED gold standard. As part of staff's staff's recommendation that was shared with the board in in December by FFM, the Bennett School Building would be demolished, but memorialized and repurposed in the new facility.

The total project cost is holding at $200,000,000 And if you recall, the board provided appropriation in the FY '26 budget for staff to begin the design and construction of the parking structure. Wrapping up the safe and secure community quadrant, we have, public safety enhancing public safety communications at schools. This is a partnership between the county government and Prince William County Schools to improve public safety telecommunications at every school in the county. The estimated project cost is $14,000,000. The schools already provided their $7,000,000 portion, and the board accepted that last year to the project budget that's being managed by the county in our department of information technology.

On the county side, we previously provided 3,000,000 in the f y twenty four budget funded by the county's capital reserve, and staff is requesting the county's remaining $4,000,000 in f y twenty seven also funded by the capital reserve at no cost to the f y twenty seven budget. It's in the f y twenty seven budget, but it's not funded by f y twenty seven revenue. As we progress to the health, well-being, and environmental sustainability project, we have the homeless navigation center east. The board recently authorized that construction contract late last year. Construction is scheduled to begin this spring.

We wanted to wait until after hypothermia season ended, as everyone is keenly aware of during the past past week. And then we also have the homeless navigation center in the West. Previously, the board provided a $4,000,000 appropriation in the f y twenty six budget for design, and I'm happy to report that the board can also expect to see that design contract for the board's approval next month in March. A new project that staff is recommending is expansion of the juvenile services center. I know and I respect that the board, several board members toured the facility.

And the original building was built way back in 1978 that had a very perhaps different philosophy in terms of rehabilitating youth. The existing facility has deficiencies regarding youth rehabilitation, but also program flexibility. And frankly, the mechanical systems such as plumbing electrical systems are old and need replacement, especially in the original 1978 building, which is right here. Staff is recommending a 40,000 square foot addition on two floors. You can see that on the map in the the blue section, and it would demolish much of the original building while keeping, some of the additions that were built, I believe, in 1998 and up here in 2005.

The current project estimate is $60,000,000, and staff is not assuming state reimbursement. We did check based on several concerns of of board members. The state moratorium on, construction reimbursement has been play in place for the last decade, and there is no sign that is ending. As a matter of fact, the state seems more interested in consolidating juvenile facilities than they are in funding, new facilities. Staff is requesting to move this project forward on a a design appropriation of $5,000,000 in fiscal year twenty seven.

That will enable us to to do preliminary planning and adequately scope out the project. This would be debt financed solely by the county. Moving on to parks and recreation. This slide is momentous because from the original, referendum back in 2019 that was overwhelmingly supported by voters, We have the final appropriation scheduled in fiscal twenty seven for Neabsco District Park construction, and that is, recommended in the proposed CIP. In addition to that, the board is very interested in improving existing parks.

If you recall in the FY '26 CIP and budget, 2 and a half million dollars was provided to improve existing facilities with amenities such as field lights, permanent restroom facilities, pavilion and picnic areas, And staff is happy to recommend that for fiscal twenty seven, that 2 and a half million dollars be increased to $5,000,000 annually to improve existing parks. Parks. That is funded by the county's general fund on a cash to capital basis, and that will be included in the county executive's proposed budget next week. In addition to that additional 2 and a half million dollar investment, staff has developed a package of projects for the board's consideration that improves existing projects, but also helps develop new projects. If you recall, the board had capital project requests that were sent to staff in October, and Matt presented to the finance and budget committee in December.

And, almost unanimously, I believe, the board was interested in parks and recreation facilities. This package of projects totals $17,000,000 funded by cash. It is on a onetime basis in fiscal year twenty seven. To improve, I'm not gonna go through all the projects. Some of these projects were specifically requested by board members.

Other projects finishes original scopes that were developed for projects in the twenty nineteen parks and recreation referendum. Other projects is items of of board interest after collaborating with mister Hendler Voss and his team. This $17,000,000 combined with the 2 and a half million dollars increase on the previous slide means that there will almost be $20,000,000 of cash funded parks and recreation investments in the county's proposed budget, which you will see next week. This also includes a trails component to, extend the the Neavskoye Creek Boardwalk in, the Woodbridge District as part of the Potomac Heritage National Scenic Trail. Trail.

The building and facilities capital program continues at $4,000,000 per year. Generally speaking, $2,000,000 is allocated to facilities and fleet management to improve and maintain county facilities, such as the building we're we're currently in, and $2,000,000 is allocated to parks and recreation for the maintenance of parks facilities. What you don't see on this slide is that in the f y twenty five budget, the board allocated an additional 1,200,000.0 for maintaining parks and recreation facilities. That continues in in this budget. In government operations, performance, and innovation, we have the county wide space project.

Facilities and fleet management presented the space master plan to the board in December. Staff is recommending a new civic building and parking garage at the government center to accommodate future space needs in the county and start reducing the county's reliance on leased space. The estimated project cost is $220,000,000, and staff is recommending and requesting a design appropriation of $20,000,000 in fiscal twenty seven to start design of the building and the parking structure. This project would be debt financed. Staying in this quadrant, we have the information technology hardware replacement program that the board started in the f y twenty six budget to replace security firewalls, IT infrastructure at data centers, which houses the county's IT backbone, but also network hardware, voice, video conferencing, and that continues in this budget.

As we're rounding out mobility, economic growth, and resiliency, there is the landfill cell liner and infrastructure funded by solid waste fees totaling 10 and a half million dollars. $8,800,000 is for a new cell liner for phase three part c. This is a mandated project by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. When we start of a new landfill cell, it has to be, lined with a composite liner to protect groundwater quality. And then there's $1,700,000 to reconstruct the landfill main entrance to improve traffic flow and also eliminate the the dips as you enter the facility.

The proposed CIP includes $5,000,000 of stormwater management fee, cash to capital investment to to improve the county's water quality and maintain the county's m s four permit. We have mandated reductions in nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment levels that must be achieved. And all of this is going to capital improvements to improve stream restorations, channel improvements. Failure to, achieve the mandated reductions means basically we're in violation of the Clean Water Act. And then also the trip program continues in fiscal twenty seven.

If the board recalls in the f y twenty six budget, the trip allocated funds basically doubled from 225,000 to $450,000 per magisterial district. I'm happy to report that continues at the April level in, FY twenty seven. I do wanna take a moment and talk about, the 2019 mobility referendum projects and their associated debt service. As we take inventory of the county's transportation, funding sources, grantors tax cannot be used to service mobility debt service from that referendum. All of it currently is allocated to satisfying OmniRide's local subsidy.

The same holds true for the transient occupancy tax revenue. That too is unavailable to service debt service. It too goes to the OmniRide local subsidy. The only funding source that is currently available is NVTA 30% funds. We currently receive approximately $23,000,000 per year.

However, 5,800,000.0 of that goes to satisfying the VRE local subsidy. The balance is available to mister Canisales and his team to leverage that funds to try to obtain state and federal capital matches for other mobility priorities. We wanna preserve that for the transportation team. So staff is recommending in the proposed CIP that we cash fund the Devlin Road widening and Old Bridge Gordon Boulevard interchange debt amounts that were programmed in the mobility referendum utilizing NVTA 30 fund balance that has accrued over the years. We already have precedents for doing this.

In the f y twenty five budget, the board cash funded the Prince William Parkway and Minnieville Road interchange projects. What this means is we would not issue any debt for these projects. They would be cash funded. So we're we're moving the projects. We're delivering them to the community.

But by taking the debt off, it preserves annual NVTA 30% funds for mister Cannizales and his team while saving the counties an estimated $50,000,000 in interest costs over a 20 period. As we round out the the CIP presentation, staff is requesting a total of a $149,000,000 for the following projects. This is a summary of the FY twenty seven capital appropriations. This slide summarizes the project phase, the funding amount, and the funding source. As I round out the presentation, I just want to emphasize the difference between a capital project budget and an operating budget.

The capital project delivers the the facility, the capital improvement, whether that be land or design or construction. It's almost like when you buy your first home. You get a loan. You pie buy your home, but then you have to factor in the annual operating costs in your annual budget to pay for the debt service or the mortgage on the facility, but also the cost of of keeping your home and the facility operational. The maintenance costs, the utilities, and the program operating costs, namely the people that are providing service to the community out of the facility.

And this slide summarizes the impact of the debt service and operating costs for each of the facilities in the proposed CIP on the five year operating budget that mister Shorter will be presenting in terms of his proposed five year plan next Tuesday. As you can see, the total in fiscal twenty seven, that impact is $40,000,000. That includes that almost $20,000,000 cash to capital investment on parks. And then you can see the out years, how it increases as some of these major facilities, advance and are constructed, and the county has to pay the debt service cost. I do wanna emphasize the proposed CIP.

It does adhere to the, board's adopted policies on sound financial management. This is the final slide. This is the fiscal year twenty twenty seven budget calendar that starts tonight with adoption scheduled for April 21. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions the board may have.

Alright, thank you so very much for this. Before I go over to Supervisor Vega, I just wanted to make sure I'm clear on the NVTA 30% funds. What was the number again? How much of it is partially funding our VRE local subsidy?

Yes. We receive about $23,000,000 a year from NVTA 30% revenue. Approximately 5,800,000 of that currently satisfies the VRE local subsidy.

All right. I know that I've had a lot of conversations regarding funding like PRTC, for example. And I know supervisor Angry has come to my office and we've talked about that. Is there any concern because I know what they get TOT they get recordation taxes. Is there any concern that they might need to dip into our MBTA 30% funds?

That'll be covered in the county executive's proposed budget presentation But next but to answer your question, share, the answer is yes. What we are seeing is staff is is proposing that to satisfy OmniRide's FY '27 local subsidy, it is starting to dip into NVTA 30% funds to the tune of about $1,200,000. And in the presentation that was dispatched to the board yesterday, based on OmniRide's five year projection, that does increase year over year.

Since Rick came into the chambers, mister Cannizzales, if you would please step forward. I don't wanna get too far ahead of next week, but I just wanna understand what impact would that have on our ability to do other mobility projects?

Madam Chair, members of the Board, County Executive Shorter. Thank you for the question Madam Chair. I'll go back a step. As our budget director has mentioned, Dave has mentioned, we used to for the capital program, we used to have the TOT, the grantor's tax, and the NVTA 30%. PRTC got their money from the gas tax, which they continue to use that fund as well, and VRE did dip dip into, by code, into the NVTA 30% for their capital program.

Since then, we have lost the grant towards tax, the capital program has, we have lost the TOT, and now as you've heard that we may lose some of our MVTA 30% to another transit service that's not VRE, which minimizes that to, you heard the numbers, about $17,000,000 $16,000,000 a year when before we used to get 30 some million dollars a year. So I'll let you do the numbers there, but we're getting about half of what we used to get to deal with our capital program. We're now funding transit at a much higher rate than the capital program, which obviously serves a lot less percentage of the population. Thank you.

I'm sure I'll have more questions next week. Thank you so very much, and thank you, Mr. Sinclair. Supervisor Vega?

Thank you, Madam Chair. First, I want to start off by praising you a little bit, Dave. This is my second term on this board, and I gotta say that year after year, you really do, at least me, impress me. I don't know about the rest of my colleagues. I don't wanna speak for you all. You're super knowledgeable. I know that when I'm not on the dais, I throw a ton of questions your way and you're always very responsive. I certainly appreciate the attention to detail and the care that you provide to not just the tax payers of this county but to us board members. Thank you for that. I want to start off by talking about a criteria, if there is any, when it comes to prioritizing certain projects.

You know we have a $1,560,000,000 total CIP expenditure. Is there a criteria when it comes to prioritizing projects? For example, we're looking at the possibility of spending $200,000,000 for the judicial center expansion over other similar projects. Is there a criteria in terms of prioritizing?

Yes. As Matt presented to the board during the fall, there's a CIP selection committee that grades out, if you will, new CIP requests. The selection committee looked at the board member requests, for example, after they were received in October, November, and that was the scoring was shared with the board, I believe, in early December. So there is a criteria.

Thank you. And I ask for that as a refresher. Obviously, the county executive is going to present to us his budget proposal here soon and it is going to be up to us to figure out what those needs are in terms of projects that are near completion and what others could potentially wait. I appreciate the refresher. I know you mentioned that this request is in part with our principles of sound financial management. However, I do want to ask you in regards to the $33,200,000 in new debt proposed for FY twenty seven alone in projects like the countywide space renovations and juvenile service centers. Does this impact our debt to ratio revenues?

Something that the I would just ask the board to consider as yes. As I think you're referring to this slide. Forgive me if if you're not. I I I did neglect to mention that as as this debt service and and CIP operating costs are increasing in the out years, I would ask the board to consider that we are also retiring debt on on existing debt that the county has already sold. I'm not suggesting I I would need to look at the numbers, but there's it's probably the net is still increasing in the out years, but probably not as bad as we think it is because while we're issuing new debt for CIP projects, we are retiring existing debt each year as

well.

Thank you. That's a good reassurance. In regards to future operating costs, do we have, an idea regards to the public safety training center and the homeless navigation center as to what those, operating costs will be if occupied by f y twenty eight?

Yes. We do. We do publish that in in the proposed CIP document. We'll have that available later this week, and that's an excellent point. The proposed budget presentation was dispatched to the board yesterday.

OMB staff is working on the proposed budget and CIP documents that will have those operating costs by fiscal year for each project. And we'll have that. Our goal is to have it available in online for the board and the community Thursday. And when that happens, I will send out an email or the county executive will send an email with a link so you have that in advance of Tuesday's presentation.

Okay. Thank you. And then maybe you mentioned it, maybe I missed it. Do we have a cost estimate yet for the homeless navigation center west or any fiscal analysis?

Yeah. We we do not at this time. What we are requesting is a design appropriation. Actually, the board already provided us the design appropriation in the FY twenty six budget so that we can do we haven't done much preliminary planning work on that, even a conceptual design yet. That's why you're not seeing a very good picture on this slide.

So as I mentioned, that design contract is going to come to the board in March, as in next month, so that we can kick that off. And once we have a better idea, even just a 10% or 20% design, we'll be able to derive a much better estimate.

Madam Chair, if I may ask my last question. We obviously know that we have a very generous revenue share agreement with the school division with over 57% of our county budget going to the school division. I'd like to know, Dave, if you could provide an explanation for us here in Chambers and those watching at home why we have public safety communication upgrades for our schools appearing in the county CIP rather than the school budgets.

This is a project and because it's it's almost a fifty fifty it's a fifty fifty cost sharing because it is mutually beneficial for for the schools and the county for our first responders.

So it's mutually, mutually beneficial for our first responders?

Yes. Our police, fire and rescue personnel, and the schools.

Madam Chair, I would remind us here on the days to look at the additional documents that will be provided to us as we analyze once the county executive publicly presents his budget to us so that we can have some sort of a direction and indication when it comes to the decisions that we're going to be making in regards to the budget. Thank you Dave for answering my questions. That's all I have for now Madam Chair. Thank you.

All right, thank you so very much. I do not have any other speakers in queue. I think everyone's holding out until next week. So thank you very much, Mr. Sinclair. Yeah. Yeah. You just look like relief. Like, what? What? I'm free.

Thank you. And as I said, we will we will, send an email out when the when the county executive's proposed budget is available online.

Alright. Thank you so very much. We are now on to agenda item number 10, and that is public comment time. While I'm waiting to get the sheets, no speakers? Wait. Hold on. Do we have anyone available online? So we do not have anyone in person or online. Our next meeting before someone yells out motion to adjourn our next meeting is next week, Tuesday, on 02/17/2026. I'd like to entertain a motion to adjourn.

I think I'll just second what you just said, madam. You said motion to adjourn. So I'll just

I would like a motion. Alright. You know whatever. I'll just do it. Alright. Second. It's been moved and seconded. Oh, folks. Come on now. This was an easy meeting. It's easy. It was short.

Supervisor Stewart, are you

I. Did it not work?

Yeah. There you go.

Okay. Very good.

Got some

You're unanimous.

Thank you

very much. We're adjourned.