Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

The Pledge of Allegiance by Supervisor Lane and the invocation by Dr. Frazier.

let us pray most gracious and loving father dear god we thank you for this day we thank you for allowing us to come into this space to conduct the business of our county dear god we thank you for the protection of our citizens we thank you for our first responders and those who serve dear god we ask that you unite us as one even if we don't agree on every voter, every situation, we can still practice civility and decorum. And we ask that anybody who comes up to the lector to speak on what they believe, that they do it with courtesy and with goodwill. And dear God, we ask that you bless this meeting. We ask that you keep us and protect us. In your son Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board. Your first item of business this evening is the approval of the agenda, and we do have some additions. If I could have the floor computer, please. Some additions to the agenda. Agenda this evening for your consideration is the Department of Social Services status update, and that's going to be a presentation report. Then we have a resolution recognizing Senator Glenn Studivant Jr.'s call upon Governor Abigail Spanberger to establish a statewide moratorium on data center development. That's going to be on your consent agenda. And then a resolution considering the date of a special election to fill the vacancy in the position of the Chancellor District Representative on the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors. A resolution considering an interim appointment to fill the vacancy in the position of Chancellor District Representative on the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors and call for candidate resumes. That vote will be held after closed session. But the vote is to add it to your agenda first. And that is your agenda for this evening as published plus these additional agenda items.

Okay. Is there a motion to approve the additions? So moved. Okay. All right. Go ahead and vote.

Six yes, motion passes.

Okay, great. I'm sorry. Madam Chair, that brings you to the awards and special recognition. And we do this evening have the approval of a commendation recognizing Reverend Dr. Raymond A. Bell, Jr. for 40 years of faithful pastoral service and community leadership. And Mr. Yakubowski has that recognition that he would like to read.

Thank you. One thing about being in the community for a long time is that the proclamation is long. So bear with me as we go through this proclamation for Dr. Bell and his 40 years of leadership and pastoral service. Whereas Spotsylvania County proudly recognizes Reverend Dr. Raymond A. Bell Jr. for his 40 years of dedicated pastoral leadership, community service, educational advocacy, and transformational impact throughout the Fredericksburg region and the Commonwealth of Virginia. And whereas since 1986, Dr. Bell has faithfully served as senior pastor of Mount Hope Baptist Church, devoting his life to ministry, leadership, development, education, mentorship, and compassionate community engagement, whereby countless individuals, families, students, and local organizations have benefited spiritually, socially, and educationally. And whereas over the course of four decades, Dr. Bell has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to servant leadership, civic engagement, youth development, faith-centered community transformation, and educational advancement, extending his contributions well beyond the church walls through partnerships with schools, health care providers, community agencies, and regional leadership initiatives. And whereas under Dr bell's strategic guidance, mountain hope Baptist church experienced significant congressional growth and expanded its reach throughout the Fredericksburg area, including the acquisition of more than 20 acres of land to support a proposed 1500 seat sanctuary family life center, educational facility, daycare and administrative building buildings. Whereas Dr bell has positioned mount hope Baptist church as a humanitarian and outreach centered ministry. Known throughout the region as the hope. Partnering with local organizations to address critical community needs, such as housing. Instability hunger healthcare access, education and family support services and whereas. beyond his past role accomplishment dr bell has served the broader community as an adjunct professor at germanna community college a chaplain for the spotsylvania sheriff's office and fire and rescue department an aspire mentor for spotsylvania county schools and a valued contributor to numerous boards including the fernsburg regional chamber of commerce Spotsylvania County School Board, Mary Washington Hospital, Spotsylvania Regional Medical Center, and the Spotsylvania Educational Foundation. Whereas as an educator and mentor at heart, Dr. Bell founded Mosaic Expressions LLC to coach leaders across ministry, business, athletics, and community organizations and establish Mount Hope Academy, a faith-based institution that provided meaningful educational instruction and spiritual formation to generations of families for 28 years. And whereas a lifelong learner, Dr. Bell has earned advanced degrees from American University, the Presbyterian School of Christian Education, Virginia Union University, Ohio University, Howard University, and East Tennessee State University in addition to completing executive coaching certification through Georgetown University and completing the certified planning commissioner program through Virginia Tech. And whereas throughout his career, Dr. Bell has remained deeply committed to empowering individuals, strengthening families, mentoring emerging leaders and supporting literacy initiatives, second chances and hope for individuals navigating life's challenges, earning the profound respect and gratitude of the citizens of Spotsylvania County and the Commonwealth of Virginia. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors hereby expresses its profound appreciation to Reverend Dr. Raymond A. Bell Jr. for his 40 years of distinguished service, leadership, and lasting contributions to the citizens of Spotsylvania County and the greater Fredericksburg region. I'll make that in a form of a motion.

Let's vote.

Six yes, a motion passes. Wonderful.

And if Dr. Bell can come on up and we'll go, we'll come down here and we'll take a photo. And Dr. Frazier.

This is my disclosure statement. I hereby disclose that as an employee of Sponsor Bain County Schools, earning over $5,000 annually, I have an interest in tonight's consent agenda item. 8 Title FY2027, Schools Additional State Appropriation. My disclosure is on file with the clerk and is available to the public for review. Anna and Amy, please record this disclosure in the minutes of this meeting as required by law.

Thank you, Dr. Frazier. Okay, Ed.

Yes, ma'am. That does bring you to your consent agenda. If I can have the floor computer again, please. The consent agenda this evening is as follows. The approval of the minutes is July 14th, 2026 Board of Supervisors meeting. Item two is the approval of a budget adjustment and appropriation for state reimbursement for the elections office and the amount of $88,676 in state reimbursement. Item 3 is to authorize advertisement of a public hearing for amendments and additions to County Code Chapter 4, Animals and Fowls Article 1, in general, Section 4-16, Noise from Animals. Item 4 is to authorize advertisement of a public hearing for amendments to County Code Chapter 4, Animals and Fowl, Article 1. In general, Section 4.1, definitions to add and revise definitions to add and revise definitions to comport with the County Code of Virginia and to update language regarding abandonment and tethering of animals. Item five is to authorize the county administrator to execute the administration agreement with VDOT for the Jumana Point Drive sidewalk project. UPC 129151, local share of the project, $515,619. Item 6 is an authorization for a public hearing to consider changes to Spotsylvania County Code Chapter 19, Solid Waste. Item 7 is a budget adjustment appropriation and designation of authorized organizational representatives for the FY27 Virginia State Police Help Eliminate Auto Theft Grant Award. Item 8 is FY27 Schools Additional State Appropriation adding 4.99540 state funds Number nine is a reimbursement resolution for water and sewer system projects. Item 10 is a resolution recognizing Senator Glenn Studer Jr.'s call upon Governor Abigail Spanberger to establish a statewide moratorium on data center development. Item 11 and 12 are not going to be voted on the consent agenda. Item 11 will be voted after closed session. And you've already voted item 12 for the accommodation for Dr. Bell. And that is your consent agenda for the evening.

Thank you, Ed. Appreciate that. All right. At this time, we're going to open... Oh, okay. Amy, can you... We're going to open the public hearing, but I'll have Amy read the rules first. Sorry. So if you'd like to speak, this is the time that anything on the consent agenda, if you want to get up and speak to anything on the consent agenda, this is the time that you would do it. So we don't have anyone signed up. So if anyone wants to come up and speak, they're certainly welcome to do that.

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

Thank you, Amy. Okay. So anyone who would like to come up and speak at public comment, just on the consent agenda items. Thank you. There's a button there. No. How about now? Yep. That's good.

Good evening, board members. My name is Stephen Cozzella. I own a little over a $300 home in Landrum subdivision of Berkeley District. I'm standing before you tonight to demand an immediate end to a glaring regulatory... Inequality that leaves my neighborhood completely unprotected by county law. Right now, our county has a functional barking ordinance. It penalizes an accumulation of 60 minutes of barking within a 24-hour window because this board explicitly recognizes that relentless noise pollution destroys a person's health and property value. Yet, look at how arbitrarily these protections are applied. with the papers that you all have. If you live in Meadowbrook subdivision, on a two to five acre lot, you are protected. If you live in Tavernier, on a quarter acre lot, you're protected. Even in Whalen Ridge, on a massive five to 20 plus acre lots, residents are protected, but on my 1.7 acres in Landrum subdivision, I'm exempt from the law. Completely unprotected because this is illogical Because of this illogical political line, my dream property has turned into a nightmare. There is a kennel operating a mere 75 feet from my bedroom window. The dogs at this property easily shatter that 60-minute cumulative threshold on a continuous basis. If I lived in almost any other part of the county, I would have a legal right to protect my sleep, file a complaint, and hold the neighbor accountable. Because I live in Landrum subdivision, the current rules tell me that my peace of mind doesn't matter. You have created a system where one resident gets legal protection while another resident who pays the same exact taxes gets left completely defenseless. I invested a bit over $300,000 to enjoy my new home. Instead, I get a decent night's sleep. I'm forced to sleep on my couch." An exemption should never be used as a shield to protect an operation while destroying the homeowner's quality of life. The solution is straightforward and requires two immediate action from this board. First, strike the exemption from the county books entirely to establish absolute regulatory equality. Second, apply our existing 60-minute cumulative threshold equally across all district borders. We do not need to reinvent the wheel. The legal framework is already written. You just refuse to apply it. Board members, please close this loophole, establish equal protection, and give the entire county of Spotsylvania the legal tools to hold a nuisance kennel accountable. Thank you.

Thank you.

Can you hear me? OK. Good evening. I'm Kayla, and I'm from the Berkeley district as well. I just wanted to come up again and put some input on the situation. This is a very frustrating issue. When you see your district is the only one exempt or one of the only ones exempt, it feels isolating and you can't help but wonder why. Times have changed in areas like the Berkeley district have become less rural. There needs to be some sort of change. One of our neighbors has said they've had problems with our neighbor with the barking dogs for at least three years. And the fact that there's No change by now is really absurd to me. We didn't know about this issue when we moved in. Our neighbor has been very disrespectful towards us and to the other people that are living around us. And it's just selfish that they keep getting away with this. I can't believe it. Other people can hear this around us. So it's not just us experiencing this problem. We're all annoyed with the constant noise. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you.

I am actually confused. Are we not allowed to speak on the scarlet battery and a storage facility?

So that'd be when it's public presentations, which will come next. So after this, yeah, yeah, this is just on consent agenda items.

Hello, Karen Prossy, Cortland. The fiscal year 2027 adopted budget says the county plans a $52 million par issuance of utility revenue bonds. After accounting for $12.5 million already approved or appropriated in fiscal year 2026, and bond premiums net of insurance costs, $42.52 million is attributed to fiscal year 2027 project costs. But tonight's resolution authorizes reimbursement from future bonds with a maximum principal amount of $56 million. Please explain the additional $4 million and identify by name and dollar amount every project and expenditure covered by that $56 million authorization. This is important because the county separately identifies major utility infrastructure as developer funded by Amazon. The current CIP shows $127.5 million in Amazon revenue for fiscal year 2027 and approximately $209.6 million in total developer funded level one projects. The Massaponics Level 1 Project Sheet specifically calls that project 100% developer-funded. It has a total project cost of approximately $182 million. The Level 1 Reuse Conveyance Project says it includes regional pipelines, booster stations, storage tanks, sanitary pump stations, and forced mains, and expressly states that all costs incurred in that project are being covered by private development. Yet, at the same time, the county is issuing substantial utility debt for other water and sewer projects, including work at the same Massaponics treatment facility. So, my question is, can the county certify tonight that not $1 of this $56 million reimbursement authorization be attributed to a cost that Amazon Data Services or another private developer is obligated to advance or reimburse. That question is important because the fiscal year 2027 adopted budget states that the level one reuse system operates independently of ordinary water and sewer rates and that utilities does not subsidize services provided to reuse system users. There is another issue I would like reconciled. The adopted CIP shows solid waste capital projects funded largely with cash, yet tonight the county is discussing a November referendum containing 33.7 million dollars in solid waste bonds as part of a 400.6 million dollar referendum package. The public deserves to know when and why that financing strategy changed. These aren't small numbers. The adopted CIP totals $4.5 billion, including more than 3.9 beyond 2031. Before this board approves additional financing authority, please provide a clear reconciliation showing what Amazon pays, what private developers pay, what utility rate payers pay, and what is being bonded and why. Thank you. Thank you. For the record, I also have two emails that I emailed you that I would also request on the record. Okay.

Thank you Hello, I'm Antoinette Pyatt I have been trapping in your County for 15 years Some of the things I can report to you that you may not be aware of is rabies is on the rise. We have had multiple cases right here off of Salem Church Road and Lafayette Boulevard. There were a few people last summer that actually contracted the disease that were feeding colonies of cats. I suspect all of the clearing of these woods for data centers and housing developments and whatnot are causing the wildlife to cram into the backyards of all of the residents. And therefore, the cats, the feral cats, which are a huge problem, they're an invasive species, are getting infected. We continue to trap. We need outside help. I plan on going to Spanberger to talk to her about maybe some sort of committee to investigate if we can do some, raise some funds and alarms. I also don't feel like animal control is trained to handle the calls that they're called out on. I have several people that have called me, have told me that a baby raccoon was taken behind their house and shot. It could have been taken to rehab. It did not show signs of rabies. It's not for them to make up that decision either because they're not doctors. The other thing was a lady was called about a raccoon that was on my friend's porch. A lady cop came for animal control. She took it for a walk down the street and let it go. That is totally inappropriate. I called the wildlife rehab people. They said it should have been brought to them. and held under quarantine for two weeks. So there's some real big disconnects in education here and what's going on in real time and what is on paper. Also, the laws affecting animals is very vague here, which is really disturbing. And I'd like to know who's responsible for relocating all of the wildlife that is going to be destroyed and pushed out in. There was a bear down at the Cosner Corner Starbucks. A bear. I mean, they have nowhere to go. Somebody has to be responsible for relocating these animals. It's not fair to us. It's not fair to them. So I hope that I brought some light to something you guys weren't aware of, and I hope we can work together to make some changes.

Thank you. Is there anyone else in the audience that would like to speak just on the consent agenda items?

Good evening, board, members of the community. My name is Marcus Garcia. I don't have a comment on any particular item on the consent agenda, but rather the consent agenda as a whole. I come to these meetings almost every month. I speak almost every month. Primarily because I like to come in here and learn something. Inevitably, I always learn something. The nuts and bolts of how we do contracting or some of the design aspects of a water treatment plant.

Apparently, rabies is on the rise in the county. I did not know that. That's good to know.

What I'd like to speak on right now is, and I'll be brief, I'm confused why there isn't an item on the consent agenda each and every month where this board takes the opportunity to use the platform it has to counter the abject racism we're seeing in this county. We weren't 12 minutes convened in this room tonight and the harassment of our local Spotsylvania County school superintendent had already started. You will see video, you will see pictures online tonight of a highly esteemed, highly credentialed professional Why is there not a standing consent agenda item each and every month? We have board members at our school division being threatened each and every month. Mr. Lane, I am loath to come in here and lodge ad hominem attacks. That presentation you did last November, I sat back there about eight rows back. You venerated an abject racist in Charlie Kirk. That was a nonsensical performative stunt. I had to pick dust bunnies out of my stubble from when my jaw hit the floor. Each and every month, Mr. Mullins, you wear that trident on your chest. Colonel Retired, Mr. Gooseman. Mr. Cole, I know you're not an elected. but you're an influential member of this board. You can shape decision making here. You have history, you have tenure. We need to operate this county as a team. We need that from you. You're our elected leaders. I'm forced to question decision making, and ethics when I don't see that each and every month. I come in here each and every month to learn something, and I'm not learning the right lessons with your complicitness. Thank you.

Thank you. Just for the good of the order here, it probably should have stopped you because that wasn't anything on the consent agenda. So I want to just say, again, if that could have been done during public presentations, but if there's anybody else in the audience that would like to speak just on the consent agenda right now.

yes yes so you can speak on that yep all right good evening my name is brent hunsinger i work with friends of the rappahannock and i'm a resident of the lee hill district As you know, FOR actively supported the move to require SUPs for data centers in Spotsylvania County. We have pushed legislation in Richmond regarding transparency and reporting for water usage information around data centers. While energy gets the headlines, water usage, whether from surface or groundwater, continues to be an issue, and not just in relation to data centers. The recently released SJ25 groundwater study report lays bare the need for swift action on groundwater east of I-95. The clustering effect of reclaimed water systems will have impacts to our waterways at peak use times. Additionally, power generation requires more water, especially into the future. We're looking at on-site generation with gas, nuclear, and other potential types of power generation. With all that said, Friends of the Rappahannock supports Senator Sturtevant's call for a moratorium on data centers at the state level until the planning and regulation can catch up. and i hope that you all tonight will vote to support that call from senator sturdivant to have an executive or have an executive order issue issued thank you for your time thank you anyone else in the audience would like to speak on just the consent agenda

Good evening. My name is Cindy Hodges and I reside in the Salem district. I'm here to ask that you all place an immediate moratorium on all existing data center development and future data center developments in Spotsylvania County. I am echoing the sentiments of many to include Chris Jakubowski and David Guzman. These types of businesses rob our communities of resources, This effect on our water systems can be felt miles away. Adding fuel to this problem, Virginia is in the driest period since 1941. The power needed for these data centers impacts all household electric bills by increasing rates and creating a huge drag on energy that is not sustainable. In fact, we have to keep adding new transmission lines, substations, and now battery storage to support these data centers. The pollution, both air and noise, affects our environment and quality of life. They all have a noise that strongly impacts our mental and physical health. The particulate matter these data centers create may not always be seen But we, your constituents, have to pay for bad decisions. These businesses permanently destroy the character of Spotsylvania County. I also ask you do not sign any non-disclosure agreements with any prospective businesses and also make it a policy for good governance to prohibit participation in NDAs for any appointed or elected officials. Transparency is what makes a strong community. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Hi, good evening. I am going to speak a little bit about the moratorium and data centers. Is that okay?

Yes, you can speak on the consent agenda items now.

Okay, just want to clarify. Thank you for clarifying that. My name is Catherine Williams, and I reside in the Lees Crossing area of Spotsy, where the proposed Crossroads Data Center may be. I have spoken to you all before about Crossroads, and I appreciate the Board of Supervisors recognizing Senator Sturdivant's call for action to Governor Spanberger for a moratorium on data centers, including Crossroads. I am only one person out of 274 residents that call Lee's Crossing home, and I believe at this time going forth with Crossroads without fully studying light and noise pollution, heat vortexes, and other environmental and human negative effects that these data centers bring is dangerous for our community. Why the rush? It feels that there's a rush to have all of these data centers in Spotsy. Is it because Kettler is eager to build? That is not good for us. To be fair in your planning for our county is to have a complete pause. Crossroads is destined to forever change and wipe out our neighborhood as we know it to be and change our peaceful community. The residents in Lee's Crossing are stressed and worried that Crossroads will bring a diminished quality of life. and our mental health will suffer as you continue to gain tax revenue from AI center. Recent research published in Frontiers of Climate, the researchers analyzed public health reports that highlighted continuous low frequency noise more, I'm sorry, yeah, more than 59 decibels over time. That including ground vibrations, fossil fuel backup generators, emissions, and lights on continually that cause chronic sleep disruption, increased anxiety, and stress-related mental health struggles, along with elevated stress hormones for those individuals living in close proximity. even within a five-mile radius. Knowing this and many other serious health concerns that come with the data center, how could you go forward with these, especially crossroads? I know money is a big factor in all of this, but we should matter more than money in this county. will get considerable amount of tax revenue, but at what cost? Residents will not see a benefit at all. So please consider the communities in Spotsy tonight as you possibly move forward with the plethora of data centers. To be full and fair, please say no to crossroads. Let's start with a moratorium that is needed for all of these data centers, even the ones under review. Now is the time to be careful and diligent in planning for our county, No more data centers, please. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

Again, this is just on the consent agenda items.

Good evening. My name is Paul Doe and I live in Chancellorsville. What I don't understand with all these data centers, what no one has even brought up, is these data centers are 80% not in use. They're building them, and then they're going after clients to actually use them. And there's 56 decibels they're using. The data center is not even up to speed yet. If you look at studies that have been done, when they are fully in use, the decibel level will be in the 90s. And that will cause definitely hearing loss for any businesses, residents, or people that are exposed to that level of noise. And water usage and electricity is going to go up exponentially, and the people that are building them will not tell you what that usage will be until they build them and then they start getting the clients they need. So what we see right now is not a data center that is at 100% capability. So you see these blocks of blocks of data centers. There is not one data center in the US that is at 100% capacity. So as we go into the next century or whatever, our children, our grandchildren are going to be exposed to something that we have no idea what it's going to turn into. Thank you.

Thank you. And again, on the consent agenda, so data centers, the moratorium piece is on the consent agenda. If you want to talk in grander terms of data centers, I'd ask that you wait until the public presentation piece. Thank you.

Good evening, Dawn Shelley, Chancellor District. The moratorium for the data centers, we don't need any more. We don't need any. So moratorium, vote for that, because we need to stop them. So please approve that, and then it wouldn't be me without saying please support the schools. Thank you. Thank you.

Hi, Christina Berry. Real quick, I just have a question. Sir, what is so interesting on your phone that you're sitting there watching your phone as opposed to listening and participating in this? I'm just curious.

Ma'am, this is a public comment period. Please sit down.

I'm just curious. Ma'am, please sit down.

You're going to be removed from the meeting.

Okay. Anyone else on the consent agenda?

Hi, my name is Pam O'Neese, I'm in Berkeley. I just wanted to come in in support of the moratorium. I think that it's pretty clear that the community is waking up and we're asking simply for you to pause things and support that pause so that we can get a better understanding. Clearly, everyone is not on board with these projects, and so in order for the community to support the data centers, we need to have a pause so we can better understand it. I don't think that's a whole lot to ask. I guess that's all. I just wanna make sure that I support that. I have to leave, but I just wanted to be here tonight to at least say that much, and thank you for your time. Thank you.

Okay, any others on? And if you guys wanna queue up, that would be great.

A little more height here. Um, my name is Kyle newbie. Uh, these hill district, um. Appreciate y'all's time and hard work and what you do and listening to us. Um, you can't tell there's a theme here. I'm advocating for the moratorium. as well. I am a, I work really hard in my business. I'm a small business owner and I'm proud to be based in Spotsy here. I'm also proud to live in Spotsy. We moved from one side of Spotsy to the other. From Levels Crossing over to New Post, a year and a half ago, and we love it. We absolutely love it. We homeschool our family, and it's really tough to see how this data center development can really impact us and my family. My oldest daughter is with me. from across the river, and I believe it's King George or maybe it's Stafford still, the development there off Route 3 that's perspective to across our field that we look over at the Belvedere perspective. to then the lovely 10-minute drive that I'm blessed to have to go to work, to drive over off Northeast Drive near the Penske truck rental area there. And as I drive down Northeast Drive, I regularly dream about, man, if I could save up and buy one of these lots and build... a bigger headquarters for my company as we've taken over one unit of 1,500 square foot and then a second unit of 1,500 square feet and just recently expanded to 4,500 square feet from a lovely local landlord over there. To my surprise, several months ago, I saw, wow, everything I thought of possibly ever getting is bought up for or earmarked for data center development, which that happens. But from my drive to Newpost, from Newpost to my drive to my office, I am surrounded by nothing but data centers in the development. And it's one thing. for me to deal with the already developmental data centers at work, but then to have that surrounded at home as well is discouraging and disheartening. And so I would very much appreciate your strong consideration of supporting the moratorium. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, members of the Board of Supervisors. My name is Susan Goetz, and I'm a resident of Bumpus and Berkeley. I stand before you tonight to sincerely commend this board for your courage and leadership in pursuing a moratorium on new data center development. When we look across the Commonwealth, we see our neighbors in Northern Virginia choking on industrial sprawl, straining local water supplies and facing rocketing energy bills. You listened when residents in Lee Hill and across our district raised red flags about the massive scale of these facilities. Requiring special use permits and pressing the pause button shows that you are putting our community's long-term health and quiet neighborhoods ahead of quick corporate windfalls. However, a pause is only effective if it leaves no back doors wide open. I urge this board to ensure that this moratorium applies universally, covering not just brand new applications, but any data center projects that may have preliminary zoning approvals, yet still lack final pre-full operational approval from the board. We cannot allow grandfathered loopholes to quietly pave over hundreds of acres of our forest and farmland. Furthermore, true caution requires absolute transparency. I respectfully request that every single contract, agreement, and memorandum of understanding between the county and these tech corporations, both already approved and in process, be made fully public in their unredacted entirety. For example, the general need for utility substations is disclosed in the Gateway Commerce Center. Specific power capacity requests, megawatt allocations, and grid vulnerabilities are routinely blacked out. Exact volume projections for water consumption and technical specs of evaporation rates are heavily redacted, a major pain point for local activists trying to calculate the strain on regional water development centers. Tapping into our water supply is allowed in emergencies, but what constitutes an emergency? Expected hot weather? Will all waste waters be tested for forever chemicals? Can some waters be reused if it's tainted? Will reports be made public? All this is either missing or redacted from the contracts. Taxpayers have the right to see every line. We must not accept sections hidden behind broad claims of industrial secrets or proprietary corporate redactions. For the existing already approved data centers, these redactions include massive sections in regard to water usage, wastewater, and power. If these facilities are being built in our backyards using our infrastructure and implementing our air and power grid, the public deserves to see the exact costs, guarantees, and liability protections negotiated on behalf. Stay firm for Spotsylvania. We've already done our part. Close the loopholes, open the books, and keep our community protected. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else like to speak on just the consent agenda? Okay. Seeing none, I'll go ahead and close that and ask my colleagues, is there anyone that wants to poll anything?

Yes. Number 10, the moratorium, please. Okay. Any other polls? Madam Chair, number nine, please.

All right. Polls? Okay, you guys are good. Okay. All right. Well, then let's go ahead and take number 10. We'll do number nine first. I'm sorry. I mean, you can comment in the public presentations, which is next, if you'd like, because I closed the, yeah, yeah. Okay. Right, right, right. Okay. All right. So we've got number nine and number 10 polled. Is there a motion to go ahead and approve the others?

Okay, let's vote. Madam Chair, I just got a brief discussion on the consent agenda. For county staff, we have a lot of public hearings authorized in this consent agenda. I just want to make sure we get that information out in enough time to the public before those public hearings happen. That way they could... attend give us the feedback that they want it's just it's multiple public hearings i just want to make sure we get that information out before those public hearings happen we advertise it a little bit more stringently so well there's certainly the legal requirements that get gets uh advertised but i think you're talking about maybe some additional social media stuff so absolutely i'll leave that to it all right so let's go ahead and vote

Six yes, motion passes.

All right, great. So let's go ahead and take up number nine, Supervisor Guzman.

Yes, thank you. Yeah, I'd like to ask Ben if you're able to address some of the issues and the questions.

I think Becky is probably better to answer on those questions.

Good evening, board members. I guess my first response, I think I can speak for Mr. Loveday. We always appreciate the opportunity to confirm that we are not using any bond funding for any of our developer projects. So I can give you that absolute assurance there. So this item that is on the consent agenda, this is a reimbursement resolution that we need to do for IRS purposes. We are not authorized to issue any bonds as of yet that will come later so we can't you know do anything with our bonds let alone reimburse them until we come to the board with a public hearing provide all the information to get board approval and then go through the actual issuance process now i do have information on on all the projects here that i can provide or if it's the board's pleasure i can get back to the person that had the question with the details and follow up um you know at a future board many meeting when we're issuing the bonds to give that information

Yeah, I think I think it's important for the public to understand that. Yeah, we're not we're not issuing any bonds and that and we're not spending any bond money on. Other projects that are paying, particularly what was discussed about the Amazon and, uh, but, uh, yeah, I think, um. You know, there was a lengthy list of questions. I would be fine if you wanted to address those and we could make sure that those get get publicized out for clarity. But as far as I was concerned, I mean, as far as I knew, we were just reimbursing those costs that we had on contract.

Correct. So what are bonds? When we issue bonds, we're reimbursing our project costs. And I guess one additional thing I wanted to share to help illustrate how we are separating our data center related projects like our water use projects. We have separate projects. So any costs that are incurred that are related to this level one reuse is going to a separate project costs versus any project work that is not related to those developer funded costs. And that is important because we need to be able to reconcile the revenues that we get in from the developers to the costs that are actually incurred. So I did want to share that. And so, yes, we haven't issued any bonds. We will do that later in the fall. And we'll come back with a complete listing. There will be a public hearing so we can get input from our citizens. And then the board could approve the issuance of the bonds.

That'd be great. And again, yes, if you can provide us the answers to those questions specifically, and we'll make sure those get promulgated to make sure that again, transparency. That's what it's all about here.

Absolutely. I'd be happy to.

That's great.

Yeah.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Okay.

Is there any other questions or anything? I make motion. We approve.

Okay. six yes motion passes all right and then supervisor yakubowski if you want to take up ten yes thank you

I've served on this board for for a while and 1 of the concerns that I have is the disconnect that we have between the state and the locality. We're responsible for land use and yet there's a lot of things that are outside of that control that. That land use does affect, for example, just, you know, transportation is 1 of them. Um, the data center issues has come forward and we had a presentation by, um, was here dominion did not show up at that 1. Are they were at that 1? They came later. Yeah, but at that at that meeting, and and it was very eye opening to see just the impact. That our decisions will have. And we can work with our citizens and have the correct setback, the correct noise, the water usage taken care of. We can do everything that we need to do, and yet the impact on our power grid is beyond our control. And I saw that Senator Stuifont had put, well, it was an op-ed that I read that he put together and I read that and went back and found his legislation that he proposed before, read a lot of the legislation that had unfortunately died as it was going through the assembly this year. And what I had wanted to do was to let our our legislators and our state leaders know That we do, we're not looking to give up any local control over land use and what we do in the county. But if we have no control over the power grid. And the effects that that has, and the lack of leadership that they have shown over the past decades. Of really not providing the power for what we need, regardless of its data centers or anything else. Um, state and feds, um, have not done their job. And so I wanted to see about this board joining. With, um, and in his call for a moratorium based upon the electrical. Usage the lack of a plan that the state has how we've already seen that that dates that electricity will be provided have already been moving. That impacts what those projects that we have already approved will look like. With outside power usage, perhaps so all of those things. I think that really need to be taken into account because the decisions that we make, and somebody actually out here had said it too, which is one of the concerns I've raised for the past three years, has been a lot of this, I shouldn't say a lot, there is a percentage of this that is speculative and There's no end user, they're driving up the prices for other businesses and if a lot of these sites are approved and there's no power, so they can't power themselves up. But the cost of our industrial land has gone up so much that our small businesses and other businesses can afford to be here. What benefit is that to our county? So, I think it's about time that the state and this has nothing to do. You know, I've read a comment. about how well we need to figure out how to find more revenue and you know what i am not about to throw my county away for the hope of a dollar in the future just because this is the the shiny thing that's here right now that we need to do that's not right and we're not going to do it but i do want the revenue don't get me wrong i do want it but not in that way at all and I wanna make sure that our tax rate for our citizens is low. I wanna make sure that we can do the things that we need to do here, but there's a right way and a wrong way to do things. And I appreciate the leadership that has been shown, but I wanna make sure that everybody knows. And that's why there was the paragraph added at the end where this is focused on the state infrastructure, not our power to do anything, leave our powers alone. allow us to make decisions that are best for our county. And that's why I'm putting forward this resolution. So hopefully this will go somewhere. Hopefully we'll support this. And hopefully those at the state level see what an issue this has become and do the right thing and do their job. Thank you.

Thank you. Dr. Frazier. Thank you. Those of you who know me well know that I don't talk unless it's something important to say. And I disagree that we should put forth a moratorium and that might not be a popular answer. I'm not saying we need a plethora of data centers in our area. And I do agree that we need a committee to start, but I would employ this board before we go and follow a moratorium for someone else, Why not work with our surrounding elected officials to come together in a space to have a conversation? You know, I did some research, and those of you who know me know that I love research as well. In the 1920s and 30s, there was an uproar about power lines. and how they were detrimental to the environment and how they were not needed because they would cause more harm than good. Can you imagine a society without power lines today? In the 1970s, 60s and 70s, there was an uproar about what we should do in terms of nuclear plants. because the nuclear waste would seep into the drinking water and all of these things would happen. But we discovered that building the nuclear plants that we do have, have added a value to our society where we can freely have energy source. I'm not saying the data center is the answer. I'm not saying we need a lot of them because they're competing sides of the saga. But what we should do as elected officials, we should give you the information, not speculative, not based on assumptions, but based on accurate information and facts. I know it's scary. I know when we look out and we see something different, it is scary. But we also need to understand the type of data centers. Are we talking about hyper data centers? Because every time you pick up your phone and you snap a picture, that picture is stored somewhere. Is there a need for certain types of data centers? Absolutely. The hyper data centers that are going to energize the robot revolution, maybe not that. Maybe we're not ready for that piece. And I do agree that there are some checks and balances. But I would employ us as the leader of this community to be truthful and to also not be so quick to judge everything based on a little bit of information. Information is critical. It is key. And we can sway it. If I go on this internet, the way it's designed, and especially now, I can find evidence to support any claim that I put out there. Any claim, any notion, it could be a lie. It could be something made up. And I have found the information that would convince and incite others to take up this revolution against data centers. What I think we do need in Virginia is committees that will focus on safety, rather it has to do with data centers or other things, rather it has to do with the pesticides that we are spraying on our vegetables and we're taking to our dinner tables every day. There are many issues that we need to be concerned about because the elephant in the room might be the data center, but there's much more. than we need to be concerned about? What about how our animals are on the farms and the oversight of disease that are taking over some of our farms today for the very meat you bring to your table? We have to do better as a society. And it's not based on who's gonna like me or who's not gonna like me. It's based on the fundamental truth of being grounded in what we can come around. There's always gonna be a debate, but how we handle those debates from this board into the audience, into our community is our livelihood as a community. Because we all want the same thing. We want our children to be taken care of. We want our food to be safe. We want our environment to be safe. And I'm not saying, I'm not advocating for data centers, but what I'm saying is work with our local officials who represent us in Richmond. Where's the conversation that we've had with them extensively? I'm not saying they didn't come here and give their opinion, but what are we gonna do when Richmond doesn't do what we asked them to do? What we've accomplished? What is the purpose of this letter, this moratorium? Because we can't speak for Northern Virginia. We can't speak for Southern Virginia. This letter may entice people to wanna do something different because there is a moratorium. You know how society is when you tell them don't do something, they wanna do it even more. But what are the solutions? What can we come around together? How can we bring you, those of you who have studied and have done the research on both sides, how can we get you around the table that we can have a conversation to make this community better. It is not about me, it is not about you, it is about us together. And as the leader on this board, as the leaders in this community, we need to stop doing things that will appease five or 10 people. I'm not saying that it's wrong not to listen, But we have a community of over 160,000 individuals. 160. Most of us have 20 plus thousand people in our area. Can we speak for five or 10? Or does the 160 matter? Where's their voice? And I want to say to those who are out there listening, live your voice on both sides of this matter. There's not a one-way solution for everything. And for that reason, because I wasn't brought around the table to talk about this, I'm not going to support it. Is there a committee that's needed in Richmond? I'm willing to write a letter and ask the governor, please develop committees that we can study the effects of data centers, the one that we have already, how is it impacting our environment and what we need to do to get ahead of it. And that's what I want to leave with my community. It's not for a vote. It's not for anything else. And I don't want you to think that I'm on one side or the other, but I want to be truthful. And I also want to be very transparent with my community.

Thank you, Dr. Frazier. Supervisor Mullins.

Thanks, Madam Chair. So I appreciate everyone who's come out and spoke their mind and expressed themselves. I can understand why you'd feel that way. The issue I have is kind of multifaceted, and it starts with Sturdivant's actual op-ed, What he wrote. He's not completely accurate. He's talking about some older issues. They're valid issues of power, electricity, water, all that noise. They're valid, but it's dated. So asking the governor to conduct to enact an executive order for a moratorium is performative, I believe. It's he knows it's not going to it's not it's not going to happen. in my opinion, but he's asking for it. And I feel like just jumping on the bandwagon and asking for a moratorium opens up a whole bunch of questions for me. One is, how do we treat, where does it start? Does it start with projects that might be coming, applicants now, or are we going to go back and address people that are applicants and builders who are already doing what they're doing? I haven't read, actually, the resolution in its entirety because I think it's changed a little bit. But the real issues, in my opinion, are not the data center by themselves, although they do use a lot of power. It's power is the issue. The state of the Commonwealth has to buy the majority of its power outside of the state or the Commonwealth. We're buying it from Ohio and West Virginia and other places. What the governor needs to do is allow for there to be a accelerated power generation effort in the state because the more power you have, the more power is available, the lower the rates are for everyone. And instead, we enter back into the greenhouse gas initiative and where the priority is offshore windmills. That's not going to none of that electricity is going to end up powering your smartphone or your Internet of Things at home or your car and any of that. So when you talk about a moratorium, the six of us now, someday it'll be seven again. The seven of us are the firewall for that. We are we can be the moratorium each. applicant comes before us and we scrutinize what they're doing. And Crossroads is a great example. I know it's not popular, but it's a great example of listening to the concerned citizens and then enacting changes. Now, again, it's probably not what a lot of people want, but they've made a lot of changes. And that's because we've worked with them and held their feet to the fire on that. So I feel like We complain about Richmond injecting itself into our everyday life by more and more mandates, but now we're gonna punt to Richmond and think that they're gonna stop or they're gonna solve these problems. That's a pipe dream. Richmond's not gonna solve the power problem or they're not gonna, what exactly are we trying to solve with a moratorium? Now, if we take it step by step, if it's power, The industry itself recognizes that they can't get the infrastructure they need quick enough. So that's a big problem from an investment perspective. And then it could be years and or they know it will stress the grid more. So they're looking at alternative options right now, on-site power generation, which in SMRs, I know people think that's a long way off, but actually it's not. It's going to be a lot quicker than folks think. So those are the focus areas I think we need to, the governor or her team needs to focus on. And also when you start discriminating against a particular organization, part of industry, there's a lot of legal thought that that's not even legal. It's not illegal because you're being discriminatory. You're arbitrarily deciding you don't like this industry, so we don't want them here anymore. And you open yourself up to issues. Why that matters is... Ed and his team, Ben and Becky, they run a really efficient, tight county fiscally. And what that does for us is it gives us the highest bond ratings you can get, AAA bond rating with all three of the houses. And why that matters is... When we do apply for bonds, we get the best rates. And so when you start sending messages that you don't want an industry here in the county, you're sending a message, not just to data center community, but the whole tech community and others that are dependent on that. That's a message of instability. You're telling those people, you know what? This just might not be enough juice in the squeeze. They're going to go build their data center anyways, somewhere. And that's fine. So that's fine. But it's not going to alleviate the grid problem. What we need, like I said, I believe that the effort should be to for the governor to focus on power. And we don't you know, we want to have a good quality of life. And I think we should have a measured amount of data centers. And that's the discussion we have on the board. We don't want to be like Loudon. and uh or prince william there should be a a defined amount and and the location should be um uh within reason so again i for that reason i feel like this is a a stunt if you ask me a performative stunt and uh for that reason i don't support it thank you supervisor guzman thank you ma'am chair first i appreciate the comments from my uh fellow board members up here

actually lots of good comments on both sides of the issue. But what I think is really important and I don't wanna be missed is we represent the voice of you all. I've got constituents out in Berkeley that have an opinion. And I've done a lot of homework, and they've done a lot of homework, and they send me lots of homework. I get duplicate homework, by the way. And that's good. I like to see the involvement. But at the same time, I think it's important to realize that, you know, we're talking about data centers, I know, but it is a larger issue. It's the power issue we have in the state. And And do I appreciate your comments on the grid itself? And we're not going to fix it in one industry. But we have an issue that I think is important that the governor and the people down in Richmond understand that the citizens of Spotsylvania are concerned. And we want to make our voice heard to those people that are making those decisions. Supervisor mentioned, I mean, we don't have control on that. We don't control the power grid where it goes where the transmission lines go or anything we can control local land use and we can control data centers being approved or we're not approved in the county, but that's it. We can, we can work on that demand issue, but we can't solve the problem of how we're going to get the demand for your house for your backup generator. You know, when everybody is power went out the other night. So, again, I. I wanna support it because I think it's important that our voice gets heard. And whether it's gonna make a difference or not, it's still our voice and I wanna support that. Thank you.

Thank you. Supervisor Lange.

so i think where we're at here in livingston i want to concur with supervisor guzman i regardless of my personal opinion i'm a representative of the 20 to 25 000 folks that humbly put me in this position uh we met with rappahannock electric dominion was supposed to come we as a board previous members and current members and county staff have done a fine job, I feel, of tackling the issue of noise, tackling the issue of water use, no wells, no potable water, things of that nature. One thing that is beyond our control is the electric grid. So we invited Rappahannock Electric in and we invited Dominion in. Well, Dominion I will say, was a no-show for a while. We got a lot of great information from the president of Rappahannock Electric telling us that we are not using any of your money as a co-op to build these substations. If an AWS or a Microsoft wants a substation, they are writing a check for $20 to $30 to $50 million for us to build that substation for them. That was great. As a co-op member, that is great. Now, fast forward a year or so later, now we're hearing, well, there's this magical list that Dominion has where people aren't going to get power for another five years. And now that list is continuously moving out. That date continuously gets pushed out. In the meantime, my folks and all of us are now dealing with increased electric bills because you cannot put this infrastructure in without having the end user to help pay for it. So if that end user is not going to be online for another five years, how do you expect Dominion and the powers to be to pay for the infrastructure upgrades? The banks are only going to allow them to borrow so much money for these infrastructure upgrades until the banks say, you've got to show us some more revenue stream if you want some more money. So then, as we've seen, Dominion comes out with rate hikes. So it is being passed down to us on the consumer level on things that we have no control over. And I feel like we've done our best to try to understand and collect data on the electric grid. And we were not given the proper information from Dominion. And we are now finding out later the power supply failures that is going on right now. In the Livingston District, we dodged a bullet with the Valley Link. We don't know if it's completely gone away from our side of the county, but our agriculture neighbors in Orange County and our friends in Culpeper County are getting torn up by major transmission lines. So these are things that we were not aware of during that time period either. On this other side of the county, we dodged a bullet with the, I can't remember the name of it now, but the Kraken Loop. Brand new transmission lines coming across Lake Anna. Luckily, that is already in Dominion's right-of-way. But Stafford County and all those counties above us are dealing with these transmission lines. These are things that we had no idea about. Another thing that is scary to me is that if they go with on-site power generation, a lot of that on-site power generation is natural gas. So where are we going to get the infrastructure for the large natural gas propane lines to crisscross throughout the Commonwealth without our citizens' gas bills going through the roof? So our electric bills are getting taxed. I'm afraid our gas bills are going to be soon next when we go with all this on-site generation. So that is why Livingston is agreeing with this, that we need to take a pause. We, I... I have not voted for every data center project in this county, but I have voted for some. Because we need to get the tax burden off a Harry homeowner. So I was willing we are willing to diversify our portfolio to a certain extent. We are not going to go overboard until we can see what happens with what we already have. So I'm willing to join this until we can get those power supply, gas supply, and I don't feel like the SEC is on the side of the people when it comes to the state level.

Thank you. So I guess part of the beauty of being chair is I get to go last. So a lot of the things that have been said I concur with, but I do think it's important for transparency purposes to tell you what this resolution means to me and make sure that citizens understand what it means, okay? It's not... It's not a moratorium. It is not, okay? What this represents is the county's desire for the state to take the lead And work on issues such as power and water. We've done a great job. Our staff has done a tremendous job addressing water issues. But there's a bigger issue in the Commonwealth that needs to be addressed. And they should take that lead. We don't have, as it's been said, we don't have the authority on power. We can't control that. So it is up to them, the SEC, to make those decisions. It means addressing critical infrastructure. That is something that, again, lands on the state. What it does not mean is that I don't want to take away the authority of any other locality to determine their own destiny. All right? They should, if they want to have data centers, they should go for it. Far be it from me to tell them that they can't do that. And I think that having a statewide moratorium can put this, it puts what the state wants to do, it puts other communities at risk for losing an opportunity that they might really want, like in southwest Virginia, where it's very hard to get industry there. It's also imperative that we retain our land use authority. We saw this year in the legislative process They basically took away some of our authority, right? We don't want that. They should not be telling us what we can and cannot do with land in the area. And so I want to make sure that that is retained. That also means that all of the work that we did last year and this beginning of this year on that special use permit, we made leaps and bounds changes at the beginning of the year with the special use permit. That gives us the ability to look at each one of the applications on its own merit. And that will not change with this resolution. And I just want you all to know that, because I don't want you to feel like this is something that it's not. So just know that applications will continue to come in. They'll continue to be massaged and voted on and all of that. But what this does do is send a message to the state that we want them to fix the issue. We want them to come up with a long-range plan, which they haven't done so far. So when those applications come, we're going to use every tool in our toolbox to make sure that every protection is put in place and that it is the right project at the right time and that there is community involvement and we are doing right by our citizens. So I do support doing this because it seems like Our voices sometimes are not always heard in Richmond, and we have to send a message to them that we have a concern. So if you read the resolution, you can see that it's not saying that there's going to be a moratorium. It's basically saying, we want you all to work on this. Get it done. But also, again, it doesn't mean that applications are going to stop. It doesn't mean that. And frankly, if there was a moratorium, and I'm just being real with you guys, if there was a moratorium, I don't know that it could stop the ones that are in progress. But we have tools that we've done that can help with that. So that's where I'm at with this. I don't know. Does anybody else have any... Chris?

Yeah, if you don't mind. And I appreciate everybody's voice. And I'm not here to do a back and forth on any of these issues. And is this... Is this going to go anywhere? I don't know. To be honest with you, it's a strongly worded letter that you hear about being sent all the time. But you know what? It's about time somebody actually does something. And that's the frustration that we have. And I think, and I've said this from this board before, take away data centers. This is not an attack on data centers for me. Take away data centers and replace it with something that our community wants. And it uses a ton of power. But we can't have it because the state hasn't done their job. We actually have moved into second place behind California in buying electricity, buying more electricity than we produce. And I'm sorry, I don't want to challenge California for anything. And that is a terrible place to be. We have not produced... And yes, Dr. Ferger, we had a nuclear... We built a beautiful lake to power our nuclear plant that now has lots of beautiful homes there. And I've heard from many people who wonder why we put a nuclear power plant on a lake where people live. And, you know, it's just the way it goes. But... But it's up to the state to make sure they do their job. And until data centers came along, we have never had a presentation from REC, Rappahannock Electric Co-op, where the president sat there and said, I can't power these things. And who that's going to fall on is us. The regular people, our bills go up. our power is not guaranteed and this is america for goodness this is a cuba and yet we can't even rely on power to be there because other levels of government haven't done their job and what this is i hope is a a a nice way of saying to them please get off your rear end and do what you're supposed to be doing because we are doing what we're supposed to be doing here at the local level we're listening to you guys we are trying to craft ordinances to make sure that that the issues that are important are protected and that these are done as best as we can but when things are out of our control i think it's it's up to us to write a strongly worded letter and to make phone calls, and to ask our local elected officials to please join in this, not to targeted industry, but that industry has brought to light the cracks that we have in our infrastructure. And they need to get working on this. And we have even seen that some of the ones that are currently even opening up, data centers are opening up in our county, the power that was promised is now being pushed back And that's going to affect how those data centers now look, the noise, the impact that they have on communities that we've done a good job of protecting. And so hopefully it will go somewhere. Um, I would love for the assembly and maybe we can definitely add this to our legislative agenda to, um, ask the state to please do their job. Um, in in our energy, because it's not just data center. It's not going to end here. It's going to be the next industry in the next industry in the next industry and I don't want to hand any of this over. Um, to other states necessarily, but if we don't have the power. Our citizens have to come first. We can't power data centers if we don't have electricity. So it's our way of saying, please do your job. And we're doing our job, so you do yours. So that's really it. Thanks.

Okay, thank you, Chris. Does anyone else have any comments? Dr. Frazier?

I just have one final comment. I think I don't have a problem with asking something, but I do think we need to be cautious about how we ride on someone else's platform to do what we wanna do as a county. I think I would have appreciated more if this was coming truly from us and what we wanted to do and what we wanted to put forward and also how it's worded. I don't agree with all the wording of it. And so, because I did not have input in that piece, I will not be supporting it. Whereas I could have, if we were to do this in a way that we were looking at, and I know that I'm one vote, but I would hope that we would come together, especially when we're speaking as a board to the state, that we would also do things to involve the people who represent us in Richmond in a different way, that there are layers that we can go through to get our point across. And that's my hang up with this. Thank you.

Thank you, Drew.

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. Thank you, Dr. Frazier. When we were kind of talking about this a little bit last week i think it there definitely needs to be some sort of message sent to uh this to the governor's office and uh a focus to to solve the problem we have right and um i was in favor of why don't we write our own strongly worded letter that specifically addresses the issues power generation and infrastructure. But the opportunity to snap link or jump on board with Senator Sturtevant's letters, that's the issue I have. Because I feel like I don't completely agree. I agree with the passion and the effort and the focus on addressing the problems but we need to be more specific just just saying hey moratorium boom and there's no there's no what if or there's no details in that so um again i i was in favor of doing something specifically like that where we're speaking with our own voice kind of like the way we did some of our other resolutions in the past as well um but uh i feel like a senator You know, we know what we're doing up here. You know, it might not always be an agreeable thing, but we work really hard to with our staff to look out for. We're all spots of Indians. Right. And we really do want the best for our county. And sometimes it's hard, but I feel like a senator, you know, he's he's in a different level and. felt like his focus was as if we didn't know what we're doing with land use. So if there was a way to craft a substitute resolution, I'm open to that. But that's kind of where I'm at on the whole idea of following the Senator's wordage. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. So just my other two cents is, I think it sends a strong message when we're united up here. I really do. I mean, if we pass a resolution where it's split, it doesn't have the impact, I think, that if we were all on the same page. But I want to ask you, would there be something that you would change about this? if you wanted to do something substitute. I don't know. I'm just trying to get, yes, Dr. Frazier, sorry.

I would agree with Supervisor Mullins. I think when we, as a voice, a collective voice, want change, it needs to come from our point of view. Getting on someone else's point of view, it may not be the best way to achieve what we want to achieve. And so if we want to send the message from this collective body, I might be in agreement with that, but I'm not in agreement with going on someone else's platform because there are many reasons why people do things. And we have to also be reflective of the reasons. And those reasons may not match up with what we want to do. So I would say.

You can you can you can go ahead and take the vote or we can agree to do something else We can't we can't take any any questions right now, I'm sorry We can't do that right now that's not how this works and I apologize but you can talk during public comment coming up after we debate this but Right now this is the way we're doing it. So I All right. My apologies. So we can either... Yes, Chris.

If I might. And I know I was partially joking when I said a strongly worded letter. I think... Who else in the state has stepped forward and said, hey, we need to do something about this? We did have some legislation that went through. Senator Stewart was one of them. And it went nowhere. And so my desire behind this is to, if this catches fire and it actually goes somewhere and other localities say, yes, would the state please step up and do something? And Senator Suvant is the vessel that we're using to do that, so be it. Because remember, even if we send a letter to the state and say, hey, make sure that you provide enough electricity for the entire state, They can still go ahead and do anything that they want. They can put a moratorium in. They can take away our land use powers. They can do anything. So signing on to a moratorium that we're not sure what the end of that is going to look like is no different than sending a letter, except that I don't think it has the forcefulness behind it. A state senator who is pushing this and is trying to get this done, and I'm assuming is trying to get his colleagues on board, To do something I think has carries a lot more weight and remember, this is a statewide moratorium. It's not just going to apply to us. So, if Northern Virginia wants to continue to build data centers, and as you see, they're actually denying. A lot of data centers, we are still. all together on the same grid, buying power, and there's no end in sight for the downward trajectory that we're on when it comes to energy. And so is this a little unorthodox, let's say? Sure. But sometimes you need to be a little unorthodox to get attention and hopefully put it front and center. And am I in favor of everything that the moratorium says? I don't know what she's going to sign. She can add in anything that she would like when it comes to that. And in fact, they can do a moratorium on their own anyway. But what I'm trying to do is trying to get our voices and our citizens, because we've done our job, and this is what irritates me. We've done our job. We listened. And in fact, we're going to be listening in just a little bit to a lot of people that are going to be letting us know what they think. And that's our job is to sit here and listen. And their job in Richmond is to listen to us and to get off their ass and to do what they need to do. And if this is unorthodox, fine. I know it's not typical, but again, REC sitting there saying that we don't have the power And I'm not sure people's power bills, your power bills, I've never seen my power bill this high. And it might just take something like this to tell them. And it's not an attack on data centers. It's not focusing in on them. But what they did is they shined the light on the failures of our state and our federal government over the past decades that we don't have the energy to do the things that we might want to do things and we don't have the power for it. And so this has just brought this to a head. The revenue that comes from data centers would be fantastic to have, but I would personally prefer to have my lights working than a lower tax rate. So, well, perhaps we can have both, but that's where I'm coming from this. So thank you.

Thank you. Drew?

Yeah, to the citizen's comment there, what we do, it's not easily recognizable, but We're in the process now of basically discussing if there is a way we can do a substitute motion or language on that. And I appreciate everything that everyone's saying, from the citizens to my fellow board members here. um when you get in line you could be the first person of last person but after a while people don't see you they just see the line and and so by using the term moratorium uh where people words matter you know we could wordsmith it all day long up here as to what we are saying but at the end of the day we would be agreeing to senator sturdivant's you know we've got our version of support here but um so i'm i'm looking for a way to satisfy everyone's concerns um and Also say hey we we applaud the effort of Senator Sturdivant and go forth and do good things However, our nuance is X, you know, we want to we would like to do something like that Yes, and I would say that what I would hope that we would do is also if we had a

the conversation with our elected Richmond folks to say, hey, these are the things that we're concerned about. You represent us in this area in Richmond. What are some things that we can include in a letter that represent our voices? that we can convey to Richmond. I'm not saying we don't need to convey something. I just don't think that we need this Senator to take our message. And I would employ us to consider, we have representatives in Richmond that that are in this area. What are they thinking? What is our conversation with them? I think one in particular in this area, one delegate in this area has mentioned that she's concerned about the electrical problem or electricity. And I know that she's put forth some, so even being in Richmond, she could give us some idea of what it would take for us to collectively as this body joining with another body to say, we're joining forces here, but I don't think we need this Senator to take our message. That's my point.

All right. So I don't know that we have consensus on this. So I'll entertain a motion.

Unless there's a substitute motion, I make a motion to approve the resolution as presented.

Vote then.

Four, yes. With Mr. Mullins and Dr. Frazier voting no, motion passes.

Okay.

So now we're on to... Amy, that brings us to public presentations. Has anybody signed up to speak?

Yes, sir. We have several citizens signed up. So we're just going to take like a five-minute break, if that's okay. And I'm going to time everybody. Okay. a lot of time that I said. Five minutes. Okay, so hold on a second, because what we need to do now is this is the public presentation time. This is the time that anyone can get up and say whatever they want to say. However, we do have people signed up, so we're going to go in order of people who are signed up first, and then... Then we'll get you guys all queued up. You don't have to sign up to speak, but it's just we kind of want to do it in an orderly fashion. There are benefits to signing up. Yes. So, Amy, do you want to call the names then? And if you want to read the rules again, or I think everybody was here when the rules were read before. Okay. Okay.

The first citizen signed up to speak is Rich Thompson, followed by Donna Crump. Do we have Rich Thompson? Donna Crump? And after Donna Crump, it's Crystal Sams.

Yeah, just there's a button down there.

Okay. Okay. Hi, I'm Nonna Crump from the Chancellor District speaking about the lithium battery storage facility proposed on the land behind Salem Fields Church in preschool and adjacent to Nye Reservoir, Thorburn Estates, and other individually owned properties. A lot of people here may not know about it because we've been hearing so much about data centers, but I bet Scarlet Energy told you that this is safer than a data center. It is not. Have they told you that every battery storage facility in the United States has failed in some way? Many have caused huge fires which led to mass evacuation. I've provided you with photos. Toxic and flammable off-gassing poses an invisible catastrophic threat. This lithium battery storage facility is located by two cornfields. Corn equals fuel. Such a fire could consume acres and acres and leave thousands evacuated, homeless, or even dead. Our own fire marshal acknowledges that they are not equipped to fight such a fire, and the toxic smoke alone could travel for miles and miles, leading to severe illness and eventual loss of life. This proposed facility sits inside Spotsylvania's own Reservoir Protection Overlay District. a 2,000-foot buffer the county created to protect the Nye River Reservoir, which supplies up to 6 million gallons a day of our drinking water to over 12,000 Spotsylvania residents, some in Fredericksburg, as well as thousands of visitors every year. At one facility in California, heavy metals showed up in nearby wetlands at 100 to 1,000 times normal, and we're proposing that the same risk inside our own water supplies protection zone Such an incident would cost tens of millions in mitigation costs. According to local water chemists and treatment specialists, the water treatment plant near the reservoir would have to spend $15 million to upgrade their facility to be able to handle runoff from an emergency event, and $1.5 to $2 million annually to keep the system up to code. In addition, when trying to sell our homes, we would be required to disclose such a facility exists nearby. Our insurance rates would increase dramatically, taxes would increase to compensate for the changes needed for Nye Reservoir and the fire department, and the value of our homes would decline rapidly and they would be impossible to sell. Who will compensate us for that? All told, we're talking about soil contamination, contaminated drinking water, unseen off-gassing, wildlife destroyed or displaced, fires blazing out of control, home loss, massive financial losses, and toxic smoke that knows no limit spreading throughout the sky. The citizens of this county are tired of the industrial radicalization of land use and are prepared to act to prevent an immediate danger to life and health risk in our own backyards. I'd like to finish with a question. You may or may not care if your constituents do, but would you want a lithium battery storage facility next to your home or your child's preschool? Thank you.

Thank you. Crystal Sams. Followed by Barbara Best.

I realize I'm not Crystal Sams, but we've been married for 28 years, so she sent me in her stead, if that's okay. Good evening. My name is Brad Sams. I live in Chancellor District, and I would like to address the proposed battery energy storage system facility intended to be directly in our backyard. I do not oppose clean energy initiatives, but the board must consider protecting the families, the homes, and the safety of Spotsylvania County. I'm here to address that massive storage facility itself on Gordon Road, positioned right behind Salem Fields Community Church and mere yards from my house and others in the Thorburn Farm community and neighborhood. I acknowledge the importance of grid reliability. However, placing a utility-scale battery facility adjacent to where our families sleep and our children play should be considered a severe zoning error. It ignores two fundamental realities. One, the immediate environmental risks to our county's natural resources and the distressing financial impact to our neighborhoods. First, I'd like to discuss the environmental dangers. Industrial lithium ion facilities contain highly concentrated chemical energy. As documented in engineering reports by Jensen Hughes, when these battery systems fail, they can enter a thermal runaway, an uncontrollable and self-heating chemical fire that burns at thousands of degrees. They are not ordinary fires and they cannot be easily extinguished. The San Diego County Battery Energy Storage System Plume Study confirmed that lithium-ion fire can emit highly toxic gases such as hydrogen fluoride and carbon monoxide, threatening first responders and nearby residents. Furthermore, planning evaluations like the Klickacat County Best Report out of Washington State warned that the enormous volumes of water required to cool these chemical fires risk washing hazardous materials and battery contaminants directly into local soil and water tables. For Spotsylvania, the proposed site for this facility rests within a critical zone where toxic runoff could impact the Nye River Reservoir watershed, a primary source of drinking water for our entire county. This heavy industrial hazard belongs in a remote industrial corridor, not next to our churches, residential wells, and our backyards. Board members, progress cannot come at the expense of public safety and residential stability. There are countless heavy industrial zones in Virginia where this facility can be built more safely. I urge the county board of supervisors to deny this special use permit. Let's protect Spotsylvania's environment, preserve our property values, and keep our neighborhoods safe. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Barbara Best. Followed by Jennifer Child.

Good evening. My name is Barbara Best. I'm in the Chancellor District. I did quite a lot of research. This is an 18-page report by several PhD registered scientists from around the world. And I am not a public speaker. So he touched on most of what I was going to cover. So I'm going to stick to some very small but very important points. the smoke cloud that will emit the dangerous gases when the wind is not blowing it'll emit gases for about five miles do you know where this building is five miles actually a little under five miles from the 13.7 acre facility that's being planned to be built on that lot. The elementary school where my niece works is one mile from where that facility is being planned to be built, where some of the people in this room's children and grandchildren go to school. One mile from where that facility is being planned to be built. The fire cannot be extinguished with water. one mile from that facility there's a pizzeria across the street where i worked for many years my friends run that pizzeria what are you going to do if you have to evacuate where are these people going to go emergencies don't happen in the middle of the day they happen around the clock where are they going to go The biggest event for Salem Fields Community Church happens on Halloween night. In the middle of the evening, how is the fire department across the street going to go over and evacuate people in the middle of an emergency? Where are they going to go? In the middle of the night, two in the morning, if anyone lives around there, they got to drag their kids out of bed in an emergency? Where are they going to go? That's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you. Jennifer Child followed by John Deminski. Jennifer Child. John Deminski.

I believe so. Would it be possible, since I'm a member of the Mothers and Multiples Club, to have five minutes to speak? I was on the board years ago. Would that be all right?

I'm sorry. I was focused. Start over again.

Since I'm a member of the Mothers and Multiples Club, may I be permitted to have five minutes?

Are you speaking on behalf of them?

Not directly on behalf. Yeah. So that's okay. That's all right. I'll shorten it. I'm sorry. No, that's quite all right. Following process is important. Right.

Yes. Thank you.

No problem. Okay. Hi, my name is Jennifer Child, and I'm part of the Lee Hill District. The main point that I want to focus on today is I would like to request an immediate independent cumulative acoustic impact study for the three medical envelopes surrounding the Spotsylvania Regional Medical Center. I'm going to go off script here like I always do because I just want to talk to the board as a person. I've been following the potential impacts of these data centers from as long ago as three years. I immediately thought of the hospital back then and some of their delicate patients within. But one thing that I think it's really important for the board to know, if you don't take away anything from what I say, In this very short window is the hospital can lose its accreditation its federal accreditation if the noise envelope is pierced. And there were some justifications for why it might be okay three years ago, but i've had some counterpoints to that in my notes. If it loses accreditation, it will no longer be able to accept Medicare or Medicaid patients, which would adversely affect the entire county. It would affect every single one of your districts. Another thing that I want to talk about while I have time is Everyone thinks that gas turbines are the answer to solving the energy crisis. And our leaders down in Richmond or wherever may think that that is the instant fix too. But my daughter and I, we went out to look at data center noise. And we went 1,000 feet away because we were looking at what the impacts could be for St. Jude's Church, my daughter Daphne. And we measured. But I also had heard about the Vantage VA data center. So we went by there after the inversion window was over. And we took measurements there just to see. Obviously, they run on their gas generators the entire time. And we also took a band analysis I'm not sure if you'll be able to see this, but... So this is the base... Sorry. I put the... It's the baseline at St. Jude's. And that is a thousand feet away from... the Vantage data center that has gas turbines. There's currently a Nextera Dominion Energy merger. Nextera is a gas company. They are likely going to push through political means to fix this energy problem through putting gas turbines at all of these places. But it will absolutely be within the acoustic constructive interference window to affect the hospital. And these types of noise, they will pierce the hospital. We will lose our accreditation. So please, Please double check and require a study. I've run out of time, but I have it in my notes. Thank you so much for your time and your diligence and your thoughtfulness. This is a thankful job, so thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

John Dominski, followed by Karen Prask.

Good evening, Board of Supervisors. Appreciate you guys taking the time and hearing us out. My name is John Dominski. I live in Thorburn Estates in the Chancellor District. I've emailed several of you before, and I appreciate the responses I've gotten from very few of you. I'm here to speak like some of my colleagues here regarding the Scarlet Energy Project the BESS project off of Gordon Road. Now, I don't get involved in bureaucracy. I don't have time. I'm a doctor. I treat patients and I oversee doctors who treat patients all day long. So if I'm here, something's messed up. You know, when evil comes knocking at your door, what do you do? And we had that emotional testimony just before about being a mile away from this project. I wish we were a mile away. I share a property line with this battery storage facility project. We have one thin tree line that separates us from that proposed project. It's insulting. It's extremely insulting. I moved my family down here from Fairfax County to treat patients, to grow. We have two children, a one-year-old and a three-year-old. We're probably one of the families that's in the backyard the most. We're in direct blast zone from this facility if and when something were to happen. And these days, it's more about when and not if. It's 150 feet from where my son and daughter go down the slide every single day. We can reach over my property line and grab one of the corn stalks from where this corn will be replaced by this battery storage facility. I don't argue that these things need to exist, sure, for sure. But the location is absolutely critical. And again, it is extremely insulting that this would even be proposed in a location like this. I don't know if any of you guys have been down there. I was talking to Noah last week. He said some of you guys have done a drive-through or maybe the planning commission. Come to my property at any time you want in Thorburn Estates and walk my property line and you tell me that that's a good location for exploding batteries next to three-year-olds and one-year-olds, a church, a church with a school in it, two tributaries from the Nye River Reservoir. It's chaos, the proposed location of this. And we need to very, very carefully consider this. I got the pleasure of sitting in the Planning Commission meeting last week and got to see the map with the primary development area and a lot of the mixed land use and areas where things might go. A thousand times better than this location. It's preposterous and it's extremely insulting. So we need to be very careful about this and I urge you to vote down this special use permit for the Scarlet Energy Project. Thank you.

Thank you. Karen Prask.

I do not have a complete report on the convoluted and financially beneficial relationships that many of our Board of Supervisors have with developers, their personal businesses, campaign contributions, marketing consultants, and favorable motions and subsequent approvals for developers' multimillion-dollar projects to proceed. Those details will come at a future meeting. However, I do want to ask Mr. Jakubowski about his $10,000 donation from and relationship with Dave Renson, who is now an engineer that leads the hyperproductive team at Google and guides strategic investments in large-scale AI infrastructure, as well as his lead in questionable purchases like $5 million soccer fields that were purchased well over the assessed value and burdened retired county employees who served their time in the community. and should be living their retirement years peacefully and not worrying if they will be able to afford their monthly medications, and whether or not you will continue your history of what appears to be a pay-to-play history, especially with Tricord Homes, Craig and Michael Jones, 4 Mile Fork LP, MacGyver Group LLC, and our now famous Charlie Payne, if you become Commissioner of Revenue. I fully support Dr. Shelly Bowman Sr. for Commissioner of Revenue, who is a doctor of public administration, a former IRS revenue officer, and public service professional focused on disciplined governance and ethical leadership. He is running for Commissioner of the Revenue to protect public trust in tax administration and ensure the office remains fair, transparent, and reasonably managed for the people of Spotsylvania County. With his experience in fiscal oversight, governance, and organizational leadership, I believe he is a right fit at exactly the right time for our county. I urge everyone to check out Dr. Shelly Bowman Sr.

So, ma'am, you can't make public campaign stuff up here.

Cindy Statz, followed by Kelly Schaefer.

Hello, my name is Cindy Stotz and I live in the Lee Hill District. The document presented is a petition created by a Lee Hill resident in opposition to the Data Crossroads Tech campus. It is signed by over 200 residents. In June 3rd, 2020 meeting minutes, it was discussed that the county should reasonably accommodate the potential for solar energy facilities while actively preventing the widespread proliferation of such facilities within close proximity to rural residents. in that meeting staff stated quote small-scale projects from a county resources side are also more manageable to review and develop recommended conditions and mitigations and to monitor during the construction period end quote it appears the county was recognizing its own limitations to develop and monitor large-scale projects in 2021 solar facilities outside the pdb received a five percent acreage cap the current draft has a 3.5 percent cap The planning and zoning staff is quite inundated with current rezoning and data center applications. I imagine that the data center influx along with regular development has stretched the county resources pretty thin. I would like to request a cap be placed in the updated comprehensive plan for data center development. If we can do it for solar, we can do it for data centers. I propose a square footage cap given that many of these campuses are asking to build millions of square feet of data center buildings and it's the buildings themselves that are the issue. Currently, we have approximately 15 million square feet approved with another 26 million square feet proposed. That's 40 million square feet of buildings sitting on about 4,000 acres of land. I believe a cap of 15 million square feet is more than reasonable. This includes crossroads. At the bare minimum, the county should enact a square footage cap for a designated time frame, say three to five years, which seems to be the average time it takes for an application to work through the system. Enacting a square footage cap for a given period of time would provide the county several things. Time and resources to fully evaluate each project on its merits and determine if the project is a good fit for the location resources and residents. Time for the approved and constructed projects to get up and running so that problems can be identified and avoided in future projects. Time for new and better technology to roll out and become more widely available. time for the county to address any violations that may occur so residents are not suffering with the fallout of a county stretched too thin to properly address any violations that may occur time for the county to expand its data center guidelines time for residents to learn about and voice their opinions about each project time to understand exactly how much tax revenue the centers are providing the county and then identify shortfalls and needs so the funds can be thoughtfully applied for the best use of the residents I would love to see the same thought and consideration that was given to the impact of solar facility development to be applied to data center development. We've already reasonably accommodated the potential for data center facilities. Now we need to actively prevent the widespread proliferation of such facilities. I believe a square footage cap and supporting a statewide moratorium will prevent such widespread and potentially damaging proliferation. Lastly, I urge you to give careful thought and consideration to the battery storage facility and to hear your constituents' concerns. Thank you. Thank you.

Kelly Schaefer, followed by Mariah Neary.

Hi. My name is Kelly Schaefer, and I'm a Leehill District resident. I asked the board tonight, when it comes to data centers, will Spotsylvania County negotiate from a position of strength? The citizens of this county have overwhelmingly rejected the use of our land, water, and resources for data centers time and time again. We have brought forward evidence of environmental impacts as well as impacts to the health, safety, and quality of life of residents living next to these facilities. Yet the response has consistently been that this is inevitable and that developers are graciously working with us. That is not a substitute for enforceable protections. Take the Crossroads project, for example. When asked to implement stronger regulations to protect the land and people of Spotsylvania County, Kettler responded that it agrees to implement where feasible, which is a legal escape hatch, not a commitment. Kettler has also pointed to the GMU property value study to argue that proximity to data centers does not impact home values. But one of the study's own researchers, Director Clower, cautioned that the study aggregates across regions. It does not measure the immediate property line effect at a specific subdivision next to a specific data center. And that is exactly our concern. We are not talking about homes somewhere within a county that happens to have data centers. We are talking about neighborhoods immediately adjacent to multiple hyperscale campuses backing up to one another and creating another data center alley. We are not anti-growth. We understand the tax revenue and proffers these projects can bring, but we also need to acknowledge the uncertainty surrounding the race to build. Experts have raised concerns about the pace of AI infrastructure while the grid struggles to keep up and before profitable demand has even materialized. Spotsylvania is looking at projects stretching through 2035 and beyond, so why are we rushing? Slow down. Let the studies come out. Let the market develop and put enforceable safeguards in place before we commit our community to decades of consequences. I am asking this board to operate from a position of strength. Establish a comprehensive data center ordinance and create a square footage cap. This gives us time, and more importantly, it gives this board the ability to be selective about which projects we accept. Require clear definitions of items such as emergency use. A delay in utility power should not become a loophole for generators to operate indefinitely. Clear definitions gives where feasible, nowhere to hide. And lastly, negotiate decommissioning requirements. If a project is canceled, abandoned, or never reaches operation, our community should not be left with a massive unfinished structure and no clear path to restoration. These are not unreasonable demands. They are what negotiating from a position of strength looks like. Developers need access to our land. They need our water. They need our tax structure. They need this board's approval. We do not need to give our county away just because they are asking for it. So let's slow down, establish the rules, and make sure that if these projects come here, they work for the community, not the other way around. Thank you.

Thank you. Mariah Neary, followed by Renee Johanson. Renee Johansen, and then Brent Hunsinger.

Good evening. My name is Renee Johannesson, and I reside in the Lee Hill District. My family relocated to Fredericksburg from New York in search of a better quality of life, a quality of life that we have enjoyed for 15 years. But now that quality of life is being threatened by the unknown risks presented by the influx of data centers in our beautiful community. Progress for the sake of progress does not advance society, and sometimes we do not realize what we've lost until it's gone. My family, your family, should not be guinea pigs at the risk of our physical and mental well-being. The most verifiable and quantifiable carcinogenic risk comes from air pollution, specifically the diesel particulate matter emitted by backup generators. cancer clusters are not identified until an extensive spatial and epidemiological analysis is conducted. Even when compliant with local ordinances, background noise functions at a chronic environmental stressor. The human body interprets sustained sound as a threat, activating the sympathetic nervous system and leading to the release of stress hormones like cortisol. Chronic exposure to data center noise is scientifically linked to sleep disruption, impairing cognitive function and mental well-being. Over time, this continuous physiological activation contributes to an elevated risk for cardiovascular problems, including hypertension and coronary artery disease. I fear that we have lost the focus of our priorities as a community by selling our soul and our land to the mega millionaires. The affluent living in their ivory towers do not have to endure the hum of data center noise, the disruption of their landscape, displacement of their wildlife, or the heat and pollutants impacting their backyards and swimming pools. The culturally rich history of Spotsylvania County is the heart of Virginia. We live among the heroes of the past and the present, some of whom helped shape America and who are buried in marked and unmarked graves all over this county. Let's not let greed shape our future. Let's not let this generation and those who come after us carry the burden of decisions made in haste. It will place our community, one of this country's most historically significant on the wrong side of history. And I leave you with a quote from Willie Nelson. The strength of rural America never comes from big industrial footprints. It comes from generations of people, open spaces, local businesses, and a connection to the land. Thank you.

Thank you.

Brent Huntsinger.

Brent Huntsinger. David Vita. Followed by Susan Goetz.

Good evening, members of the board, and thank you for serving the citizens of Spotsylvania County. My name is David Vita, and I live in the Chancellor District. I recently found out about an early-stage proposal for a battery energy storage system that may be located near Salem Fields and close to my home in Harvestdale. And I'm referring to the scarlet battery storage facility. After some online research, I was quickly startled when I read about the extreme toxic fire hazard posed by the industrial size lithium ion batteries that are the backbone of that kind of facility, which will be approximately 13.7 acres. All right. And we're talking about something much more volatile than a data center. Think of the data center as a marathon that will suck our soul. But think of this as a sprint that will just knock us out. A lithium ion based fire can't be extinguished by standard methods. They are often out of necessity, left to burn on fire. burn on while they're generating toxic gas, toxic residue, and toxic particular matter. The runoff from such a fire caused by rain and air particles spreading is a life-threatening emergency. Such runoff could dramatically contaminate local groundwater in the Nye River Reservoir. The fumes and gases that would spread would pose an extreme health risk to local residents, animals, schools, and shelters. Speaking of local, it's less than one mile from the Salem Fields Community Church, which also has a school. It's a quarter mile from a stream that flows into the Nye River Reservoir. It's a half mile from the Nye River Reservoir itself, and it's less than a mile from my neighborhood. To boot, it's 1.2 miles from Freedom Middle School and Smith Station Elementary School. I'm a school teacher in Stafford, and the thought of a bunch of kindergartners, all right, freaking out because in the transportation crisis, when a battery actually starts to burn out because they can't put it out, the whole scenario would just be a nightmare. Allowing the building of this facility will have a potentially devastating impact on nearby property values. Many residents are depending upon the future benefit of the values of their homes. This facility could easily cause residents to lose value of their homes and cause financial struggle. It's an all or nothing proposition. What I mean by that is as things would be stable or they'd be suddenly become irreversibly catastrophic. With that in mind, what it does to our home values, if it becomes less attractive for people to live around Spotsylvania and close to these data centers and this storage facility, since schools depend upon enrollment for their budgets, and since that enrollment and that money is going to be impacted federally, the crisis that will happen if less families start moving in here and it impacts our schools will be irreversible. Thank you.

Thank you. Susan Goetz.

Susan Goetz, Berkeley. I wasn't going to come back up, but since we have zoning for data centers on the agenda for later, I just would like to insist that every contract, every memorandum of agreement, every part of Anything that you're presenting here tonight is made available to the public With no redactions, please post links on the site so we can read them thoroughly and and Please thank you.

Thank you There are no other citizen sign up to speak Okay at this time anyone else that would like to speak just queue up in the aisle, please. I

All right. I got five minutes? All right. Madam Chair and members of the board, I want to thank you for allowing me this opportunity to come and speak to you. My name is Bruce Mogenson, and I resigned in the Cortland Voting District, and I come here tonight as a member of the American Legion Post 320, located right here in Spotsylvania County. As you may be aware, the American Legion is a veteran organization that is open to all veterans who have served honorably in our military. But the Legion is much more than just a social club for veterans. Yes, we do meet and we reminisce about our time in uniform, but I want you to understand that the Legion does much, much more than that. Board members, you have before you a letter and a copy of what every Legion post provides to higher headquarters on an annual basis. It's called the Post Consolidated Report. This report reflects many of the things the Legion was involved in over the past year, and that's 2025. It shows that the Legion here in the county was involved in supporting not only American Legion programs, but also community organizations and the citizens of this area. Some of these programs include, but are not limited to, Boys State, Girls State, where just this past year in 2025, Post 320 sponsored 16 boys and three girls to these programs. These programs allow rising seniors to attend a week-long camp dedicated to teaching state and local government. During this past reporting period, we sponsored and supported an American Legion baseball team. We also provide financial support to the junior ROTC programs within the county, as well as providing academic scholarships to deserving high school graduates. We sponsor and support a scout troop at the post for both boys, girls, and cubs. In fact, this past year, the post sponsored and we had a total of 76 scouts and cubs. Post members also step up and volunteer in the classroom of our county schools, providing mentoring and assistance to our teachers. We also provided temporary financial assistance to veterans in need within our community. Our post service officers provide assistance and guidance to our veterans when they need help submitting disability claims to the VA. The post also provides Thanksgiving and Christmas food boxes to needy families within the county, as well as providing a Christmas gift stocking to veterans who are residing in our assisted living facilities within this area. The post holds an annual Christmas party open to both post members and local residents. Post members also participated in the annual Wreaths Across America program held each December at the Oak Hill Cemetery. And this program honors our fallen veterans by placing a Christmas wreath upon their gravesite. But supporting Legion programs is not all we accomplish or do for the community. This past year, the American Legion Post 320 has donated thousands of dollars to support local community charities and organizations, some of which include the Ron Rosner YMCA Bright Beginnings Program, which provides elementary school children with school supplies and new school clothes. We have also donated to organizations within the area that provide health and welfare to county and area residents, such as the Pink Flower Organization, Imagine Life, the John J. Wright Educational Center, the Brisbane Center, the local chapter of the Salvation Army, the local food bank, We were also a sponsored donor to the Fairview Baptist Church McClung Logan annual Oyster Roast charity event. But these are just a few of the local organizations that the American Legion Post supported with either time and or money. In fact, this past reporting year of 2025 saw the American Legion provide over $50,000 to support both Legion programs and community organizations. So in closing, I want to again thank you for your time. and for listening to what it is that your local American Legion has done and will continue to do for both the veterans and the people of this community. Thank you. Thank you.

Hello, I'm Paul Doe from the Chancellor District. Everybody's talking about lithium battery storage, and it's affecting me. I'm in Thornburg Estates, and so it's going to be right in my backyard. So everyone told you how bad they are, but no one's told you the history of them. THERE'S NOT ONE OF THESE FACILITIES THAT HAS FAILED. IN 2023 IN ILLINOIS, THEY SAID THAT WAS THE BIGGEST FIRE OF A LITHIUM BATTERY FACILITY. 2025, MOSS LANDING IN CALIFORNIA. THEY SAID THAT WAS THE BIGGEST ONE. TOOK THEM FIVE DAYS TO PUT OUT, AND THE THREE MONTHS FOLLOWING THAT DISTINGUISHING, IT FLARED UP THREE TIMES. This past year, they had a cargo ship coming from China. They had one of their electric cars catch fire. They fought the fire for five months. They finally had to rescue the crew to take them off the ship. The ship sank off the coast of the Azores. You cannot put these fires out once they start. They leave toxic chemicals into the soil, particulates in the air that you're gonna be breathing. And if everyone told you, there's a couple schools nearby, there's businesses nearby, and there's a lot of homes nearby. So taking an agricultural farmland and rezoning it for a place like this is really unimaginable. There's got to be places better suited for this like an industrial complex. Taking it into a residential area that used to be farm is really irresponsible. EPA is still at California. They're estimating the cleanup in California is going to be $10 billion. I don't think Spotsylvania County has anywhere close to that kind of money in their budget to start a cleanup. All the companies in these past three fires I just quoted said they were following all the regulation and rules. The problem is there are no regulation and rules. EPA has admitted that what they have for these companies to meet is far in between what really is needed. There's all kind of studies and panels now that are working on stuff to get better situations for these places. The problem is, if you're dealing with the federal government, it'll probably be four or five years before we see them. So we really need to take a close look before what we approve for our county. Thank you.

Good evening, members of the Board of Supervisors. My name is Carla Millsap, and I am in the Livingston District. I'm a 2024 graduate of Spotsylvania High School. I spoke to you guys last month about the school board's pattern of silencing citizens who raise student safety concerns that pattern continues and the consequences are becoming more clear. Last night, the Spotsylvania School Board again voted against requiring drug testing for teachers and staff who work with the children. The proposal was limited to hard drugs, cocaine, opiates, meth, and PCP, but not marijuana, yet it failed. Two years ago, a second grade teacher at Spotswood Elementary School was found under the influence in her own classroom with a white powder substance later identified as containing cocaine. Her husband was found passed out in a vehicle in the school parking lot, also under the influence with their two-year-old child inside. The substances involved are extremely dangerous and these are documented facts from law enforcement reports and court proceedings. Superintendent Clint Mitchell has started implementing drug testing would create so many vacancies that no one will want to work here. Board member Jennifer Craig Ford has voted against the testing. Board member Larry DiBella, a longtime former school resource officer, has publicly described past instances in which principals sent impaired teachers home with no police report and no notification to parents. The parents deserve better. The estimated cost of the testing under discussion has been reported in the range of roughly $24,000 to $91,000 per year. The school division's operating budget is approaching $400 million and with related funds near half a billion dollars, refusing a safeguard that costs a tiny fraction of the budget, while children have already been placed at risk indefensible. This board of supervisors controls the local funding, and I urge for you to stop approving any further school budget until the school board implements hard drug testing for employees who have direct contact with our students. Why continue to fund a system that will not take this basic step to protect our children? The school board has spent more energy silencing speakers than fixing the problems those speakers identified. They illegally banned Shamgar Connors and cut off his microphone because we raised safety concerns about how the Division DEI hired a bus aide, later convicted of sexually assaulting multiple special needs children, and then tried to cover it up. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression confirmed that banning him violated his First Amendment rights. student safety must come first please use your authority over the budget to require the change thank you thank you um before my time starts can i ask why he's been on the phone the entire meeting like that's just i mean isn't he paid to be here

And then with that said, good evening. My name is Ashley Forbes. I'm McKinney-Vento. So I've learned about the National Blue Ribbon Schools program through a school in Maryland, the same school that produced records for my son within days, records I've been told for months in writing that didn't exist. That's how I found out that those records were real, and that's how I found out what a Blue Ribbon School actually was. For 43 years since 1982, that program was the highest honor the U.S. Department of Education gave to American schools, recognizing outstanding academic performance and real progress closing achievement gaps. Fewer than 1% of schools nationwide earned it in the given year. Last year, Washington discontinued the program. Maryland didn't let the standard disappear. The state relaunched it as the Maryland Blue Ribbon School Programs. So Maryland kids could still be held to it. This isn't a far-off fantasy. T. Claywood Schools in Prince William County, Virginia, not even 50 miles from here, earned it in 2024. This county has earned it exactly once in 2018 at Chancellor Elementary, not since. I understand this board doesn't oversee school curriculum or daily operations directly, but you approve the budget the school system runs on. I ask you to consider if the standard is real, if Maryland cared enough to keep it alive even after Washington cut it, Why hasn't this county reached for it again? Both places operate under the same exact federal law. The Individuals with Disability Act Title 20 United States Code Section 1400 governs every IEP in this country. It's not state-specific rule. So when a family basic reasonable request, a school record, an attendee list, confirmation of services, get answers in days in one place and takes months in another, that's not a legal difference. That's a choice. Any school can earn a blue ribbon, but y'all are in lawsuits. Thank you. Thank you.

We good? All right. Shamgar Connors voting District 63, but I just want to say what's up, guys. You know, I missed you since last month. I mean, look, I'm here tonight to say today I did my first day of school teaching at Spotsylvania Schools, bro. It's so awesome. Like... Clint Mitchell, I love you, man. Clint was here tonight. I just want to shout out Clint. He said at the last meeting that if if they drug tested teachers, they wouldn't have any teachers, man. You know, I mean, you saw me last month. I was a felon. And guess what? You know, they are felons. You know what I'm saying? Like last year, they did that. And I just want to say a shout out spot. Sponsor me to schools forever, bro. I love you, Clint. Clint, I love you, man. And Jen Craig Ford, I love you too. She voted no to the testing. No one's ever testing ever at SponsorVania. Well, I ruined a good thing with accountability. Larry DiBella, shout out, man. He went on Laura Ingram, Laura Ingram on Fox News. And he said that he saw teachers being escorted out while they were wasted. But then there was no report. There was no arrest. There was no anything. They just got sent home and got told to come back the next day. And you know, so what? I mean, so there was that lady, she passed out in her classroom. She had enough Coke and Fent on the desk that could have wiped out the entire classroom, probably the whole school. But, you know, and then her boyfriend was passed out, wasted in the car with a kid. I mean, I was just, so I just one time, who cares? I mean, no big deal. I mean, so what if it happens? I mean, they say testing really costs 24K a year. I mean, the school budget's 500 million. A year, I mean, we need that money to spend on lawyers to cover up things and, you know, get people out of meetings, okay? We don't need drug tests. We just need participation. Megan Jackson, we love you, Megan. Megan's more concerned about banning parents who talk about DEI hires than, you know, and then the convicted pedophiles, predators. You know, silencing the messages is way more important than making sure the adults in the classroom are sober. And Carol Medawar said, this isn't the problem we need to go chasing. You're right, ma'am. Chasing actual safety is so exhausting. Much easier to just hope for the best. And Baylen wrote us, shout out, we love you too. I mean, she keeps voting no right alongside all the others. Consistency is a virtue. Even when it's consistently putting kids second, you know, and listen, my boy, Ranch Lieberman, I mean, Rich Ranch Lieberman, whatever his name is, you know, he supported actually getting drug tests, which was wild, which is, I mean, if this guy, Ranch Lieberman, who had his parents. page, his Facebook page, where he's supposed to report all the news to all the parents. And then someone submitted to him news about a kid being abused, and he purposely hid it and didn't talk about it. I mean, look, what a guy. If he's talking about getting tested, there must be a problem. Okay, so just want to shout out. I love you guys. I love Sponsor Media. I'm always going to teach you forever. Nicole Colm, everyone, she said all Trump supporters were clowns. She said that last time. So I just want to say, Jamaican me crazy. I love Spotsylvania schools, okay? Boy, I got to get this out. And, you know, I got to do what I got to do, guys, you know. So I love it here, guys. Boy, I got to get rid of the Evans. It's all gone. Love you guys. Thanks, man.

Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Laura Beisner. I'm here representing Refund Restoration LLC, who's been hired by several claimants to help them get a refund for the surplus of a property owned by Robert Luck, which sold at the property tax sale on 5-1-24, assigned case number CL-24-106, with a deadline submission of a surplus claim of 5-10-26. A claim was submitted within the deadline. However, due to the rush to file the claims and an attempt to include as many eligible claimants as possible, there was a miscommunication between Refund Restoration and the attorney, Blake Gale, resulting in four eligible individuals not being included in the claim. These were Dale Trent, Lily Brooks Williams, Thomas Brooks, and Jessica Johnson. The attorney, upon realizing this, immediately submitted a request to Sands Anderson, that the court released the funds for these individuals based on VA code section 55.1-396, which states that the county may grant relief by ordinance to heirs of former owners. County attorney Carl Holston was made aware of this and passed along the request from the attorney Blake Gale to the county supervisors. WE ARE ASKING THAT THE COUNTY PLEASE MAKE THESE ADDED FUNDS AVAILABLE TO THESE CLAIMANTS THROUGH THE REPRESENTATIVE REFUND RESTORATION LLC'S DAVID HILGENDORFF WHO IS NOT ABLE TO BE HERE TODAY. THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME.

THANK YOU.

MY NAME IS TRULANE BELAR. I LIVE IN THE LEASEHILL DISTRICT. A few weeks ago, there was a health advisory to not go outside because of the wildfires burning in Canada. I had the misfortune to have to run some errands that day, and even the brief amount of time I spent outside, I could feel the smog getting in my lungs. Why does this matter? A 2026 VCU research paper finds Northern Virginia data center air pollution rivals power plant emissions. Those are data centers that normally have power and only run their generation under emergency conditions. The quote is, in the areas with large clusters of data centers, CO pollution exposure can be equal to or higher than that from natural gas power plants and compressor stations. Currently, Spotsylvania is fielding a plethora of 18 data centers within a roughly 10-mile radius. That will include several thousand Tier IV generators. Tier IV generators are not a panacea. They still produce pollution. My understanding is they produce pollution at approximately 10% of a Tier 3 generator. 10 dimes or a dollar, 10 times 10% is 100%. For every 10 Tier 4 generators, they produce the equivalent pollution of a Tier 3 generator. Now, Tier 4 generators are approved in Virginia for primary power production. That means if the eight Bio-Rite data centers currently in progress don't have electrical power, when they're ready to come online, and they probably will not, they can legally spin up the generators to power themselves. And there's nothing we can do about that. If each one of those data centers averages 200 Tier 4 generators each, they'll produce equivalent pollution of 160 Tier 3 generators. The math is 200 times 8 is 1,600, divided by 10 is 160. Keep in mind, it would be legal in the state of Virginia to run 160 Tier 3 generators all the time. That's illegal. But they can run 1,600 Tier 4 generators that produce the same amount of pollution legally. Now we're going to add 10 or so more data centers on top of that, all within a 10-mile-square radius. There are going to be times we're going to have to issue smog alerts here in Spotsylvania County. We said we didn't want to compete with California in anything. We're going to compete with LA on smog alerts. So I don't necessarily know how the recommendation is just something that we're going to have to deal with. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Hello, I am Emily Hurl. I had no intention of speaking tonight, but I heard some things, sorry, Lisa, heard some things that I just wanted to just get on record that are alarming as a citizen watching this proceeding. And I don't think I'm the only one who was concerned about it, just judging by the uncomfortable wiggling and grunts that I was hearing from those around me. As we continue with the discussions on data centers, I just would like it addressed. There was some language, and I agree with you, Dr. Fraser, that the language that we use has power, especially when you are in a position of power and are chosen to represent us. I was deeply insulted by being compared to people in the 1920s and 1930s. who were ignorant to what it meant to have power lines in their communities. We have information. We are not ignorant. We have seen this play out in other areas of the state. We have seen that it doesn't work out for many of the different areas, and to be told that it must just be my own ignorance and fear of technology causing my resistance was very insulting. You made mention also about how there are 160,000 people in the county and we can't just consider the needs of 5 to 10. I'm sure you meant 5 to 10,000 people, but I assure you that there are more than 5 to 10,000 of us who is opposed to it. This is one of the most politically divided counties that I've ever encountered, certainly in the state of Virginia. And I think what you'll find is you got your red hats, you got your blue hats, you've got every color of hat in between, and all of us are telling you on one united front that we are opposed to the process that has been happening so far. It needs to slow down. And I think that you will find, and I hope that it is not on election day, that there are more than 10 of us, 10,000 of us who are opposed to it. Even those of us who are opposed to it, the few that are, I don't think that any of us would appreciate having our very legitimate concerns minimized in this way. We have also heard some language both at this meeting and also in the Planning Commission meeting that we should be taking into consideration the needs of other areas and even the data centers. was mentioned at the Planning Commission meeting. And I would just like to remind you that you have not been elected to represent the fine people of Southwest Virginia. You are here to represent me and my friends and the other voters in this room. And if they choose to harm their community in Southwest Virginia, that's on them, but we expect more from you. We've also... heard about the progress that has been made in terms of the protections to protect us from harm and mitigate the damage. And it's awesome, and I thank you for it, and it is clear that there have been hundreds, dozens of hours that have gone into it, into protecting to us, but we have to acknowledge the fact that for those to exist in the first place, accepts the fact that there is, in fact, harm that is being done. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, my name's Joshua Stotts from the Lees Hill District, and first of all, where'd she go? Ditto to everything she just said. First, I'd like to point out, as she did, that there are definitely more than five to 10 people here that oppose this. I'm no orator, I'm no raconteur, so you're gonna have to deal with this because I literally pulled this out of my backside while I was back there. I had hoped all of you were in support of a cap for the number of data centers within Spotsylvania, though clearly you all are not. This cap, as I understand, is well within your ability and power to enact. Hearing the words of the folk present tonight, the folks behind me, and a couple of you, this cap does reflect the will of the people you are elected to represent. A cap would allow residents and members of the board who are either uneducated or undereducated about data centers to come up to speed. Two weeks ago, one board member used the example, while you all like your phones, Kind of funny I heard that again tonight. If this is the measure of understanding used-based decisions allowing these facilities, a cap is surely an order and a necessity. A cap would also allot time to overcome the follies of the board supported to attract data centers in the future, now our present. I recognize it much easier for each of you to push the that was easy button, but I, for one, ask you to do better. Dr. Frazier, you mentioned the livelihood of our community. What will be left? What sense of community will be left when our community is surrounded and broken by these facilities? Secondly, we're not asking you to speak on behalf of Northern Virginia or Southern Virginia. What we do ask and what we do deserve is every one of you speaking on our behalf. Which brings me to Mullen's points. You question why involve Richmond. To that I respond, if we don't find representation that supports us locally, where else do we turn? A power issue is dead. Do you remember July 22nd? I would also like to remind you that you are our peers and not our superiors. We elected you. You were one of us, and one of us will replace you. and i can't say jeb i can't say your name i'm sorry thank you let's see um we and you all cannot point the blame at the state or count country levels they were not the ones to entice and approve our county's current predicament thank you y'all have a good night thank you

Hi, Jamie Ashton, Leehill District. I wasn't planning on coming. I was home. And then I just heard about the lithium battery storage facility. And, you know, it's almost like nobody's been listening to us. We've been telling you for a year, hey, these data centers are bad. There's bad health repercussions that are coming. And then, boom, here's something worse. Please just pause. I remember the days when Spotsylvania County was full of trees and people loved it and we were appreciating the earth around us. And now we're just blowtorching it. You know, back I was born in the late 70s. Back then, you know, I lived a lot of years around fire departments. People kind of dismissed what happens when all these chemicals go into the soil? Where does it go? Nobody cared. 9-11 happened. Firefighters did what they had to do. First responders did what they had to do. And now they're dying from cancers they obtained from saving lives. I invite all of you. I will introduce you to my lawyers. I've had over 40 operations. I've spent more nights away from my family than I should have. I am a patient of the Forever Chemical 3M lawsuit because of where I grew up as a child, because of foster homes I were in were firefighters, and they brought those chemicals home. So unless, you know, you want to have these same conversations in 10, 15, 20 years, when you've got one of our unborn grandchildren up here saying, hey – Did anybody speak up for us? Did anybody say, hey, pause? There's too much proof that this isn't what we need. Look at all the states and counties that are putting a pause saying we acted too quickly. And you're selling our souls for pennies on the dollar when counties and states that ask for more money are saying stop. But we're just sitting here. Hey, come get us. We're still here. We got to stop. If we say we love the kids, if we say we love this county, we got a funny way of showing it right now. Thank you.

My name is Tony Hernandez and I'll be dragging my half cripple behind over all of your communities eventually. First is just to address a few things up front. The idea that your phone is not going to work without these multiplicity of data centers is frankly nonsense. AI is an additive. You can go on Amazon right now and purchase an AI toothbrush What does it do? It brushes your teeth. Okay, this is the equivalent of saying that your car won't run without ethanol or you won't have sweetener without high fructose corn syrup. Again, these are additives, they are not necessities. The notion that we can't solve the world's problems so we can't deal with this one, I don't know how to deal with that nihilism. The only thing I could say is the problem is not us. We are not the ones who invented this lightning fast pace that is bringing such detriment to this community. It took the fathers of the post-World War II New Jersey, the former Garden State, to turn itself into... It took three generations to turn itself into America's backside. And it took an entire generation of baby boomers to flush away the virtues of our post-World War II boom and invent the Rust Belt. The truth is, is not a one of you want to live near one of these things. And it's my understanding that only one of you will. So there's a blatant hypocrisy there. It was not we who were voting on data centers while operating a company that openly services them. Indeed, it was the state that itself suppressed the health effects of data centers on Loudoun County. By the way, I want to thank the board and other members of county for stop using Loudoun as a reference. You know, hopefully we won't have to shut off the electricity to half the United States. Half! The United States was shut off by one Loudoun County data center simply switching from Dominion to its own power station. Now, this is why Loudoun, as well as other municipalities like New York, Texas, yes, Texas, and over 300 other municipalities have vouched to put some sort of pause moratorium or whatever you want to call it on data centers. Now, Finally, this notion of, I don't understand this whole complaint that many people have here about vape stores. I don't know where that's going, why people have that. But if you have such a problem with drugs in the community, and really, we could probably use the cannabis revenue. But if you have such a problem with them, why would you want to turn- Sir, your time's expired. All right. Thank you very much for your time.

Okay. Any?

Okay.

All right. So at this time. Oh, right. Okay.

Hi again, Dawn Shelley, Chancellor District. Tonight was the first time I'd heard about the battery storage facility, and I did a little research through your website, through the SPOTC website, and a name came up, and there's Charlie Payne. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Anyone else that wants to come up, just kind of queue up at the podium there.

Good evening, all. Marcus Garcia, Lee Hill District. I've often made myself the... The target of ridicule, ire. I've been attacked tonight already for my earlier comments. I do apologize, Madam Chair. I thought just a general consent agenda comment would land. I want to thank you, Mr. Mullins, for pointing out. I, too, read Senator Sturtevant's letter. I want to thank you for putting out there that some of his information was, in fact, dated. Mr. Lane, I want to just correct something. I'll give you the benefit of doubt because I, too, have gray hair. Dominion did, in fact, come. Mr. May, I met him that evening. He was not the president of Dominion. He was another strategic account manager or something. He did, in fact... give us a good presentation after REC. So I just wanted the public to know that. It's been about six months. I concede that. So I'd like to ask my neighbors and fellow residents here, you can go out and check to see. I guess I'm not a huge fan of data centers. I don't understand, but for a different reason than most everybody here. I wanna thank you guys for putting out the information tonight. Finally, The water issue is no longer an issue. I'd love for that one to go to bed, right? The power issue, sure. I'd like to shift conversation in this community. Why are we not doing more renewable power in this community? We heard from Dominion, per kilowatt hour, it has what's called LCOE, the lowest levelized cost of energy than any other fuel source. And so I'd like to shift the conversation for the future there. We compare it. And I know everybody, nobody likes battery energy storage. The interesting thing is we all carry lithium ion phones. We climb on airplanes. We ride on bombs with 20 pounds of highly dense liquid to get here to go home. And so again, for different reasons, we just need more information here. I owe an apology to this community. I've been made aware that sometimes my comments come off as disrespectful. That is not my intent. I'm an engineer. I study a lot. I read. I brought books in this room. And so I just want folks to continue coming like I do to learn. That's all. Thank you for the time. Have a wonderful evening.

Thank you. Anyone else in the audience care to speak? All right. Seeing none, then we'll go ahead and close the public comment time.

It takes us to public hearings. Your first public hearing this evening is to consider a sublease from tenant EGS Financial Care, Inc., Alorica, to proposed subtenant Kalahari VA LLC concerning tenant space located at 10300 Spotsylvania Avenue.

Floor computer, please. Tonight's public hearing is to consider a sublease between EGS Financial Care Incorporated and Gallahari Virginia LLC for a portion of the space that EGS has rented within the county and facility at 10300 Spotsylvania Avenue, Fredericksburg, Virginia. EGS' main lease expiration is February 28th of 2027. EGS has vacated the space. Under their existing main lease, they have the ability to sublease to another party. And that sublease is with Kalahari LLC from Kalahari, Virginia LLC with an expiration of October 31st, 2026 with a potential for a one-month renewal. So, staff, if you have any questions, I would recommend approval of this following public hearing tonight.

Sorry. Go ahead.

Can I add to that? Yes, sir. The county is not a party to the lease. The lease is between Alorica and Colorado.

Right. So it's pretty straightforward. This is just a formality then? Yes, ma'am.

This is for the public hearing to make sure that we're letting the public aware and have an opportunity to make comment on the sublease being executed between EGS and Kalahari, Virginia. Okay.

Great. So at this time, if there's no questions, we'll go ahead and open the public hearing. Are there is there anybody that signed up? No, ma'am. Okay. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak to this issue at this time? Seeing none, I'll go ahead and close the public hearing. All right. Any other questions that have popped up in the last five seconds?

All right.

And if there's not, then I'll go ahead and entertain a motion.

I'd like to make a motion to approve this sublease.

Okay. All right. We'll go ahead and vote.

6 yes motion passes.

Thank you Ben.

That takes us to a presentation reports by others. We have the. Since Ben's already up there, I guess we can go ahead and start with the residential refuse center updates.

this one will likely not go as fast as the public hearing so we'll go ahead and get this presentation uploaded get the floor computer please tonight would like to give the board some updates on the residential refuse program as we did have some directives were issued during the fi 27 budget development and I wanted to start off by giving the board and the public an idea of where all our convenience centers are. The pink circles or purple, depends on how you can see it on your screen, show a five mile distance around the convenience centers throughout the county. As you can see, we have very good coverage throughout the county, both from our larger facilities where we take bulk items, household recycling, we take household garbage, we take appliances, other items like that, and also our smaller facilities which are strictly aimed at taking in that household garbage and household recycling. As part of the FY27 budget development, staff was asked to look at ways to find revenue generation points and reduce costs within programs. And one of the programs that was looked at was the solid waste budget. During that budget development back in April, I believe, of this year, the staff was given direction to move forward and include within the tax rates scenario the following items. One was the implementation of a residential refuse permit program. That program was set at a $50 per permit fee and was proposed to have a $200 replacement fee. Right now, we would estimate that potentially we'd sell 30,000 permits with an estimated revenue of about $1.5 million. The other item that was included within that tax-based scenario was site closure. Ultimately, what was adopted was a two-day-a-week closure for the facilities. All centers were to be closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays based on use. Basically, those days were not as heavily used as we have on the other days, so it made the most sense to close them on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. That expenditure reduction was included at $300,000, but actually was included in the budget at $340,000. The construction and demolition debris was another item that was addressed. We wanted to move forward with the elimination of C&D, construction and demolition debris from Chancellor and Berkeley, and then shift that out to the Livingston landfill as the county was carrying a large amount of material from these facilities and was quite often basically overrun by commercial users. and basically having tax dollars supplement commercial businesses or subsidize commercial ventures. Our proposal to still allow for residents to dispose of C&D at no charge would set a five-load limit per permit per year, and we would charge for all other C&D above the five loads. So the estimated revenue is approximately $350,000 for that particular item within the budget. To give you an idea of the site information, this is the same slide that was presented back in April of this year. It gives you an idea of the daily traffic counts with Chancellor being our largest busiest average daily traffic count with some of the other smaller ones like Lee Hill at 90, Chuning Park at 70. So we have a wide range of facilities that see a wide range of traffic volumes. So I want to present the current traffic counts, and I do note that this is based on a limited data set. Basically, this is over the last couple of weeks as we've gone through and made changes to not only the C&D, eliminating that C&D in April, but making some other changes within the organization as folks knew that we were moving toward concentrating on the household waste and household recycling. The general trend that you can see in the average daily traffic count on a seven-day is the green. And the average daily count in more of a yellowish tone is the post-closure. This was after the closure on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. And also reflects some limited data from the elimination of C and D. We're not seeing any major concerns. It's not overloading any particular site due to those sites being closed. In fact, some sites are seeing less traffic. Chancellor is seeing less traffic. We are seeing some small uptick in Wilderness and Marshall Park, but generally, We're having very limited impact from that closure. We're not seeing trash being dumped at the gates. We're not seeing any excessive dumping throughout the county. Folks seem like they are, at least from our customers on the sites, while it is an inconvenience, we aren't getting the immediate reaction of, like some people threaten to just throw trash out on the side of the road, down the road from the convenience center. That's not happening. So this gives you an idea of where we're at. Once again, it's very limited data. We would like to come back after at least seeing three months of data to get a better idea of averages and peaks. But I want to at least present something tonight that showed you what was going on in the field that we're seeing. So moving on to the next phase of the FY27 implementation, you know, we've gone through the closures of closing on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. We've implemented the elimination of C&D at Berkeley and Chancellor. You're still allowed to bring bulky items like furniture and things like that to those facilities. The next implementation will be residential refuse permit. We're working on code changes for this. That's part of the authorization that was done tonight for the public hearing only, just authorization, not public hearings. That's just for us to come back in the future with those code changes. Right now, we're looking at replacing that county refuge decal with a hang tag or basically just a permit. The permit will be implemented by the Public Works Department. I do want to reiterate, this is back from the presentation we made back in the budget cycle, that the decal fee shown on the tax bills was never associated with the Solid Waste Service. I know people think that it was, but this was not. This is your local registration fee for your vehicle. It was just a tool that was used at one point back in the day to be, hey, this vehicle is registered in the county and had current taxes. But it was never meant to be a refuse decal, never was it codified as a refuse decal. You would issue one tag per residential property upon approved application. We've worked with the GIS department so that the system actually ties into our updated 911 addresses, which are updated about three times a week. So the permit number will actually get attached to a verified residential address. For folks who are renting, you know, landlords would provide renters with a private service or the permits for the rented property. We're looking for an FY27 program implementation with the code amendments coming for the board in the next month or two. Having a soft period of transition between now and January 1 and implement the program January 1 for full enforcement. The recommendation are generally going to be for a permit to be good for one year. It would include five residential C&D loads. So the folks would come in and be able to actually dispose of some limited C&D up to five times within a year. And I'll show you how we would track that on, I believe, the next slide we have. The permit must be displayed while at the center and be visible to the attendant. So we've had some discussion of, you know, it comes in the form of a hang tag. And, you know, if you're on the site, you should be displaying that to the residents. But, you know, you can't drive down the road with a hang tag, right? So, you know, basically at this point, the hang tag will be displayed to the residents, to our attendants. So the resident would display the hang tag, whether or not that's on their dash. hung on a necklace that they're wearing, I don't know. But the point is, it has to be shown to the attendant on the site. So it doesn't necessarily have to be on the rear view, so we're gonna avoid the whole concept that, oh, this is violating state law. Be on the dash, you can show it out the window. Once again, wear it on your person. All we care about is seeing that permit. Residential issuance would be estimated at about 30,000 units. And the fee of $50 would yield about $1.5 million in revenue. And the replacement fee would be recommended at $200 to make sure these things have value and that people take care of them. Doing so helps eliminate the, you know, basically letting your buddy borrow it and use your free decal to get into the sites because you know it's going to have a pretty steep cost to replace that. This is an example hang tag that we would look at doing. Hang tag on your rear view or simply display on the dash. On here, we would have the valid calendar year. This one for this first year will be issued for 2026 through 2027. We'd have a distinct number code on there, once again, tying back to a 911 address. In order to adjust for the free C&D loads that can be brought to Livingston, we would propose just doing a simple hole punch scenario. Basically, these would be similar to a placard that would use for handicapped, same type of material. They would come to the landfill with their C&D load. This was not going to count for a 20-yard or a 30-yard, but a true residential C&D load. Then they could get that card punched and dump it, no fee. They go through the five loads. Then if they're bringing in C&D, there would be a potential charge with that. On the back of the hang tag, we'd have the replacement costs. making sure the note to remove before travel, because I know that's been something that's been brought up by multiple individuals. We'd also propose to have a QR code on the back. I can't print all the rules and regulations on the back of a hang tag. And I'm doing this actually at the convenience centers as well. I can't have, you know, if I had all the rules and regulations, there'd be 10 boards long. So we're putting QR codes on there to where uh you know not only we have the rules and regulations available at the shack but if you want to use your phone scan it and you can go right to your hours your closures the rules and regulations that apply to that site where you can dump things for the facility so hopefully that will help educate the public as to what's allowed to be used at the the centers Construction and demolition debris on the bottom would be accepted at Livingston, and after five visits, charges may apply. The estimated cost on this, the cost per permit is about 73 cents. Mailing has gone up, so we measured it out. So it's between you pay for the envelope and the postage, about 78 cents. The total cost of $1.51 per permit issued. So the residential permit application, we would look to do this as an online application, which would be tied to an actively updated 911 residential address database. One permit per active 911 residential address. If your address was not found or you needed assistance, you could visit an in-person kiosk, basically like we have at utilities department for folks to pay their water bills. So, they could come into Utilities Administration in Merchant Square to be able to get that permit and get it worked out. Payments would be the Civic Clerk and Card Point. Card Point is already used by the Sheriff's Office and Parks and Recreation to receive payments. So, this is already, this process has already been approved in other departments with the Treasurer's Office. There's already processes established. So, we're not recreating the wheel here. The in-person applications via kiosk. Once again, we look to make that available to the Utilities Administration Office and Merchant Square. Mail-in applications will not be accepted due to needing the address verification and potential for return payment. So we want to make sure that the folks coming in and making payment for these, since we are taking money for these permits, that it is done online or in person. I can't really accept an O3 of mail-in application. The other concerns that this permit really would address is, you know, we've heard a lot of people complain to say that, oh, well, the decals, you know, we're only issuing two now per address. And they may say, I've got five or six cars. Well, that's understandable. If you've only got two permits, you don't, you got to pick and choose. But you got a hang tag or a permit that's movable, you can move between the vehicles. It also addresses issues we've seen with shared family vacation homes, particularly toward the lake, where folks, you know, parents or an LLC, you know, that the family owns together and they all come and use it. You know, how do their kids come and use the convenience centers? Well, they can use this permit, stays with the house. And the high replacement value. and the limit on C&D, because honestly, at the end of the day, C&D is where we have the problems. It should limit sharing between users. You know, to give you an idea of the C&D, you know, we have folks who are calling and complaining, saying that, well, you know, I can't believe the county cut off the C&D, but then the longer you talk to them, They reveal that they've been running the business this entire time and was bringing in their contractor waste. But it's an inconvenience to them now to have to find a source of disposal at their job site or bring it to the Livingston landfill. So it's one of those things, you hear people talk and you let people vent. At the end of the day, you know, it's very interesting when, you know, kind of telling themselves suddenly, oh, well, I was running a business, but now this adds more time onto my workday. Then it comes down to a question of whether or not the board wants to subsidize private industry, whether or not that's your small business or whether or not it's a larger contractor. So that's the updates as of tonight. Our intention would be to bring to the board. With the authorization for public hearing approved tonight, bring to the board the public hearing in September, and then start moving forward with the implementation shortly thereafter.

Thank you, Ben. Does anyone have any questions? Okay, Jake?

So, Ben, ask a couple scenarios for you. If I'm going to Livingston, I've got household trash in the back of my truck and Chris sends me over to the C&D dumpster because I've got two pieces. My C&D tag getting punched. I'm going to the C&D dumpster.

So at this, when you go into Livingston, we actually have additional signage going up on Thursday. I go out there in the morning. So all those dumpsters are just going to be for residential use. basically residential debris, whether it's household debris or C and D, and you bring in out, you know, a little bit of C and D, you know, a couple of boards, you know, I'd like to think that the gate is not going to make you punch it, but if you come in with a truckload of drywall and two befores and all that stuff, then yes, there, there would be a, so that's, so that's, that's, that brings up my other concern.

We're asking more from staff, um, We're going to now have to have staff make that call, say, okay, three pieces of PVC pipe. He's got a truckload of household trash, but I see he's got three pieces of old PVC pipe. Now they're up making that call on whether they're going to punch my card or not, right? Who's going to be checking if the tag is that person's? You said they're attached to the address. If somebody on site feels that that tag is not that person, who's going back and checking that tag number and then confirming it, who's in that vehicle, and then that person's address? That's the...

At this point, the tag will be associated to the address. If you've lost control of your tag or you give it to your buddy to use, that's basically on you. I'm not going to be able to go through and pull every single user's number and then look against their driver's license. The site would back up to the next degree. If you came in with the tag, unless there was a reason that we needed to question that, it'd be just like today. When you come in with a decal, really the only time I'm questioning that is if you're dumping material you shouldn't be delivering or shouldn't be dumping.

And I'm just asking you scenarios. Public watching will have some of this information come September. $200 value, right? Right now, if I ask my wife for 200 bucks right now, she'd look at me like I'm crazy. Somebody steals my tag. I don't want to pay for the new one. I call the sheriff's department. I have them come out and take a police report that somebody stole my trash tag out of my truck. And they filed a police report. It was stolen. Am I still, one, am I going to be charged the $200? And then you have record of what my tag number is. Who's going to go out? Will the guy at Post Oak or Livingston be checking to see who's got Jake's tag number? Or how are we doing that?

So if in a situation where you had, let's say it was stolen, and you filed a police report that it was stolen from your vehicle, you know you file the police report without you know bring the police report to us you know we're going to replace that tag and it's not going to be you know charged 200 if it was destroyed as long as the tag number is visible you know it's over 50 still there we're not going to charge you um where you're going to have a situation is the 200 to prevent you know i've been loved and i understand that completely understand so you know what we would do there is you know we would not charge them the replacement cost. Now, what we would do is go into the system and void out that number. Now, it comes down to, you know, seeing that number and, you know, is the juice worth the squeeze, to be honest with you. Is it our attendance at the site being able to see that, you know, 10,001? Unless we have a reason to really investigate, you know, I'm not going to pick that up.

Yep. So and then go back to the rural areas. The trash services are they're available in the rural areas, but they are not the most reliable. You know, if a trash service has somebody call out, they're going to send their drivers to the more densely populated areas and the rural areas get left behind. Wildlife got brought up earlier. Out in the country, you roll them dumpsters out the end of the driveway, they smell just right. Believe me, something's going to get into them. So we have a whole different animal that we deal with out in the rural areas. And then also the five-mile, by the way, the crow flies, some of our country roads, it's going to take you a few more miles to kind of get to some of these locations. I'm concerned with the added traffic on 208. I wish there was a way we could still accept some of this larger stuff at Chancellor and then have our professionals transfer those a few times a day instead of sending so much commercial and businesses out to two-lane areas. to await um so that is a concern of mine personally i feel like some of these changes that where we could save some money uh and this is for county admin as well is is management uh we've had some discussions where you know the dump is closed for two days and i'm getting phone calls at 7 30 in the morning on a thursday with trash just overheating the facility and they were just closed for two days uh we had an instance where A yearly annual safety training needed to take place. So all the other locations were closed that day. And instead of having the folks that work at the smaller locations come in and fill in at the only two locations that were supposed to be open, everything was shut down. and so we're having some things that are happening i'm having i'm having folks being told that hey if you got another load of trash bring it in because as soon as these blue containers or as soon as the green containers are full i've been told to shut the gate have we had that happen have management given out that order that once you fill up i don't have transport for you you're going to close up

No, the only times that we would shut down the service is if, like at Chancellor, when we were taking C&D, sometimes we would cut off C&D because it had no ability to haul. But generally our sites for the compactors, you know, basically if that green one fills up and we can't haul it, you know, we're still going to take the waste. We should be directing that, you know, to the overflow bin or to the, even we've done that, we've had to convert some of the recycling too.

Just wanted to make sure. I've been told that once that overflow bin was full, they were told to close the gates. So, also, some of my concern is with management. And I've pointed to a few instances to where if I was in charge, I would have gotten written up. I wouldn't have gotten my proper merit increase if I was doing things like that at the end of the year. We're going on our third year, I believe, with wintertime hours, correct?

Correct.

How many sites have we outfitted with lights since we started that three years ago?

The decision was made to include the lighting in the bond referendum before we move forward on the lighting replacement because it's over a million dollars.

Okay. So that's another thing is I was hoping we could knock a few out here and there, you know, and to to be able to add a few lights to to some of our locations. So that's that's another concern. We've been waiting on lighting for 3 years. So now, as as somebody who. Leaves my house at at 430 in the morning to go to work. I'm coming back into the county around 530 PM. I work Monday through Friday. So the only opportunity that I will have to dispose of my trash would be on the Saturdays or Sundays. So that's why I was hoping some of our evening lighting times, especially since we're closing down only we're only open 5 days a week now. So only open five days a week now. We're getting ready to change hours to limit the daily operating hours. I just, I don't like any of this at all. I don't like the tag plan. I feel like a lot of changes has been made because we were forced to because of the state things that we went through as accounting organization, the Department of labor is kind of pass some of these things down to us, but we should have been on top of them a little bit sooner. And then we should have, in my opinion, should have started throwing some fixes at these things.

I mean, that's, you know, we were moving forward on addressing the lighting issue, but then the volume, the cost came up so much, the decision was made, you know, to place that as part of the bond. Staffs, you know, in terms of management, you know, I think you referenced one instance where the two days, you got a picture of somebody overfilling the container at Todd's Tavern. Well, that was because the attendant there was goofing off in the barn and we fired him the same day. I just, I took some pretty aggressive personnel actions here within the last week at the landfill. So another thing it comes down to, I understand exactly what you're saying, but when we come in, we're talking about a department that has a lot of environmental regulations, a lot of customer related things, know every year we come in and ask for more drivers we come in ask for a director multiple years in a row i've asked for full-time gated tenants to try to make training easier and every time i come in and ask for they're either not included in the administrator's budget or it's cut So we're in a situation where it's unattainable. We're in a situation where, you know, before we did some of these changes, we were treading water and our staff is drowning. And we would love it. You got to set the level of service. We would love to be able to, like, whatever you guys want to do, we're willing to do. You want the sites lit, we'll light them. Just give me the money to move forward on that.

Mm-hmm.

So I want to make sure when I say management, I'm not pointing directly at you or that I'm using leadership and management. Those skills can help solve a lot of problems. So that's what I mean when I say management. We've got to be able to think outside the box. Six months ago, it was, hey, we're closing five locations down. I got to sit here on paper real quick and say, okay, five locations, 365 days a year, because I'm just trying to save them. I didn't want them a knee-jerk reaction to get them closed down. Then we got to re-permit them. All your environmental stuff you're talking about, we got to re-permit that facility. Once we close the facility down, 99% of the chance it will probably never really be open again.

Yeah, I mean, the staff recommendation.

So to find a way to save the facilities, I'm appreciative of you and staff for saying, okay, we can make that work. And keeping all facilities open and permitted for right now until we can wrap our head around this. But in our rural areas, we have longer wait times for fire and EMS. We have less deputies on our roads. We're the last to get our power cut back on during storms. We're the last to get our roads paved and patched. And don't get me wrong, we in the rural areas chose that life. I get it. We chose that lifestyle of living in the more rural areas. but we pay the same amount of taxes and when it comes to our convenience centers that is one of the very few things that every resident just about in the those rural areas can reach out and touch almost on a daily basis you know and then also i've mentioned this before we're still a little old school out there you find a bunch of old-timers out there at the convenience center probably wasting some of your staff's time by wanting to talk for hours upon hours, but it's like a community. I mean, you've run to the dump on Sunday and the wife asked me where, where have I been? I ran into X, Y, Z at the dump, honey. I'm sorry. But in the rural areas, that is something that this community that those taxpayers can reach out and touch and go use on a day to day basis. And, uh, So that's why it hits a little bit differently in the rural areas. So I'm appreciative. I'm not trying to criticize or anything like that. I'm trying to motivate, inspire, and try to use management and leadership to maybe fix some of our gaps. And then, like you said, it is up to us and the community to fund Uh, what we're looking for, but I just want to make sure we're thinking outside the box and try to solve all these problems and not just throwing our hands up saying, I don't have the money. I can't do it. So thank you.

Yeah, thanks, Chris.

Yes, thank you. Um. Couple of questions I have number one. Um. I really hope that your tag doesn't get stolen, Jake. You're in a bad part of town if somebody's breaking in to steal your dump tag, but it could happen. I've heard from people now that we're heading down to Livingston to dump off some C&D, and the concern that they had was, number one, when they got down there, they had no idea where to go. Um, there was a couple dump trucks. There was a, they said dump trucks in front. Some type of big truck, and then there's the scale and then the truck was coming across. And so there's, there's nothing that residential you go this way, you know, they were sent down there from chancellor. so that needs to be taken care of also the hours at living center just till three which if we're going to be sending everybody down there especially for cnd we need to see about upping that um if not you're going to get a lot of people that are rushing there on the weekends and i am concerned with 208 also and massey road that um especially if we're sending people down that away the um Other concern I have too is the C and D. I found it kind of amusing, I guess, that this person that called me and had a few 2 by 4s to throw away had to go down to Livingston, but they were allowed to throw a couch away. So they thought, wow, if I just throw a blanket over this thing, is that a couch and we can throw it in the dumpster? So it's like, if there's I understand you have to have rules. You have to have the line somewhere. But I'm wondering even would it be more effective? And I know this is late in the game, but. Would it be more effective like we did with brush where it's three days a week, C and D three days a week, and people just know on Saturdays is when you can clean out your garage and throw away all that, all those two by fours you were hoping we're gonna fix something in the future or that piece of sheet rock or that bucket of mud that's sitting there, now it's gone moldy. And you don't wanna throw it in a trash bag and you wanna do what is right. So that's just my concern, that we're sending people down there and it's not really user-friendly, and I do have a safety concern. Going back to what you said, Jake, about the... having the money to do these things. You know, there was a bond referendum. Was it in 14 for solid waste that failed? And, you know, things still had to get done because a lot of this stuff is state mandated. I remember it's So opening cells, closing cells, all that. And we have to pay to have that done. It's not a simple process and it costs money. And that was part of the bond referendum that had failed. So then the county had to find dollars somewhere to make that happen. because this is one of those parts of local government that is not exciting and it's not headline grabbing until things stop being easy and convenient and things have to change and you have to invest in it. And we have a lot of priorities and having to invest in some of this might Might take a little bit of money up front, but we'll pay off in the future because I just don't see sending everybody down to Livingston as being the solution to a lot of this, especially because If you, I mean, just say out in your area, Drew, Cortland, go north of 3 somewhere. You drive from there all the way down to Livingston and then back. You know, that's a half day going back and forth, sitting in traffic, waiting. I get lost, probably. You get lost, yeah. But it's, um, it's it's just this is this is something that we need to work on in a in more of a macro. And I know we're trying to fix things as we go along. But I really want to see if we can, um. Look at it more in a long term, um, comprehensive way. Uh, just because it's it's not going away and even talking about, uh, trash service in the in the, you know, P. S. D. I don't have trial service. My brother does, and he was telling me it's going up even more. So, of course, they get you in there at the low, low price, and then they keep raising it, raising it, and eventually it's just another cost. and they cut down to once a week for recycling once a week for for waste and so it's it's you know it's something that we have to deal with but i really do want us to to try to make this more of a part of what we do and not sort of a and i'm not saying it's you but just an afterthought when things get to the tipping point and so you know the the lighting is a is a great issue I know it costs money, and if we had tons of money, we would have done it by now. But it is important because we're not getting any smaller, and all of these issues are going to be staying with us. But if we can look at some way of the C&D, just because I'm not sure what that's going to do, sending everybody down to Livingston on a continuous basis.

Thank you. Just to add to that. Oh, I'm sorry, man. I said long-term, you know, really what needs to happen, if we're to maintain, you know, solid waste as a government service. And I'm not disagreeing. In rural areas, you've got to have the ability to throw away trash. Whether or not that's five days a week, seven days a week, that's kind of up to the board what happens, right? But, you know, from the primary settlement area, you've got to look at what other localities have done as they've grown. And Spotsylvania is growing regardless if you like it or not. We are growing as a locality, both in population and usage. As they've gone to having, you know, a transfer station within that more urban area to where you have a spot, you know, that's not chancellor because there's no way you're going to get over the ingress, egress issues with that. But if you have a transfer station that has scales, that has the ability for people to come in, the ability to put it on a tip floor where I've gotten large rubber tire loaders that can push it and scoop it and put it in semis even compared to what I'm doing with roll-offs. You know, that's what a lot of localities have done as they've grown over time. But once again, it just comes down to, you know, that's a desire or that's a priority. It's finding the funding for that and then pulling the trigger to move forward on it. But if, you know, wishes were horses kind of thing or, you know, all that, I mean, that's, you know, you consolidate a lot of those, you know, chancellor, you consolidate, you consolidate a lot of those convenience centers in the urban areas into a true transfer station that is built, purpose built, that's safer to use, it's easier to use, it's got the scales, it can handle the traffic and all those things. It just comes down to timing and money.

Great. David? I'm sorry, Ed.

No, no. I was just going to, you know, talking about C&D, I just want to remind everybody that we're talking C&D from residential, not commercial. So how many times does a resident tear their dick down, you know, and rebuild their deck? Once every 10, 15 years? It's not like we're asking residents to take C&D out to Livingston once a week. You know, C&D is from remodeling a bathroom or remodeling a kitchen or doing your deck. And if you live in a residential house, you're not doing that every week or every month or even every year. So to ask somebody to say, hey, can you take your C&D to Livingston once every five years or six years when you're doing a remodel, I don't think is... unnecessarily inconveniencing anybody to have to drive to Livingston to dispose of it so we don't have to subsidize running it all over the county. The majority of the calls that we're getting now about C&D We had one last week that the gentleman was irate, and he admitted that for the last 15 years he's been taking his C&D that he's been generating in Fairfax from his business. doing remodeling here to the county to dump a C&D. And, you know, it's kind of like, well, you know, you've been speeding on I-85 going 100 miles an hour, and now you've got a speeding ticket. So, you know, sorry, but, you know, that's why we're making the change because we're getting so much commercial C&D, and we knew that was the problem with C&D. So, again, if a residential owner is doing a remodel, you know, they get five punch cards per year to take residential C&D to Livingston. So, I just wanted everybody to be aware of that.

Madam Chair, I'm sorry, I just had one little bit. I had one more question to ask Ben, if I might. I know in the past with the decals, that had to go with a car with a hanging tag. And I've had this question with people where they might not own a truck, but they want to throw away a couch or a mattress, whatever it might be. And so they go and they rent something from U-Haul or Lowe's or whatever it might be. Will we allow... a hanging tag for something that would go to Chancellor like a couch with a rented vehicle.

Yes. That's one of the things about it. It could be put in a rented vehicle, even if it's a rented pickup truck or the Lowe's truck or Home Depot truck you can get in the parking lots. You don't have to pick those two. Any place you can go. I think it really comes down then when that back of that truck comes open. For example, on mattresses, we're trying to put a limit of two sets per visit, and then you got somebody that rolls up the back of the truck and there's 16 mattresses in there, all coming from their house. So, yeah, once again, it comes down to you would like to think the common sense of our enforcement employees would prevail. Now, I'm not going to say that it happens every time, and you guys will see that now. It doesn't happen every time. Right. But certainly that would be the thought of the hang tag as you go with a rented vehicle.

Okay. Thank you. Jake. Jake. Hang tag goes with the house or the vehicle. So if I'm in a Willow Crest winery and farm vehicle that has my farm's name on the side of it, but I have my hang tag and it's clearly household trash.

I should be, it goes with the residential address and that's that's what we've told it. You know, we would give the instructions to the attendance. Now, once again, it comes back to the common sense onsite enforcement because I can't so so to my point, we're putting a lot more on the gate attendant again.

And to Ed's point, Ed, I agree with you. Not everybody's going to be running C&D daily or weekly at their house, but I have received emails, and I know you have received complaints, and we've even brought it up here. Hey, if you just throw that drywall in a trash bag, you'd be fine. That came from staff to say, hey, just throw that drywall in a trash bag, you'll be fine. Because we're getting residents who show up to the dump with that one piece of PVC pipe, and because we're leaving it up to that gate attendant, they are getting turned away or told that no you cannot and then oh he just he should have just thrown that piece of pvc pipe in a trash bag he would have been fine that's came out of our mouths here so we're leaving it up to the gate attendant to so we're putting even more pressure on the gate attendant and i agree with you but our residents are being turned away because of just the small piece of c and d you know so and i've dealt with that so david

I just want to agree with everything Jacob says, particularly for the rural areas. And I know, Ben, we've had a lot of discussion on this topic. I had your ear on Saturday. But I think we've addressed this as an all-or-nothing thing. I mean, we went and we closed every convenience site two days a week, except for Chancellor and Livingston. But yet, out in the rural areas, they have no place else to go. And so... There's probably more and I would love to see the numbers, you know, the number of rural versus urban people, but they go. But, yeah, it's, it's, it's 1 of those things where. You know, maybe there's a different solution. Maybe we look at some of the urban sites that maybe are very duplicative, you know, up there that have really low numbers and close one of those, especially, again, you know, not to pick on Lee Hill, but again, it's, you know, a couple of sites are pretty close together. We're going to have some MS4 problems coming up down the road because of the populations up there. So it's going to be added expense anyway. So maybe we close a couple of those areas. and then find a way to get some of the rural sites open more, you know, whether it's even at another day somehow, you know, and again, I'm hearing from my constituents just like Jake is, you know, it's, it's, It is a much more used service out there than it is maybe in town. But it's one of those things that as Spotsylvania, you know, people have gotten used to that. You know, they want to be able to go when they want to go. And, you know, people get in a habit and, you know, it may not be the day that they want to go and they just can't schedule it that way. You know, especially these guys that are out there working all day on their farms and whatever. And, you know, they may not be traveling up 95, but they're working long hours, you know, and may not make it to the dump. So certainly not messing with the weekend hours. And certainly Livingston has the issue that, again, their hours seem to close a little earlier even on those other days. You know, so, again, I know somebody went, I think, at 6 o'clock one time and was like, nope, they're already closed because they close at 5. But they didn't know that, you know, because they don't normally go to Livingston. So I do ask concerns there. You know, if there was some way of doing another site, like a transfer site down the road and put that in some plan, you know, that'd be great. It doesn't fix it today, you know, and then maybe we find a bridge to that to even like we did with the brush, you know, a couple of days a week, you know, allow some C&D at Chancellor, you know, just to kind of bridge toward that. When we first talked about that originally, I wasn't really a big fan of that because it didn't make a lot of sense until all of a sudden we started implementing it. i started hearing from all these residents that is like it wasn't working you know so again i think we need to take a you know be mindful of of what we're hearing from the people that are using this service and what they need and what they want and then try to see where we can make the adjustments to make it a little more amenable to them and uh you know it may mean we have to juggle some money somewhere uh you know get some lights up you know get some stuff in the bond do a better job maybe this time around with the bond referendum for solid waste to let people understand that, hey, this is where we're going to get to by using that. So, you know, get more support for that. So I just ask that staff take a good look. Let's figure out where we can fix this so that, you know, again, these people out there in the rural areas, again, Jake and I are out there together and we're hearing it probably more than so than the other board members and just like to see where we can make some adjustments. Thank you.

Drew.

I guess it's good to live in Cortland. Right now. I'm kidding. You might have already touched on it when I was using the facilities. But as far as trailers go, can we still buy the double axle trailer that I've always wanted to have and use that? And then what constitutes a C&D load? I mean, is it what fits in the back of a quarter ton or half ton truck normally or what?

So you may have noticed we are working on changing up the signs at several convenience centers, and I think I sent out to the board some upcoming policy changes as we roll out some sites that can have single axle trailers. And then chancellors will accept double axles. Once again, I think we're looking to try to keep those 14 feet or less just because of the turning radiuses on them. Livingston you can take them out there you know folks at Livingston you know we're trying to keep the residents out of the back of the facilities so you really shouldn't be going back to the face that's one of the issues I have with staff this past week unless you have a mechanical dump trailer because it's it's a safety issue In terms of what constitutes a C&D load, I mean, is it basically you go and, you know, tear up a wall? I mean, it's your drywall, it's your tuba floors, it's your decking material, it's, you know, plumbing material, wire.

Something that looks like a weekend kind of small project.

Basically, if you tear down a wall, what's inside the wall is construction and demolition debris. I mean, blocks shouldn't be coming anyway because it shouldn't be coming into the materials that we have there. One of the challenges we have, and that's even today still yet, is if we put a restriction on the C&D, which we have, and people are combining by it. But, you know, we've had situations where the C&D can's full, and you try to tell people the C&D can's full, so they just pick up their C&D and throw it in the compactors. And now I'm throwing in stuff that will tear up a $150,000 piece of equipment and ultimately increase our preventative maintenance or our maintenance costs on it. So C&D is a big challenge. I mean, it's just the site's not, at the end of the day, Chancellor was not designed to handle the volume of traffic it is and was not designed to handle, you know, bulk C&D the way you were receiving it. You know, it was meant to handle, you know, you're doing a small little job and you get a couple of dubivores or a piece of pipe or, you know, a couple of trunks of driveway cleaning out your garage, not you're ripping down your garage and rebuilding your garage type thing.

The last little admin question, the five punch out, when does it expire? Is it calendar year?

Yeah, we were proposing to make sure that revenue was generated annually. It would be an annual decal or an annual permit. Sorry.

And you can't roll those five over to next year, right? No. All right. Always looking for an angle.

Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. This is kind of unrelated. I did get a call from a constituent today about the Mine Road dump or convenience center. And because those gates are kind of inset, what was happening is people were turning in, not realizing, like, It was closed today, and it was creating a problem with people turning around. Let's take a look at that. Is there any way we can put signage out on Mine Road so that people, as they come up to it, will know that it's closed, don't even try and turn in? Because that turn is really bad.

In that particular scenario, we would probably just look at moving the gates closer in, basically at the VDOT right-of-way, and then putting a closed sign on the gate. We can certainly look at trying to put something out to where it's visible from the road, try to keep it on our property so it's going to deal with the VDOT permit and deal with all that stuff.

Yeah, anything that we can do to sort of indicate to people that, because I guess today there were like three cars just trying to turn around, and then mine road is backing up. from that whole activity so if you could look into that that would be great um i appreciate it and i do i do appreciate um you know i i generally go if i'm gonna go to i'll go to chancellor you know because i'd have something bigger and i do know that that there's a lot of um activity there and the staff does you know have to do a lot of directing and i do appreciate i want them to know that their efforts are appreciated too so um for tonight what are you looking for tonight from us this was uh the information only i think the idea behind is you know get your own thoughts and then you know we'll be coming back and In September?

Yes.

Okay. All right. All right. Does anybody else have any other questions? We're all good? Okay. All right. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Madam Chair, I'm going to go ahead and have Amy and Melanie do the social services update. So go ahead, Amy, you're up. Thank you. No, actually, there's three more. There's three or four more after you, Amy, so I didn't save you for last.

Got to get you guys a week. It's almost 9 o'clock. All right. Let's get this. All right. There it is. Okay.

All right.

All right. Are we ready? We're ready. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Madam Chair and board members for letting us come here tonight and present a state of the agency for the Department of Social Services. We have a lot of stuff going on and we wanted to make sure that we had everybody well informed. For those who aren't as familiar with the setup and perhaps in the audience, the local Department of Social Services, they are a state supervised locally administered agency, which means that we take all of our policy and procedures from the state and implement them here locally. And there are funding streams that come through the localities and then get reimbursed by the state. We have two major functions within our agency. One is protecting vulnerable adults and the other is administrating mandatory benefits. So we work not only in the public safety arena, but we also work in the benefits arena. So before we get started into all of the fun stuff, I wanted to just touch base on the move. I wanted to give a huge thank you to this board for supporting, securing this space for our citizens and our community. And a huge shout out to Ben Loveday and his team for the two years of planning that went into this move. It is an absolutely beautiful environment for our citizens. Every time I walk into the lobby, I ask our citizens who are sitting there, what do you think of the new digs? And they love it. They have bright smiles. In the far corner of this picture, you'll see we're going to be also getting a sensory wall for the children over there. So there's still some unpacking to do. But once we are unpacked, we look forward to inviting you back for an open house for the county employees. So stay tuned. And thank you again for providing us this space. All right, just wanted to give you an update on where our hiring practices are right now. We have currently eight job pending offers. Well, they're not pending anymore. They were already accepted. So we have EW eligibility worker ones starting in the end of, well, actually the beginning of September. I think it was the new date. And then we still have five eligibility workers that we were awarded for FY27 to hire. The move did put a little bit of a wrench in our ability to recruit, interview, and onboard. So we're a little delayed in that. We have a one administrative three position, a family service worker position, and a compliance and training coordinator, a lot of which have just recently been vacated. To give you an idea of our benefits division and the volume of citizens that they serve in our locality, we gave you a look at what FY25 and 26 number of citizens currently receiving benefits. We did an unduplicated number because some families do receive multiple benefits. Some receive Medicaid and SNAP and TANF. And so an unduplicated number would be the 34,114 citizens receiving benefits. See, I write notes, but then I never look at them. I just get talking. I wanted to bring your attention to some of our measuring performance indicators, starting with our benefits division. And a lot of the measurements are done in timeliness or accuracy. And for our SNAP application processing, we have not met our timely processing in several months. Medicaid, it's probably been almost a year, if not longer, since we've met those processing standards. We are correctly... currently on a corrective action plan for our SNAP processing. And as I've shared with the advisory board levels, which I'm hoping have shared with you also, this doesn't come as a surprise. We knew that we were short staffed in these areas and we were struggling. And what I have shared with our advisory board is that the fact that we have the numbers that we do, I am very proud of our staff. Because the fact that they were able to keep the numbers as high as they were,

Is is an achievement and yeah, I just like to interject a little bit of history here. There's a few years ago We were having issues in services Which is like Child Protective Services Adult Protective Services Family Services that type of thing and we made a conscious decision then to take some of the positions from eligibility and focus them on services. And so I think we've got services fairly well squared away now. So now we need to go back to benefits and eligibility to try to get that squared away.

Yeah, we did a risk analysis of where would be the least amount of damage done if we were understaffed. And in terms of life and death, it was services needed to be fully staffed. And so we did, thank you, Mark. And that had a wonderful effect of stabilizing the services division. Our turnover rate reduced and we were able to start retaining staff. We got the caseloads under control. And so services is doing very well. But our benefits division now needs some attention We also have overdue Medicaid renewals which the state has sent out a notice that those all have to be caught up by November We'll be on a corrective action for that Again, we have 8,000 families without a caseworker in Medicaid. So we knew that this was going to be a struggle and But this is part of why I'm here just to kind of be fully transparent with you all as to where we're at how it's going and Where we go from here I wanted to give you an idea of some of the application volume that we get in the different programs. And one of the things that I just want to highlight here is the energy assistance applications, how much those have increased. And all of the other programs are showing, with the exception of TANF in child care, are showing some increases, which we expected. And in the caseload numbers, you might have noticed there was a slight decrease from FY25 to 26. But that was a result of some of the HR1 cases. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. The big beautiful bill that came down with new federal legislation had a lot of impacts on eligibility for SNAP benefits and who could receive them. And I'm going to be going into some of the impacts of that later as well. But that's why... I am theorizing that we saw a decrease from FY25 to 26, but you'll see that we're seeing an increase in the applications. So I expect the caseloads to go back up after this last rebound.

Amy, can I ask you a real quick question? So like in some of these categories like this, are you also reaching out to other organizations for assistance? So like Healthy Generations, their primary thing is our senior population. And I think they have some services like this too. Are you guys reaching out to them when needed?

So each division has their certain community partners that they work with. Like our adult services is very connected to all of the adult service related. And our VUE and TANF are very integrated with our employment partners. And I... was earlier doing an email to our workforce connection to talk about how we can get together to talk about some of the implications of the HR1 in the work requirements and how we can assist citizens with, you know, becoming gainfully employed and retaining some of the assistance. Okay. Thank you. This is a snapshot of our Family Services Division. As you can see, they are doing very well. And they do a lot of really good work. Putting them all on this one slide felt like a disservice almost for everything that they do and how well they're doing it. But I wanted you to have all of the information at your hands for reference if you ever want to look back at it and see kind of a comparison of how we'd go from year to year. We currently have... 40 RAFT homes, and RAFT homes are our resource and foster family homes who can house children who come into our care. We currently have 77 children in care, which means that we don't have a home for every child that we take. And that means that we have to place children sometimes farther away out of the locality, sometimes in other states. And so if I could just put a big plug out there, we train our own foster parents And if you are interested or know anybody who's interested in becoming a foster parent, please contact our office because we need more, especially those for older children. The Children's Services Act program also rests under my umbrella, and some localities have it completely separate from DSS. It is completely, it's a separate budget, separate program, but it does kind of run parallel with what we do, so it makes sense that it would fall under our jurisdiction. This program is growing tremendously And we estimate our budget to close out in FY26 at probably nearly $13 million. We're still getting all of those expenditures in. There is a very large increase in private day, as I'm sure you all are aware. And private day is when the school feels they cannot handle the needs of a high-acuity child in the school. Then they will find another program or vendor or... school that can and that's what we refer to as private day schools. And the need for that has grown tremendously and out of our 13 million budget we are already at about 8 million of it going to private days. The next largest expenditure is our congregational residential care and that has doubled. It was 800,000 some and now it's up to 1.6 million some. And then our third largest expenditure in this is our community-based services. And that's important because they just passed legislation to increase our community-based service match rate, which is going to increase our local share tremendously.

These are costs that we really don't have much control over. None. These are all mandated. It's kind of like... They said, this child needs these services. You figure out how to pay for it.

Yeah.

And just to add to that, initially, OCS, Office for Children's Services, the push was for localities to use community-based services, right, rather than using services outside of the community. And so we were pushing community-based services, and now it's shifted. And so now we have all of these. We're connecting our families to the community-based services, but it's going to increase our match rate. Right.

This is just giving you a graph of kind of what the total expenditures look all the way to the right, and then the breakdown of the top three from FY25 to FY26. And you can see where there's this big jump. Okay.

Amy, I do have a question. When Lori and Guzman and I went to a meeting in Richmond, we heard about, we were told that if there were mistakes made with the Medicaid Right. That we would be penalized. Oh, I'm getting to that. Oh, you're going to get to that. I'm getting to that. Okay. That kind of took us aback. We were like, we're going to have to come up with that kind of money?

Mm-hmm. So...

Again, some of it depends on how the state decides to handle it as well.

So you're going to cover that? Yeah.

Okay. That's the second on my bullet on this slide. Okay. So... The first part is that the HR1 bill has transferred an increased percentage of the administrative cost to localities. So where we were 50%, now we're 75% responsible for administrative cost. And we have calculated this to be about $1.167 million that's going to be incurred at the local level. Now, Dr. Frazier, what you were speaking about was the SNAP error rate penalty. And what has happened is they have now, SNAP has traditionally always been fully 100% federally funded. And now this bill is saying that if you have a SNAP error rate in your state above 6%, then your state is going to have to pay a matched percentage of the total amount of SNAP distributed in Virginia. Now, in FY25, Virginia's error rate was 11%. That means if our penalty doesn't decrease, we can expect a $270 million penalty for the state of Virginia. Now, I can tell you in a national meeting I had earlier this week, they shared with us that North Carolina just passed legislation that they were passing that down 100% to localities. We are one of nine states in the United States that are state-supervised, locally administered. So we're carefully watching how these other states that are similar to us in structure are going to handle it. And North Carolina is the first to have come out with a decision. And that was really surprising to me that they passed on 100%. And they said localities would have part of their sales tax withhold, and then they would be attached an additional penalty based on their individual locality's SNAP error rate. Did you follow all that? Okay. So, right now, I believe that the state has gotten down to, I think, 10%? Or no, we're still at 11? Oh, okay, we're still, 9.8? Okay, and then we as a locality are 9.1? Oh, eight, okay, 9.08. Six, we need to get to below six. Now, I need to preface this a little bit with background to how we got to this error rate, because there was a point where there was the big move to get as many people on SNAP benefits as possible. And the state of Virginia then implemented waivers to verifications. And so they said you didn't have to verify your residence. You didn't have to verify your child care expense. You didn't have to verify A, B, and C, which... By state waiver, we could do that, but it was still a federal requirement. So when the federal people would do their reviews, they would get the verifications, which would result in errors. And so as soon as the HR1 bill came down, I think it was Governor Youngkin at the time, put in an executive order to disband the waivers, and now we have to do verifications, which I'm good with that. It's just that's a complexity of process now that you're introducing to an entire workforce that's never had to do it. And so now I have added workforce training. I have added workforce steps to take. And oh, by the way, you have to get all of these case readings done because now they're throwing us list of how many of their hundreds cases a month that we're reading? Yeah, hundreds of cases that we're reading for the state to ensure for case accuracy. And so there's this big move now towards quality. And if you've ever met me and worked with me, you know that I'm a stickler for quality. So I've got no qualms with that. I just need the manpower to do it. And that's kind of where I'm at. If we're gonna be getting a price tag tagged on to our error rate, we need to get working on reducing it. And to do that, I need to reduce my caseloads, and I need to get caseworkers for my caseloads. And we have already told staff, slow down. We'd rather you get it right than get it timely. And so we already have started that. And so I don't anticipate seeing our timeliness processing go in the green anytime soon. And that has some real life impacts on our citizens who are waiting for benefits. And that's the reality of where we're at. The reduced SNAP eligibility that the HR1, there are, increased exemptions now with non-citizens and things of that nature that now people are losing benefits there's also a work requirement that's going to now be implemented with medicaid as well and our expansion adults who are adults i think i wrote down what their ages were but there are adults who are currently receiving Medicaid that if they're not meeting a work requirement, they're going to lose their Medicaid eligibility. Also, they're going to have to do their renewals every six months as opposed to every 12 months. Again, that's fine, but now you're doubling the workload for all of those Medicaid cases, which is our largest caseload. It's 30,000. Not all of them are expansion, but there is an increased workload.

And I'd just like to say that this is probably the inevitable consequence of the federal government trying to reduce their budget deficit, you know, because the federal government, they keep spilling trillions more than they're taking in, and you can't do that forever without having really bad consequences, fiscal consequences. So You know, as bad as this is going to be on us at the local level, I mean, you can kind of expect it, you know, as the federal government tries to get their spending under control and, you know, reduce the deficits. Yeah. You know, the thing I don't like, though, is they're dumping the work, more work on us and then penalizing us if we don't do it.

Absolutely. We also are seeing with new legislation, the Community Child Services Act. putting a cap on what we pay private days private day schools are very expensive as you can imagine because they provide a specialty service and so in order to limit some of the budget craziness going on in CSA, they've put a cap on that. Now, what that means for us at a local agency is that anything above that 2.5 cap is going to come out of local dollars 100%. Now, I am proud to say that we only have one vendor right now who is above the 2.5 cap. And it is a vendor who we've identified with the school is absolutely needed and is probably well earning that amount that they have. So I think that in terms of that respect, we're okay. There's nothing too crazy that's going to go on with that, knock on wood. For now, I shouldn't have said it. All right. And then we already talked about the community-based match rate increasing. So I know with the SNAP, I did a guesstimation based on a couple different models of how the penalty could be distributed locally. And so it's a guesstimation. But between the administrative cost and the state error rate penalty, I guesstimated somewhere in the $5 million additional local dollars would be needed. All right, let me back up a little bit. I also just wanted to add before we go off the screen that The VACMS system is our operating system that we are used to determine eligibility and issue benefits for Medicaid, food stamps, TANF. And that operating system, fully admitted by the state, is a faulty operating system. It doesn't operate as intended. It spins. It delays. It freezes. And every day there is a broadcast about why it's not working or how it's not working. And that also adds a tremendous wrench in us being able to work effectively and efficiently. Now, they say that they are starting to try and get a new system, but that will take years to get into effect. So this is us, this is our staff at our July all staff meeting. We did a Hawaiian theme, so you can see that people took part in that and had their luau's on. We had a really good time. We had a great motivational speaker who talked a lot about how to be resilient in this type of work. So it was a great event.

Picture. You all notice the rabbit ears in the back row?

Yeah, they enjoy it. We also get a photo booth back there with a drop. They have a good time. This is a great group of people, you guys, and you will never meet a more dedicated group of people to social services than these guys. We only can get done what we get done because of the people we have and the caliber of skill that they have. They're amazing. I wanted to share with you what my priority goals are with the workforce. My goal isn't to build a bigger agency. My goal is to build an agency that can serve our community with accuracy, timeliness, and effectiveness. In order to do that, I have to be able to attract quality people, and I have to be able to keep them, and I have to be able to give them reasonable workloads so that I can have high expectations of them. I can't hold them to these high levels of expectations of service if I haven't provided them the tools and the caseloads to do it. So what I would like to focus on with my position request is to stabilize where we're at with our caseloads, to get caseworkers for the 8,000 families we don't have a caseworker for, to prepare for the projected need that we see the community heading towards, and to accommodate for the complexity of the cases growing not just in benefits but also in services our services cases are getting more complex in the needs that the families are facing and in addition to the legislative complexities that are getting added on and I'd just like to add that

You know I think amy and Melanie and our senior staff has done a great job in terms of turning around the climate environment in the DSS department before. There were. there were serious morale issues in DSS. And it took a few years to turn things around and get the right leadership team into place. But now when people leave DSS, it used to be, You'd get a lot of complaints about supervision and leadership and things like that. We don't see that so much anymore. Now it's based mainly on caseload and workload when people do leave. And so my hat's off to Amy and Melanie and the senior staff. I think they've really turned the climate around in DSS. It's very tough work. They deal with some really difficult situations a lot of times, and so it takes a special kind of person to do that.

Thanks, Mark. For the 8,000 families without a caseworker, you may have said this when I stepped out for a minute, how many families can one caseworker have?

It depends what level of skill they have. If it's an entry level, I would say maybe 450. Eligibility, you can pop up, but if it were a level three, I would say maybe 550. Right now, we're trying a different approach. It's very taxing on our staff to not be able to deliver quality service to these citizens, and it became an issue with how to cover it. And so we're trying a different approach now, and we're giving senior workers 1,500 cases per worker, and we're going to give them access to the emergency part-time workers to help try and facilitate better customer service to those families. Really, I just feel like we're kind of pushing around the problem. But for their morale, we wanted to give it a try because they were really – getting upset about, you know, the complaints and the volume of calls and, you know, things, you know, getting messed up. And so we're gonna, this was their idea. So we're gonna try it and see how that works. But it doesn't take away the, you know, problem that we have. These senior workers are supposed to be leadership support. And now we're taking that away from our supervisors. So it's just kind of Rob and Peter to pay Paul, it feels like sometimes. All right. Let's see. So I put on here the history of our staffing additions because I want to recognize that this board has approved, and county administration has approved positions for us consistently since 2024 and even in really difficult budget times. So I want to recognize that. And our current staffing needs, I took from, we haven't delved into our FY28 yet in great detail, so I don't have hard numbers for that yet. But I can tell you that they're gonna be very similar to where we were at last year. We need a lot of administrative support with the additional verification requirements. We need eligibility workers for the caseloads. And with that comes supervisors to supervise the additional staff. Our information technology and security, we're trying to build up as well. And our fiscal support, we now have additional roles with the new finance system. And we're a large agency. We're 163 positions, and we have two fiscal people. who help us process all of that and we also put for two service workers because we know that those caseloads are going to continue to grow and I don't want to get in a position again where those caseloads become overwhelming and I start seeing turnover in that department again and so to keep up with the need let me just add do you have the applicants are people applying is there a

Because oftentimes that's the difficult part of this is that, you know, there's not a lot of people that want to go into... Right. This, you know, work sometimes.

So, yes. Well, I wouldn't know for the case aid support because I think we primarily have been promoting from within for that position. So I wouldn't know anything recently about that. I know the eligibility workers, we solicited about 100 applicants. Yes. And we just hired eight out of that. And so I anticipate we'll get enough to pull from. It's just going to take time to get the interviews done. And it takes a good year and a half to get an eligibility worker fully trained to be operating on their own. All right. So one of the things I just wanted to highlight is when workload exceeds the workforce, it creates a risk management issue for me. And that's where I kind of got into with the services. I had to do a risk analysis of what's going to hurt the least in the community. And that's how we ended up with the 8,000 Medicaid families without a caseworker, because I figured that late renewals were better than going late on CPS calls. But what that brings is our higher SNAP rate, error rate. I won't be able to get that down as well without the staff to do it. It increases the potential for fraud if staff are rushing through and don't have the time to take to question. And when they're rushing and they make mistakes, overpayments happen. And if the overpayment is our fault, the family still has to pay. And that's an awful feeling when we've made a mistake and they have to do a repayment. I've already explained to you we're having a lot of delays in the timely processing, and burnout is a big concern for me, especially in my benefits division right now. They are consistent about feeling overwhelmed, and they are consistent about wanting some job satisfaction to be able to leave feeling like they're serving the community in the best way that they can. And my work first, you know, they're the boots on the ground. They're what make all of this happen. And like I said, I'm only able to do what we've been able to do because of the people we have doing it. And if I were to lose those people, these numbers would look very different. And I don't want to get there. This is just highlighting some of the other things we've already talked about, and I don't wanna just keep repeating myself, but I just wanna, express my goal that I want to build a right-sized, efficient agency. And this community means a lot to me. It means a lot to our staff. And we want to do the best in our capacity to serve them in everything that we do, whether it be delivering Medicaid for our pregnant moms or our kids, or whether it be going out into the field, checking on neglect and abuse. And whether it be, you know, the people we have at the front desk reading somebody who just has questions. Every corner, everybody has the same work ethic and desire to do well for this community. And I know that we can with the right tools and resources. Great.

Thank you so much, Drew.

Yeah, Amy, good slide questions. I have one. What's an example of an overdue Medicaid renewal? How long does it take, flash to bang, starting it, and it gets approved? What's that like?

So Medicaid renewals, let's say my Medicaid renewal is due in September. Then I am due to complete the renewal in August. And you guys can come up here and talk if you want. And the worker has 30 days to complete that renewal. And in fact, could you guys come up here? Because now that I'm talking this out loud, is it two months ahead that you're doing the renewal? You got to turn it on.

We are required to initiate the action two months ahead. And the system will try. We actually have to try to renew a case three times.

Can you just pull that a little forward?

So we actually have to try to start the renewal process two months before it's due. And we actually have to go through three attempts to renew a case before we could potentially close it for failure to complete the process. So the first run is actually a system run. It tries to run it through an automated determination. If that fails, which most of them do, then a renewal packet goes out. And then we have to do what's called a manual ex parte, meaning no contact, where we try and run it without getting the paperwork back. And again, the Medicaid renewal paperwork has already been mailed out, so then if they return the packet, then we can initiate the full process, which is what generally happens. Then once we get the renewal packet in, we run it through all the system searches, all the system matches. We have to send out and request for a verification of certain things and then wait for individuals to submit those things. Once they submit them, then we can hopefully complete the process. We have 45 pages. 30 days from the date they turn it in, but we can draw it out longer than that. It's usually about 45 days to get them done because so many of them go overdue. And if they turn everything in within the 90 days of whatever date we closed it, if they didn't get it done timely in the first place, then we still honor the renewal. and we backdate the coverage to the date of closure. So there's no gap in coverage, and that is federal policy.

I'd just like to add that sometimes the clients or the applicants aren't always timely in getting their stuff submitted, which makes it harder for us to get that done timely.

A lot of it is the U.S. Postal Service delay, I'll be honest, but we are working on solutions locally. We have just received a new licensing for a system that will allow us to receive documents electronically in a secure and fully encrypted environment through Microsoft Box. So we are in the process of testing that so that we can deploy that out and hopefully that will increase the accessibility for our customers to submit documents securely electronically as opposed to say email which is as we all know not safe you're not just sit you can't just sit down with the folks because they got to go get documentation or other things right Correct. We have a lot of a lot of what we need is income verifications. With some of the Medicaid cases, we may need bank statements, we may need property records, we may need mortgage statements, especially when you're talking about long term care. And we're dealing with a lot of authorized representatives, attorneys offices and so forth for a good number of these as well.

Dr. Frazier. Sorry. So Amy, you and I serve on another committee together. What can the community do to help with some of this? What are those things that as we are, as the community is tuning in, what are some of the things that they can do to help your department? Well, foster parents, you heard that.

Yes, we definitely need foster parents. And we're trying to connect more with the community partners to make sure that those of us who touch families in different aspects have the same information so that we can reiterate it. And we know that adult learners need to hear things like, what, nine times, and so... We want to have it reinforced at different places. And if you're working with one of our citizens, you know, in the homeless arena, you know, ask them, did you turn in your benefits on time? When is it due next? You know, maybe just give them gentle reminders. And with our workforce partners, we have a really... vigorous viewed department and team who is working with our community partners who we can pay you to hire our citizens, you get a stipend if you hire them. And so we could use more of those partners. They're called FEPs. But I can't remember what it stands for. Do you full employment program partners. So that would be helpful to get some more of those community partners and employers, Spotsylvania counties on board. So we have them and I think the schools signed up today. That may not be true. I may be lying about that. But we are actively recruiting. And Kalahari is next on our list to talk to to become an FEP. So those are some things that we're looking into. And, you know, the citizens we serve in general, you know, I am a firm believer in people do the best that they can with what they've got. And... And so I think that we take each opportunity that we have to try and educate and guide and counsel. And if other community partners who are having touches with these families could do the same. And if they need help. Sometimes citizens just don't understand what needs to be done. It's not a matter of they don't want to get it in timely or don't want to put down the accurate information. They're just not understanding what's being asked or how to get what they need. Just have conversations.

And I know that our school social workers are partners with you all and they help facilitate a lot of this. And so I see that partnership. My last question is situational poverty. Are you seeing it increase where people who may not have needed support now all of a sudden need that support because of just how things are.

So we did see that, a large amount of that when COVID hit. And I think that people who were coming in who had never had benefits in their life before, had really great paying jobs and triple digits, doctorates, you name it, we saw them. And I think that it's taking a long time for people to recover from COVID. And I think we've come a long way But I do think that we still have some situational poverty in people who haven't been able to get back on their feet. And of course, you know, generational poverty is huge. Yeah.

Thank you.

All right. And if there's no other questions, then I want to thank you guys so much for hanging in there late with us. Thank you. And everything that you do. Really appreciate it.

Thank you for the time.

Our next presentation is Data Center Development.

I think Kimberly's here for that.

Rwanda. Kimberly, there you are.

All right, thank you members of the board. Becky and I are joining forces tonight to go through this presentation. I'm going to give you a status update just of projects and a little overview of timelines of code amendments and other strategies we've implemented related to data center development. And then Becky's going to go through some revenue projections. So here's our data center map. This is something that we're keeping updated in real time. It is on our website, but I know we've seen this shared a lot, so I think everybody's probably pretty familiar with it. Right now, what we're tracking are those projects that that have been approved by the board. We've updated it to show those that are actually under construction, those that are in the site plan stage, those that are under a special use permit process within a pending rezoning process. We've identified the Caroline County Data Center. As you'll recall, that was approved for 4.5 million square feet. Caroline County the rezoning that was approved in Spotsylvania County was a support property to the Caroline data center for utility infrastructure and the like and then we had flagged a couple of land areas where We had had some pre-application meetings, some tire kicking for data center, but nothing had been submitted. So we even have that flagged here for you. As you can see that really the vast majority of the projects that have been approved and are pending are all on that east side of I-95. They are all within the Berkeley and Lee Hill voting districts. All of these projects approved and pending are within the county's primary development boundary, with a couple of them that have been approved and that are pending lie within a one-mile buffer of the primary development boundary, which that is called out in our land use policies as locations potentially supported for data centers if they're within that one-mile boundary. We do have one project that would be this Paramount Data Center campus that is outside of that one mile boundary. So this slide is just breaking out the totals for approved data center projects and these are the projects that said when they came in and got the rezoning they committed via proffers of we are only a data center. Where we're at with those is a total of 12.1 million square feet. Approximately 5.2 million of that is actually under construction, and then with 6.9 enabled and ready to go. This total does not include the Mattamee Tech campus that's in Caroline County. For those projects that were approved and they identified data center as a potential, and that was under a laundry list of other industrial uses like warehouse, science research center, we're at about 3.2 million square feet. So that's your approved potential. And then those pending in the either rezoning or a special use application that we have currently under review, that total is over 16.4 million square feet. So if you combine your approved 100% committed data center with the approved potential data center, that brings you to about 15.4 million square feet. So just a brief overview of what we've done here in Spotsylvania County in data centers. I know you've heard it many times over the years. This has been an identified targeted industry for the county since 2011. Prior to the 2025 code amendments, we had data centers identified as an office use. So office use, it's the most prevalent use across all of the non-residential zoning districts. The county did initiate in 2023 a comprehensive plan amendment that identified or established, excuse me, land use policies specific to data center development. Those policies we use today to consider all of our rezoning and now special uses to ensure that mitigation is committed via proffers or conditions. That includes noise, view sheds, location, construction impacts, impacts to natural resources, environmental, et cetera. I want to, you know, confirm that all approved data centers, all of those that I just went through, those all went through the rezoning process. We haven't had any by right. data centers to date. All of them went through the rezoning process. We have approved proffers for all of those projects where all of those elements were considered in detail. And those proffered conditions, they're legally enforceable. they run with the land not the operator and you know like I said we've got several projects that are under construction now where the implementation and forcibility of those proffer conditions have been very effective I will say that the board did approve code amendment that all data centers require a special use. So there's no more buy-right development potential in the county. And prior to that code amendment, there was over 3,400 acres of industrial zoned land that data centers could have developed buy-right. So all of that is off the table. Everything you've got approved. We just went through, but all data centers will have to go through either the special use process or the rezoning process. So we have been working, as you know, the past couple of years on the overall comprehensive plan update. Of course, that includes everything from transportation, the natural resources, historic resources, land use, the whole gamut. And of course, that did include data center policies and some updates. And Jacob's done several work sessions with the Planning Commission, did a work session with the board the end of January to go over updates. that meeting at your January 29th meeting we did ask the board if there was any interest in establishing any land use guidelines that would recommend a cap on data center whether it be acreage or square footage within the county at that time the board didn't give direction to staff to do so so that isn't in any current draft language that we have other options that were you know put out to consideration is scaling back that one mile buffer i mentioned so you've got your primary development boundary the comprehensive plan in 23 established that one mile boundary outside the primary development boundary is potential suitability for data centers so another option was to scale back that geographic area where data centers could have land use support Again, that direction hadn't been given. In anticipation of tonight's presentation, we did, at the Planning Commission's last workshop session on August 5th, discuss data center policies. And the Planning Commission members did have discussion on a square footage cap and a scaleback of that one-mile buffer. The Planning Commission did express support for a maximum square footage cap, but they did defer whatever that amount is to the board. And they did express support for scaling back that one-mile buffer outside the primary development boundary. So where we are, though, status update for the comprehensive plan, the overall update, is we did complete our last work session with the Planning Commission last week. So all drafting has been finalized, all the mapping is finalized, and we're really gearing up to public hearing. And so we are anticipating the Planning Commission's public hearing for October, so that will be here before you know it. So I just put that out there as we have our discussion tonight, that if the board does want to consider any policies related to the data center cap or policy, Scaling back the buffer or whatever comes of the discussion We really need that really soon To avoid any interruption or delay and the in the county adopting the comp plan Which is which needs to happen in December? It's understandable if there's more discussion that's needed and if that's the case then what I'm gonna advise is that we peel this off as its own standalone and amendment to the comp plan to allow all the work that's been done up to this point to advance and and get approved in december and then we can handle this one um on its own and with that i will turn it over to becky before you do that can i ask the uh the map that you have does the the scaling back the one mile

affect any of these sites?

No, sir. Okay. And I'll jump ahead if that's okay just to give you a visual. This... hopefully it shows up okay on your screen, but this red outline hatched area, this is what is the current one mile buffer around the entirety of the primary development boundary. The scale back that staff would recommend you consider if you want to go this direction, it would take this whole western portion out. And so kind of like I was saying, where all of your existing projects that have been approved, everything has really concentrated more onto that eastern side of 95. And so to answer your question, no, it would not impact anything that's been approved, nothing that's pending. I did mention that one project that is outside of the one-mile boundary anyway, so this wouldn't impact that at all. It's on the west side anyway. It also is not going to impact any of your VEDP sites that have been identified.

Thank you.

No, of course. So I was asked to present some revenue projections tonight regarding our data centers. And I think I want to start out, and I don't mean to be flippant, but you know those Ozempic commercials where they have somebody eating popcorn while they do all the legalese and talk about all the warnings and stuff like that? I do think it's important before I get into these projections that I provide a little bit of that legalese, those caveats, because we are so early in this process. These revenue projections can change on a dime. There are just so many different factors that influence what happens that I just want to briefly and quickly, and I'm sorry, I know this is going to be kind of a little dry. That's why I wish we had that popcorn. But I want to provide some context because I think it's important. So, you know the projections that we use it's just like any business model, you know, there's going to be changing variables the economy You know hardware life spans construction delays. There's just a name a few and some of these things are Very variables some of these things. I just want to let you know are just facts that go into these these projections so starting with You know, each building, each data center, and I'm calling them a building, or sometimes they're known as shells. And it's just this, the building itself, and each one in this model is 250,000 square feet. And it includes 12 rooms, or what they call pods. And this shell, in the projection, we consider it being completed within one year. However, in these pods, you've got to outfit it, right, with the servers and the network infrastructure, information like that. And we have no idea. And just like what was discussed tonight, you know, you could have a data center that maybe they only fill three pods. Maybe they only have tenants for two, six, ten, you know, all of them. You know, we just don't.

No.

This early on. However, I got to put something in the projection. I didn't want to put 100% of the pods being filled in, you know, year one. But I also, we got to make this a relatively easy model. So what I did with this projection was I just assumed that the pods were going to be completed in year two. That may not be realistic. I understand that. But I think when we go into showing you the model for one data center, it'll highlight the volatility that you can see with the equipment, the servers and the networks and stuff like that. So the estimated refresh rate on these servers, networks, stuff, seven years. That's what I've been hearing. But again, technology changes quickly. So that's what I have in the model, but that may not always happen. And when you have different... You have an Amazon versus, I'm just going to say Microsoft, even though that's not part of our portfolio. It just maps out that they may have different technologies, that this one is seven years, but somebody else may have five, somebody else may have three, ten, just a lot of variability. Now, I just wanted to share that the revenues, I am putting them in today's dollars. I'm not adjusting for inflation. Again, I'm trying to make this easy for somebody to understand, and I don't want to throw a lot of things like, you know, what the dollar is going to be 20 years from now. It just starts to get overly complicated. they are based on existing tax rates and the Commissioner revenues are depreciation schedules and I did have to make some assumptions based on when we think the 60% infrastructure reimbursement grant will wrap up and then shift to potentially the 20% they don't overlap it once the 60% goes away then it goes into the 20% lastly the numbers I'm presenting tonight are net they are after we pay the incentives I think that's important especially you know when we're looking at the sixty percent temporary sixty percent infrastructure reimbursement grant so with that being said I did want to show because I think it's good to have one What does one data center look like? And so this, again, is the Amazon model with the incentives built in. So a single data center building we are projecting could generate $27.8 million over 20 years net of incentives. These revenues do include real property, computer equipment, furniture and fixtures. And then in year 11 is when, you know, like I was saying before, we are expecting that shift from one grant to another. What I wanted to highlight is if you look in year two and year eight, year 14 and 20, that's where you're going to see that refresh of equipment. So year two is when they're putting the equipment in and we're making that assumption that they did all the pods, right? so you can see that and then in year eight is that seven year refresh so you can see it bumping up you know a bit and again in year 14 and again in year 20. so if you think about it um if they even shift you know, that seven-year cycle a little bit, you can see the impact, the potential impact it could have on our revenue projections. And that's why I know we've mentioned this in the past. That's why we feel it's so important, at least for the business property piece of this that is volatile, that we try and keep that for other uses. And I know the board still needs to determine this, but, you know, county administration and my recommendation at this time is to use that money for cash for capital. That's what we are seeing a lot of localities do because it will reduce our interest costs, you know, and it reduces the volatility that we see. Because the last thing we want to do is, you know, have a revenue model that, you know, we say we're going to get this much in the budget cycle. Then all of a sudden we don't get it because a few data centers decided that they weren't going to refresh when we thought they would. And there was a Northern Virginia partner locality that really got into trouble for that very reason. And it's not even a refresh. It could be, you know, situations where the equipment isn't available. You know, we ran into that with COVID, obviously. So those are things that we need to consider. So then moving on, again, when you start to try and project everything that was all the square footage that was talked about earlier, to me, I think you get lost. in the big numbers. And it just gets overwhelming. It's so speculative that I don't think it's very useful information when you're trying to pull in all that square footage. Because really, we don't know when it's going to be coming. So what I did was I took Costner's Corner And I said, all right, this is one that we have an idea, at least, with construction timelines and potential COs, certificates of occupancy being provided, that we can get a reasonable idea of some near-term revenues. So based on that I ran using a single data center model and the potential for the certificates of occupancy is to go out between 2025 and 2028 five data center buildings Are looking are projected to generate a hundred and thirty two point four million over 20 years and of course that is net of incentives and So I'm available for any questions. I just, I do want to caveat that all these numbers are just, it's very early in the process. We're still gathering information and, you know, it just takes one little thing that could shift these revenues significantly.

Thank you. Jake?

Sasha, quick question on the revenue. We're just talking about the machinery and tools taxes off of these. We're not talking about the real estate taxes, correct?

Are you talking about for the cash for capital?

Yes.

Yes. Okay.

So we're not even – we've always talked about LIDL as one of our biggest beneficiaries to the tax rate around here.

So –

as far as the Amazon centers go, they're still paying full amount of real estate tax building assessments. So that's what I wanted to point out. Lytle is sitting on 81 acres. their building is worth a little over $100 million in assessment and then about $3 million in land assessment. So that's roughly $750,000 a year just in the real estate tax from them. And then if I'm going over here to tax parcel 50-A-112, And this somewhat pains me to say this because I went, you know, fought tooth and nail with the land use attorney on what is a guarantee on money, right? So the machinery and tools tax, it's going to fluctuate. But what is a guarantee, and I've always agreed on, is the real estate tax. And that's what I'm hoping that we can continue to communicate with the current and future commissioner revenues because we're seeing these data center, the land being sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. So if you look at tax parcel 50-A-112, it is 220 acres. It is an Amazon data service center. I believe it's the one that we have the only building on. Right now, so it's only got 1 building. I believe it's planned for multiple buildings on this that that building assessment right now is already at 100Million dollars with just the 1 building there. And then the land assessment is right around 38Million dollars. If you go down Route 1 and you look at the Spotsy Techno Campus, big article was out in the newspaper not long ago. An investor from Los Angeles bought that property for, I want to say, over $200 million, I believe it was. The assessed value right now is nowhere near that. So that's one way we need to communicate with the Commissioner of Revenue's office and say, hey, you are legally supposed to assess this land at its fair market value. Well, we can go back a couple of months ago and show you that it just sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. So, yes, I'm I am very skeptical in the golden goose egg when it comes to the machinery and equipment tools. But there's one thing that is coming to fruition is the real estate tax. So that's one thing that I just want to clarify to the public. There's no depreciation. We will. There's no performance agreement or anything like that with Amazon. Whatever their land or their buildings are assessed at, they pay the full tax value to that to the county.

Yes, sir. So as far as I wanted to make sure that we were saying the right thing. As far as the performance agreement, we are rebating real estate and personal property.

So what is that rebate?

That rebate is the infrastructure grant is 60%. So 60% of the revenues that we collect. gets rebate, we have to collect it first, and then we rebate it on these Amazon properties. And what we're doing is they are investing, per the agreement, roughly $93 billion into Spotsylvania, and the investment agreement has us rebating 10% of that. So once we rebate 10% of that investment, that infrastructure, then the 60% goes away and we shift to this 20% performance grant after that.

And you're projecting that it'll take 10 years to get that down? Yes. Okay.

Yes. But again, that's a rough projection.

When you have an idea of what the real estate taxes might be after this, could you send us an email to let us know?

Absolutely.

And that way, if anybody in the public wants to know, they can reach out. We can share that information, or you might be able to put it on the next update.

Well, I can tell you right now, per my discussions with the chief assessor, the one property he mentioned that has the $1 million and 26 for the tax revenue, that is a building at the time he was saying it wasn't assessed as fully complete. So he said it was about an 85% assessed value. So now, and I am not an assessor, and I'm not going to pretend to be one. It is very complicated. There are different rules for different types of Amazon, I mean, excuse me, different types of data centers. You know, you mentioned the hyperscale, and then there's ones where, you know, there's the tenants, and it's just very complicated. And I do believe... you know, Mr. Talley did share that, you know, once they are fully constructed, then they go into this different way of assessing them. But I'm getting outside of my area, and I'm going to step back to just, I just say that what we're seeing here, what I've shared tonight, is not necessarily the same way he is going to assess them once they are complete. So this amount could change.

And just to confirm, your numbers are simply on the machinery and tools tax, not on the real estate?

The numbers that I presented per building, that includes real estate.

Okay, it does include real estate.

It's everything. Okay. Yes.

Typically, I think when under construction, it's more of a cost basis of assessment. And then once complete, it goes into like a more market-based assessment. That's very general, though. I also don't want to play assessor as well.

I think I read – I know enough.

I know enough to be dangerous.

Yeah. I think in Prince William, I think their hyperscale, if I'm remembering correctly, they do it based on the megahertz. So if they are selling the cloud computing services, if that's what you call it, then they're using the megahertz to decide how much they're going to tax. But again, it's a very complicated area.

David? And I'd just like to add, as far as the rebates go and stuff, and this isn't just for this project, but as far as I know, any Economic incentives and I know economic incentives can be controversial and stuff like that. But, you know, in Spotsylvania County, we don't just hand out money as economic incentive. What we do is we rebate a portion of the taxes that that new company pays so that we still come out ahead because the portion that we keep is still more than what the property was paying in taxes before it was developed. So, you know, it's not like we take taxes from one taxpayer and give it to some other company or something like that. Now, all they do is they get a portion back of the taxes that they paid for a certain period of time. And like I said, I'm not here advocating for economic incentives or anything like that, but I just want to make that clear because I hear so much about how, you know, oh, they took my taxes and gave it to, you know, this company or that company, and we don't do that in Spotsylvania.

Yeah, thank you. So, of course, I have, so you said this is the AWS model. Is there a difference between AWS model and say a non-AWS data center project? So in other words, not everybody has the same 60-20 deal here. And how many, what are the differences? How many fall under which one?

Yeah, I'm glad you asked that. This model is just for those data centers that fall under that incentive agreement, because that's the information we have at this time. Any other data center that falls outside of that agreement, you're not going to have these incentive agreements. I also don't know, because I worked with Amazon to get an idea of how much in computers and peripherals. I had that discussion with them so I could get the best model that I could. And they were very good about giving me that information. I haven't had that dialogue yet with the other data centers.

So out of the eight that we have approved, how many of those are AWS then? They all.

That actually own the project that's three they are the tenant of one of the approved projects Yeah, and based on how that agreement is drafted as the tenant it will depend on how it's it's taxed that we would have to look at you know, the Have do a legal review of that and to see if it falls under the performance agreement. I

Yeah, it was under my understanding to Mr goose's point that to get that they have to be owned and operated by if they're just a tenant. Then, like you said, we would have to lean on Carl to go to bat for us to say. Right pay up some duckies, you know.

And so that was based on the dollar 25, you know, and we've already had some discussion that, you know, we want to. Really look at that, you know, and and see, you know, discussion for another night, but let's, let's really look at that figure. And then, of course, is going to get. I mean, we're in an agreement process with them that we have to stick to that for X number of years.

Yeah, and there is a provision in the agreement that actually states if we increase the tax rate, then what will happen is there will be a rebate process just like we're doing with these incentives. They would pay it. We would rebate it to them. So it's actually written into the agreement should that occur.

And how long is that for?

Oh, it's that's the room is through 2050 or 2051. Carl, do you recall? It's 50 or 51.

Wow, that's unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah. I wish I could lock my rate in for that. Um, but, uh, okay. Yeah. Thanks.

You're welcome.

Uh, first of all, thank you for the presentation and, um, and for reminding us of just how uncertain the dollars are and will continue to be. You know, I don't know why anybody else would want to locate here if we can raise the tax on them and Amazon is going to be stuck at $1.25 for well after Most of us are gone off of this board. But the one thing that I do, and I think it's important for the board, I don't know when we're going to get to this point, and perhaps we don't do it with hard numbers, but perhaps just some physical guidelines of before this money starts rolling into the coffers, we need to figure out what we're going to spend it on because if not it's going to be like kids in a candy store and we're going to be buying all those shiny things that are out there and we we cannot do that one of the things i would absolutely love to see and i was just doing a little bit of math based upon your speculative numbers so this is all speculative so but the the underlying um idea is still there is Knowing that there is a base, if you take the real property out of the numbers and we're just dealing with the machine tax and that fluctuates. And it fluctuates based upon how much is in there, the years. I mean, they could extend it instead of seven years, might be ten years. I mean, all that is up in the air, and we don't know just yet. But what I would like to see is knowing that there is sort of a baseline of what that number is per data center. I would like to see our board in future discussions come up with physical guidelines of what to do with that beyond the cash for Sorry, it's 10 o'clock. Thank you. Cash for capital. It's 10 o'clock. And also do some tax rebating. I'm thinking of the car tax that the state was supposed to do away with and pay the counties, and that sort of just never went anywhere. And perhaps we can come up with some sort of formula, and I'm not doing it tonight, but the idea out there that Instead of just more government things that are out there parks and fire stations and stuff that we all need and we use and an updated solid waste facilities we can't forget about that one is some actual tax relief to our citizens because I If this goes on and 20 years from now our tax rate And tax burden on our citizens does not see a significant impact. And all we have are, you know, every position we have no empty positions in the county. You know, we have, you know, the things that that we need for government to run. then I would think that all of this has been kind of a little bit for naught because that tax relief is very important, and especially the car tax is very important because, number one, that was promised to us, you know, 30 years ago now and we're still stuck with it and it's one of the stupidest taxes around but that provides immediate relief to families especially families that have multiple you know you have kids and they start driving and now you gotta buy another car for them if you know if you can that's all all of that goes into you know the burden the tax burden that's on the on our citizens. So if it's not that I would love to see some sort of and I would like it more of a percentage than a dollar amount.

So I think not to interrupt you, Chris, but I know Ed and I talked about kind of coming up with a plan and we were talking about maybe doing something around like in September-ish time, right? That to have another meeting about kind of coming up with a fiscal policy, right? on how to do that stuff.

Oh, no, that's great. I'm just getting it out there so that we're not looking at each other. Oh, it's on my list, for sure. But I just think that actual tax relief for our citizens has to be top of the list, in addition to making sure that the services are provided as best as we can, but not only focus on that.

No, I don't disagree with you at all. I just didn't want you to think that that wasn't something that was in the mix. But for tonight, what we're trying to do is give direction to planning. Do we want to cap? How do we want to do that?

I'm sorry, I was getting to that. Okay, sorry. No, no, you're fine. You're just speeding me up. Yes, I know. When it comes to that, yes, I'm in favor of capping. I think that we have enough, and we can, especially because these things take a long time to get turned on, as we're even seeing from the financials. So there's no reason to open it up and be flooded until we know actually what it's going to look like. So I think actually what we kind of have is and kind of what is in the pipeline because I don't think it's fair to do that to anybody to turn it off right now. But what we already have approved, what could potentially be because some of that was grandfathered in, I get. And then whatever is in the pipeline in the process, I should say, not speculative, but actually like in the process, figure out whatever that amount is, give it a little bit of a buffer and then go with that. And I would get rid of the mile. Because I think all the mile does is it opens up new opportunities for us to be outflanked in this. And before you know it, we're going to have a whole other map with a whole other section of potential ones. And we're sitting here going, where the heck did that come from?

Drew, you had a question, and then I'll come back to you, David.

Yeah, I forgot what I was going to say. No, kidding. Is there any protection? I imagine some folks who are still listening or in the audience here could be concerned that or have a question about could AWS position itself to be like gobble up all the approved sites or is there protections or any kind of limitations baked in to limit that?

Not from the land use perspective, and I don't believe on the other front either.

No, sir. So other end users would allow us to have different tax rates and different performance agreements and incentives and things like that, correct? And then, of course, we've already set the limit on the amount of reuse water that's set. And even if AWS is doing some of these other sites, they're going to have alternative cooling. So, yeah, I just wanted the public to hear that. And, again, when I asked the question earlier about the one-mile buffer, it was kind of the same thing. I was feeling like, hey, at a minimum, we should look hard at that as far as giving you guidance. So, my opinion.

David?

Yeah, I just want to reiterate the same thing on the one mile buffer. I mean, when it's on the west side, it's starting to reach into our agricultural rural areas. I mean, just, you know, we absolutely have heard loud and clear from our citizens that they don't want it over there. And then, you know, same way with a cap. You know, we could pick arbitrary numbers. You know, we could look at the things that are in there. I know you've got the numbers there. We had talked everywhere from, you know, 15Million square feet to 20Million square feet to even as much as 30Million square feet of of putting it in the comprehensive plan, which again is just a number. It's it's it doesn't set doesn't mean anybody can can or can't make a decision on the board or in the future based upon that number just because it's above or below. I mean, it just becomes a planning aspect, I think so. Um, you know, uh, I guess if. Chris had some comments about those things that are in the pipeline and things like that and you could probably do some quick math and figure out what does that look like and give us an idea of what that number is that we can have a discussion and maybe give some direction so we can give it to you so you can put it in the comprehensive plan before it goes public and that way we can get comments back from the public on that.

So I'll just tell you the totals if you're gonna assume all of the approved data center projects that included those that said we might be a data center or might be something else and Everything that's in the pipeline that comes to thirty one million nine hundred and one thousand four hundred and eight square feet Which would be fairly conservative compared to anyone else correct other localities I

Loudoun County has 53 million. Yeah.

Prince William.

Do we know what Prince William has in 2025? They had 12 million up and running, but they had a lot more in the pipeline.

Yeah.

Dr. Frazier.

Yes, Becky, I don't know if there's a way that we can do an analysis of when we do get the revenue, what is going to be the relief of our local, our general funds? What's the relief? What percentage? I don't know if we can quantify that with a percentage, but what will that allow us to free up to do other things like infrastructure, like fire and rescue, schools, all of those things that we are strapped for every year trying to meet the needs. I don't know if we can quantify it that way, but I think as we look, as we are visionaries and we're looking toward the future, how will our decisions that we've made thus far, how will it help us relieve the burden even on the taxpayers? So how... How can we quantify that? I don't know if we can. Not tonight, but just food for thought.

Thank you.

Just some idea, because this... I want those who are listening online and those who are in the audience to realize that we just didn't arbitrarily say that we wanted... data centers just to have them. We were looking for ways to really relieve the burden on the community. And as I said before, it was never our desire to have a plethora of data centers. It was our desire to fulfill the needs of the comprehensive plan that we have been seeking an opportunity not to have to raise taxes. And so, you know, I go back to In 2001, when I opened a brand new school, the tax rate was 90 cents. We don't ever want our taxpayers to have to go back there again when we have to do things like infrastructure, opening schools and all of the other things. So somehow quantify that eventually for us so the community can understand that piece because I think that would be where people begin to appreciate the work that we've done is not glamorous and it's not to make anybody's life miserable, but being responsible with what our decisions are and looking out for our community as a whole.

No, absolutely. I think one of the things that we can look at is, of course, our 30-70 split, where we look at our residential and our commercial statistics. This is a perfect example. We can put those numbers in. Again, very speculative, but however, we could put those numbers in to get an idea of how it'll impact that split. We've heard a lot tonight about county needs, lighting at our solid waste facilities, DSS. There's a lot of needs out there. So, you know, trying to prioritize those needs against the real estate. And then also, of course, looking at the capital side to say, what can we, if we use this, you know, business property tax, non-real estate tax, to put cash towards these needs, how much interest could we be saving? Then that interest frees us up on the general fund side so we don't have to increase our tax rate, our real estate tax rate. It all works together and nothing is in a silo. You change one thing, it's going to impact something else. So those are all things that we could look into. I think that's a great point. I'll probably, Mr. Petrovich, need to pull in our financial advisors. I'm a little bit at capacity right now, but I can get them to help and try and get some information for you.

Last comment. I want our community to know that we're looking out for... the interests of a whole and every aspect, like you said, works together, but we have to be those visionaries that actually look along the way so we're not leaving our kids and our grandkids to hold the money bag for the things that we could not afford to pay for.

Thank you. Dr. Frazier, David.

thank you yeah and i i agree with you i mean that's that's where our constituents want to hear from us you know that we're making sound financial decisions based upon the data we have and the data that were presented and and knowing that you know boards before us did the same thing you know and we are now where we are uh but at the same time i think uh you know we have to answer that question how much is enough you know everyone's asking that question people on the board people constituents You know, and so we have to figure out what does that mean? And as we go forward with these projections, you know, then how we're going to spend it to make sure we're meeting the needs that the community has and that we need to go forward. And I think from a smart planning perspective, we just need to put it in our comprehensive plan so that when we do have people come in that want to develop, they can look at our comprehensive plan and understand what we want for the county in our future. And that's the... The idea is having a comprehensive plan so that the citizens and the board and the government, we all have an idea of where we want to be in 5, 10, 15 years, whatever, for our kids and our grandkids. And I want to make sure that that's clearly articulated and understood by those that are sitting out in the audience and online because they're the ones put the bill. I say they, we, because I pay taxes too, just like everybody else. You know, and I want to make sure that my taxes are being spent well and such. So obviously, you know, setting a cap, you know, $31 million sounds a lot. You know, it doesn't, and again, I want to reiterate, that doesn't mean we're going to approve $31 million just because it's in the comprehensive plan by no means. You know, we still control that based upon every project that comes through on its merits. And, you know, maybe we set a little lower number. Good part about it is we can change that number in the future. A future board can change that number. Probably will. You know, just like the tax rates. So, but I do think we want to put a cap in the comprehensive plan. I'd be, you know, curious from other board members what we think that number ought to be, though.

So, just kind of tag on a little bit here. So, I was thinking about this today and had a conversation with Kimberly earlier about it as well as, you know, had a call from one of my constituents regarding how to best do this right and and there was a suggestion that almost to maybe do this throws little wrench into setting like just a cap right but almost doing like a um x amount of square feet per time period you know and I'm just throwing that out there as a way to say because in if we do it that way what we're doing is sort of staging you know we're letting it it kind of marinate and and not just setting this hard and fast number, right? And the other thing is I worry, and I'm for doing something, okay? I'm for setting a cap, but I want to be able to point to what the rationale behind doing it is, right? Instead of just throwing a dart at the wall and saying 31 or 20 or whatever. I think we have to be thoughtful about how we get to that number, right? And one of the things that I was talking to Kimberly about today is just like your portfolio for your 401 , right? You diversify your portfolio. You figure out how much percentage you want of this kind of stock or that kind of stock or, you know. I think we have to have those conversations or have something that demonstrates how we got there. And I don't know what the answer is, to be honest with you, except I think we have to look at those VEDP sites and see, like, Where are they? How many more of them are there that were kind of shovel-ready sites, per se? I think we have a couple of different elements here that we need to look at. And I guess if the consultants could even give us an idea of, you know, if you look at Loudoun County, They're highly – they've got all their eggs in one basket. They really do. And I think it's a shame that that happened because – and it's no negativity towards those supervisors on that board. But, you know, they – they had buy right all the way up to last year. I mean, they were coming in like hot and heavy. And then, you know, so I just want to make sure that, and it's getting late, so I'm droning on, but I just want to make sure we have a rationale behind what we're doing so that we can point to it in a systematic way.

it's chris if if i might and you're not droning on i'm going to start droning on um 30 million roughly is 124 at 250 000 square feet it's a lot of data centers so my question then would be is that take take one of the ones that are approved and we have roughly 12 million let's just say that the actual approved ones the three sites um Are they able to actually fit 12 million square feet worth or are they going to have access? So let's just say take, you know, site A and they thought they could do 12 because I have heard this. They thought they could do 12. They can actually do 10. So they have an excess of 500,000 square feet on that. But that 500,000 hasn't been realized, so that actually can roll over to another site. You see what I'm getting at? So we could approve a site that might have 5 million square feet, but then when they cite it and they figure it out and for whatever reason, they can only do half of that. So what is the intention behind this? And for me, the intention behind this is to limit the number of sites, not to have 85 little teeny data centers springing up all over the place like vape shops or something, but something that contains it. It's an industrial use. Put it in an industrial site. Keep it away from our residents. Let them operate as they should. but I just think I'm just wondering how do we how do we keep it from continuing on and spilling over and actually not stopping solar was different they're going to use this much acreage to build solar put up solar panels so you want to do 200 acres whether you did 200 acres worth of solar panels or not it was 200 acres you're done and so it didn't spill over and go well we still have a little bit of excess in the

You get what I'm saying?

Okay, good. Yeah. Okay. No, you're looking directly at me. I'm like, oh, but but that that's what we're trying at least where I'm coming from. I'm trying to control. The the massive just spread of it and then also for it to come in in little bits, you know, maybe you get 1 on a 20 acre site. Is that what we really want? Are we trying to, like I said, contain it, put in industrial areas, you know, have all the standards that we have per the or the rezoning and and then if you can't get that out of it. That's not my fault. That's what you have estimated. That's what we took off the books. Next. So just a thought because we're going through this whole process anyway.

Yeah, but what I think is important is, again, I think we need to come up with a number that seems reasonable to put out for public comment. Again, Jacob and crew out here are working hard to get this comprehensive plan out and get it into public comment by October. And so I think it's important as a board that we, we agree to say, okay, here's a good round number to start with. I mean, we've heard lots of people tonight talk about, you know, they think there ought to be a cap and a lot of them. I bet you would say it's a lot lower than 30Million square feet. You know, so I think it. it should be hoot on us to come up with something reasonable to expect that the public is going to be in agreement on or at least understand. And again, I agree we have to have a methodology of why we come up with it. That's why I asked the question about what things are improved and things like that. And maybe we don't include all the ones that could be a data center that aren't committed to it. So we adjust that number down a little bit more to make it a little more reasonable. But at the end of the day, no matter what number gets put in there, it could be 15,000 it could be a hundred thousand. I mean it doesn't restrict the board for making any decisions It's just a planning document that then we can use to plan from but we want to be as as Thoughtful and put enough thought into what number we put in there that makes sense, but I think you know we It would be a disservice to go forward with a comprehensive plan without that number in there Okay, so Kimberly let me ask you

What's your timeline that I know you need direction? And would it be possible for us to do some of the back work on this and then on the 25th set that timeline or set that whatever it is that we want to do? Or does that put you in a bad position?

No, I think that's still reasonable. I would say if we think it's going to go past that, then I would ask for the board to let us peel off as a standalone comp plan amendment.

So I guess my question is, and I can do some digging too just to try and figure out would be from a financial standpoint in a looking at how you would want to diversify your portfolio at a county level what how much of one industry this industry is really healthy to have uh... i would also you know one of the things that was brought to my attention from our northern neighbors is you know the cost jake mentioned the cost of the land and how once that land becomes data center land increases in price which uh... you know, affects other industries, too. I think there was a gentleman in the audience tonight that mentioned that, you know, he has a business and, you know, you almost price out other industries or it can happen. So what's the mechanism for that? The VEDP issue, I think, is important because when the state did this whole, and I know everybody probably knows the history behind this, but back when the $1.25 was developed and all that, that was really kind of a mandate from the state. You all, this is coming. You figure this out. And kind of made it so it was... little bit forced on us for lack of a better term but we want to make sure that we're respectful of some of the history that's gone on I'm not saying that means that it's a you know you're you got the rubber stamp of approval it just means I think we need to look at what's happened with that does that make sense So that would be that piece. And then as far as I think the primary development boundary, I think we're all on board with that. I don't think anybody has a problem with that. I think that's pretty much a no-brainer. And so I think if we can look at that, that would be good. And then, Kimberly, some of the ones... And I know I can look this up, but on the ones that have been approved, if there's any ones that were kind of iffy there, you know, like if you're not sure it's going to come to fruition or something, to have that. have some information on that, that would be good too. So I think what we need to do is some homework on this a little bit more so that we have a methodology. I think if we just set a number, it looks like amateur hour. You know what I mean? If we just set a number out of no methodology, we can't defend it. We can't say this is how we did it, right? We want to be able to do it, but we want to have the methodology behind it. So anyone else have any? So we'll revisit this on August 25th then. Okay. Thank you so much.

Becky, looks like you're staying at the front desk there for a little while. So we've got the 2026 bond referendum public outreach plan.

So, yes, I will move through this. I know it's getting late and we have another presentation to follow, but I thought it was important. Mr. Petrovich asked me to give an update on our 2026 bond referendum public outreach plan. So on November 3rd, our voters will be participating in a special election to consider four local bond referendum questions totaling the 400.6 million. As you can see to the right, there are the four categories in the individual amounts. to support informed decision-making by our voters. We did work together to put together an outreach plan to get the information out regarding the purpose and the fiscal impact of each referendum question. So our strategy includes engaging multiple platforms to ensure widespread awareness and participation. So the outreach platforms that we are looking at, we are going to be using radio, 90 spots between August 21st and October 21st, three different stations. I think, yes, here, let me just jump ahead a little bit. You can see here, down, you can see these are the three stations that we are talking about. And then if you look at the circles over here to the right, you can see the coverage area, which is, of course, it's covering all of Spotsylvania. We are also going to be using social media. We're only going to be using Spotsy Alert once because we don't want to abuse that platform. But then we're also going to be using our social media, Facebook, the county pages on September 9th, 14th, and the 21st. In addition, we're going to be using newspaper. That's going to be Free Press and the Freelance Star on these dates right here. I want to highlight on August 30th and October 18th. I hope I've got those dates right. Those are Sundays, and that's going to be a printed freelance star advertisement on that. So we're trying to reach everybody we can. Board meetings, of course, we can come back at every meeting. You're going to be sick of me if you're not already. uh tonight um but you know we can provide updates at that point as well and of course we're going to have our website i'm quite excited about this is and and daniel brooks i want to give a shout out to him in our finance group he has been working with is to revamp this this page and make it more user friendly It'll be nice. They can go to the actual individual project, hit on that, and it will show the description right there instead of having to download a full document and look at the full document all at once. So that's going to be really nice. And, of course, on this website, we're going to have information, you know, how much will my real estate tax bill increase if I approve this particular referendum question. So they can put that in. So lots of good stuff coming. One thing I do want to point out is in the past we have used, and I know it's been mentioned in past meetings, a postcard. We have decided not to go down that road. We felt that there were plenty of platforms here available to us, and it was going to be $26,000 for us in postage. to to mail those postcards and and you know it's it just didn't seem necessary and that's why we also wanted to make sure that we put something in the freelance star two sundays to make sure we're getting to people that maybe you know um aren't on you know uh social media or other electronic platforms becky just you know one thing that i think and i don't know

if this is possible or not but one thing that if we have the hoas of the neighborhoods where we could push this out to the hoas so that they could push out the information to their i think that would be really helpful so get contacts with hoas and then get the information that we would be sharing with these platforms to them okay yep all right i

So, of course, all this outreach, we are trying to get people to come to the community meetings. That's what's really important. Website is going to be especially important as well. So between the website and the two community information sessions that we are going to have, we are looking at September 9th. from Riverbend High School from 6 to 8, and also Massaponix High School, October 21, 6 to 8. So what we're doing is east to west. We're getting, you know, two schools on the east side and the west side. the county. During these sessions we are changing it up a little bit. In the past there would be at the very beginning presentations. We felt that that required everybody to be there right at 6 o'clock. Instead what we want to do is we're creating a presentation of the projects that's on a continuous loop. So then people can come in, sit, watch the continuous loop, and then we'll also have tables, you know, finance table, of course, and then all the individual project tables where people can come and ask questions. So it's more of a free-floating type community meeting. Okay.

I'm sorry to interrupt again. So would that presentation on the continuous loop also be on the TV station? Like, you know, where we have our... Could we put it on there, too?

It's going to be on the website, but we hadn't thought about putting it on the public access.

So if it could be on there, that would be really good. That's a great idea. And then also, I'd put it on the Facebook, too. You know, like... anywhere where people because it's a lot easier for people to watch stuff at their because we only have two meetings and not everybody's going to be able to make those meetings so if we could just put it on our channel I think that'd be good

Absolutely, like I said, it'll be on our website as well. And what we were talking about is break it up into Clips, you know to so, you know one question. We'll have one video So they're not having to go through an entire video to get to just transportation if they want to look at that Yeah, just look at the dates and both of those are Wednesday nights, I mean I

You know, I know a lot of churches have Wednesday night services, things like that. So you've got a whole demographic that wouldn't be attending maybe. So I was just wondering if we thought about maybe doing a different night of the week for one of them. Just throw that out there.

Let me go back to the team. It'll depend on the availability of the school. So I can't guarantee, but we will definitely take that recommendation back. And that concludes I told you I was gonna try and keep it short and sweet for you guys Jake yeah, I'll go really quick.

Thank you for the presentation I would also like to say we on the newspaper ads. Can we ensure that the pain the paywall is removed and If we're going to go to the freelance star and say, hey, we want to advertise this, even if they have to charge us a small amount, I'm not going to pay for everybody who accesses that web page. But I would like to get those paywalls removed that way. If they do not have access to the freelance star, they will still be able to click on it and get that information.

Yeah, absolutely. We can we can work on that. I will say outside of we're using Fredericksburg Free Press.

I don't think they have one.

That's fine.

Yeah. No, they do not. And what's nice is we only have to pay once and we have unlimited. So we're only paying one hundred and fifty dollars to advertise on all five days on Fredericksburg Free Press.

Just wanted to make sure if we advertise on my my absolute favorite newspaper, the freelance star, that we remove the. If there's anything I can do to help facilitate a date in the southern, western end of the county. I know we got River Bend. I'll definitely share to get the Massaponics. If there's anything I can do to help facilitate something in like that 208 Livingston Elementary area. Belmont kind of corridor, please let me know. I'd be more than happy to help staff. And then my last suggestion would be to reach out to public safety, reach out to our sheriff's department. They want to get the, help us get the word out for their bond referendum. And then also on the school side, they want to help get spread the word and spread the factual information out to our constituents. Then I think it would benefit them to help share their story with the bond referendum as well.

And I'm glad you mentioned that. Oh, I'm so sorry. Yes, ma'am. So I was just about to mention when we had a meeting to talk about this, we had the PIO, Renee Daniels, and she was wonderful. She had a lot of great ideas. And that was another thing I should have mentioned on our website. It's not going to be buried within the finance. It's going to be on the front page. It'll be a tile so people could go right there front and center um so they can they can find it so but yes the schools are going to be a partner and i we will definitely partner with public safety i see lieutenant colonel and chief baggers more than just chomping at the bit to help get out there and spread the word and they already have they already have

TO THAT POINT, ED, CAN WE USE, IS IT EVERBRIDGE OR WHATEVER WE HAVE, OUR TEXT THING THAT JUST LAUNCHED ALERTING?

I BELIEVE THAT'S THE SPOTSY ALERT.

THAT'S THE SPOTSY ALERT.

OKAY, GREAT. THAT'S YOU GUYS THEN, RIGHT? OKAY. THE TREES GO DOWN AND EVERYTHING? OKAY. THANK YOU.

OKAY. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THAT. APPRECIATE IT. YOU'RE WELCOME.

JULIE, YOU'RE UP NEXT. your topic is the state bonus information good evening I always feel like I'm last That's because we saved the best for last.

That's right, the best for last. Thank you, Ed. Tonight's purpose is to provide a brief overview of the state's supported bonus and the options before the county. At the end of this presentation, staff will be looking for the board to take action on the information provided. The state authorized an optional one-time 2% bonus for constitutional officers, compensation board-funded employees, and other state positions. The bonus calculated on the base salary as of June 1, 2026, and must be paid later than September 30th. if the locality accepts the funding. Impacted departments include the Sheriff's Office, the Commissioner of Revenue, the Treasurer, the Commonwealth's Attorney, the Clerk of the Circuit Court, the Register, and the Department of Social Services. This slide presents a brief summary of the four options, which we will examine in greater detail as we go through this presentation. Option one would be to decline the state funding. Option two is to accept the state-supported funding for the positions identified only by the state. Option three would to extend the bonus to positions within the impacted departments while option four would be to extend the bonus to county-wide. Option 1. Declining the state funding would result in no bonuses being distributed. County administration recommends this approach as it maintains equity across all positions countywide and because the county's ongoing pay increases have surpassed those provided by the state in recent years. As illustrated here, Caroline and Hanover counties have chosen to decline the funding and not provide the 2% bonus, while King George County has opted to accept the bonus and award the bonus only to the state-supported employees. This approach for King George mirrors what we are presenting as option two. The City of Fredericksburg and Stafford have not yet made a decision on their bonus. Now before I go forward in this presentation, on this slide, I do apologize in the handouts, the bonus information at the bottom with the number of employees was wrong on the printout. I have it correct here on the screen. Option two, accepts state funding and provides the bonus only to employees funded by the state compensation board and other state supported positions. The state share of this bonus is $248,921, while the local match is $162,087. It is important to note that the funding provided for the Commissioner of Revenue and the Treasurer's Office is only at 50%. Within the departments listed, 301 employees would receive the bonus, while 271 employees within these offices would not receive the bonus. Option three extends the bonus to all positions within the departments shown here. This option materially improves the equity within the impacted departments compared to option two, but it has a local price tag of $704,798. The state share did not change in this scenario. Option four extends the bonus to all full-time and regular part-time employees. This option has the highest local costs at approximately 2 million amongst all funds with the highest impact to the general fund of roughly 1.7 million. As you review the options presented tonight, this slide provides an overview of the FY26 and FY27 approved state and county compensation adjustments. For fiscal year 26, the county budget included an average salary adjustment of roughly 5%. This was made up of a 3% COLA and 2% merit increase for non-public safety employees and a step increase for public safety employees. By comparison, the state budget provided an average adjustment of roughly 3% for the same period. The current year FY27 budget includes an average salary adjustment of 4.7%. This consists of a 2.7% cost of living adjustment and a 2% merit increase for non-public safety employees and the step for the public safety scales. While the state budget for FY27 provides a 3.7% average adjustment. So now that we have explored the options, I will turn it over to you all for questions, comments, and action.

Okay, so my comment is thank you for your presentation, number one. And number two, this puts us in a really difficult position because it's giving some money to some and nothing to others. And that is hard to do. And I mean... I'm for doing option one, which is we just decline it. So, I mean, I don't know if anybody wants to talk. I'll make a motion to choose option one and decline it.

Oh, go ahead. Sorry. Thank you for the presentation. So the last slide there before the questions, this is projecting or this is what we we've approved in 26 already and what's. And 27, so.

Correct. And what we're trying to highlight here is what the state is doing is they're giving a, for example, in 26, 3%, and they're offsetting it at the time with a 1.5% bonus. So what we're doing is we're giving ongoing pay increase. If you go to 27, we're giving a 4.7 ongoing, and the state is giving a 3.5% ongoing, but a 2% one-time bonus.

So we're projecting and we're outperforming the state just on our own. Exactly.

And that is the whole point of, I think, which, you know, supports the reason for, you know, not taking this optional bonus because we are already providing more than what the state is providing.

If I may jump in, because, you know, it is County Admin's recommendation to go with option one. And as the board's well aware, every time I do the budget, you know, compensation is my top priority for our employees. And The comp board positions that we have with the county are also supplemented with county salaries. So we pay more than the state pays just for those comp positions. And those people that are on that comp board pay scale also get the same compensation that we give our employees. So in 26 and 27 years, You know, between the COLA and the merits, you know, we have kept pace with inflation as well as provide performance merit salary increases as well. So that was the reason I made that recommendation to go with option one. The other thing is this is a one-time bonus that we did not budget for. I know when we sat down originally to do the budget, the state was talking about a $600 one-time bonus, and then when they passed their final budget, they made it a 2%, which makes it even more expensive for us. For us, but I think that what we've done, you know, at least over the last two fiscal years, we have more than compensated fairly our employees with the raises that we've given them.

Yes, Dr. Frazier.

Can you explain option 3 just just for me and that's a partial extend the bonus to all position in the department with partial state funding. So, that means that it would not be the 2%. What is what is that?

So the option three would include the individuals that were not identified on the comp board position. I'm going to give you the example of sheriff's office. Not all their positions were identified. Okay. Okay.

Just wanted clarity on that. Okay. So there's a motion on Jake.

Just to clarify from Ed real quick, our compensation, we talk about our, our, Raises and the merits those are for County employees and the state forward their state compensated employees across the board Okay All the question, okay All right

Try that again.

six yes motion passes thank you so much um at the next thing is board reports but we're coming up on 11 o'clock and we got a lot going on so we might have to we have to come back out right if we go over midnight I mean, I think maybe board reports we can do. I think we need to get to our closed meeting. Okay. Is that all right? That's fine with me. Okay. Okay.

all right madam chair members of the board this is your resolution to adjourning the closed meeting whereas the spots of any county board of supervisors desires to join the closed meeting for the discussion consideration or interviews of prospective candidates for employment assignment appointment promotion performance the motion salaries disciplining or resignation of specific public officers appointees or employees of the county specifically regarding the board of supervisors vacant chancellor district seat and whereas the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors desires to adjourn and close meeting for consultation with legal counsel employed or retained by the county regarding specific legal matters requiring the provision of legal advice by its counsel specifically regarding Virginia Virginia code's regulation of manufactured homes a land use and storm water management issue filling the Board of Supervisors vacant Chancellor district seat and whereas pursuant to Virginia Code section 2.2-3711 a 1 and 8 such discussions may occur in closed meeting now therefore be it resolved that the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors does hereby authorize discussion of the adverse stated matters.

So moved.

six yes motion passes the meeting whereas the spots of any county board of supervisors has convened a closed meeting on the state pursuant to an affirmative recorded vote in accordance with the provisions of the virginia freedom of information act and whereas section 2.2-3712d of the code of virginia requires a certification by this board that such closed meeting was conducted in conformity with virginia law now therefore be it resolved that the spots of any county board of supervisors hereby returns to open meeting and certifies by roll call vote that to the best of each member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the virginia freedom of information act and identified in the motion convening and closed meeting where her disgust are considered in the closed meeting dr frazier aye jake aye drew aye chris david aye and the chair votes aye All right, Madam Chair, I have two resolutions that I would ask the Board to add to the agenda. One is to set a special election date, and the other is to call for resumes for individuals who would like to be considered for an interim appointment to the Chancellor District position on the Board of Supervisors. So first, a vote to add it to the agenda. I'll move.

Oh there it is.

6 yes motion passes all right madam chair the first resolution I'm gonna put before you it is before all the board members there are copies up at the dais for the public if anyone is interested this is a resolution to set a special election for the open position on the board for the Chancellor district This sets the date on March 16th, 2027. I'm gonna read it briefly for the board and for the public. Whereas the majority of the voters in the Chancellor District elected Gerald Childress as their representative to the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors for a term of office commencing on January 1st, 2024 and expiring on December 31st, 2027. Whereas Supervisor Childress resigned his position on August 6th, 2026, leaving a vacancy in the office of the Chancellor District Supervisor. And whereas pursuant to Virginia Code Section 24.2-226A, the remaining members of the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors direct the county attorney to petition the Circuit Court of Spotsylvania County to order a special election to be held on March 16, 2027. to elect a qualified candidate as a representative of the Chancellor's District to the Board of the County Supervisors for a term ending on December 31st, 2027. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors of the County of Spotsylvania that the County Attorney be and is hereby directed to petition to the Circuit Court of Spotsylvania County, Virginia to order a special election to be held on March 16th, 2027 to elect a qualified candidate as a representative of the Chancellor's District to the Board of County Supervisors for a term ending on December 31st, 2027. So moved.

Five yes with Mr. Mullins voting no. Motion passes.

Thank you Madam Chair, members of the board. The second resolution before you and again a copy at the dais. Whereas a majority of voters of the chancellor district elected Gerald Childress as a representative to the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors for a term of office commencing on January 1st, 2024 and expiring December 31st, 2027. And whereas Supervisor Childress resigned his position on August 6, 2026, leaving a vacancy in the office of Chancellor District Supervisor. And pursuant to Virginia Code section 24.2-228, the remaining members of the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors within 45 of the days of the vacancy may appoint a qualified voter of the Chancellor Electoral District to fill the vacancy. And whereas, pursuant to Virginia Code section 24.2-228, at least seven days prior to making an interim appointment to fill the vacancy in the office of the Chancellor District Supervisor, the remaining members of the Board of Supervisors must announce the names of all persons being proposed for the interim appointment and make available for inspection each person's resume and any other materials the Board requires. And whereas... satisfy the requirements of the virginia code the remaining members of the board of supervisors desire to receive by 4 25 pm on august 18 2026 the resume of any qualified voter of the chancellor district who desires to be considered for the appointment to fill the vacancy in the office of the chancellor district supervisor Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Board of Supervisors of the County of Spotsylvania that any qualified voter of the Chancellor District who desires to be a candidate for the appointment to fill the vacancy in the office of the Chancellor District Supervisor be in hereby as directed to submit a resume with home address and any other documents supporting the submission by 425 p.m. on Tuesday, August 18th, 2026, to email address coadmin at spotsylvania.va.us which is the email address for county administration or to the county administration office room 2459104 courthouse road spotsylvania virginia 22553 generally open between 8 10 a.m and 4 25 p.m monday through friday can i get the voting screen

Madam Chair?

Yes.

Before another minute goes, today's National Sons and Daughters Day, all right? Because it won't be in a minute, right?

Okay, so because we have to end up by midnight, so we'll forego board reports right now, and our next meeting is August 25th at 5 p.m. Ed, do you have anything else?

No, ma'am.

Okay. Motion to adjourn?

So moved. Okay.

All in favor? Aye.