Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

I'd like to call to order the um regular board of supervisors meeting uh August 5th, 3:00. Um with that um Mr. Williams, would you lead us in a prayer, please? Let us close our eyes and go to the Lord in prayer. Father God, once again, Father, you allowed us to come to this place. We thank you, Father. We thank you for this building, for each one person that is here, Father. We try to do your business, Father. And father, your business in a respectful, respectful way. Father, be with our hearts and our souls that we can make the best decisions for this county. That is something you'll be proud of. Father, then if we disagree about some things, Father, please give us the understanding that it's okay. In Jesus name we all do pray. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Thank you, Mr. Williams. Miss Hammond, would you lead us in the pledge, please? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Roll call, please. Mr. Williams, here. Mr. Bill Harris, here. Mr. Kittington, here. Mr. Jesse, here.

Mr. Don Harris here. All righty, moving right along. I'd like to welcome everybody that's in the gallery today. Thank you all for being here. And with that, uh, we need to talk about, uh, the approval of the consent agenda. I make a motion we approve the consent agenda. Motion to accept this consent agenda by, um, Mr. Jesse. Second. Second by Mr. Williams. Uh, any additions or or changes to the minutes? Hearing none. Seeing none, uh, roll call, please. Mr. Bill Harris. Yes. Mr. Kinden. Yes. Mr. Jesse. Yes. Mr. Williams. Here.

Mr. Don Harris. Yes. Approval of the consent agenda. Uh let's move to item number two, public comments. I'll open the floor for any public comments. Our first Yes. Our first public speaker card was submitted by um Gordon White of Delta.

All right. Mr. White. Mr. Chairman, members of the board, my name is Gordon White. I'm from Delaware. I appeared here two months ago asking the board to have a comprehensive contract for the proposed real estate reassessment. While I cannot vouch for the cow and company or for the price of the contract, I can say that I am pleased that the board has before it a much better and far more complete contract for this work than it had for previous reassessments. In particular, section 2B says forth that the reassessment shall be based on market value as determined by representative sales. This is exactly as it should be. I commend the board for bringing such a contract to be considered. Thank you. Thank you, sir. And I'd also like to say to you, thank you for agreeing to be on the BCA board.

I'd be glad to do that. That'll be about a year and a half from now. All right. Well, thank you, sir, for your service and thank you for your comments. Thank you, Mr. Cardi. Sorry, I think my mouse is um dead, so I've been playing with my mouse. Um, the next public speaker is going to be Don Moore of NAACP Middle Sex branch out of Urbana. All right, Miss Moore.

Good afternoon, Mr. Harris, Mr. Walker, and board members. My name is Don Moore, and I'm the current president of the NAACP Middle Sex branch. I would like to thank Mr. Walker for the suggestion of the ad hoc committee for body cameras, and thank Mr. Harris for allowing me as a community member and representing the NAACP to be part of the committee. Um, at the last board of supervisor meeting, I was not very happy with the outcome. We were not very happy with the outcome. This has dragged on long enough. During the last meeting, a decision was made due to Mr. Harris not being in attendance, Mr. William Harris that is um that we were going to move on to other business and there were no questions and there were motions made about spending county money and Mr. Harris was not here. In 2020, the sheriff's office had an opportunity to review three different body cameras and they were also given the opportunity to try them. When the sheriff's office chose what works best for them, that should have been enough. Most law enforcement officers using Axon, but they are not water resistant. We are surrounded by water. They have also had recent cameras catch on fire due to the batteries. I would rather take the recommendation to have continuous than to have continually replaced cameras. One question was asked, why do we need 16 cameras? Yes, the SRO's need cameras. In ad hoc committee meeting, we discuss those issues and question the number of cameras. The three officers are not just SRO's. They also work the road when there are holidays, when school is closed, when they need additional officers on the road. The cameras are assigned to an officer so there's no questions asked. You do not share your service weapon. This is the same concept. Please have faith in the

committee you appointed. We do not want waste, fraud, and abuse, especially with our tax dollars. We have not seen any Board of Supervisor member hold a town hall about this major county concern. The issue does not seem to hold the same weight as the boats or boat ramps, sewer, and water. But it holds way more weight than those issues. Body cameras are a public safety issue, and I just don't see public safety being a priority in this county. In Virginia, use of bodywn cameras by law enforcement is governed by a specific state law and policies. Localities are required to establish and fund a dedicated prosecutor position for every 75 body warn cameras deployed. 75. We only asking for 16 and only 14 are going to be used on an average to manage the increased workload of reviewing and presenting footage. Bodywn cameras recordings are not considered public record under the Virginia Public Record Act, but are subject to Virginia Freedom of Information Act when requested. Virginia law mandates that localities employing employing bodywn cameras must fund at least one entry assistant commonwealth attorney for every 75 cameras. This ensures adequate resources for reviewing and processing the footage generated by the cameras, which we have here in Middle Sex. At this time, we do not know what kind of time will be needed to invest. Not all incidents warrant body camera footage. If the Commonwealth Attorney's Office can review car cam footage from the state police and never had an issue, why I'm not understanding what the issue is at this time. I would hope if the workload becomes unimaginable, you would most definitely consider additional help for the Commonwealth Attorney Office. As a work group established by the State Commission Board and later by the Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security studies workload impact of

bodywn cameras on the Commonwealth Attorney's Office. This study aimed to assess the impact of bodywn cameras on public safety and judiciary agencies. And that is how they have determined for every 75 bodywn cameras, we would need an assistant Commonwealth attorney, Middle Sex is looking to have 16 cameras, 14 in use, but they will not all be in use at the same time, except for maybe the Oyster Festival. We are respectfully asking that a decision be made today on the purchase and deployment of body war cameras for the sheriff's office and that if another assistant Commonwealth Attorney is not approved, the Commonwealth Attorney's Office continues to keep statistics it needs to warrant additional employees. Thank you for your time and consideration and I made it.

Thank you, ma'am. Mr. Cardi. Right. Our next public speaker is Robert Jackson out of Urbana.

Mr. Jackson.

Good afternoon board members and others. Robert Jackson. First, I would like like to just say that I have had the opportunity to attend the ribb cutting ceremony on Thursday for the new sheriff's office. I was really surprised at the size of the building on the inside. Um, looking from the outside, it really didn't look that large. Um, from the tour that I got, it was obvious that the space that the building was well utilized. So, kudos to the sheriff to Sheriff Bushy. Great job, sir. Um, next on the issue of body cameras, I have nothing more to say on that issue. After six years, what more can be said? I will talk about the what I would what I will talk about is the CA, the Commonwealth Attorney. He keeps saying he needs another attorney for the body cameras and then turns around and says he or she will not be used just for body cameras. Well, you just added an assistant commonwealth attorney to your staff last year. How can you justify another attorney when no one knows what the case load will be like yet? There are other counties in the state of Virginia larger in middle larger in population and with more deputies than Middle Sex and they have body cameras and using the same amount of staff that you have right now. How do you explain that? From the research that I have done on BWC's body one cameras, the only time the footage is reviewed is when there is serious incident or when there is a complaint. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Jackson, for your comments. Mr. Cardi, I don't have any more um registered public speakers, but I know you like to open it up. Is there anybody else that would like to speak? Come forward. Seeing none, hearing none, I'm going to close the public comment. Okay, moving right along. We're going to move to constitutional officers. We have a treasurer's report only, although I do see Miss Wright here if there's any questions particularly to her. Why don't you come forward, ma'am, just for a second? Yes, sir. Thanks for being here today.

Thank you for having me. I just have one question. Is there anything that's uh give you pause at this point uh about anything that's going on right now with uh what you have? No, actually everything's going well. Okay. Collections are are up percentages which is later in the um let's see page 37 to 41. But right. Yep. My staff is rocking it out. All right. Wonderful. You find us any more money somewhere? I'm looking for it here. Well, we're always looking for it. Looking for it. Talk to the mic. I'm

sorry. Yeah. But anyway, yeah. Everything looks good. Thank you for your service and for your people in your office as well. Yes, sir. Have a great day. Thanks. You, too. Thanks for being here. Uh, Commissioner of Revenue is a report only. Page 42. Uh, C. Clerk of court. Uh, comp board position, Rachel Hardenback. Hello. How are you today? I'm good. How are you all doing today?

Good to see you.

Good to see you. Good to see you. I don't get a chance to come over and see you often. I'm only asking for a budget line adjustment, but I figured I need to come over here and explain to you why and give you an update as to what's going on in the office. Um, so the comp board gave us another position in our office. Um, this is regarding legislation that has been coming down for years regarding new changes. Um, when the state decided to legalize marijuana in 2021, hand in hand came new legislation that decided, "Oh, what are we going to do with all of these convictions now where people for the last hundreds of years have been convicted of possessing marijuana and how do we deal with those?" So, we have been awaiting how are we going to handle this because it's been my job to keep those records. And um so in May, the comp board allowed every clerk's office in the state one additional position. And in June they gave us guidance as to how we should proceed. Um, so the office of the executive secretary has decided best practice moving forward should be to scan all criminal files from January 1, 1986

to present into our criminal system. And that has to be done by July 1, 2026. For us that means 8,000 to 12,000 criminal files have to be scanned and data has to be entered into our system which is hundreds of thousands of pages that have to be entered which means additional staff is necessary and I did not need to come here in spring addition. uh I didn't need to come here and ask the board for additional funds and I was so I did some research and I talked to my auditor and I tried to find and allow myself um how do I resolve this problem and not bring it to the citizens and make everyone else worry. and I tried to advocate for change. And so, um, with our resources, we do have what we've collected over the years in this little thing that we charge. It's called a non-reverting fund where people who come up and get these gun permits or um, you know, if they pay for copies, we charge this nominal fee of for using a credit card. and we've collected over the years and I do have stashed away some funds that I can use um and I've checked with our auditor and she says that I can utilize these non-reverting funds to pay for the county's portion um that they are responsible for um on

this additional position. Um, the state of course is responsible and they have agreed to pay for the compensation for this full-time position. The county of course is responsible for paying the health insurance and additional payroll taxes. Um, so after speaking with the auditor and the fees that I have available, it comes out to about according to mine, if I've done all my math right, about a $16,500, which I've talked with Ann Marie about, and I've agreed that I can supply the county with. So, I just need an adjustment in my budget and I can supply those funds as long as I have the adjustment and the okay from the board. I can supply those funds to the county, make the adjustment, and um we can get that additional staff member in my in my office so that we can begin with the task we have at hand.

Wonderful. Um thank you by the way for being here today. number one and I'm type of person that I don't like surprises. So, thank you very much for the pre-all prior to you being here. I do appreciate that greatly. Uh, I have a couple questions and I'm not sure if the other board members have any questions or not. You said that um I think this data all needs to transpire by July 1. Is that correct? That's correct. So, this this is going to start immediately if we approve this. Correct. the the new employee I want I would like to start September 1st. Okay. If it's approved. Yes.

Okay. Uh follow-up question to that is um so you're going to hire a new person in September. Your drop dead date is July 1, 26, correct? Yes, sir. What happens after that? Employee-wise,

the state is on a bianual budget. So, the state has approved it for an additional year. I will have to look at my budget again next year to see if we can still handle an additional person for the following year. Um my position is we still have after July 1 of 2026 what's going to happen is there are some cases where um some are automatic sealing. There are some charges that are automatically sealed. There are a slew of additional charges that can the defendant can petition to seal. So, Virginia Code sections 19.2-392.2 and 19.2392.12. And I can email those to you. you don't have to remember them. But if a person has been charged with a crime, um any offense defined in title 18.2 that is acquitted, null prost dismissed, they may file a petition requesting expungement. If a person has been convicted or charged, deferred and dismissed of a misdemeanor, class five or class six felony, they also may and it's been more than seven years

of the date of such convictions and there are other outstanding that ha they have to regard. they also are eligible to petition. So there are other people who are going to come forward to petition the court to have their convictions expuned. Is that is that open and ongoing or is that a drop dead date of July one? No, that's beginning July 1 is when they can start filing these petitions

and and the state has decided to wave any filing fee and provide a form. So there will be several prosay litigants coming to our office to file these forms. So, I anticipate there will be several people coming into the office that will need additional help. So, depending on the work case load that that brings in, it's possible that we will need additional staff to take on that workload, but at this time, I'm not sure. Yeah. To anticipate.

I get it. Uh and I know that you'll know more about that as you get closer or somewhere around that July one day. Yes, sir. So, you're asking today for uh the approval of this position? Yes, sir. Just the and you guys, your group will take care of the county's portion of that. Yes, sir. Okay. And after July 1 or moving into the 27 calendar year, um being on a buy in budget, I assume that the state is going to fund that position again. Yes, sir. Which we'll have to tackle that at a later date,

right? Yes, sir. and in that secret box that you able to do what you need to do financially. Is that going is that going to be able to flow to the next time frame or is that just wait and see and we'll see where we are that I'll have to see where we are when I do my budget at the end of the year. Wonderful. Okay. Any questions? I got a couple questions. Go ahead, sir. Uh the position that you said you going to need to be filled by September 1. Have that already been filled? No, sir. So, you got to hire somebody. Yes, sir. And that's going to be posted in the Sentinel or just going to be

We will we will post um for the employment whether it's in the Sentinel or online or somewhere online and um advertised. Evidently, y'all going to have a learning curve. Yes, obviously. So, we don't we don't know where we not going the person who's going to be performing the scanning for that particular job of scanning those files is not going to be the new hire obviously. So I the person in the office is going to have someone in the office is going to be performing that duty and I'm going to have the new hire will be entry level land recordings things of that nature. But

so you got to do it a year to find out where you're at. Then then you know how to put things like you want it, right? That's right. And and then you But I'll need to replace you know the person that's going in the office now that's going to be scanning. We're going to be pulling from the office to get the scanning done. We have to replace that person with a new body. So, and once you catch up in next July, then you will know exactly what you where we're staying. I mean, I don't know that we will always need a person. We just need the person to get this. I got you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Any other questions?

Yes. Um, the state comp board, are they funding 56,775 or are they funding 40,267? No, that was not the number. The number originally it was Why did I Maybe I read it wrong. I don't know where that number came from.

Oh, no, no, no, no. That's the total. That number at the top is the total that includes all the compensation is well the compensation is the the 40,267. That's the amount that's just going to be from September 1 through July through June 30th. I did not put the full amount because we didn't hire as of July 1. The 56775 is the total amount including all the total including the taxes, the insurance, the disability, the total number. That's and I don't know why, but

I'll clarify, but that should say state compboard slash state compboard slashcounty funds. is that when you sent the form that number that was at the top included all of these numbers at the bottom that was what was at the top was the total at and I don't have the 40,000 I wasn't sure what the but the number at the top is the amount of all of these numbers down here added up. So, so for one year because you say we're working off of a two-year budget for the state

this year is from September 1 to June 30th because I did not hire as of July 1. I understand that 30th, but you also you state it's a two-year state budget. So then the next year would be a complete 12 months. Correct. And what will the state give us for that 12 months then? Um it was the complete 12 months was 48,000. Okay. Some Okay. And 48,000 is entry level for your office. Um entry level is 42,000 as a deputy one. I thought you said that this would be an entry level job. That's it.

Because it wouldn't be doing the work. It's going to be shifted somewhere else in your office.

That's that's correct. 40 42 is an entrylevel position. So we will do some shifting on the comp board amount. Uh the comp compensation board gave us a level four a deputy level four position is what they gave us. So, I'll have to move my deputies around in the in their order to make it. So, like I said when I said that um it's not going to be the new person that's completing the scanning and indexing. I have to move someone from my office to complete it, right? And then the new person's going to be

in the entry level position. So, I have to move someone from my office into level four because I don't have a level four position. So, I have to move someone from my office into level four and then move the new person into level. So, someone in your office will get a promotion through this, right? Okay. Okay. And then this position, you're going to use the difference between entry level and what the money you're getting here to give the person in your office a raise to do start doing this. I think that the person that I'm moving over there is about at the same level. All right. the position it looks like to me from what I'm hearing it's funded for two years by the state because the state has a budget by the state and we don't know what's going to happen after that right exactly

and all the records could be filed and everything done by that time and that's a year past the deadline we don't know what will happen in the future so um are you hiring this as full-time or are you hiring this as a term position well the state has it as a full-time position full-time but is there a term in other words you only have funding for two years and it's only so much work that this position is for. So, I would think when you would hire the person, you would let them know it's for a term of two years and if you don't get funding after that, then the position goes away. Absolutely. And yes, I would let them know that when they're hiring. Yes. Okay. All right. Thank you. Uh-huh. Any other questions?

So, before we uh vote on this, let's be clear. Yes, it's a bianium budget, but we're approving this through until July of 20 uh 2026 at which point there'll be further discussion on whether you need that person, what the real numbers are, and what we're going to do or not do. Yes, sir. We're all on the same page on that. Yes, sir. All right. Wonderful. our position. So, a uh a motion would be in order to approve FY2026-00002. Also, moved. So, moved by Mr. Kittinen. Second.

Second by Mr. Kittinen. I'm sorry. So moved by Mr. Jesse, seconded by Mr. Kittinen. Um, any further discussion? Seeing none, roll call, please. Mr. Kinden? Yes. Mr. Jesse? Yes. Mr. Williams? Yes, Mr. Bill Harris. Yes, Mr. Don Harris. Yes. Motion's approved. Thank you for coming today. Y'all have a good night.

Okay. Um, item number 3D, Sheriff's Office 911 Equipment Grant. Amarie, are you going to handle that? Yes, sir. I think I am.

All right. Um the every year the county has been eligible for a NG 911. This year it is a $150,000 grant with no I want to say no strings attached, but that's not right. with no match the we are required to purchase all these equipments right here including training for eight I think it's $8,000 worth of training um connectivity hardware for 20,000 headset replacements training iPads even some 911 trailer upgrades and at this time um I will say that David Layman worked with the 911 center to make sure that this grant was applied for in a timely manner so we I don't see David Layman in here he should get some kudos for his work on this as well as Rachel. Um, and me, I'm just the bearer of news. So, at this time, we'd we'd request the board of supervisors to approve and accept the grant along with the budget of adjustment of 2026-003, which allows us to actually spend the $150,000.

I didn't see that in my packet 2026-00003. Right. It is just it's on page uh 46. Oh, there it is. Well, and I think when we talked about it, I didn't have this piece of paper in the packet. Remember I told you that I needed to fix this piece of paper. Right. Right. Right. Right. No problem. Um, any further discuss discussion or questions for Mr. Ricardi? Seeing none, hearing none. Roll call, please. Motion. Motion yet?

Oh, yeah. We do need a motion. Sorry. I'll make a motion we approve uh budget sub request form FY20263. Second. Roll call, please. Mr. Jesse? Yes. Mr. Williams? Yes. Mr. Bill Harris? Yes. Mr. Kinden? Yes. Mr. Don Harris? Yes. Motion is approved. Okay, moving right along. Item number four, agency and staff reports. Always our favorite to see uh VDOT monthly report. Mr. Mcnite.

Good afternoon, members of the board. Um here to give a an update, monthly update on Middle Sex County and some of the things that are going on currently throughout the county. It's wrapping up paving season. uh multiple routes throughout the county have been completed. So that's that whole process is wrapping up. You can see some of those routes on this list here. Uh some construction projects in the next 24 months that I did want to highlight. One in particular, UPC 123878 is route 3 and 33 at 626 Regent Road. That intersection improvement project, as a reminder, that was a smart scale project that's fully funded. It's projected to start December of 2026. Uh bridge projects in the next 24 months, UPC 118288, that's route 17, the northbound bridge replacement over Dragon Run, that's still projected for early 2026 start. Some projects that actually were completed today. Route 625, Bob's Hole, and 693. Those were pipe replacement projects. Uh those have been patched out as of today. Uh they were just completed. Um that's Bob's Hole and Corbin Hall Road. And then also the secondary six-year plan, uh route 740 Sports Complex Road, that paving has been completed as well. Um there we do need to put down some shoulder stone on one side, but other than that it is substantially completed. So it looks great, rides good. So it does

happy with that. Uh some other I've been getting a lot of questions about a dock at the end of Lover's Lane in Deltavville. I did just want to give give the board a quick update. Are aware of that material has already been ordered for the repairs of that of that dock at the end of Lover's Lane. Uh, and so once those materials come in, I'll be able to give you a more finite schedule for when those will occur. Quick question. Is that in um Lover's Lane? That was by request uh by a letter by uh Ms. Moore. Is that correct? Is that the same one we're talking about? I I'll let Miss Moore know today.

I saw the response. I think the uh I think VAT had planned to improve the project before Miss Moore's letter. Okay, wonderful. But she was she was very happy and pleased that it was being done. Okay, wonderful. Thank you. This going to put the eyes on the county dot now. Eyes are always on the county dot. Continue, Mr. Mcnite.

Yes, sir. Um I do want to go over really quickly um the Deltavville shared use path. Um, I did meet with board member Kitten and and the county administrator, Mr. Walker, to discuss this project. Just as a quick reminder to go over this project, the county applied for and received TAP funding to uh for this project to construct a shared use path in Deltavville. On April 5th, 2024, the county requested additional funds and a time extension for that project. The county was awarded the maximum allocation for TAP programs totaling $2.5 million. It was understood and agreed upon that the 20% requirement of matching funds totaling $625,000 plus any additional funding required to deliver the project would be provided with local funds. A public hearing was held on June 5th, 2025. Uh there were some concerns raised during that meeting with the size of the path and the proximity of the path to homes along Route 33. Uh the county and board requested that VOTE review the plan and determine if the scope of and width of the path could be reduced to either an 8-oot shared use path or a 5-ft sidewalk. It was determined that this would be possible. However, there may be some additional design required for the five-foot sidewalk. Uh, but that it was likely it could be accomplished. Uh, to proceed, the county would need to draft a letter requesting the change and the reasoning for the change and the intent of the project and how this change will still serve the original purpose of the project and provide the same benefits to in to the intended users. Some important dates I I just want to put in front of you. The rideway phase is set to begin April 2026 to March 2027. The you

utility relocations March 2027 to November 2027 and then advertisement of the project is November 2027. Um please note that if the county were to cancel the project, the county would be responsible for repayment of all the funds expended on the project at that time. to date that would be $238,485. Uh, additionally, the county would not be eligible to apply for funding through TAP, uh, the TAP program for a minimum of two years. So, just some things to consider um, when making that decision. Questions for Mr. Mcnite? latest on the um Norse bridge.

So, VOTE, we are conducting review any any fatal crash on any roadway, there's an automatic review that is conducted as part of that. Um the the crash that occurred on the Norris on July 13th, um we that review is ongoing in coordination with land uh law enforcement. Uh it the process involves assessing road conditions at the time of the crash, the infrastructure, signs, pavement markings, uh and any other contributing factors that may have resulted in uh the cause of the crash. I can't speak to those right now. That's still on ongoing. Uh the review will be complete within 45 days of the crash. So we're looking at late August when that review will be complete. Um so the circumstances of the crash are reviewed as well as in accordance with that review

update on the new bridge. So there is a um a bill I believe it's scheduled for uh it I think it's August 28th I believe is the bill signing. Yes. Yes sir. Yeah. Um construction is still projected to begin 2028 as of right now. Um, and they're projecting 4 years of construction to 2032. I think there's some citizens concerned about the fire being on the bridge and what it did to the asphalt underneath. And you know, anything that could be done to speed up that 2028 deadline would be greatly appreciated. I know you're trying all you can do, but it would be greatly appreciated. Yes, sir. Understood.

Oh, yeah. Leo, first of all, I want to thank you for uh um helping save some front yard in Deltavville uh with a with a little narrower path. Um also, I just wanted to ask I know that probably going on a limb here because I know that the last meeting talked about all the all the roads in Deltaville being repaired, but uh Robins Point Road, do you know if that's been looked at recently? It wasn't on the list here, but I do not know, but I will add it to my list. Robins Robins Point Robins Point Road. Yeah, it's uh off of North End Road going down to all those houses at the point. It's It's pretty rough. Okay,

thanks. Okay, any other questions? I have several. Uh new bridge. Yes, sir. Uh well, wait a minute. Let me back up. the path. Has the county administrator sent uh the letter that you're looking for? That's what I was getting ready to chime in on. If that's the consensus of the board that you want them to try to design that down to eight or 5 ft, authorize me to send a letter and I'll get that out tomorrow. I would say it's going to require an actual vote, not a consensus. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah.

Okay. Let me finish my questions and then we'll see where we want to go with that. Um just curiosity with two accidents on the Norris Bridge in the last what uh 45 days or thereabouts. Uh is is that something that yourself would um send any information in the consideration of the bridge being maybe a three-lane bridge? I don't know. Or is that a done deal and it's already done?

To my knowledge, it's being designed as a two-lane bridge with shoulders, much wider shoulders. I don't I can't I don't know for sure if that's four or six feet or or larger, but it is it will have larger shoulders. Um to my knowledge, it is not being designed as a three-lane bridge. Okay. Just curious. That was all my question was was uh you know that bridge there should be some consideration and I don't even know what the accident potential is over the last five years but might be worth talking about or at least saying something about that. Yes sir.

Uh and I know the extended shoulders uh will be a big addition to the current bridge the way it is. Okay. Um, thank you very much for your diligence and quick response on the, as you well can see being up there, there's been a lot of improvements that the complex committee has done up there with the county as well. Uh, and uh, that's a great addition uh, to where the ballpark is now uh, that center uh, versus uh, going forward. So, thank you very much for that. And that'll answer one of my questions that I have to report to the complex committee because they that was being talked about today. Matter of fact, along with how good it looked uh and then asking about were there going to be any uh additional gravel coming up there with the enlargement of that uh pavement. So,

next week. Yes, sir. Hey, you keep all the dogs off my back and I appreciate it. Thank you very much. All right. All right.

I wasn't going to say nothing, but you know, you got roads leading to that complex 619 and you got 620 that goes by and y'all know you're closed. The bridge down you uh uh I mean years ago it's not going to be opened back up. Have not anything been done to 619? You got a bevel in the road is cracking over and I was the one that comment you're fixing everything in Deltaville and how but the middle of the county is not being looked at. Now I don't know what connection it is but it seems to me it is something. So when these things get beyond some other things give me questions you know and I you know I kind of kind of made my answer because no responding doing nothing it is what it is you know so it's it's good that they put as for you know two or three feet but all of a sudden you know cut off and you think about the rest of the road that you know accidents happen at the bottom it's not open up it's got a waterway van on on 620 then you got to go to uh 619 which the road is beveing and somebody ran the ditch the other day it's nothing being Now you you know um what do we have to do because when we live in an area we know and and and you know uh data and all this kind of stuff as well but common sense is a whole lot better than data. It's just like the bridge and different things just like the speed limit on dirt bridge road. Uh you know we try to get it lower and void raised the speed limit because they use data 45 days. Who got to do something 45 days to study something? You know, I I don't I I really don't get that. But if we get a present of taking a long time, guess what? We take a long time to do it. And uh the pandemic was 5 years ago. So I just like see things moving a little moving a little quicker. And you know, to get one pat on the back one way, you might be slapping somebody else. So it got to be very careful how these pets go.

Understood. Any other questions? Thank you, Mr. Mcnite, for being here today. We appreciate it. And I'm going to handle that right now. So, is it what's the consensus of the board? Uh, do we want to empower our count our um uh Mr. Walker to send the letter for looking at moving from 8T, I think it was, to four or six feet versus

it's currently designed as a 10-ft path. And the two options, and we would need to know which one would be reducing it from 10 feet to 8 feet. It would still be considered a shared use path or reducing that scope even more to a 5-ft sidewalk. So, which is a different surface. That'd be concrete versus asphalt. The path is a shared use path is typically asphalt,

right? Your opinion, Mr. Krennan? I I probably prefer considering the circumstances there a five- foot sidewalk. However, realizing that in all practicality, people are going to be riding bicycles on it. And uh I'm not really sure that sidewalks would be designed for that sort of thing. So, if it's an extra um couple of feet, then I'd probably go with the with the uh the little bit wider version. But if we can get it as close as we can to the roadway to spare as much front yard as we could, that would be great.

Okay. Um, are these options come with a price reduction from what we just talked about as well? There would be a minimal price reduction from going from 10 to 8 ft obviously just because of the the amount of surface that you're reducing the 5-ft sidewalk. we would have to relook at some of the storm water because that might change some of that part. So there I don't know if there would really be that much of a a price reduction in that depending on what that reveals if it needs to be redesigned. Obviously that's going to cost um some more money. So the chance we could vote tonight on 5 foot approve 5 foot and actually cost us more.

No, I I do not anticipate it cost more. I but I'd be hesitant to say it would save you any you know amount of money. Okay. Thank you. Well, and what you're what we're talking about on that is a letter coming from um a county administrator to them saying we'd like you to look at that and then there'll be some further discussion andor cost of uh what that change may or may not be right before we give the final approval. Correct. Correct.

Yes. Yes, sir. And the easiest one would be going from 10 to 8 feet because it nothing's changing other than the width of the path itself. So that's really all that's changing. The five foot we'd have to look at storm water and whether a curb and gutter would be required and some of that some of those items. So one would be nice concrete and the other one's going to be asphalt with the old kind of typically shared use paths are asphalt are they? Okay. Help me with a motion. County attorney, please, Miss Lewis.

Yeah. Um, so, um, a motion to authorize the county attorney to request whatever size path y'all want, uh, for the the shared the Deltaville shared use project, please. Can I u, Mr. McNight, is it uh is is 8 foot the the narrowest shared use path you can have? Yes, that's correct. Okay.

And you the the narrowest option that we have right now in this location would be a five-foot sidewalk. That is as narrow as we can get. Now you can have six foot sidewalks if you know but um that's the narrowest option for a shared use path. The narrowest is is going to be eight feet. Okay. I say sidewalk.

If we tell you we want the 5ft sidewalk today Mhm. and it comes back that that price is actually higher or or it's but yet the 8oot is a lot a lot better deal for us. Can we go back to the 8 foot or we're making a decision today and that's it? No, I we just have to get approval to reduce if we're going to go to the five. we have to go back to central office. They have to review it to ensure that it's not changing the scope of the project substantially. That that sort of thing. I I do not anticipate it being more expensive than what you what you have budgeted for the project, what currently is budgeted. So, but yes,

I think the concrete will look nicer. Okay. So, the motion is to empower um Mr. Walker to send a letter requesting us looking at the sidewalk option as well as what we've already looked at. Yeah. And I can send Matt a Okay. Is there a motion for that? So moved in those words. Wonderful. You can clean that up a little bit from the county attorney. Uh I need a second. We're talking about five foot the Yes.

Second. Okay. Motion made by Mr. Kitten, second by Mr. Bill Harris. Any further discussion? Roll call, please. Mr. Williams. Yes. Mr. Bill Harris. Yes. Mr. Kinden. Yes. Mr. Jesse? Yes. Mr. Don Harris? Yes. Motions carried. Thank you, Mr. Mc Knight, for being here. Thank you all. Okay. Um, moving right along. Uh, school matters. Dr. Sites, are you here? I am here. Wonderful.

Good afternoon. So, you have a budget supplement request form from Middle Sex County Public Schools on page 49. 49. Yes.

Yes. And so, the first there's a um a refund that comes back to us from vital records, which is what we use to scan all of our documents. It seems it was a double bill payment that was made and we caught and they have refunded that money back to us which goes back into the technology budget. Um we have received two small donations. One of those is designated for the elementary school and one has been designated for the high school. And then there is an insurance adjustment due to a one of our vehicle repairs. So those are the requests that I have for you today. questions to Dr. Sites. Seeing none, um, hearing none, uh, a motion would be in order for FY2026, uh, 03 budget supplement request.

So move. So moved by Mr. Jesse. Second. Second by Mr. Bill Harris. Further discussions or questions? You going to get out of here a little easier today? Wait for a while. I'm going back to the office. Don't Don't change it. I know. I know. Uh, roll call on the motion, please. Mr. Bill Harris? Yes. Mr. Krennen? Yes. Mr. Jesse? Yes. Mr. Williams? Yes. Mr. Don Harris? Yes. Motion's carried. Thank you, Dr. Sites, for being here. Thank you.

All right. Okay. Moving right along. Social services. That's a report only on pages 51 to 56. And we're going to do a little flip-flop on item D and item E. We're going to actually hear item E first. And that's the MPP DC regional dredging authority, Louis Lawrence, and introducing I believe uh Rachel Peabody. And further discussion, Broad Creek Dredge and Regional Dredge.

All right. Good afternoon. Nice to see you all. Um, last time I was here, I was Louis Lawrence as the executive director for the Middle Peninsula Planning District Commission. I hit 30 years in June, so now I'm managing director uh for the PDC. And this has been a transition that the commission has been working on for several years. Um, so we've hired Rachel Peabody onto the staff and um I'll ask her to come up and give you a little background on who she is and why we hired her. uh she is now serving as the acting executive director and she comes with a very interesting pedigree of work history that is applicable to a lot of the work that we do. So Rachel, you want to say a few words here first?

Thank you. Um I'm Rachel Peabody a little bit on my background. I come here from the Virginia Marine Resources Commission where I was the director of um and all of the environmental programs there. Um, I had a workforce of about 200 employees um that worked in in our programs. Um, so I worked everywhere from fisheries management to um legislative policy. Um, from a personal perspective, I I am in a commercial fishing family. Um, so coastal, rural coastal is very important to me. Um, maintaining the culture um, and the use of the water is part of everything that I do. Um, and we're also small business owners. So, I'm looking forward to the work with Middle Peninsula, with our boards and our local county staff to kind of put all of those things together um to find solutions to what you decide are your needs um and for us to make your jobs easier.

Thank you. Welcome to the new position. Thank you. And Rachel may have to cut out early because she's got little ones she's got to go pick up from school. Um so, she'll be here for as long as she can and then she's going to have to get get on up the road. Uh so, Mr. Mr. Chairman, how would you like to proceed down? We got quite a few things here to talk about. What's your pleasure? Wherever you want to start is fine with us.

All right. Well, why don't we start with some good news stuff and talk about Broad Creek. That project is done. So, we got a deep channel in there and that was a remarkable project from moving as fast as it did from November to where we are right now. I uh Rebecca is here. I think you may want to give an update to to the board on exactly what happened and what transpired. And I think uh we will be able to tie this one off into a nice package and the good folks down in Delta Deville can start using their channels. I'm pretty sure they're already using them. Yes, they are.

Good afternoon. I'm Rebecca Francis. Uh I'm a coastal scientist and marine scientist with VHB. However, when we started this project, I was with waterway survey, so I'm still in transition as well. Um, Broad Creek had not been dredged since about 2009. It was a core project at that time and when the core stopped maintaining their small draft projects, the Port Authority stepped in with their grant program and so this was project was dredged as part of a grant. Now, since it had not been dredged since 2009, there were no permits uh environmental permits and there were no design plans for the project. So the county really and and uh MPBDC really were starting from scratch on this one and they were able to hire a dredging contractor and we started working through the permitting system. So we got all of our permits uh in October of 2024 and then the uh county and MPBDC started working on the actual contracts. So what's really unique about this project is when we design dredging projects, we always call it you have to design for both ends of the pipe. That means where you uh how much material you can take out and where do you place that material and this was a very unique project because you did have a placement area but the placement area did come with some restrictions on it. So when we started looking at the design of the project while it was permitted to minus 10 ft which we kept the core um uh general design but we added some wideners we couldn't dredge to minus 10 feet. Um the uh uh uh estimated volume to minus 10 ft was around 70,000 yards uh cubic yards, but the placement area would only hold an estimated 30,000 cubic yards. So to meet the core criteria, we had to look at how much material can we remove and maintain uh

the disposal site. So the initial depths that we looked at were what we call a minus 7 plus one foot channel. So they had to get to - 7 ft but we would pay them up to minus 8 ft. As that project continued uh the uh contractor kept taking um aerial photography and getting volume updates in the disposal area and by May we realized that we were going to have more capacity in the disposal area. So we went ahead and made a design change with the contractor so that now they could go from a minus 8 foot channel to a plus one foot channel. So uh somewhere between an eight and a 9 ft channel. So that really ended up uh creating a really nice dredging project for you much greater than what we thought we were able to. Um and so the um uh let me see. So we ended uh in June and the total uh volume removed was uh around 36 to 37,000 cubic yards. So uh we were able to dredge about 7,000 more yards than what we thought we originally had capacity for. And the contractor did an excellent job of regrading that site. And I'm sure you'll hear a little bit more about that um from Mr. England. But I'd be happy to answer any questions that that you have.

Mr. Mr. Chairman, before Rebecca answers any questions you may have, I promised her I was going to lavish a lot of praise upon her and her associates. Um, I can't imagine doing this dredging project without Rebecca's assistance and Mark Mansfield and several others, Dave Cretz behind me, too. I think we all learned more than we ever wanted to about dredging. But I have been completely and totally impressed with their level of professionalism, their involvement in the project. I don't think there was a morning that went by that I didn't throw an email at Rebecca and she had three back before I could read them all. Um, it's a space that we're not that experienced in and I think the project went remarkably well and it would not have went that well without y'all's assistance and hat tip to Louis too. Louie was on it uh getting information and and and helping bridge gaps of understanding. How about that?

That may be the word of the month, gaps of understanding. But Rebecca, thank you for your help and assistance with that project.

It was a great project. I was very impressed with with the final I I do work a lot on dredging. That's one of my primary um uh tasks that I perform. And um while I know it seemed painful at times, this this project turned out very very well in in in my uh opinion. But I'd be happy to answer any questions. I I would um along with the uh county administrator um say that um we we were very pleased with everything. Wasn't easy and we had a couple stone blocks here or there, but all in all uh the project was done uh greatly and uh we appreciate what both of you have done to to make that happen. I do have a question and I may have to refer to the older gentleman in the group uh because I think he was here. You said 2009 was when the last dredge occurred. Out of curiosity, what was the depth that we um we dredged that in 2009?

Do not recall. I'd have to go back and look at it. I

I'd be curious to know what that is uh at some point. No big rush on it, but I'd be curious to know how that um coincided with uh you know the 20 24 25 dredging uh part of that. Um and the I saw um something that and maybe that was county information that um we would look at dredging possibly every 10 years. Well, we went longer than 10 years uh since the last time we dredged that. So, I'd be curious to know how much it was dredged the last time as well.

Any other questions? Thank y'all very much for coming today. We're not done. It's the Louis and dredging show. Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Um so, the third item that you all had down there was a regional dredging authority. This is something that the region has been working on and positioning for for probably almost a decade. When Congress defunded the shallow water dredging program at the core of engineers, that's when we started advising our local governments that this was a type of bad that we did not want coming to our coastal communities. And what ended up happening was when the light bulb would go out in a channel marker and the Coast Guard would show up to change the light bulb, if their boat hit the bottom, they have to take channel marker out. And so channel markers started coming out on the seaside of the Eastern Shore. Um Davis Creek and Matthews, Aberdine Creek and Gloucester, uh Hole in the Wall in Matthews. Matthews County actually owns those eightons now to try to keep them back in because Coast Guard was going to take them out. And we knew that this was going to be a long-term a catastrophic transport, maritime transportation problem uh with what we would call devolution at its worst where local governments were left with this problem with no significant solution other than using your taxpayer money to dredge all of these creeks. And we knew at that time that we needed a really different approach to this and so that that's the first thing that we did was created the Virginia waterways maintenance fund at the state level. And that was working with delegate Bloxma, delegate Hajes. And that we've been able to grow that allocation from about, you know, a million, a million and a half per year to up to five million a year. But you know how much this individual project cost you all here. And so you can basically do one or two projects a year with the state funding. And there's probably hundreds of these projects all over the Commonwealth that are in the same position that we're in right now. So, we undertook a pretty large study nationwide to try to understand all the different models that were out there. And there are about nine different uh dredging programs that are operating in

Maine, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Florida right now that have developed some form of a municipal dredging program that look at different financing uh methods that do public private partnerships all the way to the municipality owning a dredge with public workers out there going from creek to creek all the way through here. So, we have been positioning for this for a long time and about three years ago, uh, we got about five and a half million in the state budget approved. Um, but the good folks at the state had some difficulties in coding that money for us to be able to get that out of the state budget. We were successful in getting that out. So, now the public access authority is sitting on about $7.5 million to operationalize the framework for a municipal dredging program. That's unheard of. that that is a really monumental step forward that the state legislature has taken with very explicit instructions to me. Do not mess this up. Figure out how to deliver public services more efficiently with better cost structure um to keep these maritime highways in the middle peninsula open and then if we figure it out first then the rest of the coastal communities can come you know behind us and also replicate what we're doing. So that was the other thing that Matt asked for me to come and talk with you all about is how that is beginning to unfold. So we took title to that 7 and a half million around the 1st of June. So now what needs to happen and that money went expressly to the Middle Peninsula Ches Bay public access authority which is my other hat. Take the PDC hat off, put the public access authority hat on. and that um the PAA now has to sit down and work with the member local governments across the middle peninsula to see what that coalition of the willing looks like. You know, which localities want to join, how will the program unfold, how will we begin to look at funding uh for dredging because you all just went through the one-time dredging uh for Broad Creek and

what we need to break is that cycle of one time and then never coming back again for 5 years, 10 years, or 15 years. and then you're running around trying to figure out how do you pay for it? Uh how do we deal with it? A much more efficient model is to have that maintenance dredging cycle planned for and then how do we fund it? Um so that every creek in the middle peninsula whether it's federally recognized or creeks that have a significant commercial presence have a plan to be able to deal with dredging long term from a financing perspective. So the coalition of the willing question becomes which of the local governments of the nine of the middle peninsula want to take a seat at the table and have a a good conversation around how do they want to move this forward recognizing that everybody most likely will not join at the exact same time. every time we set up a another regional unit of government to deal with very specific local problems that you all have, we may get 75% participation right out the gate, but normally within the next year or two, everybody joins because they're able to see, oh yeah, this makes some good sense. So, we have to also account for how do we bring the others along that didn't want to join in the very beginning. How do you address the cost structure? how do you you know because the ones that go first are going to be the ones that are end up paying for the majority of the structure as it evolves as it goes forward. So um anticipating that when we started working on the Broad Creek um I went ahead and commissioned and I spoke with you all about this last time that I was here had legal counsel commission a white paper on what some of these different financing approaches might look like. You certainly I'm not asking you to action this tonight. And I'm only providing this to you all because this was part of the Broad Creek project because we knew that Broad Creek, it was so difficult for us, even though we were able to get it done quickly. You all learned a lot. We learned a lot. There were a lot of bumps in the road that I don't want to be on your plate because I don't think you all want this back on your plate again. That's what the true benefit of having the municipal dredging

program is, is when your phone rings, you get to say, I don't know, call the public access authority. They're the applicant of record. They're the ones that are handling this for us. So, the paper that we put together, I had legal counsel take a look at all the different funding mechanisms that were out there. Many of the ones I had prepositioned inside of state statute with different bills that I had the delegate put in several years ago to make sure that you all had financial options to help pay for dredging. One of the ones that they talk about in this study is the tax incremental financing district, a tiff tool, which is generally used in urban areas for lowincome housing. When your certain areas your communities go through a life cycle, it allows for the aortioning of that tax revenue to be poured back in to deal with a specific public problem. So, I added dredging back into that statute that would allow for the aortioning of revenue within an area that you circle to be able to say some of that revenue can go back to be able to fund future dredging projects. I asked legal counsel to look at other ones. They came back with the service district model. Uh the service district model is utilized by several localities in Virginia right now. Some of them uh utilize a threshold where you would ask residents inside of that polygon to say some percentage of folks have to sign off on it. What legal pointed out was that requirement is not in the statute. It allows for it but it is not required. So it is a very powerful tool that allows for you to direct your taxable revenue to very uh important public needs projects and infrastructure projects within defined geographies that you draw on a map. So you have a couple different choices that are contained in the white paper that as we begin to stand up the regional dredging authority. We will have the same conversation with every local government that wants to have join the coalition of the willing to be able to say you will not be able to fund all of these dredging projects solely with grant money. You're going to have to

supplement it. What you would not want to do, which is something that we've been counseling on, is every time you go back to your general fund to pay for dredging projects on certain creeks, it sets up for really uncomfortable conversations for those folks that don't live on the waterfront, your phone starts to ring. Why are my taxpayer dollars going to make it deeper for these people that live on the waterfront? A lot of that can be avoided by thinking through the mechanics of how we want to finance dredging short-term and long term. And there are a lot of different tools that can provide consistency and predictability in the space of financing public need projects. The core of engineers right now, they're only getting funding for maybe one to two projects a year. We have 17 federally maintained channels in the middle peninsula alone just on our roster. So I mean it would take just ungodly years for the core to ever show back up. So, we're going to have to be in this space long term, uh, trying to convince the state legislature to invest more, looking at different ways to set up the costing structure for you all to know that you've got money that's available. And so, we will be back at sometime probably within the next, you know, six months or so, asking you all about which of these financing structures do you think fits the way that you all want to govern in Middle Sex? And so the tools that you may deploy in Middle Sex may be very different than the tools that Gloucester or Matthews wants to deploy, but there is a finite list of tools that will have to be selected. Um, so I wanted to leave you all with that. There's also an ordinance that's in your packet as well. If you go with the service district, you're going to have to develop an ordinance that will probably if you want the tiff district one, we can modify that ordinance as well to handle the tiff district. But it's a really good white paper that gets into all the different tools. There may be another one on there that you all like better. I think the service district one um is setting up to be the easiest to deploy with the less amount of complications on

your finance staff. Um but that will be a local decision for you all as as we begin to get into that that conversation there. Okay. So that's kind of an update of where we are with the regional dredging authority. The next step will be the public access authority will convene and then that that body politic will have to decide whether or not your current appointees that serve on that public access authority whether or not they want to keep it at that level or whether or not they want to set up a secondary um board or body that only deals with dredging. So the public access deals with all the public access stuff and then we've got a secondary board through the authority that may require some appointments uh from you all here uh to be able to serve in that capacity and and if we go down that road if it is the wishes of the access door to do that I think it's probably important to have some marina owners that can participate in that. We heard a lot from marino owners on Broad Creek. They care passionately about it. Um just like the surface transportation folks do. If the trucks can't get up down the road, VOTE's going to hear about it. if the boats can't get in and out, the dredging authority is going to hear about it. Uh, any questions on um the regional dredging authority as we continue to kind of move that through its steps or Matt, you may have some comments on that.

Louie, I I have one. I know we're still very early in the process. Where are the other counties lining up in this? I know some counties are more interested in it than others, obviously the coastal counties, right? But um have Glosser, Matthews, have they kind of got out and ahead of us on? You all are the first ones that we've actually talked about taken possession of the money and we knew that that that why we did this paper because we knew the timing would align correctly. If I had to guess, I think the coalition of the will and the easy is going to be Gloucester, Matthews, Middle Sex, and Essex. Yeah.

Because those four have active dredging needs. King and Queen and King William their dredging cycle on the Matapan and the Puny is years out. They got deep waters with the exception of the plateau in front of West Point where that's shallowing in that could end up to be a king and queen dredging project and that might bring enough to be able to bring them to the table. They they generally want to be have a seat at the table early instead of not. Well, Mr. chairman and just a reminder Wayne Reggie myself and Kendall Weber as our citizen rep uh represent Middle Sex on the planning district commission and the conversations we've had at the commission have been outstanding I think. Yes,

I I have it's been seldom that I've seen a regional issue get off to as good a start with participation widespread accepted. It's not we don't want to do this is how do we make it faster? Oh yeah. Yeah. every discussion we've had is can we just get this thing kickstarted and get it going. Um, it's something I'm very excited about and I hope to help the county facilitate whatever option if we want to participate that we pursue. And uh, I think that nexus between the county and this regional body is going to serve us very well. And currently I think Dave Cretz is our rep on the access authority. That's correct. And then I'm the alternate. No, it's vice vers.

Okay. Well, there you go. I make him go often. So that's right. All right. Any questions on on the uh dredging work that policy work that we're doing right now? We'll be back and frequently on this as we continue to go. Thanks for coming in and updating us for sure. We appreciate it. Do do they have I mean is Sans Anderson providing y'all consistent legal counsel and guidance? Say for instance, the county met on this at a at a retreat or something in the fall and decided, hey, we want to go with the the TIFF district. Uh, can we get some guidance on that through Sans Anderson through the authority? Yes, that that's correct. Okay. I stole Heather's questions because I I felt that disturbance coming from legal. Yes. Um, if we were to work,

that's why the model ordinance was in there to help give you the shape of what it would look like if you wanted to go the public service district way. Yeah. Legal was saying try to stay away from the tiff. Although it it does the utility of what we want, they think it's more complicated than just a public service district. And so the paper does a pretty good job outlining all of that in there. But yes, they'll they'll be able to help. To to cut to the chase, we're talking about special tax districts, right? So some of them are aortioning revenue, not new taxes. So no, it is not a special taxing district.

It could be though you could choose to levy additional tax or you could choose to aortion existing tax revenue for a specific public purpose or public need. There's a distinction between the two. Thank you.

Yes, sir. And that that question is where it gets hung up a lot of times. The tax incremental finance because of the word tax in that people immediately say, "Well, it's a new tax. We're not interested in it." And we say, "No, it's not. It's a portioning of tax revenue that is already being generated inside of a polygon that you desire to say this amount of that taxable revenue goes to this specific public need that we have." And so it it has to be clarified because a lot of folks get really confused about the term. It was an uncomfortable choice of words at the uh if we're spending more money, someone's got to pay for it some way, shape, fashion, form. We can call it whatever we want to, but we got to generate the funds to make this recent dredge go over.

Absolutely. It's aortionment versus new tax. Any other questions for Mr. Lawrence? Okay. So, we got Carlton Boat Ramp. That's the next one. All right. That's on here. Okay. So, I think uh we wanted to have uh Ricky with VHB talk a little bit about some of the working waterfront uh work that we were doing and then uh Dave and Matt and myself will probably talk some about um some of the other things that we've learned from some state agencies related to the sand that continues to fill in the hole next to the ramp. Okay. Um Yeah. Well, wait a minute. Uh I think Mr. England is up next, correct?

Are we going back or you want to stay with that one? Oh, yeah. Because that's the element saying nest. You're correct. Yeah. Let me let me with your permission I'll take my seat. Please. Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Mr. England.

Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the board. So, we're going to be talking about 4 D here, which is again since we're on the dredging topic. Uh, if you recall, I guess last meeting I came before you with uh the dredge spoil site for Broad Creek and how we're going to go about removing the dredge materials. Um, I brought before you an RFP draft that was in our packet last month. Um, I'm still working on that RFP draft. I've uh taken that to our our partners, the core of engineers, and discussed that with them. They are in concurrence with that draft at this point. So, I could put that on the street as perhaps a long-term solution for maintaining that site, getting it back to a a condition where it's ready to be received dredge materials again. Uh we do partner with them. We have agreements with the core of engineers to manage that site. So, they want to be kept in the loop, but they are they have reviewed my draft and are ready to go forward with that with a long-term solution. Um, if you recall at the last meeting as well, you declared uh the spoils in that site from the Broad Creek dredge and previous dredges as um surplus. And um Matt made the suggestion that we we revisit uh the process we used last time to try to work more in the short term if there's some interested parties in coming to get some of those materials and try to lay some rules and a policy and procedure down for that to happen. What I put in your packet uh this time is a revised version of those procedures and policies. Um, I'm mainly looking for your head nod for to to go ahead and proceed with that in the immediate term as well as uh I think I've already gotten the approval from you last month to to go in the RFP approach. So, I'm ready to to advertise that RFP as well. So, a couple of tools to try to get moving on getting the sand, the dredged materials out of that

site and get it done in a managed and controlled way. So, um, with that, today I'm mainly bringing, um, before you in your packet just a revised procedures and policies as well as a a hold harmless clause form that we would require contractors that want to come in and use the site.

And and Chip, if I could uh expand on that a little bit, I think last month I I gave a hat tip to Mark Mansfield, a gentleman with DHB that we've been working with through the PDC. uh we were on a conference call when we just started kicking off the RFP that uh we were directed to develop and he had suggested very highly that we get in touch with the core of engineers. Uh they are our partner on the site and uh I think the adage was if you want to go quick go by yourself if you want to go further go together. the core of engineers is probably going to have their input, slow things down a little bit on RFP, but I think it's a much better product with their participation and uh we'll go further together so to speak. So the the dredge material policy is what we do in between while we're waiting if the board wants to. We've made our former policy much more robust and uh I think it protects the county fairly well. If the board wants to continue down the road of allowing our local contractors come in under agreement and harvest some sand, um it it's a good thing and it may work against us a little bit getting partners in other areas, but we'll cross that bridge right here in a moment when we talk about Carlton Road boat ramp. Um, but board's got the policy in the in your packet.

Anything that in that RFP you've put together that makes uh sand replenishment and metal sex a priority versus having it trucked outside the county. Um, I'm not sure we can I'll ask the legal to weigh in on that. I'm not sure we can directly handle it in that direction. And we are certainly are going to be requiring in the RFP and in the procedures for them to present their their plan for what they intend to do with this with the spoil site. So that

projects in the county, Deltavville, one that sand replenishment, they're in need of it and I would hate to see the sand truck somewhere else outside the county when we have a good use for it right there in Middle Sex. Whatever we could do for that, I'd appreciate it. Understood. Okay. Uh, Mr. Attorney, is uh a motion in order for that that we need? You want to help us with that? Okay. Or actually, I'm going to defer to the county administrator on this one. How would you like them to implement?

Gentlemen, if you're comfortable with the more robust policy that I've had tip to chip, um I think he's done a great job with Heather getting it um a little bit more robust. That's going to be my word of this this policy. If you're comfortable with it, I would just say authorize us, begin using it while we uh get the RFP on the street and we'll go from there. And in in uh response to Bill, your concerns, we've already been approached by a couple of uh contractors locally that do plan to use it locally, we'll get this policy in their hands and get those work plans back. And one of the things I think Chip has uh very astutely put in this policy is we'll have one contractor working the site at a time with a defined plan. So they come in, they're working the site, they leave, and they leave it in as good a shape as when they leave it. We had some input from one of our contractors that will probably sign in up for the agreement and want to come in and use some of the sand is saying, you know, Matt, you really shouldn't have more than one contractor working at a time because they had to work around people once before. And I was like, yeah, you know, you're right. We probably need to limit it to one and have a defined work plan and work schedule. So,

okay. So, we we don't necessarily have to approve the spoil site RFP update. What we're approving is the contractor use policy. Yes. Correct. Authorizing us to use it. Yes, sir. Okay. Uh, a motion would be in order for that. Mr. Chairman, I move to authorize the county administrator to implement and the document and process the develop uh process developed by the county staff to respond to requests for removing dredge materials from the Delville storage site. Second. So move.

Uh motion made by Mr. Kittin. Uh second by Mr. Bill Harris. Any further discussion? Seeing none. Uh roll call, please. Mr. Krennan? Yes. Mr. Jesse? Yes. Mr. Williams? Yes. Mr. Bill Harris? Yes. Mr. Don Harris? Yes. Motion's approved to move forward with uh with that process.

Thanks, Mr. Chairman. And you know the best part about this policy, uh, our county engineer learned if you ever leave an important part blank, I'll fill it in. Uh, uh, applications be submitted to Chip England, county engineer. I don't think you'll leave those blank anymore. Thanks. And want really want to recognize our county engineer. He did a great job on those. Yes. Thank you, Chip.

Thank you, Chip. Okay. Uh, moving right along. I think we're now ready for Mr. Weight uh with the Cotton boat ramp um in partnership with the H never mind um the working waterfront grant.

Welcome, Mr. Wait. Wyatt. Wyatt. No, you're good. Good. Uh this is a little short for me, but um y'all can hear me. All right. Good afternoon, uh chairman, board members. Um I do have there's a presentation in your u packet. I did reduce it down if we don't want to go through all of it again. U y'all have seen this before. Uh I've been asked to come in and give an update. I don't have coming through. I had you can switch it. Yeah.

While they're working on the tech and we have a little bit of cover that they need to have. uh really uh I'm probably going to embarrass him, but I'm going to recognize a citizen that's helped us tremendously with some ideas and concepts on Carlton Road boat ramp that has I think spearheaded some really great ideas that we've presented to the state and uh I think are going to be incorporated into overall design of the site once we start really getting it uh cooking. I'm going look at him. He's kind of smiling, but uh Mr. Bob Brown's here with us tonight and uh I think uh he had some really good ideas that I'll share with you later a little bit after Ricky's finished.

All right. So again, good afternoon. Uh so the intention today is just kind of give you all another update. Um the project has been moving forward since I think I was here about six months ago. Um, and we've been working through with the middle peninsula planning district uh through the LGA group where uh county as y'all know the county administrators meet on a monthly basis to talk through that. Um, I'll walk through probably stop me if you want more background. But again, you've seen many of these slides. I'm going to do a quick overview of how we got here. Um, we I know I came and we had already done the public meeting, but I did want to just hit back on that and then talk about where we are within the schedule. And then I have all three of your sites in this presentation, but we can just focus on Carlton Road if that's the pleasure of the board. Uh, wherever y'all want to go with that, I'm happy to talk about any of them. Um, as y'all know, this was a uh grant-f funded project through the raise program intended to help working water uh watermen in maritime industry. So, not just the seafood industry, but also the dock builders, shore builders. So, very relevant for the discussion you just had about the uh reuse of sand for living shorelines and such. That that is what this project is also meant to uh impact and help in the process. So, um, we did we looked at this this grant was applied for by the PDC and it so it looked like looked at the full region of the middle peninsula from Essex all the way down to Gloucester Point, King William and all between. Um, we looked at the 65 public sites. We quickly analyzed them into what they were uh currently being used.

You can see on the screen here about 60% of them were purely recreational. And that could be just a kayak launch, canoe launch, just a view. Some of them are b just like bird watching sites. So with limited road access, a lot of those fell into the recreational uh bucket. And then you had the commercial only about 8% were purely commercial use. Um, and then that 14.5% was that mixed use. And then there are actually about 17% that are nonaccessible at all to the public even though they're publicly owned and just not in use. Uh whether some of those are sites where there's no parking available. The only way you could get into is by foot. Um, so with all that said, we did look at all 65 and then went through this process. Uh this is just a very high level, not intended to to get into detail again, but we visited a group of our my colleagues. Um we had coastal engineers, environmental scientists, civil engineers. Uh we went as teams to every one of the sites, evaluated them, looked at them for sure, like one of the main things we evaluated is their elevation and their shoreline condition, how sustainable they were moving forward. We did uh look at dock conditions. I'm glad to hear that Lover's Lane is being addressed. We went back after I saw the article and we looked at our field notes and it did say there's some boards that needs to be replaced and there's some cupping and some holding water. Uh we said that it was in about a 5-year range of needing to be addressed and so I'm glad to see that VOTE is uh following they didn't give them that report but that was going to be in our final report that uh some dock boards needed to be replaced at Lover's Lane. Um so we that is it is a point that I do want to make and we've

we've done this presentation at all the localities at the end of this which is coming to an end hopefully soon. Um we will deliver a report to each county that contains our recommendations for all your sites. Not just the three that are selected to move forward with this round of funding. But it is a report of all your sites that any that any recommendations we're making and potential other grants you may decide to go for or using local dollars for small improvements. So that is a deliverable that the PDC will get and then share out to all the localities. Um one thing you will also get in particularly in Middle Sex is what we call a gaps analysis in the work waterfront access. we you'll see where we recommend potential in the future for additional public access where there's large stretches of the river uh that don't have public access. That doesn't mean um you have to fill all those gaps, but it's something to consider as you look to continue to support your working watermen and women um and just the maritime industry. There's a large stretch of the Rapahhanic River in particular that doesn't have uh public access. Um actually Broad Creek is is limited as well on public access. So there's some there's some holes in Middle Sex that in our final report we'll make recommendations on. Uh all of that is covered in this document. Um as far as what we looked at and those statistics of where the catch is being made, we've worked we've had multiple meetings with the commissioner of the MRC, the waterman association and gathering all this data. We've been meeting here lately. We've been meeting a lot with VIMS and we just had a meeting actually this morning with a professor from Virginia Tech looking at the economic

side of it because we've we've now proved that we have these holes and we need these improvements now we're trying to make the final case of if we make these improvements what economic benefit will it bring to the region and so that's the last piece we're working on is through this process. Um, so again that's going through as I hit on this earlier. This was our kind of our gaps analysis. You the blue areas are where we have facilities. Um the middle picture is those blue areas get a little tighter together with the improvements we do. And then on the right is what we would like what we would recommend in the future to fill in even more access points. Uh so through the process again I've been here before but we continue to have uh conversations with the player all the players these are some of the bigger ones but the uh stakeholders in this will be back at the waterman's association meeting next Wednesday night in Lancaster um we are seeking so if you know any watermen we are going to be putting out a final survey uh to those watermen asking some very pointed questions here's what we're proposing How exactly will this help you? That will really be the final piece to our report of helping with the economic side. Is it going to save them 5% in fuel or save them or bring in 5% more catch? Those type of questions. So,

we're um I mean what we're anticipating in that is going is more the operation savings. We don't think that there's going to be huge more numbers of catch out there because we're it's regulated. It is a regulated industry. But what we anticipate the savings will be on the operational side. The the time they spend in the water, the fuel they spend in the water um get getting catch in and out. So that's coming out next week. So again, we'll that'll be in social media platforms and and the Virginia Mortimes Association will be helping us with that survey. uh much like they did before at early on in the process. We did survey the watermen and um and maritime industry on where they were looking. That's how we ended up with the sites. That is all part of the report that will be delivered is the results of those surveys. Um again, we we've looked at where the fishing grounds, lease grounds, all different fisheries, shellfish as well as finish. Um, so all of that culminated in what we've created here is what we're trying to improve improve with this process. This for those I grew up in the region. I thought I knew mostly where the seafood came from and how it worked, but I've learned a lot more in the last two years um how the harvest comes from the c from the the waterways goes to the dock and you know it varies whether it's a finfish, a crab or an oyster. that process when it lands is very different and where it goes in the inspection process and who it can be sold to. You know, oysters and clams can't be sold directly to the public. They have to go through a USDA certification. So, there's a part of this that we're not improving. I mean, that's really that that lower uh you know, our seafood when it comes out of our waterways, it goes all over the country and abroad.

um we're not going to really improve that part of the process. Uh what we're aiming to improve is from the water to those buyers, the processors, get improving that process is is what the target is and that's what's shown here in on this graphic. Um very high level results. Um we we know oysters are the highest volume to our region. Um and the crabs um oysters are highest value in dollar. Crabs are still highest volume. Blue crab blue catfish is very interesting. U we're still, you know, that's a newer fishery. It's been around, but there's a lot of traction. There's a lot of blue catfish out there, but unfortunately right now the problem with blue catfish is the processing is limited and that at the state level that's being something that's being focused on if we were to do this project 10 years from now, it might be a different result. Blue catfish may be off the chart because we have all these processing facilities. We have heard from the watermen that they want to catch more blue catfish. They need especially in the northern areas um up in Essex in the northern end of Middle Sex there's a lot more blue catfish and same thing in King Queen but the limitation on the catfish right now is the processing the labor to to process it in the facility. So um all of that's been analyzed but just that's just an FYI if you know anybody that wants to open a fish processing facility it would be filled with catfish if uh if you opened it. Um, so you've seen this before, but we did develop a very detailed matrix of how to determine the site sites that were selected. Um, and that's where we got to the top 11 sites. Um, we really have formulated this as a

network. Uh when the grant was started, it was going to be three or four sites and we just went back to the PDC and said we just don't think three or four sites are going to make an impact that that a bunch of improvements to smaller sites would. And so that's where we landed on the 11 sites um which are shown here. Um they are colorcoded by locality. Um Middle Sex is number one, right? We start I don't know how we why we started number one two three but y'all are the sites there in green 1 2 and three um Matthews um is over to the east four five and six and Gloucester 789 and then Map and I and then Rapahanic River Park that's what that's called it's really it's Prince Street right at the end of Prince Street the old warf we're proposing to bring bring that back uh there in Prince Street

Ricky do you mind going back one slide just real So, if I'm reading that right, the LE's Creek Landing was the highest scoring site at number one with your criteria. Mhm. Seers Bay was two. Then I don't know, Matapana. That's in some other county I've never heard of. Kidding. And then Whitings Creek and then Carlton Road. So, we had the top we had three of the top five.

Yes. Yes. And a lot of that has to do with um the we didn't just reach out to watermen in the middle peninsula because they don't just fish like the guys from Northern Neck. They don't just fish their waterways and the Gloucester guys don't just fish fish York River and so I think a lot of it has to do with uh Middle Man with Middle Sex being re real central in this whole region and obviously you you're the home of the oyster although Matthews likes to say the same thing but um the it is a fishing industry and I will say that we also heard over and over in Middle Sex the struggle in Middle Sex is that they've lost a lot of existing facilities. Um, previously watermen were being were you utilizing private marinas. Um, some of the large uh seafood operations were renting out slips for the watermen to dock their boats at in some of the, like I said, the private marinas. And that relationship has kind of soured a little bit. and the the recreational boers have kind of weighed in a little bit more. So, that's occurring less. Um, and then the u oh marina that's up for sale up west of Urbana, that one was heavily used by commercial watermen. So I think the biggest thing we've saw in Middle Sex is that there there's a lot a lot of lack of dock space uh recently being lost places to moore up and bring bring their boats in. Um, so that's probably the other thing too, um, I mean we weighed a lot. This is a very condensed uh, version of the matrix, but one of the things we looked

at is proximity distance to a major highway. And you've got the spine running right down Middle Sex is a is a nice highway. And so a lot of these sites, I think the criteria was two or two and a half miles from a major highway. So lot these sites scored well because you weren't going if you take Gloucester or Matthews. Some of those sites are buried deep in into residential or just way off of 17. And so that did help uh some of the scoring as well for for Middle Sex is how they were uh approximately about 30 and 33. Um so again um basic needs and that's what we implemented into the project. A lot of them are replacing pavement, heavy duty pavement in in opportunities where we could we raised the elevation of that pavement up. Um so the because you have some sites that I mean a good king tide, a high tide, the the parking lots will be underwater. So, where we could without impacting any adjacent properties, we proposed higher elevations for the parking lots. We proposed higher elevations for the docks. Um, lighting is on here. I don't think now thinking back now, I'm I'm pretty sure we've we've heard from and we've adjusted where we either don't have lighting or if we do have any lighting, it would be full cut off, but we we limited that. Dumpsters is another one that's been a interestingly very hot topic. Um, a lot of neighbors don't want the dumpsters. Um, the obviously with any use, recreation or commercial, there's trash. And so that's we considered that more of an operational.

In all the designs, we have a spot to put a dumpster, but you don't have to. We don't have to put a dumpster. We can put a 55gallon can and the locality or whoever maintains it now can go down there and clean that out. Um, but that's not what we consider a necessity to put a dumpster at everyone. If if the public doesn't want it, if you want something smaller in scale, uh, that's something that can be worked out uh, through the process. But the big thing is they asked for boat ramps and they asked for improved docks. We heard it already about Lover's Lane and that's not one of the sites, but we've that a lot of the docks in the region are are aging and anything that we're proposing um would have more sustainable deck materials, some of them concrete decks um that are just going to last longer than the timber decks. Um the boat ramps, the big thing there is the sizes of boats are changing. The the big dead rises aren't as prevalent anymore. A lot of them are using Carolina skips, especially with the catfish as that's growing. Um they're using aluminum boats. If they use electric shock, if they use the nets, they're still using pretty big boats. But um so we we're trying to improve the ramps. Uh Stampers Bay is a prime example of that one. Uh that would be a much improved ramp at that location. Um, obviously Carlton Road, which we're going to talk about in a minute, would have an improve improved ramp as well. Actually, all three of your sites get get improved ramps. So, few pictures. We did have a very well attended public uh engagement meeting back last December at uh RCC. Um, a lot of stakeholders, both residential and the watermen, uh, showed up for the meeting.

Um this is last slide here before we talk about your sites particular but where we are in the schedule. Um we've gone beyond our 30%. We keep calling them 30%. 30% is what is minimal to apply for the next round of funding. The the design plans are pretty well developed because we and we've done grading. We've looked at a lot of that detail. But they are not final because they will once construction money is secured we would go back to the public work through final details before anything is uh get to that final percent. Um one new thing that is on here and I believe um it was just brought up but the the PDC has has asked us to assist with this a different funding source. It's called the port infrastructure development program PIDP all their acronyms but it's all it's still through MARAD which uh the maritime administration it it is a little uh less stringent on the uh on some of the requirements uh but it does require us to break the network down to three packages and so that is what we're working on right now and what I mean by three packages Middle Sex would be together. Essex and it's more about the dollar amounts because it's got 11 million cap. So Middle Sex is grouped together. Gloucester and Matthews are grouped together and then Essex and Mad Panay are grouped together. So we took the 11 sites and broke them into three. And so we have we plan to apply for that money in September. Let's say one out of the three gets funded. maybe two out of the three or if we're great shape, all three get a uh uh funded and we don't have to do the build grant. But the the back of the plan is apply for

that but then still finish the report and and it's now called build instead of raise, but it's the same program. We would we would then anything that was unfunded would go move into the uh build grant that we would apply for in January. So, I'll this side is stop as a pause. I've been doing a lot of talking if there's any questions. If not, we can jump in and look at look at your three sites. I got an elephant in the room question that probably some people in the public would want to know. Is the grant money still there? I mean, we've heard a lot of discussion about the current administration eliminating allow opportunities.

This there are there have been some changes. Um equity has been taken out of as one of the factors. Um it's more about need in infrastructure. Um economics is major. I mean it's so it's I mean as long as you're supporting the economy and building infrastructure and that you're building things that are going to change. Now like the word sea level rise is not in it as much but as long as it's sustainable um is the word that's used. So it's been some changes in language um in again the equity component which equity obviously played into this uh when we made our considerations. But when we went back and looked and took that out, we still would have ended up with the same sites. Uh because in the end, what drove the sites that needed that were selected were more about their geographics, their access to public roadways, their um location within the network. Um so we did look at that of what would have happened if if equity wasn't in it. And so we're we're comfortable with even though that that component has been taken out that these are still the correct sites

questions from Mr. Wyatt. You still have some more of your presentation. Well, I just had the three slides. Yes. So I've got Whiting there. I have them in order. I have Whiting Creek and then uh Carlton Road and then Stampers Bay as last I think.

Continue on. Okay. Uh so Whiting Creek, some just the existing pictures. As you see, we've got the uh the the bulkhead. Um our footprint here is not changing. We're replacing structures, not expanding, not impacting neighboring properties there. Um but we the dock does need u addressing. Uh the boat ramp has some issues. There is some dredging that we required there as well. Um, where are you talking about that dredge? I'm sorry. Whiting Creek. Where are you talking about dredging?

So, why so we limit knowing what Louie had going on with all the other activities in the regional dredging and this because of budget we focus mainly on and you can see it here. It's about 14,000 cubic yards from the channel to the pier. So it's really limited right at the So what are you going to I mean plenty of times you only got four feet or less coming in there out in the river. So if you don't dredge out there I don't

so correct and that so yes so that is again because we're trying to do these improvements and we looked at the budget we looked and said all right we've got another funding source that will pay for dredging for further out through the channel. What we're trying to do is improve the infrastructures in the immediate vicinity and so tag team this as as most as possible leverage the dollars th this will help support Louis the the municipal dredging program as well. So that's that's how we distinguish kind of where our dredging stopped and where the municipal dredging program would would pick up. So uh with this again and so currently you have a gravel uh pavement. This would be a proposed heavy dut heavy duty asphalt which is just a a thicker two layer of base and a and in our surface material just last longer um in that parking area. We uh still are showing trailer parking with regular vehicular parking. We u expanded the turnaround a little bit. uh to allow better access so a vehicle could come up and then back into that ramp. Uh we have a a floating courtesy dock there that would help assist with uh loading and unloading. But then for the water, so this this really is for the recreational and everyday user that continues to use it. What we have here, you you still have the jetty that comes out. We would make improvements, raise, reshape and raise that slightly, but we would do a concrete fixed pier alongside of that and over top like it overlaps that jetty a little bit and that would be meant for the offloading offloading of the seafood

there onto a more sustainable structure. Uh, obviously that could still be used for fishing, anybody that comes down there, but you would like to make sure that it the waterman can still access that at all times. Isn't there some type of rightway through there to that pier from the um up? So, there is that is why we have this striped we have a parking spot and a parking spot. We intentionally left that area striped because that is the walkway to get to their dock instead of instead of h I mean we could have put a car another car there but we we left that striped and for for that

that community is all on board with us. I mean it's public rightway right now. I mean this is a public site so Okay. I thought they had a we we've definitely received comments, okay, from a lot of people that, you know, I mean, residential, it's it's not our first time we've heard that we don't want to hear we don't want to see other people using this, but in the end, it's a public facility, but we did accommodate um we want I mean, we we would never do anything that would limit their access to their to their peer. That's right. Yeah. So, that's why that parking spot is is is open.

You've addressed it. Yes, sir. Um, next up, Mil Creek Landing. Um, all or we we have changed the name of this so many times. It's got about four different names.

It does. And to our folks back that are doing the environmental and doing because we have so many people working on this, they're like, "Which one are we talking about?" And I said, "Well, it's Mil Creek, also known as Carlton Road." So, um you can see and it doesn't take uh us to tell you that you've got some existing issues with your dock. Uh it's failing failing um timber structure. They all have lifespan. Um obviously the big thing here is the sholing end of the of the boat ramp. Um it is a very heavily used uh boat ramp. Uh so you'll see in the design we have what we call as a a wave wall. It has been looked at and I think um others can talk about it. Wetland studies has also with the county or looked at another solution. The two could coexist. Uh we haven't married them together. But I just want to say that the there is a plan you may have seen the board has seen of doing a a like a sand retrieval area in here. Our our proposal extends the jetty out further. Um that that wetland studies plan stops about where the current wall stops. We are recommending taking this wave screen and terminal going groin out further and bending it almost doubling the length of that. Um that does two things. We think it will prolong how long you have between any type of maintenance substantially um keeping that sand on that downward side of the uh the east side of that groin. But it also does give some spots additional spots for slips for for mooring purposes and for the waterman to use. um you're you're

getting a we would propose because we do know this is used recreationally a lot. So we are proposing to replace uh with the fishing pier there and then you can see the new boat ramp there. Um we did reorient the parking I think a lot now today the trailers come in and park this way. We through our analysis and just turning radius exercises we did we found that the movement circling around backing in and then changing orient them that way worked a little better. We did try to maximize this site for vehicular parking and you've got a stretch along the parking lot there. We don't have to do that number of spots but through our engagement we we've heard that I mean people want to come to these sites and so our one of the we tried to maximize the parking wherever we could. So there is a u a total of 18 parking spots on that side there being added in.

Any questions on this one before I go to Stampers Bay? We'll probably come back to that one at the end. Yeah.

All right. Stampers Bay. Um, again, existing conditions loosely called this a boat ramp. Uh, it is an area where you can you can access the water. Um, we have a lot of drainage ponding um that happens during rain events. Um, you can see that photo there. Again, this one um it's where the road ends in the water and we felt like there was a lot more rightway there than what was being utilized and so we did maximize that rightway usage. We did speak to several neighbors on this and I did personally have a conversation with the director from Camp Pianka Tank um know that camp very well and we I don't know we fully addressed all of his concerns but we definitely had a long talk talk about his concerns about noise at night um light pollution and just making sure that they were still going to be able to safely access the island. they you they utilize the island as part of their camp um experience and so we talked through that. Um through this process um so this is the the current design. It is just a standard boat ramp that comes down utilizing the dock for both the off laid offloading and as a tender pier. In our previous design, we showed a dock that a vehicle could actually drive out on being wider, a bigger bigger head on that on that pier to get out. And again, based on some of the conversations, we've changed that, scaled that back significantly into where this this scenario, a truck uh a box truck, which is common, would just back up to the pier. They could offload. It would be

kind of like a loading dock. it the the pier would be up, the truck could come in and you could they could load catch right into the truck and then leave. Um, so again, a less beefy of a pier. Uh, we are proposing this this area is the wooded area. It is, like I said, it's a big rideway down there. And so we feel like this is an improvement because right now there really isn't any trailer parking. So, you would have four trailer spots up on the north side of the site. We'd have four parking spots down here. We'd have some parallel spots along the side. Um, and then still be able to turn and leave like you do today. Um, we're not proposing lighting anymore down here. A a lot and and there's no dumpster being proposed at this site any anymore. Um, one of the things the messaging is a I mean most of commercial waterman activity, yes, they leave early in the morning, but they're not a nighttime activity. I mean, they leave. So, some of the concerns with the camp is that they will have events, campfires, and things in the evening. And he was just concerned about some of some of that activity conflicting. But, uh, hopefully we've addressed some of that. Um, so those are the three sites.

I got a few questions and we start right here with Stanford's Bay. He said that um, be made so the truck can back up and can load the truck on the pier. What are they going to be loading? I mean, catch coming out of the river, crabs, oysters. Well, have you have you checked to see just where the oyster ground is? public oyster ground is in the panky tank. I mean there's there's

it's out the mouth of the river and they haven't opened it up at one time. Nobody's going to run their boat way up in the pian tank to take them off when the oyster ground at the mouth of the river. The other oyster ground here is all private. What we the next one you're doing down there at um Mill Creek. What's starting to happen already is you're putting the commercial people against the recreational people. It's horrible what's starting to happen and what the public wants therefore should be heard as well. But yet when you whole speech here I heard the public was invited when he talking about going to have trash cans there or not. I mean I see I see all the commercial waterman and I worked on the water for the last 5 years. I'm for the commercial waterman but I'm also for everyone in Middle Sex County too and I do not see this as being flavorful to the community. I think that the dag on whitening creek, it's small area. It looks pretty good now. Maybe you can do something to help dredge that channel in out of there. Like you said, you're not expanding that anymore than what it is. It already has a bow ramp, already has a pier. You're going to go and take and put money down here and for seafood that isn't there. They don't send trucks anymore for three or four bushels of crabs. You got to have some barrels. Barrels left long time ago. it. We're not using the money in a way that it says we're supposed to. Then we start talking about, okay, we have barges come up and load piling on it. Oh, and by the way, Middle Sex County is responsible for all that infrastructure has been put there now. So, when that gets raked and torn, just like the one dock that Middle Sex owns there, it's coming all apart. It's It's not working to the favor of everyone involved. If you would look at Whitings Creek, you like I said, you're not doing any land there. Let's go to Mil Creek. Are you buying any land there? You're going to have to buy those plans.

This Yeah, this is all within right away. That's all within the rightway, sir. Well, I've seen some drawings that definitely that is not within the rightway. Now, maybe the drawings I've seen are wrong, but I've seen some there. So, you're saying that all this currently is owned by the state? Yes, sir.

Okay. I was under impression that by your lines there that we were not there. But I can tell you, you're getting a big debacle coming because we're putting recreational and commercialmen against each other. And that's not where we want to be right now. We're working in harmony. What we want is we want the dag on boat landing dredged so we can go back to business as normal. Yes, there's some there are definitely hormen that come in at Mil Creek and no problem helping them however we can. But the days of the big 42 foot dead rises coming and tying up everywhere, they're getting less and less. Like you just said, they're in the Carolina gifts. They're pulling on trailers and getting out of there. I think we're going too much too big. And the thing that bothers me about Mil Creek is we have the opportunity to do something with the state and get it done and get it done, I think, in a faster pace than what this is proposing. So, we going to let it close in. Citizens can't use it for two or three years before this would ever happen. Where I think there's a chance, using Mr. Brown's philosophy, we could get it done a lot quicker. And we would like to get your help to help us get it done a lot quicker. It's starting to have talk in the community that some of these projects are put up there so we're get the grant so we can pay some dag on salary somewhere whether citizens want it or not. Like it's being shoved down our throat and it's not very appreciative.

Yeah. Oh, just one question about particularly about the Mil Creek um when when this is completed is the county responsible for would the county be responsible for the dredging cost when it does need it when it's cleared needs to be cleared out is

I mean the the operations and and Louiesie may be able to speak to it some the operations all of these need to be considered long term and whether Just like the the slips, if there's a fee charge to those, what is that fee? Because that could that fee be set up for operations on and M cost for long term. That's that's the side of it that you still needs to be determined by each locality or whether some in some way the public access authority comes in and manages all the sites. There's there's still some options. We we have met with uh Newport News on and their docmaster on how they manage and it's a variable. Some of some of them they lease their sites. Some of them they collect a um fee as the catch comes in. It's a $2 a bushel that gets added on. There's there's different mechanisms um that could be used to set aside money. But I mean this is still a mixeduse site. this is still heavily going to be recreation. So in in that regard, there's still going to be some money that is comes out of the tax dollars that to support the

Is this is this property that where the parking area for instance is is that currently owned by the state or is that a county property? That is currently uh state property. Okay. So all right. So, so techn so on this one and I'm sorry I have so many sites uh for state properties they can be transferred to the p a public access authority they can't be transferred directly to the county. Okay.

Um so in this one if um if you wanted full if the lo localities because the localities are still in public access authority I think reports to the localities. if they wanted full control over it, then the best solution would be to ask the state to transfer this property to the PAA. Yeah, I was kind of under the impression that I know in the past that that there there was a time when the state would dredge out that the ramp and then uh I think they got tired of doing it.

Yeah. I mean that's the state's tired of doing I mean there's a lot of maintenance issues throughout this commonwealth and that's why we're very fortunate I think to have the program the municipal dredging program coming up because that's going to save I'm ready to sign my creek up myself. So sounds good. So I think to get a little further with Ry's question if a mor piling gets torn down whose responsibility would it be to have it put back up? I mean that's Middle Sex County or the public access authority. Well, which way how would we know which way it is?

I mean that that's got to I mean that's part of the process moving forward of who's going to manage the sites. I was just under impression through our previous conversations that once it was built and everything was done, ribbon cut that Middle Sex would be responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of it. But I take it that that's not necessarily the case. Now this one is stateowned, so it would have to go to the public access authority. Okay. the other two sites. Then if a moring pole gets knocked down, Middle Sex would be responsible for putting it back up or is there some shared maintenance on the other two sites too? Access authority.

The state owns all all three all three of your middle middle sex sites. We have we have a dock here. Yeah. Thank you. We have a dock at Mil Creek and I think we have a dock at Whitings Creek and the ramp itself is owned by VOTE at Widings. They maintain it. And then Stampers Bay is a VOTE road. Mhm. So it sound it sounds like to clarify then the the state would be continuing to maintain them. That wouldn't automatically transfer to the county, would it? Well, so the state has to I mean in order to build this I mean the state could stop us, right? So from building it in the first place,

right? And so to avoid that then we if they opposed building something then the mechanism to continue to move forward would be the transfer to the public access authority. I see. And I'm really speaking a lot. Louis Lou is the expert on this but I have getting into the policy more than I I have a segue that I think gets at some of Bill's concerns and probably some of people in the audience. if we were to scale these sites back some to have a little bit more of a balance between what it is now as opposed to like for instance having all the uh slips there uh I I would assume semi-permanent slips

it's still not too late to do that is it I mean we talked about the lighting and the dumpsters going away if some of those slips were to go away and we made that um I'll call it a wararf bigger We're still early enough in the design to do some of that. Absolutely. Um the again this particular one, the reason the length is there is really for the wave screen and to keep the sand. Well,

you could you could delete the fingers and you could just do all side boring along that. And so then and you go from seven vessels down to three. Um but the but we wouldn't recommend shorting that shortening the structure the we would still recommend and building that full length. What what what we could would deleted would be the finger slips um is our recommendation based on the sand movement and trying to keep the ramp open as long as possible.

And Mr. Mr Chairman, that may be a good segue for Louisie, Dave, and I to talk about another option or at least something else in play. And that will get into some of the design changes. We've talked to the state if if you'd like us to I mean, Ricky's going to be here if we have more questions for him. But where are you in your in your p uh process for what you got to talk about? I'm Are you good? I'm good. As long as I get to Lancaster in a little while for a baseball game, I'm good. I figure that always. Hey, we're supposed the game was supposed to be tomorrow night. They moved it tonight. So um but yes, I can stick around for a while. Okay.

Thank you, sir. Uh we'll be discussing this more as we continue to go. As Mr. Walker said that this is still we're just trying to get the get the keep the project moving, but we're a long ways from putting a shovel in the ground and having final approval. Wonderful. Thank you, sir. So, good segue and thank you, Ricky. Um, I'm going to use his schematic kind of as a good talking point. And Louie and Dave and and and Chip are here, too. Um, let me Well, hold on. No, I'm not going to use it. Somebody's grabbing something. trying to save it because he wants his disc. Oh, he does. Well, he can't have his disc back. It's how we get all our discs. What are we doing?

Any event, while while the tech crew is working, I'll I'll let you know. We had uh the pleasure of meeting with several contractors out there on site Friday morning before it got really really hot. Um William Wright and uh his assistant were there. Uh Joy Jones showed up and who?

Von Haywood. Yeah. So we we had pretty good attendance there. Um got some pretty good feedback I think on the whole. Uh Ricky's already alluded to some of it. Uh extending and I'm going to use the wrong term Dave so you may want to come up to the podium and tell me what a join a Gro jetty and warf is. But we were going to extend the jetty. Is that right?

We were going to extend the uh well, one of the guidance uh we received some of the guidance we received was to extend the jetty further out. Uh maybe have that hook in it, but keep it out, but more importantly, make it taller. I mean, currently, if you go down there, a lot of the jetty is flush with the ground, flush with the sand. So, the sand is over topped it. The sand is going through it because there's a little creek cutting cross country right here and blowing through the uh facility. And um I think it was universally accepted by all the contractors there that oh yeah, we can we could get some earth and structure and drive a track hoe out on that and then back a dump truck onto it and load the dump trucks. But you really well off by making that whole structure taller. So it creates more of a a break in the sand transfer or sand. I'm killing that. But going further out helps too because you see it in uh Ricky's uh schematic here. What you're basically doing is creating more of a small little harbor. They could be more insulated from the wave action and the sand accumulation which I was intrigued by. Um which gets me to Mr. Brown's design. We we talked for a long time about different techniques. Even talked about the Navy CBS from World War II and the infrastructure that they used. Uh, hey, we're not reinventing the wheel here. There's practices that are affected. And, uh, you know, William Wright said it best. He said, you know, Matt, oh, we need some mats down there. We can ride out on the mats. Just who's going to give me the mats? So, long story short, had a very productive meeting with them. I won't say there's a 100% Yeah. Yeah. We really want to go down there and harvest that sand for free. But there's general acceptance and some

design input that we got from them. And I think uh there's enough there enough interest there for us to potentially move forward with either incorporating that design into this type of a grant application andor partnering with the state to try to get something done. We did meet with the state several months ago. I think I've reported out on that. and they were surprisingly receptive to the possibility of developing some contractual relationship with a contractor to go down there and harvest the sand. And and I may be murdering the history on this, so I'll qualify this based on my best guess and just a qualified or unqualified opinion. Based on the aerials we saw when we were looking at this site, there appeared to be back in the two caves, a sand basin, a a sand trap, uh a basin that was routinely maintained here collecting the sand that would accumulate wherever it comes from. I mean, there's a little difference of opinion about whether it's coming up from Parrot Island or coming down the shore or both. But something magical happened along about two to 2010 2012 that sand basin stopped being maintained. It filled in and now we have the sand doom we have now. So my theory is somebody retired that knew to come do it, but I I'm not going to well I've said that publicly, but that's just a theory of mine. So with with our meeting with contractors and getting some some guidance from them on things that they would want to see if they were coming down there on a routine basis and harvesting the sand and what could probably keep the sand out of there. Um we felt like there may be a compromise here but um I don't want to ramble on this but I want to say the there is a choice to be made here and I'll tell you why. we can apply for our Army Corps of

Engineers permit and spearhead this with hopefully as MRC is a partner and go faster and try to dredge some of the uh dredge material that's currently clogging some of the uh boat ramp. Now, it's it's funny cuz Friday morning there was a guy launching a small Carolina skiff at the boat ramp. So, the boat ramp's still being used. It's just a little tricky. You got to navigate that sandbar that's out in front of it. We could do that or we can partner up with VHB and PDC and go for this grant. I think it's a I think it's an example. If we want to go quicker, let's go by ourselves or maybe with the state. If we want to go further, maybe partner up with the PDC, VHB and go for the grant. That determination is yours, gentlemen. Um there was some interest with the state and that may transcend both options where the state may have a basin there that can be maintained by contractors on a more frequent basis. Um I'm curious to see what happens. Um I think all of us want to try to do it in in the most balanced cost-effective approach possible fair to all the taxpayers, not just the waterfront uh property owners, not just the citizens, but the watermen, too. Um, so I think there's a comp compromise here potentially with a little bit more discussion.

Can you define for me when you when you said the term wait and see what happens? What are we It seemed like to me we have to make a move here. We can wait for the federal money or we can go ahead and move today. Theoretically, I think is that correct or am I missing? Yeah. No, I think you're Yeah, I'll clarify that. Bill, y'all can direct us to start partnering with the state and getting an application to the Army Corps of Engineers today. And I think Dave, can you talk to that? Yeah.

Yeah. I think they would even try to execute uh expedite it a little bit. But a key understanding here is we'll be applying for one maybe this month after we get some design costs. We got to design some stuff and work with the uh environmental planner. But then VHB and that group's going to be applying for yet another one if the grant goes forward. So we're going to be kind of doing a parallel by application, dual application, so to speak. The way I understand it,

I I want to ver I mean to to clarify something that could build you. You mentioned something about um creating a competition or or conflict between the recreational voters and the commercial. I What would be what would be that conflict?

All right, let's see here. We've got two. You got eight boats tied up there. Okay, let's say they're wor You have eight boats tied up there and let's say they're or a lot of them will have two people. Those are probably be larger boats more so than a Carolina skiff. Might have three people on them. Now, how many parking spots we got here? One, two, three, four. Say we got So those boats with one person on them going to take up half the parking spots that morning. Now if we a couple more of them drive, then the next thing you know, all of them are taken up and they're gonna tie an extra boat in there somewhere, too. Now comes the ones that are going the ones the few ones that are using it now with their trailers that have the Carolina skiffs or 25 foot parkers and whatever that they're going to come and put there. Now you want to come use the ramp. Guess what? There's no place for you to park. Matter of fact, maybe you want to bring your grandchildren down and fish off the dock. There's no room to park. Now you know the conflict. Yeah, they're upset and we're fueling this by delaying. We could go with the state and go ahead and get something done and everyone's working down there now together. Everyone's fine. But if we go ahead and delay it, everyone's emotions going to get higher. They're going to get competing and we're going to hear and we don't need that in the county. Everyone needs to work together. That's just one.

Okay. Yeah. I I used to I spent a lot of time down there in the past. I used to live on that road and uh and I put my boat in the water down there many many times. And what I found uh of course the the parking lot was configured a whole lot different than this. People would be parking, you know, sort of uh right to left the road

and and and and on busy busy, you know, Memorial Day weekend, you'd have boats parked halfway up to my house going up the road. Uh I mean trailers rather. Um but uh as as you you were saying I think that to have a whole lot of commercial boats here at the same time would be um maybe not as as as prevalent as you know the I I never I never saw that many commercial boats coming there to be honest with you.

Well the slips aren't there now. If the slips were there and when they're woring a rock off they may go there instead of where they're going now. Like he said earlier, I think in one of the presentations, some of the big buyers are renting places for them to tie up and bring them there. And then let's let's look at it. We're talking about fuel is one of the big savings by doing this. Well, if your buyer has a slip for you and he's going to take it right off the dock right there at his place, chances are that's where you're going to go. Just like we talked about the oyster ground pancake tank, someone's not going to run from the mouth of the river way on up there to use this spot. You have to be where the seafood is. and they can do studies with VMRC as square square miles or whatever, how much seafood is being harvested in there, so forth and so on. Well, let me tell you, if they get around there at Stanford's Bay and start working and create something big there, the next thing we going to see is going to see the sheriff up here cuz he's going to want a boat because Middle Sex is responsible for a good portion that Pangtank River and we keep on o opening it up more and more for people to come from other places. Not Middle Sex, Middle Sex people making out pretty good. come from other places. We gonna need a police boat and some policemen. And you're very familiar with that because that's what we're doing it. That that river, it's so bad on times you can't ski anymore. It's so much boat traffic and we want to add more and more. All right, Dave, you want to talk about uh I guess we're kind of talking about the partnership with the state. Do you have anything further with that?

Well, I'm going to kind of uh deviate a little bit more the technical aspects and what we discussed and what may be needed.

Okay. Obviously, this solution could that's that you're seeing on your screen could be blended with uh the more technical uh design that was done by uh was it wetland studies or whoever did the studies that studied it holistically. I think what you're going to find out is to solve it, you're definitely going to need a much higher bulkhead. Other otherwise, you're going to be in here every 9 months to 12 months dredging it. So, what's on the table now? It is a it is a facility that that's important to our area. So I think it's a desire to try to keep this open as much as we can. What I'm hearing from the board members and it makes sense. What you can do is you can't talking to our contractors saying has value uh to them. One contractor said it wasn't worth his time. Another two of them

Yeah. to doing he said I'm out. He said I'm only here because I live near it. So anyway, I wanted to see what he and he offered some historical. He'd lived there his whole life. He he was on it. But we have a couple contractors that were very interested in the sand. You may be able to offset the sand use the cost for the the material. You know, that's what I think John Kung did in the previous dredge. He was able to leverage that u the value of the sand versus the dredge. So, um, actually Randy Owen actually contacted me and reminded me and I think I was aware of it. The VRC permit is still active.

The core engine the core of engineers permit has expired. So, they're not synced up. Last time we dredged it, I actually submitted to JPA and the core never reissued their permit because it was still valid for another two, three months. This was maybe two years ago, three years ago. So when John last uh did the you know spearheaded the uh dredge. So actually had Mark Longest call the core and um they they indicated it might not be that hard to re-up that permit. You know may even not take something as intense as a JPA. We may be able to submit the old materials. I wouldn't bank on that. That being said, we could still take some of the old uh information, probably do a JPA and and bring the core permit up to up to snuff. So, in talking to our our um contractors, the feeling I get from them is keep the permit active and we'll figure out how to get the sand. These guys are good. you know, the guys that are moving the sand, they indicated they might one wish they had was we had mats for it because those uh in talking to Randy, he has some concerns about that building and that sand just keeping put some kind of hard surface out there is probably not. Now, although it sounds good, it may have some uh permitting issues because that's a jurisdiction. as that sand builds, it becomes jurisdictional under our sands uh our beaches and dunes and sand dunes ordinance. So even though we're exempt from that, the law is still there in the state. So it has to be somebody has to look at it whether it's our wetlands board or the state's going to, you know, at least make sure we're following the law. So um it the our contractors though are very adept at working over dunes and working through

that to get to these areas. So we may not have to do that much even on that side of it on that side of the bulkhead that that would be the east side or the I guess the southeastern side of it and just and go through a regular cycle and you might be able to keep this permit active and every nine months to a year to 15 months the guys go in and we pick up the phone and call it they dredge it out and it the one cost you can account on for each operation is a post dredge survey, which is going to cost you $3 to $5,000. So add that, put in your that in your budget. Don't That's one thing you're never going to get free is you're not going to get a surveyor. John Coun went out and did it with a stick and the core said, "No, we're not going to do that anymore."

And he took his own bathometric survey. Got his picture in the paper.

Yeah. Jay let him get away with it once, but uh Jay said, "No more, John. You can't do that. You got to get licensed surveyor to get that. We require that." So anyway, so just want to kind of put the cards on the table so the board knows what they're in for. This is a frequent dredge. And if anybody's been out to that uh site, you that bulkhead, even at uh high water, if you got a you know an unusually high tide, that's that's tipping the top of that bulkhead. It is completely worthless as far as a structure. It needs to be either you know pulled up and rebuilt or raised or or something. But that those are your options in that in that space. You can continue to dredge it if you want. You may get, you know, you have to work something out with those contractors. They may get it for the materials. Well,

I think all the options there will have to be dredging sometime another. All of them. Just how long in between the dredges is a question. You you're exactly right. Even even the design options have a cycle to them. A dredge cycle. But right now, your dredge cycles extremely frequent. That's it's going to hit you every I I would count on every year. or so and we were out there Friday and it was already starting to fill in. The waterman was working his way around it and said, "God, I hope I don't pick up any sand in my my water pump, you know, hope you guys can do something." So anyway, u does anybody have any additional questions on that part?

Dave, a couple things I don't understand. I'm not a waterman and when I played around in water, you just walk out in the water and crab and fish and do what you want to. But I'm I'm looking at this drawing here and I'll be honest with you, uh, is this going to solve the problem of be able to get the boats out in the water and we wouldn't have to drudge or get the sand out as often as what we talking about every nine months or every is is this going to solve any problem at all?

Because we don't see if it's going to solve all the problems. We don't have a problem till we create something. we this didn't even create a problem yet. So we can't solve it because it haven't created nothing. So So what I'm saying if we do this and it turns out then the only problem we have is parking then that ain't a problem. If if it solve the problem. So are we looking at because we have talked about before that some way we can stop the sand from coming up so we can't get the boats and stuff in. Mhm.

So if we solve that problem, then we can easily solve the rest cuz you don't have to uh think Randy said they parked down on the side of the road and I remember seeing parking down on side of the road. So I'm not going to get we don't have a problem unless we fix that. And everything I'm looking at now from different things. We think we got a problem that we don't know we have and we come and fight for to solve a problem that we don't have. And I just don't get it. Now, if you're not going to cause the taxpayer no money and you going to do something good and you can come and it should be studying about uh uh are is the sand going to come back up in the lack of it should that that's the number one thing when they start talking about anything go study out and sand is getting back if you can stop that mean can get the boats over now whether commercial or not you know if you can't get you can't get in there you don't have you don't have no problem we got to solve that problem do this do that I I don't know well Ricky can speak more on this design than I can.

Well, it it it got to do that. If it can't do that, if you go back to what CUS were doing, you go in there every year, whatever you do, and pay $3,000 and back in and put it on the calendar. And I'm not going to vote for that neither cuz I don't believe you keep on spending good money on top bad money and do nothing. I would like I would like to say something u that's why we have uh Louie and and

for for for this I mean they can solve the problem. Uh um and I I'm sitting here looking at it now and it's not going to happen overnight, but it's going to get done and and they're going to add more slips and all that stuff. I know a lot of you watermen, I'm not a waterman, but they go out early and and then it's a mixed use. So what you got now? Look what you got now. This is something better. And Louis can explain a lot of things and and guide us along what you're looking at. That's that's what that's what I'm That's why we got Louis and Rebecca here for

they going to show tell you, hey, this is how you can set this up and do this and everybody can work together with this versus, you know, uh u you know, your fisherman and public and have it set up so you can work it right and and and it's not going to happen overnight because it's been a problem for a while and and other fishermanmen all the areas. But if you get it right the first time, build that wall around there and put that around there and get everything set up like you want. Now you can get everybody put in here and work together on it because this is not something going to happen. You know what I mean? I mean other people can do other things other ways. It's going to cost more. But this is what we have Louis and Rebecca them to set this up and look at it and that's what that's his job here. I I would like for Louie to start just to explain some things to us.

I'll step aside. Yeah. Let me um it's unfortunate that's a beautiful schematic and we've kind of lost the the focus of what you all tasked me to do for you all at least two and a half years ago when Mr. Coons was still on the board. VOTE owns the site. Yes. Made it to him.

DWR has a lease agreement with VOTE for the infrastructure that's there. DWR has said we're not putting any more state money into this site. We know that. So DWR is walking away. You all asked me to try to figure out, okay, how do we find a solution to the problem, which is what we hired wetland studies to do, and that was a design that you all have seen several times. That included the basin for the sand to collect into. unrelated to your ask of us to solve the problem. The commission began to look at working waterfront infrastructure and this site and amongst all the other sites in the region continue to percolate through. This is a conceptual rendering of something that could add some value to both recreational and the commercial seafood industry, but that has never been designed to solve the problem, which was that sand is over topping and filling in the ramp. What you all tasked us to look at was a more realistic and short-term engineering solution, which is what wetland studies proposed. This moves beyond that. There is no way for you all to envision that from happening unless you figure out how to deal with that sand because DWR said they are not putting any more money back into the site. So the only way and this gets to Mr. Harris's question, the only way that you could, whether you like this or don't like that, for that to happen, the state is out of that game and that responsibility would fall back most likely to you all to have to pay for a lot of the infrastructure that's there. So, we have these two parallel things that happen to conclude

at virtually the same time. the engineering solution, which is the sediment basin that could go in below that jetty that's there. DWR said they would have some interest in wanting to maintain the facility if the local contractors agreed to take the sand. Absent that, they are not going to invest in this facility. And so from the state's perspective, the facility goes to zero money coming in. And so it would be in all effective purposes closed in terms of consistent capital investment to keep the facility open at the state level. Now there's nothing that precludes if the state walks away from you saying to VOTE, "Hey, we would want to enter into a lease agreement with you to reopen the facility on our dime." And then your county attorney would have to work with VOTE. You all would have to enter into a lease agreement to be able to do that. But the responsibility then to dredge and probably maintain the infrastructure that DWR once owned would fall back to the taxpayers in Middle Sex unless I can find other money external to you all to pay it down. So you've got this long-term vision that's here. It's unfortunate the timing because that has kind of created this illusion that that is where this needs to go. If you do not figure out how to stop that sand from over topping, that doesn't matter what's up on there. That that doesn't matter at all. anywhere paper that's printed on with it. So, you've got this short-term question. The design that WSSI came up with did not contemplate DWR re-entering the game, but at your direction, you asked Matt to make one more phone call back to DWR. Is there anything that would change your perspective on state investment here? And the answer back was, well, if you can get somebody to remove that sand

on their dime, then we have an interest in keeping that facility open. The state interest there will keep it open. What they said is it's too costly for them to maintain the sediment basin and to dredge it to keep it open. that that's what this whole thing hinges on right now is a innovative public private partnership to be able to have the private sector take that sand out to be able to do that that area where Ricky has shown rock something structural needs to be put out there whether it's rock whether it's sand whether it's rock sand and mats to allow commercial equipment to go out with an excavator reach down and dig that sand out on some frequency the state is going to want to see some formalized commitment between the county and private contractors to provide that service to you all. And if you don't have that, I don't believe the state is going to enter into any conversation to do anything with that site at all. In your packet, there's a proposal update from WSSI who did the design work on it to say it's would cost them about I don't know what it was 25 to $30,000 range to do the engineering and design work that would be necessary for the for the private sector commercial equipment to be able to get out to that area to be able to dredge that out. And that comes with a bunch of environmental complications because you got to cross the wetlands. you know that that's why that cost structure begins to get up a little bit higher and right now there is no more money to pay for that design work so that would come back to you all and it's a public need question is it important for Middle Sex County to keep that facility open and then if it is you can either continue to keep your dredging permit open you can dredge that thing once every six months is one strategy another strategy might be to redesign it so that you dig that pit a little bit deeper and mother nature pushes is that sand in there and you got the contractors come out and they do and they dig it out. That's probably the

path that would allow the state investment to continue. If you're just considering dredging it on your own dime, I suspect that DWR is out of it and you're going to have to negotiate with VOTE the terms to be able to do that. I think that's that's kind of where you all are at at the current moment. And so you've got some choices with some dollars that are associated with it. It's unfortunate that this has ended up with VOTE owning part of the asset, DWR leasing it. I think you all might have some fee interest in a little piece of it. So you got this reared amplation of government units here and mother nature doesn't want to keep it open. She wants to close it. And so that costs money to keep it open. And depending on which way you all choose to move with it defines whether or not the state stays at the table or whether or not they do not stay at the table. And that decision is up to you all, you know, with it.

What the state stays at the table, which would be DWR,

what would they provide then other than a couple signs saying it's a boat ramp? So what I asked them to do to get to your question was I wanted to see inside of their capital investment schedule what does that look like in terms of keeping the asset the capital asset maintained boat ramp finger peers all of that kind of stuff because right now it's not in their capital plan. They've zeroed it out. They need they said about two years to be able to get that back into the cycle for their capital investment to keep the infrastructure upgraded at the level that's needed for the public to be able to use that. That's why they want the private sector commitment to take that sand out. They said that's the biggest impediment right now that's stopping them from reintroducing the infrastructure back into their capital schedule is they need to know that the private sector through an arrangement with the county is going to go out and harvest that sand. They said if that sand can be kept at bay for a year or two that would allow them to reprogram state money back into for the maintenance of that facility. Now, that does not um what they would be looking for hopefully is a longer term commitment by the private sector to continue to take that sand long term. If the private sector did it for two years and they said we're out, we're done with it, then I think the state is probably going to say I don't know if this is this deal is going to continue to work because that's the problem. It was the cost of the dredging was so expensive for the state that the maintaining the boards was inconsequential compared to the main cost of the dredging of the project. Yeah.

Okay. I don't see us at a position to make a make a motion to do anything at this point. Not to murky up the waters any. Okay.

But here it comes. I was I was waiting to say that. I think at this time, you know, we've got some pretty good guidance from our contractors and with VHB's help, we can redesign some of this grant to accommodate to accommodate, I think, a fair and good balance. We will go a lot further participating under this grant to get more of this infrastructure to whatever degree is finally decided on done. and we can spend a little bit of money, engage our consultants that we already have uh, you know, a proposal for in your packet to incorporate a lot of those designs and thanks again to Bob Brown for bringing some of those ideas to our attention and the contractors are given still more. We incorporate those designs in this grant application. This could be a very classy facility for all the citizens. And you know, I've been very vocal since since uh John Coun was on the board about John, be careful going out there and trying to have the county involved in this because we have a dock and that's it. Um but this is the only public boat ramp we have east of the bridge that I'm aware of. We have a private one and it needs to be repaired, too. That's the one at Norview. So, while I'm very hesitant and the board knows I'll almost never recommend we take over a state responsibility, we probably need to pride a little bit of partnership and leadership and leverage a very initial initially positive meeting with uh MRC on trying to go a little further down this road, incorporate some of the design elements we need to and I hope participate in this grant in some level cuz I don't think Middle Sex County is willing to put that kind of money into that site ever, unless I'm mistaken.

So I think finding that right balance where we can get the sand out, incorporate the designs necessary to keep the sand out and partner with VHB on this grant a little bit on the site would be where I would recommend we go and create as good a healthy balance as we can between the public and the community's desire to keep things quiet and uh allow for a little bit more robust site, which is what's being shown in that concept. sub schedule. That's kind of where I am. What is the disadvantage in us working in two different directions at the same time? Basically, know you're working towards the state and see what they can do and they're continuing to do their due diligence on their

It's complicated enough. I would want us to work with them through them and and alongside them and not be in two silos. And that's for a variety of reasons. I mean, I I don't know, Dave, speak up. If if I don't think the state is going to continue forward without a they've given me no indication that they have any interest in continuing forward with this site without you all agreeing that you're going to want to look for a solution to get that sand sediment basin consistently dredged with the private sector with private with private contractors. Yeah. So we need to make it as attractive for them as possible. And that gets us full circle back to the initial design.

We're looking at probably what 2, three years out. None of this stuff moves fast now. Um, yeah. Um, maybe nine months to a year if you were able to start on the permit applications and get it through the system before you could bridge. I don't think you could do I don't think that I don't think that's not not that just the turning base and and be able to dredge in front of the ramp. That's going to take time. Yeah. Yeah. It's still going to take time. Nothing is quick in this space at all. And the time frame if you in your experience you're thinking it's going to be a few years or

Well, no, I don't think it's going to take a few years. Not for that vision. I'm saying I think you could probably get it in a year to a year and a half if you're talking about designing to dredge out the sediment basin and in front of that ramp that should be able to be permitted and paid for and have the private sector remove that I would think in a year to a year and a half because the VMRC permit is still active. We would have to work with the core to be able to uh reactivate that. That don't have anything to do with that vision that's up there. All that does is figure out how to get the sand out of the front of the ramp, but it doesn't get you necessarily, unless you won't want that the sediment basin reconfigured large enough to be able to buy you more time into the future. You can put a permit in. She can help design that so that you can dredge on that right hand side and make a a hole that's there. That would buy some time for the sand to fill back in. So it's a question of you know how how big of a hole do you all want to design for

by you and creating a long-term better plan bigger and deeper is better in this particular problem. Yeah. Because it kind of comes back to what Reggie says. If we have a design that fixes the problem and we're not out there every year collecting sand

or if the the private contractors out there harvesting sand from the trap on a routine basis. You have a design right now that WSI pay for that gets you a deeper hole, but it is not designed to have the private contractors go in and scoop it out on a regular basis. The WSI design that you have right now was designed to fix it one time. Then that's when the state said, "Well, wait a minute. If you can get somebody to come out there repetitively and do it, we might be interested in that." That's why you're looking at an additional 20 to 30,000 because you have to redesign it to be able to allow the commercial equipment excavator to be able to get out there to dig you a deeper hole.

Go ahead. One question.

Yeah. And and look ways of what it cost the county. That's what I'm looking at. You know, we talking about design and at the end of the day, you know, is we we we talking about money. Just like I said at first, I can understand taking the sand out. I look at the design and it looks good to me. That's all I know. But I'm I'm I'm looking at a cost factor and I don't like to repeat money over top money. Okay. So that's where I'm at. So I'm looking at what it's going to cost the county. We can't keep on putting stuff down the road. We might got grant money out there to get if we put it so that it's track attractable to the state. Then we probably can get grant money to help us out. I'm I'm hearing that. You can't we can't keep on putting we can't keep on putting stuff off. You know what we done to the schools now going to call us 80 million still for

Miss Lewis? You got something you want to add to this? I was going to borrow Mr. Jesse's line. Uh Louie, what would you recommend? because you're kind of the expert in this area and I definitely love the idea of bringing Rebecca back on to another project. So So yeah, so we're team Rebecca. So she has to come with you.

It it depends on whether or not you all want to be invested in keeping this site open. If it's a key critical asset for the public to use, then you're going to have to spend some money at some level to be able to protect that. The state's walking away for a certain reason. It's costly the way it is right now. You've got a you do have a current plan right now that that is um permittable that we could go for a JPA, but that will not get you a long-term solution. It is not designed for a deep hole that would allow the equipment to go out. So if you all have resolved that this particular site is critically important as an asset to Middle Sex County and its citizens, irrespective of who's using it, then you're going to need to spend some more money. And that's probably in the range of 20 to 30,000 to design the solution that would allow for the equipment to go out and harvest that sand. Before that would be executed, I would encourage you all to get a commitment from your contractors to be able to say yes, they will take the sand and on what frequency because you don't want to spend the money to Mr. Williams point and then not having any contractors that'll commit to take the sand because now you got a different problem on your hands. You just spent 30,000 to design something and nobody takes sand out.

But what about Ricky's proposed this project? How would that help us fix the problem? That um it it's a different approach to it that is more longer term. And there is I even hate to even throw this one into it. There is something called wallet bro.

Wallet bro is federal legislation. Most DWR facilities are paid for with WLET bro money. If it's paid for with WLET bro money, you cannot have commercial activity at the site. And so there's a period of time when WAL bro is amvertised off of the DWR books which is something that we have been asking them about for these sites because if the state continues to invest money in their capital side and they're using wallet bro money that vision may not even be permissible to start with. So, we have to have a couple more conversations with DWR to figure out if you put your capital money back in. Does that plan conflict with your wallet bro money? And if they say, "Yeah, it conflicts," then there's a choice that has to be made because the only way that you could do that is you would have to say, "DWR, thank you very much for your prior service. We don't need you anymore. We're going to take over 100% ownership of this facility." And that's going to be more costly for you all. So that's really your policy choice is do you want to be half in it, all in it or not in it.

There you go. And question is when too and when. Louie, here here's a question. There is a mechanism and Dave is confident that we could get a permit, get the boat ramp dredged again. Yeah. But not fix the permanent problem. Reggie and then incorporate a lot of those design elements that we want to for that more lasting fix with a contractor's commitment. DR DWR at the table or not and then participate in the grant and hopefully leverage grant monies if we're successful to make a more lasting solution. Right?

That we're good now. We've got our basin, we got our contractors going down there and harvesting and we have a much more robust sustainable site that the countyy's not spending county tax dollars on keeping open in perpetuate without a hole to catch that sand. Yeah. It's just going to keep blowing right over top of it. Sometimes the old ways are the best ways. There was a sand trap basement there for for a long time and it appears to have stopped being maintained. So if there's a way for us to nexus the immediate need uh what is it JPA Dave? Yeah. Well talking dredging

the band with the core of engineers. The band-aid drip. Just the ramp. We'll call it a band-aid drip because you got the ramp portion which is what the public wants to see open. How many months will that take, Dave? It didn't sound bad. I'm put you on the spot. Three, four. Oh, no. Um, should I come back? Yeah, you should. Because I mean, this is important for the board's decision. If we can band-aid dredge this thing and then incorporate the design elements into this grant to help pay for all of that, that fixes the problem. Dave, go ahead.

So, like I said, Mark Long, I had Mark Longest call, our core regulator, and he said it might not even rise to the level of needing a JPA. I'm gonna turn to Rebecca. I don't I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. And I think they're probably over that.

Yeah. So, we we probably in several months you might be able to have it. Now, that might not put you in time for rockfish season, but it might get it clear for next spring or something like that. So, that like Matt said, that is strictly a band-aid u fix. I mean, you're looking at probably every 12 to 15 months doing that and you're looking at spending money every time. I mean, and we would have to get some type of commitment from our contractors. Okay, we're going to do this. Do y'all want to do this part for free and and in return for the material? They might want some type of compensation. We'd have to work that out. I mean, you're talking about minimal cost compared to what you had at Broad Creek. Obviously, you're talking about, you know, maybe $10,000 worth of work there, but that's every you're looking at that every year. That is not a long-term fix. Somebody might

I think one time when John had it dredged, it filled back in or started filling back in within a month. We had a storm right after if you have a bad I mean, it can start filling in pretty quick. It, you know, it takes a while to get to the point where it's where it's, you know, you can't operate around it, but having that storm coming and change things around tonight, you know, I mean, so yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's probably not going to push the sand out of that basin because there's no way there's nowhere to push it to, you know, but certainly we could get a storm and get a lot more in it because that sand is over top of the over top of the uh, you know, over the bulkhead already. So, a good storm could push a lot of it.

Doing something that everyone can live with and everyone can work together is is the goal. I think it should be. I also believe that we need to do something sooner rather than later. And then if it involves into something else that we all can live with, so be it. But we need to do something sooner rather than later. And I'm not interested in doing something. It's a great big huge expense to the county either. So I think what you're talking about there for now, yeah, it's not the best thing, but it is getting us to where the boat ramp is open and we can utilize it. And Lou and his group working towards getting that big hole. That might be the the best long-term solution we can come up with, right? Financially speaking as well.

So I mean, the board could direct staff to try this band-aid approach for now if it if they wish. Um, I would recommend that we try the approach based on what the core has told us to resubmit what we had. Maybe they'll reinitiate it. If that's not sufficient, we have to go full JPA. Then we would back up and get Rebecca to step in because staff doesn't necessarily have the whereforall to to do a new JPA and and that type.

Sounds like a logical that sounds like a logical approach to me. and and that if if that's the case, then we would obviously have to come back to the board and said say ask for, okay, Rebecca's fee is X, we have X amount in survey cost, and you know, break down something that y'all would then approve, but I don't think you're talking about the kind of money you had with Broad Creek, obviously, you know, talking about a much smaller area.

And that and that puts you in line to do some band-aid dredges for probably five years. Is that right? Yeah. Okay. So, let's try the easy approach and we'll see how that goes and then we'll come back to the board if you know we if Rebecca has to do a full JPA and that type of thing. Obviously, that's going to be a cost per cost involved. A and in any event, gentlemen, we if we're going to spend a dime of taxpayers money on doing this, we need to incorporate a plan on this long-term fix, which is why Ricky was standing indoor for a good long time. See where which way we were able to go because you got to you got to fix the problem or we're just going to be down there every year with more and more dredging. And as Louisie spoke that we have a you need to the engineered design solution that uh wetland studies did you know something longterm really nuts and bolts. Uh Ricky's proposal is a little bit more high level you know more conceptual that comes back onto the site and that type of thing. That would be like the second layer of it. So you have a couple layers that you're dealing with in there with that process. I would like to thank your efforts you put in on it and also um Louie and his group and everything and I do agree with what he's saying. We got to fix the problem which is the sand

right before any other stuff or it could ever come to futation. So, but I think we can do something sooner rather than later. The band-aid approach for now other things work out if if the board's amanable to that, right? And we still got to get a commitment from the private sector to keep this thing going. And that's that's one of the main things to get that from the private sector to make sure that they can keep drudging it. That's the main that's one that's one of the main steps for all of this, right? And we don't have that currently other than just some verbal discussion. Verbal.

One thing I'm hearing though that I just want to make sure I mean we were joking but Rebecca is not free. Um and we will need her help just as we will need Louis help on some of this moving forward. Is the board directing staff to are we being directed to engage them so we can do the band-aid approach to get kind of a temporary solution? Because the other thing that's before you is Louis proposal for the $20,000 agreement to study to to do a more detailed engineering design on the long-term on the long-term solution. So to incorporate into that sketch. I just want to be clear because while we were joking about Rebecca, we do need her expertise, but she is not free. I mean, as delightful as she is, she can get a price on the band-aid.

Yeah, I don't know that one's on.

I think the band-aid approach has two two levels to it. One is if we get lucky and the core accepts the resubmitt, you know, staff can take we'll try to take care of that. I'll get Mark to talk to the our core regulator again, see what what he needs, and if that works and we can get a core permit with that, then we've gotten off pretty good. If they're requiring more materials, another submission of a JPA, obviously, we have to engage Rebecca and Lily and the team to do that. So that would if that happens, we're going to come back to the board and say, "Board, this this is the band-aid approach is going to cost X amount in permitting and that type of thing."

I think we need that to make a decision. Does that does that make sense? Yes. What I just said, I would agree. I think that's a direction we need to go and once we have more information about what we can do, what we can't do, how much it's going to cost, then we can make a informed decision at that point. But I think a consensus is to move forward with see what we can do and um and then go from there. Okay. Are we good with that? Everybody good with that? I'm I'm good. Yeah. Huh? Okay. And you can leave Dave at the podium because Whiting Creek's next. Go ahead, Dave. I forgot my materials are all over there. I think I can wing this a little bit. Yeah.

Probably. Excuse me. Louie probably should have led into this because he's going to describe the um the uh the actual funding mechanism and some of the the background on on how we have gotten to the point where we have the opportunity to get a design for some of the uh for dredging of the Whiting Creek uh federal channel. And I think it was you Bill that mentioned well what good does it do to make any improvements at site if you can't get in which is which makes sense. Um, so part of that is Louis group has um has got uh grant funding to do a design and I believe that's through VIMS. Is that correct?

Yeah, through VIMS. And we've been in conversation uh to come up with different solutions and they're looking at trying to submit uh package together to get a joint permit application to dredge the federal channel for Whiting Creek. Um, part of that, uh, the way I envision it would also be some material placed along the beach to adjacent to that to, uh, help, uh, the material this, we're hoping we don't have the material, the disposal material issue that we had. Well, we didn't have a bad one at Broad Creek. we had just capacity, but a lot of this material would be utilized along the banks to uh help bolster that little peninsula that sticks out, that sand spit as it's starting to fail. Pardon me.

On the Locust Grove side, I take it

on the Locust Grove side. I believe they've got a project they're permitting or have permitted uh further east that they would like some of that material as well. I envision some of that material possibly go to there to help uh as that little spit is starting to fail and I I see bad consequences if it does. So um anyway, we have that we're in works. Um I guess eventually what's what we would like from the board is um maybe authorization. Do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do you guys want to go through with the uh joint permit application process or or how does the board want to proceed with that? I'm going to let Louiesie kind of he has more background on that. I'm going to turn it over to Louie because he can explain this project.

David got 99% correct, but I do have a very complicated public policy question in here because nothing is simple in this space at all. The map that you're looking at there was the last time that the creek was dredged. the kind of the the vertical that runs from the left to the right. That's your federal channel and then it hooks in and makes a turning basin in front of the ramp that's there. The slide right after that shows you the true federal footprint of the of the channel. That hatched area on the top to the right is the area where the core of engineers previously put the material that was of good granular size sand. And so that's what the core utilized last time it was dredged and that's where it went. This is where it gets really complicated. Um, go on the second image, please. And then zoom in, Matt, on the second image. The blue is kind of the total footprint of the federal channel from the core perspective and the red is really the the channel that's there. As you can see, it doesn't go very far into the creek. Now, what Vims has been doing is they've been looking up a couple of different prongs to try to figure out, well, yeah, maybe we'll go up here and dredge up here. Maybe we'll go down here. And I say, wait a minute, that's going to create winners and losers instantly. And so it's easy for us to be when I say easy, it's it's more likely that we can get dredging money to fund what's in that red and blue area there because that's the federal channel that that's got a public interest in it. The second that we jump out of that red and blue area and you all say you want to dredge further up the creek, I'm not gonna make that call and Vims is not going to make that call because wherever you stop that line, there's somebody's house on the other side of that line that they going to get dredged.

And so the bigger question for you all is do you want to dredge and have them the design to go beyond the federal footprint in that creek? And then if so, where do you want us to go? Because you can go up to the right or you can go down off the screen where it says section 408 channel reach. You can go on down there, go around that little marsh hump and then come back out. There are a lot of choices and I can't guarantee you that we will find any money to dredge anything outside of the federal footprint. Maybe the Virginia Waterways Maintenance Fund, if you all can find me commercial watermen that are using that creek that are mooring somewhere up the creek and need to get out, we might be able to make an argument to now VMRC because now the money's been moved away from the port authority that there is a commercial seafood interest in wanting to keep that channel open. But if that doesn't exist, that is highly unlikely that we're gonna be able to find grant money to be able to dredge outside of what's there. That's the complicated question that you all get to decide on. You know, the easy answer, absolutely design for the federal footprint and then we're more likely to be able to go get money. But that does not help everybody else that's further up the creek that's out of that footprint. This kind of segus us right back to the start of the conversation where we have service district options. That's correct. And some of these neighborhoods.

Yeah. I I I don't know. It's a recovering planning director and me, but I look at a lot of these uh waterfront neighborhoods. The water is almost like a private road that they collectively as that community contribute to maintain. But we don't have those associations or structures developed for these creeks beyond these federal channels. If we had a service district or of some stripe form or the other, then that would be something formed around that private community and their interest to keep their creek open. The other complication with that is that the further

I think I'm going to be pretty correct. You correct me if I'm wrong on this. The further you go up that creek, the more gooey it's going to get. And you can't put that goo in that green hatched area. So where's the goo gonna go? You have no dredge material holding strategy for that material. You don't have sight. You don't have offsite. Now it's most likely that that red area should be on the outside good sand. And that should most likely go to that green hatched area.

Yeah. Once you leave your red area there, the creek is pretty much what it's been for eons. Yep. I mean, so the communities that have built there and the houses or whatever for a long time when they were there, that's how the creek was when they moved in. That's correct. And so that that's really you get it. I mean, that that's the question is is what do you all want? What services do you all want to provide? What's the public responsibility to keeping these channels open? Is it just the red? Maybe. So,

I don't I don't I don't think I don't know how we got in the conversation of going way up creeks that have been shallow for all their life in existence. I mean, I I didn't I thought we were talking about the boat landing and out to the river. Now, it seems like the conversation's going way up Wayne's Creek. I mean, I used to jump mullet hunt up there when I was a little That's why you That's why I wanted to ask you all the question because Vims is off here designing, you know, solutions all over the place. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't even know whether or not Middle Sex even wants to go outside of the footprint. We don't know if the neighborhood does.

We And you don't know that either. That's correct. And so that that's why what that's why we really needed this one on here because to be able to finish the JPA I need to be able to tell VIMS no this is the only public interest that Middle Sex currently has interest in wanting to deal with is the federal channel footprint designed for that or if you all wanted to go further up the creek you all need to tell me how far. No. Uh, well, for me it's just a federal footprint. Yeah. And we we go further.

Anybody else, you know, wants to chime into and and the grant funding for that. Is that a 100% grant or is that a shared with the county?

The the design work, it's got a small match to it. It's DCR has paid for that. Um, that's already been I'm going to say appropriated because we got that grant almost two years ago. So, Matt has already accounted for that in your expenditure. So this money is in hand and BIMS had been chugging on along on doing the design work and then as I began to look at where they were going that's where the kind of the flag went up and I said wait a minute I think you might be getting a little bit out of the lane that you all care most about and that's why I wanted to make sure we had had this conversation because it doesn't do the worst thing I think that we could do is to show a JPA showing it being dredged outside of the federal footprint with no plan to ever get that dredged. That's false hope and I don't think that's

Yeah, I don't think that's a direction. I think a federal footprint is where we need to go and see where we line up with that. Now we get the municipal dredging program established down the road, then you got a different right tool in your box. And that's when Louis andor the county planner, county administrator goes to these communities says, "Hey, if you want to participate in this funding it, how do we want to do go about doing that?" Right? because it's kind of as I see them, private subdivisions on a private road. You fund your own road maintenance, right? Uh are y'all in agreement with Louie continuing on with the federal channel?

Anything that I may have missed with you? No, I just samples. So that's fine. Yeah, we've got it. Got a library. We have a sediment library. Okay. Okay. Good. Thank you all for that one. That's it on that. I think it's all dread and stuff. Regional water plant. Thank you, Louie. Yes, sir. Thank you. Okay. Uh how about uh let's move right into unless anybody needs a break. Let's do regional water supply service agreement. Chip.

Yes, sir. Mr. Chair, members of the board. Um shifting gears a little bit. Hopefully this one will be a little more straightforward for you and and not so lengthy. Um, periodically the state mandates that we complete uh water supply plans. They've done that since the turn of the century historic droughts that we ran into at around the turn of the century. The last time we did this, we did it uh regionally with the middle peninsula planning district commission and several other localities. um that was done in 2011 and updated again most recently in 2018. So we're back before you. The the state has mandated mandated that these water supply plants be updated. Um we're planning to do that regionally again through the middle p middle peninsula planning district commission. They have a service agreement that I have before you um in your packet that uh I'm simply asking for your authorization to to authorize the county administrator to sign that agreement so that they can work with their consultant to update the the regional water supply plan. Um there is money budgeted within the county's already appropriated budget to cover this cost or the county's portion of this cost which is 2055863. Um, I'm available for any questions you might have on this.

Questions.

Our water system being fairly new. I'm I'm not seeing a clear advantage at this point for us joining in with this. Could you help me with that? Maybe. The regional water supply plan looks at this more holistically um for all water sources for the locality. So while the water authority does contribute to our our piece of that bigger picture um looking at it regionally does help the cost. I mean we're mandated as a locality a county to do a water supply plan for the state. uh the most cost-effective way of meeting that mandate has been to do it regionally as a smaller locality pooling with the other localities

to get it done. Thank you. Key word is mandated. Key word there is mandated. We're required by the state to do it. Yeah. Hopefully I covered that adequately. I will turn to Louis too who's who's been part of this before if he's got anything else to add. Yeah, maybe the technical answer is what the EQ is worried about is how many straws are we sticking in the ground and how much water we sucking out. Yeah. Ground withdrawals. That's what that's what they want to know. Can everybody take the same water from the same hole?

So, Mr. Mr. Chairman, we need a motion uh if it's the board's desire to authorize the county administrator to sign this service agreement between the Middle Peninsula Planning District Commission and the county for the regional water supply plan. Um and as as uh Chips already said, I believe Matt, the money's already in the budget. So staff is looking for a motion, please. I so move that motion. So move uh Mr. Jesse, second by Mr. Williams. Any further discussion? Roll call, please. Mr. Mr. Jesse. Yes. Mr. Williams. Yes. Mr. Bill Harris. Yes. Mr. Kittinden. Yes.

Mr. Don Harris. Yes. Motion is approved.

We're going to take a fivem minute break. water service agreement. Eat me a cracker.

Me a cracker. Chicken strips. Okay. We were afraid that you need an emergency. Yeah, we did. Sorry. That's all we got. Me, my friend. Be my friend. We ordered some emergency food because we were starving. Is bringing it up right now. That's a good idea. Didn't expect it to last long. What's that?

Get your envelope. Oh, thank you. Day Where are we? Just send me thoughts. Thank you very much.

Yeah, we kind of got a little longwinded on a couple. I won't deliver. Come on, man. I'm not going to say

we were going to have dinner tonight. Texas football. All right.

Oh, I'm sorry. All right. Who we waiting on? I think

Yeah. All right. I don't know where Reggie must have went downstairs. Do I need to wait for Reggie or can we start without him? I'm I'mma pull them in front. We got a

No, I don't know where it went. Somebody said, "What about come back.

Yeah, we're gonna go.

Are you back on? Okay, I'd like to call the board of supervisors meeting back to order. Uh, with that, uh, Mr. Cretz, I think you're up on the hot seat. Yep. Planning department item F. Yes sir, Mr. Chairman. Um, so several months back uh the board of s the board and the planning commission uh respectively initiated uh ordinance amendments uh to address the requirements for water hookup to the Middle Sex County Water Authority uh water system. These uh requirements are pretty germanine to most localities. Uh helps protect your water system. You don't want a hodgepodge of water systems and you do want your um adjacent development uh hooking up to those uh that infrastructure that been paid for and put in the ground. So with that uh there's several components. This is this uh particular amendment has a lot of lot of tentacles so to speak. uh one component one of the components is uh is the uh drafting or the uh development of a service area map that's generally incorporated into your comprehensive plan. Uh Miss Lewis has done some research on that. Evidently to to give credence to your and and and the credentials to your your requirement for that you also have to have the matching u comprehensive plan mapping or or description in your comp plan. Of course

we know our comp plan's currently under uh review. Seems like every time we go to work on it something else gets put into on the list of things to put in it. So that's an ever it seems like it's ever increasing. So anyway, um what I've done is I've through Heather and Chip and I helped we've worked through this and I've tried to draft uh this is just a first draft of this ordinance. Uh it gained to both the subdivision and the zoning ordinance. Uh, as you know, last month I had the uh had the board uh kind of defer the the subdivision ordinance requirements for the uh site plan review. We kind of punted that down a couple months so that we could kind of incorporate everything, all these changes into one one uh comprehensive revision into the subdivision ordinance. We didn't really want to be revising subdivision ordinance over and over. As we know, the zoning ordinance gets, you know, a few more. You'll have several amendments a year. So, um, with that, um, I think, um, Matt, can you go to the red line? There we go.

Yeah. So, um, you can see the different sections. This this first U page deals with the subdivision, the proposed subdivision changes. Uh, these are preliminary at this juncture. Uh Chip and I have been talking, you know, we're seeing as we look at it, the more we look at it, we say, "Well, you know, maybe this doesn't work or maybe we have to tweak this or that." So, um this is a living document. We're going to be changing it somewhat as we go forward and have more review on it. Obviously, it'll go before the water authority. They'll look at it. Our ordinance committee, planning commission will look at it. So, it's going to have some eyes on it. Uh you'll see different areas uh as you go down to the bottom of the page. We've added some definitions. Uh we've uh defined the water uh authority service area which is the big component of this uh particular amendment. It's obviously going to uh we're going to have to refer to uh the comprehensive plan to refer back to the comprehensive plan to uh to to define that area uh that's being defined as a water service area,

primary service area and what we're calling the water authority service area. Do we have to have a make the whole county a primary service area for the water authority to be able to have their service area the whole county? Um we we can look that later on like you say it's a working document. That's fine.

We might can we answer that now or do we need it? I mean, so the short answer is in order to make um there's a third component here that we haven't added and it's just at some point it's a little overwhelming at one time, but the board will also have to adopt what's called a water code. And what you would do with that is where you designate the entire Middle Sex County to be a Middle Sex Water Authority service district. And in order to ensure that control that growth is in a controlled manner, this is where the comp plan comes in. So even though the whole county will be the service district, right? We want to have specific areas of where that development can actually occur. So the answer is yes, you have to make the whole county in order to make it exclusive for the water authority excluding Aqua, the town of Urbana, things like that. But um that's why the comp plan is so critical because uh as the board has made clear, we want controlled smart growth. So we would need to and generally speaking, one of the tools that you have to control smart growth is a primary service area. And

I don't know that I would call the whole county a primary service. That's what I'm saying too because we want growth in in say um Hartfield. Yeah. or whatever or Cooks Corner, we would designate that as a primary service area, but I'm not sure that we can with the utility being the whole. So, I think there's there's some differences on the words that we're using. I would say from the le I don't disagree with you, but I guess we don't have to dive this deep into it tonight. I just ask

what we wanted to show the board as we have put this together. I would say the biggest hiccup as far as time delay is going to be putting the map into the comp plan, but that is a critical piece of this puzzle. Um, so but we wanted to show you that Dave and Chip and I, we have put together draft ordinances. The board has had this before you a couple of times, but it's been broad theory concepts. Dave and I are showing you now red letter. This is a proposal is the board. We we're we're seeking your feedback or questions and then we're going to send it to the planning commission as Dave Cretz was saying to go through the regular process. I will also I mean I've already prepared the water code but it I need to see the comp plan map as well. So that I have that ready for y'all to review as well but that's not really something the planning commission will review. That's a very specific ordinance that's only for the the board's the only one that has control over that one. This is essentially a a progress report is what it is.

Gold stars are appropriate to be issued. Yeah. Go ahead. So, um the next step, I guess, is we'll continue to we'll start feeding it through our ordinance committee. We have an ordinance committee meeting tomorrow morning. I'm going to go ahead and start pushing this out to them and have them see read through it and see what they think, get their feedback. It's part of a

Dave, I mean, I'm sorry. I'm going to cut you off here because this is important. The next step is genuinely is this moment right here. Is there any feedback or questions from the board and then the second step is it goes to the ordinance committee. Um it's very important for Dave and I we've we've given you something concrete to look at today. Granted, it's a living document. It's moving, but we need board feedback and specific board direction to say take this document, start it through the process. That's what we're looking for,

right? Quick question. So, yourself, um, county administrator, uh, county engineer Chip, Mr. Cretz, um, y'all all in agreement with where you are today with with the document. Well, with a caveat, um, I would say based on what I we've been directed by the board thus far, this is embodying what y'all have told us to do. Okay.

So, I just want to be really clear on that. We're And so, I think that not only is this a progress report, but we're trying to ask the board, did we get what you wanted? Are we putting it into the words that you want? I'm sorry that sounded worse the way I said that. But what we're trying to say is, gentlemen, we need some feedback. this is the time to give us a little bit of feedback. Are we on track? Are we way off? Yeah,

I'm thinking to make this thing come full circle, there going to be some once the county does their portion, then it's going to be some things that the water authority will be able to do. And I think that might be where I'm kind of like thinking there might be some holes in this because it's not what the county would do. It'd be what the water authority would do. And I'll throw a scenario out there. If another utility wanted to expand their water and we have a regulation where they can but it has to go through our infrastructure. Just one piece of our pipe would be considered infrastructure and then we would get some monies off of it. I don't see that in here because I'm thinking that might would be a water authority item they would do. Is that right or or am I being too vague?

It would be a nexus there is what you're saying. A what now? A nexus. It'd be a nexus there between this ordinance and whatever water authority policies are. Yeah. Um I just want to some other things I'm looking for. I don't have list here or anything. I'm thinking that it may not be here because it would be under the water authorities pervy. Is that I think that's reasonable to say. um you know I mean for example I mean we have here uh in in Dave's language that was an actual um I guess I guess what I'm I need to do there is I probably need to sit down with the water authority

and go through this at our next meeting and see where our expectations are with what this brings to the table and what the water authority has the ability to bring to the table then make it all come together is that sound I think it would be fair to have the water authorities's input I mean as Dave said well And that was going to be my question. Has Mr. Chambers seen the changes and what you're looking at doing and then how you know has has that come about somewhat? No. And that may be part of the next step. Well, I've read the package. Okay. To that degree, he he's seen it, but he hasn't issued any comments.

At what stage, Dave, do you need a comprehensive plan amendment to set this up in order? We'll say you get everything brushed up and where the ordinance committee's happy, the board's happy, the water authority board's happy. At what stage do you implement the comprehensive plan amendment that sets this up for then public hearing? That that's my specific. They should be pretty close. Are you going to do it concurrent or you going to do the comp plan first and then that? I don't know that we I would like to see it parallel if I could if I could weigh in. It's got to be in, you know, in step with each pretty close. So, you know, it may phase out a month either side where Mhm. but you you wouldn't want it lagging 6 months behind or 3 4 months behind probably plan along with it.

Yeah. Which means we have to get cracking on the comp plan, too. And in theory, the water authority would then adopt as well, arguably maybe in the same month or the next month. Again, we wouldn't want a big gap in in our time here. Um, but yeah, that would be the goal. And I think the board adopting the water code at the same time as well. But again, that's that's kind of like a third prong to this.

And and just to kind of deviate off a little bit, the highlights when we went through this uh nothing's going to make somebody that has to replace a well hook up to the all state code kind of covers that a little bit and general language with that. This is for new construction, new hookups, that type of thing. So, so anyway, I think we followed the law. I think what Chip and I are trying to gauge is when it's out of those what you would call a service district area, how do we handle that? You know, that's the you want to make the whole county so you can kind of control it, but how do you handle the development in those areas? So, it's a

Chip and I and Heather are trying to reconcile all that and make it right. And you know what, putting it putting more eyes on this thing, somebody's going to, you know, we'll see things. Yeah. And that that's why you put the eyes on it. So that, you know, more people that have dealt with it and worked with it, they see something in here said that's not going to work. So we that's why at this point we're only looking for kind of a blessing to go forward. Okay? And if the board sees something that they're not in agreement with, please speak up and tell us and send us in another direction.

I'm I'm personally for the blessing going forward, but also I think that we need to make sure that the water authority has straight access to you that when they get a chance to read it, should they have something to be able to call you directly? You okay with that? Absolutely. Okay. Thank you. Yes, sir. Appreciate. Absolutely. And and Dave, I'll chime in on that. If I remember the discussion that we had at the retreat correctly, if a major subdivision was to spontaneously erupt out somewhere in the hinterland somewhere outside of even the footprint of the water system and they were to design their own community water system. There was discussion on having that community water system be turned over for operation maintenance. It would have to be designed to the water authority standard.

The water authority standards. Exactly. It wouldn't just be handed over to an outside corporation. Well, I believe the ordinance speaks of that, right? Good. But I just want a trip point in it. As we've had discussions, at what point is it economically feasible for the water authority to take over a system? So, yeah, we don't want to take over too small. You don't want to take over five lot subdivision water system maybe. So, you know, you you'd be going backwards on it all the time. So, anyway, there there's numbers in there for that, too. take over ones that don't build out on time either. Yeah. So, okay. So, with continue on.

Yes, sir. So, do do would you like a I think we would probably just like a Do we can we get it with a consensus or you want to vote? We do. We need a vote. I'm happy with the consensus, but every person needs to be on We need to hear you on the recording, please. With it. Uh, roll call, please. Just for consensus. For just for consensus. Mr. Williams? Yes. Mr. Bill Harris. Yes. And please include the water authority board. Mr. Krenden. Yes. Mr. Jesse. Yes. Mr. Don Harris. Yes. Okay. Continue on. Move forward. Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you.

And Mr. Chairman, if I could keep Dave at the podium, I'm gonna invite Chip and Trent up here with us. Okay. I'm gonna introduce our next item if the board's All right. Go ahead.

Um, speaking of the retreat, one of the items that was discussed at the retreat is come to kind of a culmination in this presentation and hopefully the board's authorization to issue out an RFP for a solicited public private partnership. One of the things the board discussed at our last retreat was the Latimore property. And you know, as the board is aware, just about every budget year, we're under the same uh concern and criticism from folks in the community. Hey, look, what are you going to do with all this county property you own? Um, put some of it back on the tax books if you're not interested in um doing anything with it and you don't have a plan. So part of the discussion at the retreat was the Latimore property and the potential of maybe putting that back on the tax roles and doing a a public private partnership or solicited public private partnership on that. So tonight uh the staff are going to present to the board um a discussion of the property and hopefully get some guidance from board on what you want to do. Uh I'm going to talk briefly about the property's history. Uh Dave Cretz, I'm gonna segue right back to Dave on planning and zoning perspectives and then Chip is here to this evening to talk about the public facilities and the utilities that could come to fruition and what's available out there in the region. I'll talk again briefly about the public private partnership aspect of this and the county's PPE policy. And uh last but not least, the um the um time period and time frame on which we hope to try to get this thing kicked off. Um Dave, you want to talk a little? Well, let me do the history first. Uh the county acquired the Latimore property in 2006. Back then, the county had inherited a sewer project from the EDA and the county was uh acquiring the property for the potential construction of a

wastewater treatment plant. Uh ultimately uh the decision was made to uh kind of I'll say abandon that project or set that project aside and um uh the engineering on the treatment plant on that property was ceased. And if I go back, that was you. That's okay. You keep me on my toes, girl. Um, so that was set aside and and property just kind of stayed there. Um the county more recently in 2022 purchased the adjoining track uh tax map 2751 uh in order to expand the amount of road frontage we had and maybe potentially add for better access to the Latimore track in behind. um we did acquire that property and uh we've kind of been tossing some different things back and forth since then. Uh recently we developed an RFP or solicitation uh to bid out the timbering of the site. Didn't really get any feedback. Uh and then at our retreat back in January, the board was I think this was maybe one of the issues that there was unanimous uh desire to pursue at that time. um a consensus in any event that we maybe try to do a public private partnership on this to develop some uh public infrastructure closer to Saluda from the the Cooks Corner area, extend some water lines at the developers expense. uh expand some recreational offerings and maybe some tax base development with a commercial aspect for us to develop a a win-win project with the EDA. And um you know, last but not least, maybe offer a a a alternative type of

housing product here in Saluda that's an easy commuting range to Gloucester into Yorktown and to West Point and a mixeduse type of development and not putting us in the subdivision business, but maybe solicit for private contractor, private partner that may want to work in partnership with the EDA and the board of supervisors on trying to do something creative with this site. So, we are going to present to you uh what we've been working on and uh see how the board wants to take it from here. So, with that, I'll segue over to Dave in the planning aspects of this.

So, I'm um of course planning is at the tip of the arrow, so to speak, because everything kind of revolves around that in in the beginning of it and what you decide what you're going to put there. So what you have is the uh property is currently zoned village community and you can see that the future land use map which is over the right hand corner is uh pretty much there's absolutely no uh change projected in zoning district. So u looks like village community you have that in place you don't have to make any changes in zoning. Uh village community offers a lot of different uses. Uh you can do single family dwellings, two family dwellings, uh professional offices. Uh I'm I'm going to go through some of the more appealing uh aspects here. You have uh I mean you could do a grocery store, uh restaurants, bed and breakfast. U so and some of your special exception uses u may be more intense. You have a contractor yard. So, uh, lodge halls, yacht, I doubt if a yacht club would go there, but, uh, you have retail stores and shops with buildings greater than 5,000 ft with a special exception. Multifamily dwelling for, uh, would be a possibility for uh, with special exceptions. And since you're putting this out on the, you know, out in the street, so to speak, for ideas, you may uh have to entertain some somebody might come up with a good idea outside of these uses that the board may have to consider as an addition to the uh to the to the ordinance, you know, and consider that particular proposal. It may be appealing uh something that's not necessarily even in our list of permitted uses. So um you can look at u looking at the slides you can see that u

that stem that goes through the it looks like a tree kind of looks the contour is yeah thanks the it almost looks like a tree but it's obviously the whiter areas are the flatter areas in the bottoms and those more intense red areas are intense contours. this you can see there's several u if you look there's several nodes that run out there or or nles I guess you call them that u that you could uh accommodate development on each one looks over the if anybody I think most of the members have walked this property it's absolutely beautiful there's a lot of large beach trees and oaks on it they would make a a beautiful subdivision you know creating some type of road system in to those uh nles or those high spots and um you could really uh create a nice product in there. And the area in the front is flatter. You don't have as much relief, so you may be able to accommodate other types of uses or or residential uses in there. Um the the uh in the lower right hand corner you'll see that the uh project is uh kind of biseected by an RPA and you'll see property on the uh I guess the northwest side of that RPA. Uh may be more costly to access. You'd have to cross the uh cross that ravine to get to the other side. So, um, so you can see the, uh, property, you know, somewhat challenging as far as topo goes, but sometimes that makes an interesting product if you're using a residential. Sometimes those are actual amenities, those uh, you know, those ravines and that relief rather than just having flat lots, you know, out in the middle of a field somewhere. So, beautiful piece of property, lots of potential for, you know, somebody that may want to, you know, do it for

residential development. I'm not sure what the next slide has. So, um I'm going to turn this over to Chip. He can explain u the water authority and their uh role in this and the available utilities.

Yeah, thanks Dave. Um you know, while it while the property's got potential, it also has some uh some hurdles that would need to go over to get water and sewer to the property. And I think as you know and you've heard in the past uh those those infrastructure improvements can be costly and they may make it worthwhile or not worthwhile to develop a property um in the long run. But uh on this slide I've shown where where a potential water line could come from the Cooks Corner area. It's about a 440 foot extension for 4 400t extension that would be required just to get it to the front of the property. And then if the property is subdivided as well, um there would be additional water infrastructure that would go into the property into the subdivided parcels to serve the parcels. So, uh that that is a a pretty long extension. Um back in May, the water authority did adopt an extension policy where we can work with property owners and developers that want to do this kind of thing, but the authority is certainly not in a position uh financially to pay for an extension like this. So the the policy requires uh property owners or developers that want to do this type of work uh to to bear the burden of that cost. Uh they would develop through an agreement with the authority um plans and specifications for that extension and the infrastructure within the development that would need be needed to meet the water authority standards. And then the water authority uh upon acceptance of the those installed infrastructure would then uh become part of the water authority system. Uh also along with that would come the easements that would be required as well for the that to become a public water system. So that's the water side. Um it is a pretty lengthy extension. Um I think you would be approaching probably a million dollars to get that extension.

How much? probably in the neighborhood of approaching a million dollars to get a waterline extension from Cook's Corner just down uh 33 to the front of the property. And then you have additional cost to get that that infrastructure um tentacled into whatever subdivided parcel you might create depending on the land use that would drive the need for the size of the pipe. The water authorities policy does also allow for some crediting against connection fees if the water authority would like to upsize that pipe to be able to serve beyond it uh or connect or for some other greater purpose. Uh that pipe would need if that pipe needed to be bigger. Uh let's say the uh the subdivision just needed an 8 inch pipe and the water authority wanted to make that a 12inch pipe because now we have a master plan to serve yeah a bigger area. We could credit um allow credits up to uh the connection fee costs uh involved with that extension. So, water authorities trying to certainly balance that through their policy with not overextending themselves financially with a capital project to serve just a specific area. And that's not uncommon from what I've seen happen in other localities. uh most most other localities have an extension policy and that's why we developed one as well that helped uh somewhat protect the authority from uh the cost of doing these uh expensive capital projects to add on to the project. So that's the water uh side of the equation. On the next side, I did reach out to Hampton Road Sanitation District um and ask about sewer as well. and sewer is yeah could be perhaps even more limiting than water right now I think for this site not um insurmountable per se but for right now the picture for capacity to be able to serve this site as well as local

infrastructure to serve it is just not not quite there uh we Hampton Roads does have service areas uh you've heard them come update you on the service on the sewer side of the picture in the last year I think twice in the last year. Uh but Saluda is limited in available capacity right now and so is Cook's Corner. From their perspective, they would not uh approve uh without some serious exceptions addition to those service areas to include this property. They do have a 3-in force man that goes from Cook's Corner to Saluda and then from the and and then that goes to the treatment plant in Saluda. Um, they would not allow a direct connection into that, right?

Force me. I could have sworn they told us we had some space available in the treatment plan and we could use it pretty much how we needed to, but we need to take um uh individuals homes first. Was it something along those lines? Matt, they have a fine geographic service area for Saluda that's in their plan and this is outside of that geographic service area. Okay, got it. And when it comes to capacity at the Sluda treatment plant, you'll notice on here, I think, and Chip, thanks for including this graph or this chart. Coach Corner phase one, we had allocated uh 7,500 gallons per day, I believe,

for that. And if my memory serves, that was a brew pub and a workforce housing apartments. So, that's been kind of set aside over and above that 15,500 of of capacity for Saluda phase one. it would be a rationed use of the sewer. So, it would have to be something a developer would sit down with HRSD and really um watch very closely on how much capacity there is in the treatment plant. And of course, the county would have to chime on and say, "Hey, we don't mind this developer using that capacity, too." Where where does the Saludo service area end for as far as HRD is concerned?

It's it's essentially in that green area. on the top left corner of this map right now. It's a manhole beside the VOTE building. So, so Aqua's water is outside goes outside of what uh seems kind of odd. Yeah, there there are parcels that are served by So, HRD service area is inside smaller than the Saludas water service area. That's that's correct. And they did in some of their sewer plans I saw from last year. Uh the the next phase for expansion for Saluda for them was to pick up into those areas where Aqua is also serving but with a low pressure system that gets to this gravity green system and goes then to the plant.

Okay. Uh since then they've come back with a revise that they they updated the board on earlier this year of um the Saluda plant would eventually go away become a pump station that pumps to West Point and beyond. Uh that is that infrastructure to increase capacity for the Saluda service area for them is is likely 10 plus years out. Yeah, sure. Oh, definitely. But if I didn't realize there's a restriction when we had to use that capacity in what they determined as a Saluda area. I didn't realize it was that tight. Yeah. This this Latimore parcels right between two of their service areas. For them, it would be requesting an exception

to expand their service area to include these parcels. Not that it can't be done, but as Matt said, if there's 7,500 gallons a day for corn that's not going to materialize, then you got to look at can we reallocate that and and expand their service area. I think it would be just a discussion with the developer. They're not going to want to do that until they know some more concrete sure on what the land use is going to be and what the true demands are going to be added by adding this to their I don't see it being unworkable of something that hasn't been done before though. not not completely unworkable. It's going to be challenging. Okay.

Um you know, outside of that, there's obviously for the sewer side um on-site options as well. So, that would eat up usable land space and probably make it less marketable, more costly. Um but again that that's not an outside of the realm of possibilities either a creative solution to

one one of the positive things here that this does and and you you spoke on it a little bit was the fact that if we could get a water line from Cook's Corner up to this property at a um discounted price because of the we might have to pay a little something in fees or something to get it upgraded to a larger size pipe. But the most of it would be borne on the developer that would be putting that pipe in. So that pipe would then stop and I I'm just guessing we're probably less than 500 yards away from the last piece of pipe Aqua's got now. So this brings us by by if we if we can get this property developed properly and so forth and so on and all the everything aligns right. Having our water line coming that close to the village of Saluda this size is a big deal. It really is. And this is the way a lot of other municipalities and counties operate. They increase their water line and their sizes through the development that happens in the county. Thanks for what you're doing here, Jim.

Yeah,

I would I would venture a guess, too. If the water authority line was closer to Saluda, Aqua probably would not have sought to drill those new wells here in Saluda. They would have just offered to buy wholesale water from the water authority. Um, I think I would be remiss if I didn't say that's kind of what the state would prefer getting back to less straws in the aquifer and whatnot as as Louis said. And what one of the things too that I'll just throw in for the minute sake if my memory serves HRSD said at minimum 10 years to get it to West Point and then you're looking at another five to seven for Saluda. So that's a probably a 15 20 year buildup to look for sewer to be taken away from here and HRC do it. Well, the one good thing about doing a public private partnership, they they're going to figure it out real quick whether it's doable or not, whe it'll work or not without us having to do a whole lot of labor in it. They'll figure that out for us.

This is something that our teams uh talked about for the last 6 months. Um, yeah, the site's got some challenges, but we don't know. The private sector will tell us if if they if they show up and they're interested, hey, we'll talk to them. And if they don't, we've tried and we've learned from it. Is it is it probably it's premature at this point, but sometime another I would think the county might would want to talk to the Latimore family and see if they wanted their name to be on it because I would be I would definitely be for that if if they wanted it. Thank you. Brings us to Trent. Here comes the money man.

Yeah. Well, we've kind of covered some of the downsides, so let's uh talk positively as best we can in terms of what's possible versus probable because that's what the way I like to frame things. So, we know it's got great road frontage. We know we've got relatively low taxes. We know we need a lot of things in terms of housing types and ownership and rental options like we talked about. We know that we need some retail office space, you know, in different locations. Everybody wants a laundromat. Everybody wants a bakery. Everybody wants Aldi. Everybody wants whatever. What is the demand for that? And what that gap is between demand and supply and who's interested in Middle Sex and who's not. And let's not get our feelings hurt here because again, we're just trying to be realistic about what's possible versus probable. So again, we've already covered the sewer, you know, service not there, water line's not there. Matt, Chip, Dave, myself, some of the board members are very familiar with how this operates in other localities that are growing. and there's demand. But if you're not growing and there's not demand and you don't have the infrastructure, then what can you do to overcome that? The other challenge is in the absence of a market study, it seems, and y'all tell me that Gloucester, Central Garage, and King William, Newkin is just exploding. Uh West Point even has a lot of homes for sale that are moving for, you know, higher price points than than I would imagine possible. for the type of home that it is. So the question is why are those people moving there and not moving here. Um also we've got a lot of traffic that goes up and down 17. We've got a lot of traffic that moves through here, but it's really not enough to support a lot of the franchises and everything that everybody would like. But more importantly, what is the site readiness and what is the board willing to do to

provide incentives? Whether it's for a residential, mixed use, you know, this applies to just about any project that that you want to do. So again, what's possible versus probable, who's going to provide those incentives, when and why. So the typical incentives that a board will do for a project that it wants is typically non-residential, but we have reasons for wanting residential here. Um but the typical incentives, you know, you can discount the property, you can give it away. Uh you can participate in those infrastructure improvements because I don't know of a developer, even though I have not talked to them personally, but I don't know of a developer at this point in time who would be willing to undertake the improvement cost for the water and sewer. So that would probably have to be significantly bought down. This isn't just a typical participation for oversizing. Plus, we don't really have that option unless we strongarm HRSD and use up some of that capacity. But, you know, again, if that's the preference, that's what we'll do. Um, and a lot of people are familiar with waving this and waving this and waving that. But, as a as a previous government administrator, I've had to caution them when you administer these authorities and you administer a lot of other things, including the county's general fund, are you talking about money out of pocket? So, in other words, whenever somebody says, "Well, we can wave the water and sewer fees." HRSD ain't waving nothing and your authority should not be waving anything. Now, if the EDA wants to step in or the county or some other philanthropist and wants to pay those fees to the authority because the authority is an enterprise fund, it is intended to cover its cost and have capital recovery and all the other things that go with operating an enterprise fund. Now, on the other hand, a typical fee waiver for permits, and I don't want to get too much in the weeds on this because now the storm water changes with DEEQ have kind of kind of made some things a little bit complicated, and you've got VOTE, but let's just assume, you know, land

disturbing, all those fees come under the general county permit fees. A lot of that's just foregone revenue. So, if the board want to decide as legally appropriate and directed by the attorney, you know, you do that. Typically, we'll do those when I say we, economic developers, planners, county administrators, whatever, for grant matching purposes or some other incentive purposes or it's required by some sort of loan fund that you're working with, you know, rural utilities or whoever, DHCD. Again, that's just foregone revenue. You really don't have to move it from your left pocket to your right pocket, but it's still not money that you're receiving, and it's money that you're putting up to incentivize the developer to do these types of things. But again, what it really gets back to I think we go to the next one.

No,

that's Well, that's it. But, uh, I I was thinking there was a third slide, but what it what it really gets down to is is what is the gap between the demand and what it is that y'all are trying to accomplish? What are the goals? Um, I I could give you a lot of random statistics that we don't really need to get into, but you know, Middle Sex is a little bit unique. We have a lot of people commuting out, very few people commuting in. Um, our median home price is $300,000. That means there's 50% of the homes or whatever above that and 50% are below. So, what I'm trying to get to, and we've got what, 65? No, 32% of our population is over 65. And our population is only 10,000. We've got 6,800 people going out every day and about 2,000 that come in. So again, what's the market here and what's the demand? Why would somebody move here as opposed to move to West Point, King William or Glouester? Um, and that's that's worthy of a lot of discussion, you know, because it accomplishes a lot of different objectives in terms of what we might do with this piece of property. Battery storage site, you name a site that the county may or may not control or may or may not be interested in promoting development to kind of get it done earlier than it might otherwise occur. So, we're here, meaning me on behalf of the EDA to try and help because this is a good process to go through. Um, and we're going to discover some things through this. And again, that gets back to the possible versus probable. So, I'll stop right there. I don't know if y'all have any questions, but um, you know, it's worth a deeper dive, but the question is, how much do you want to get the site ready? Because business likes predictability, you know. Are you going to pre-zone the property even though it's own village commercial? Are you going to pre-approve some special use permits? Are you going to define what you're willing to do in terms of participating with the developer? Because they're going to ask that question of us. We're going to say, I

don't know. We're have to go ask them. We probably need to be a little bit ready on our side for those discussions. And then again that will help us in the future what we could do and what we should do and when and why and how. I think we're putting out an RFP to see interest. Is that where we're Yep.

We're we have an RFP developed to solicit a public private partnership because we don't have a lot of answers on what types of things we'd want to see. We're going to gauge what the public sector or excuse me the private sector says they would want to use it for. A lot of times in standard bidding, you can have a pre-bid conference. I'm wondering if this is the type of thing, even though it's RFP, you'd have a pre-bid and maybe some of those questions that he's saying are going to come, we can get them out in the pre-bid, and then the board can work with staff and address them

100%. And and that is a very good segue into one of the last slides I had because y'all know all about the PPE, so I'll skip some of that unless you have questions. But, um, if the board authorizes us to put the RFP out, we can get it on the street tomorrow. Uh, it would be my intention to have a pre-proposal meeting at 10:00 a.m. on August 20. See, it's like wave.

Um, where we can answer some of those questions. And we have had one developer that's doing some really nice homes in Deltaville reach out and say, "Hey, let me know about this when when y'all do it." Um, and then August 29th, we'd summarize all the questions, comments, maybe poll the board individually, say what your threshold is for this or that, and then we cut them loose because they'll need a good month and a half to put together whatever proposal they're going to put together for us to review. Now, this is a solicited proposal, so we wouldn't charge our usual fee for an unsolicited proposal because we're asking for it. But until we put it out there, we don't know.

I think I think Trent brought up an interesting point that um if if the board agrees to go through this process, we're going to learn a lot. Yeah.

I mean, and if if if this doesn't this turns out not to be the right place, right time, I think we will gain a good knowledge for a some um piece of property that is the right place in the right time. I do I do think the board made the right decision not to timber the track because it is beautiful hardwoods in there. Beach trees just hundred year old trees. Gorgeous. And having those trees on site I think adds to the property's lure. Like Dave said, haven't walked it. And I'd encourage all of y'all um if you're interested in walking site, let's go. We'll go walk it. Well, Matt, you're probably um this this this project we're talking about uh building a larger water man, something that might uh facilitate down the road something much bigger than this. Uh, we're looking at a big picture and you're probably going to be sorry that you ever took me over to Whiteststone,

but I I I see something like this and and I say, you know, well well, it's if ever we're going to be able to get sewer in there, but if you were if that's something I think that we would have to look at at least peripherally somewhere down the line because that would be something that could provide a sewer system for any sort of development like this you're talking about in this particular stretch of road and it would serve a lot of places we wouldn't be beholden to HRC. So decouple

just something to think about. Well, one of the things we have a lot of is flat farm fields with good sandy soils. Uh it's just a question of how deep you have to dig to hit a sand layer. And if you hit a good sand layer, you can discharge a lot of treated effluent into those sand layers. So, it's a very valuable product and it's like I said when we toured the treatment plant in Whiteststone, that's how we were headed. We were headed on that um avenue before whitest stone. I think they got the idea from us as a matter of fact. But then we partnered with HRD with a bigger pip. Maybe somewhere down the line some of those grants will come back

maybe. You never know. And we got a good county engineer now. So, um we'll we'll do what y'all want. Well, the premise for us was to rather than that piece of property just sitting there and no activity at all on it, what were the possibilities of what we could do with the property and which goes along with also what's the downsides of why we would do whatever we would decide to do on that property. So, I think it's um you know, I thank everybody for their diligence in us getting to where we need to get, which is to see now if we have a um you know, private partner out there that's interested in that. And the only way we know to do that is either to solicit people, you know, or put it out on RFP and see see what they say when they come back. So, thank you all for your energy in in getting that going. And what do you need from us today?

Just authorization to let us put it out for our people. Do we need a motion on that? Yes, please. Okay. Okay. I like I'd like to add one more thing to Ry's concern stuff about the about the sewer. It's we we get with the public private partnership and if they deem that yes, looks like it might be a go, it is nothing to stop them from looking at buying maybe some land next to it to be able to do that. So, they're not going to be restricted to what we have here. they're liable to answer your your question with they're going to buy some land and put it in the own sewer system there and next thing you know it's expandable and we be able to use it some so you know we'll get some good we'll get some good information anyway.

Yep. All right. Uh need somebody make a motion please to put the Latimore property out uh for RFP. So moved. So moved by Mr. Kitten. Second. Second by Mr. Bill Harris. Any other discussion? Seeing none, hearing none. Roll call, please. Mr. Bill Harris. Yes. Mr. Kittinden? Yes. Mr. Jesse? Yes. Mr. Williams? Yes. Mr. Don Harris? Yes. Motion's approved. All right. Moving right along. Regular agenda items. Um,

wait a minute. Are we going to stay on the agenda or do you want to flip-flop with A and B, Mr. Walker? Uh, well, I can I can probably make this pretty quick. Okay. If you want me to, Mr. Chairman. Uh, in your packet is the draft contract that y'all authorized us to negotiate with Cowan Services. And um, I'm very pleased to say that Mr. Cowan and and his staff or some of his staff are here tonight. Um, we patterned this contract largely after Lancaster County's contract, which I'm trying to get down to. Can you get me there, Amarie? You're at it. You've gone past it. I'm sorry. Oh, no. No. I'm sorry. No, you're right.

Yeah. Well, whose glasses are right? Yours are mine. Yeah, there you go. Okay. So, we patterned a contract after Lancaster County's contract. And Lancaster is one of the counties that gave a glowing reference for cow services. And I want to point out just a couple of things real quick because I know we're running way late. Somebody made the mistake of saying we were going to be out of here by myself. Who was that? Um time frame. One of the one of the concerns that we had was, you know, Mr. Cowan and his firm's relatively smaller and what kind of depth of bench they would have the staff. Well, they're here tonight and I think it he can speak to that. Um, I think we've got items built into the contract that address that. Uh, Mr. Cowan has agreed not to take on any additional work until he's pretty far along with our work here in Matthews and Middle Sex. Midd Middle Sex in particular. But really of note I want to uh address and it's item E under section two. Uh during the interview process, Mr. Cowan brought up something new to us and that's something called a desk review.

A desk review. Yeah. And Emory, can you scroll down to section 2E for me, please? A desk review counts as a general reassessment. Um, as Mr. Cowan made very clear in the interview, this is tested in court where once you have a good solid general assessment under your belt, I'm going to add that part. Um, couple years go by, you can do what's known as an administrative or desk review and update it. Well, at 8:25, it's section two, item E. at 8.25 a parcel. That's substantially less expensive than a full-on general reassessment where people are out in the field. I don't think it re removes us from having to do a general assessment or full-blown general assessment reassessment this time because I think you have to have the groundwork established for that desk review. But I know uh Reggie and I got a little excited when we we we perked up and heard that because this may be a mechanism the county can choose in say 2030 to have an updated accurate reassessment done without the cost and then that would take us off our five to six year schedule that we seem to be on which um I have seen even more evidence to show how underassessed our properties are right now. I think the estimate of 30% uh is very credible. At least 30% in some cases double. I've seen one property in particular that's assessed at $590 something,000 that's on the market right now for 1.1 million. So, I think we're going to find the same results that Lancaster has found and Caroline County has found that we talked about last month where our

assessment's going to be um it's going to be a pretty sizable increase. And um both counties highly recommended. Mr. Cowan and his firm, they uh one of the board members in in uh Caroline County said it's one of the best presentations he's ever had. And uh he did very well in interview. So, we've drafted a good contract for you gentlemen. Um, we have time is of the essence on this contract. Trying to get them started this month so we can get this done by January 1, 2027 where it would go into effect. Uh, I would recommend approval of the contract and I'm here to answer any questions. Questions?

Are uh is someone from the firm going to speak or not? Uh they can uh they're here and I was going to introduce them, but if y'all had questions of the contract, I can. Um Mr. White came and spoke to the board. Yes, sir. And he was even here again today and he was particularly pleased with one section in the contract. I wonder if they someone on their staff could explain that maybe to the board and to the here. Well, well, let me take that as a good uh introduction moment. So, uh Mr. Cowan, uh Jason Cowan's here tonight. Uh, and would you come forward and introduce your staff and maybe answer a question?

And Marie, scroll up to um subsectionally under two 2B. Mr. Cowan, he's referring to subsection B of section two, by the way, just so you know for the question. And it's a pleasure to meet you, by the way.

Yes. Yes, ma'am. as I'm Jason Cowan and I have uh with me here Megan Hoves um my son Ashton and um Jorge Armen Diorz and um so those are the people we have slated to potentially come in here and work in in the doing the field work in your county. Um I as you said I also have some other folks who um may be assigned different counties like u Matthews or um other places. Um so I think you had a question and and I'd like to short rabbit if I could. he talked about um doing reassessments more frequently. And um so the idea behind that is that um over time different neighborhoods and asset classes increase or decrease at different rates. Um so for example, if you think back of during COVID housing went up but the office and you know some of the other commercial properties went stagnant or went down. So you had different assessment levels for those asset classes and they would have been treated like more unfairly like some some of them would be shouldering more of the burden and less of the burden. So that's why it's a good idea to do it more frequently and um so if you chose to you could do that like you said in you know three or um two two every two years every three years or whatever. Um, and another rural county that's currently on that schedule is Fluana County, and they are choosing to do it every two years. Um, so it's a good cost savings um item to do the um the desk review because you only have to go into the field once every six years. That's the the requirement and that's a reasonable requirement to have. So, um, and you you asked a question about B, I

think. Is that right? I can read it. um what he was um pleased with said that the the reassessment shall be based on market value as determined by representative sales. Can you explain that statement to us?

Uh yes sir. So uh during the project we'll have at least three different ratio studies. Um so you'll have what's what's called as a a going in ratio study. um where where we we study the um the market sales and compare it to the old assessments and we use that to guide us. Okay, what should we do? Uh what should we adjust? Where should we adjust? Which neighborhoods, which types of property, which sizes of properties should be adjusted? And then we do a preliminary adjustment um like to all the parcels. It's called mass parcel update where we can tailor um for example the the county is currently uh segregated into two neighborhoods waterfront and nonwaterfront. Um so we could probably develop more neighborhoods because the county's invested in a new software package which allows it that to happen. Um, so we would break the county up into more neighborhoods, study the sales more locally, so the assessments can be more refined and more directed. Thank you. Let me let me ask you this. I um say I paid $200,000 say I paid $200,000 for my house and along comes somebody pays a million for the two on each side of me and my house going to be assessing a million dollars now. Um, good point. So, we use what's called the um the preponderance of the evidence. Um, and this comes like directly. You can go to the Virginia Appraisal Board uh website and they have a FAQ section and they ask um the question is what is the difference between um sale price and appraisal and an assessment? And in the answer, it says you use groups of sales for groups of properties. So it it's not automatic like you know that we wouldn't put like a million on the assessment and a

million and the one in the middle 200,000. We would figure out what's the preponderance. What is the most likely sale price for that property? And hopefully that answers your question.

It it does. It's a little scary because we're hearing in the news more and more where there's places in the United States that people are being assessed right out of their properties because they're staying and other people are coming and buying. And I don't want to see grandma lose her house because the ones beside her have paid multi-million dollars for it and she's lived there forever and she can't afford the tax because it's gone up because these people have come to our place which is a nice place and I expect them coming. But they in some instance they've paid way over what the assessment is. They paid way over what the asking price is. All kinds of things have happened as I'm sure you're aware of. We need to we need to put some kind of protection in this assessment for the people that have they're there. They've lived there and they can't help it that big money's been paid for each side of them and for us to raise their you know like you say you going to split it. So now the $200,000 house now grandma has to pay taxes on 700,000 because these other two paid a million one. I don't know how it's worked or whatever but some kind of way I'd appreciate if you could try to work that into the assessment. Um well there's there's two things that I would um comment on is um so when we do this ratio study um sales study we do trimming so that we we do what's called the inner cortile range and then we multiply that times 1.5 and anything that's above or below that like the extreme outliers extreme high or extreme low we just exclude from our analysis. So if people came in and paid like double for the the going rate, we would kick that out

automatically. So like when you're averaging sometimes you kick out the low and you kick out the high then? Yes, sir. You you would do like that's just called sales. And you say we say you would kick it out. You would still use it for those properties, but you kick it out from the group to where the smaller house would be. I'd kick it out completely. You wouldn't use it even for those properties. Yeah. on the the the ones that paid too. I mean, we don't want to lose the tax base on the larger ones either by doing that. I don't

And and the other thing is like the the local board is not um authorized to set aside the like state constitution which says that a property is assessed at 100% fair market value unless it's a special class of property. The only thing that I'm aware of that you can do is there are programs like elderly and disabled veterans and ex so you guys can sometimes raise the limit of the income and asset requirements to offset like if people really can't afford to pay there's no homestead exe exemption in Virginia but you can sometimes look at like the um there's very strict like income and asset requirements where they can get a substantial discount from their taxes. So you guys can sometimes raise that. Um I don't know that much about it, but I know that other boards have deliberately done that.

Yeah, I'd ask May to come in and talk to us, but Bill, it's a very good point and one I'll bring up because you know I I think Wayne and I picked up on this when we went to Las Vegas conference. The Fairfax chairman, he may have been chairman or one of the board members from Fairfax. This may be one issue we have in Commonwealth Fairfax because the the chairman or the board member in Fairfax, I cannot remember the young man's name. He's gonna be governor someday. You know it. He said, "We got elderly people being taxed out of their homes because all of the young professionals are moving into Fairfax and driving them out. And where are they going to go? They have no support network in in Stafford or Fredericksburg, but they got to move further out where they can afford to stay." Well, if Fairfax is having that problem, the state knows about it. So, what we need to do is work with the state and add our voice to that, say, "Hey, we're a rural community and we're a retirement community, but we have folks that have lived here their whole lives." And because we are a retirement community and all this wealth is coming into the area, the state needs a provision in code that will allow some flexibility there. And if they fix the code, then Jason can act accordingly. We can't do anything against code. But with Fairfax having the same problem, the state's listening. Yeah, there may be some movement there to protect some of the more uh fragile citizens among us.

I got a couple questions now. I go I think when I talked to you when we was over at the place and ask you um when you got people paying large amount for homes than normal. So, I would guess that if they pay that for it, that's what it worth. You know, you pay a million dollars, well, that's what it's worth. If I charge you 62% on whatever it is, that's your taxes. My thing is, how you going to get a formula in? If somebody's paying these ridiculous prices for their homes because they are, we can talk about a formula all we want, but they're paying prices for homes that we ever heard of. and we pull a sent up this week and we'll look at somebody done paid this ridiculous price for it. So my thing is that do you look at the price that's being paid for the house when you're doing your assessment?

I I do I do you put that into a formula because you got a formula you put in. It's part of the analysis but um it'll be the same answer I think I gave you before. So that's one if somebody pays like a million dollars for a particular property that's one data point among many. So there's going to be I will look at that then I'll say okay what are the other houses that are um similar in size and similar age and quality and things like that. What are they selling for? So I'm not going to hang my hat on just one particular sale. I always have to have backup, you know, multiple

sales. I got you. So what you're saying is that we can keep on getting these prices that up and down and you going to go do a reassessment and it's going to be based on a whole uh development and we know in developments I mean you go up Charlottesville I think on the left hand side to put a whole development all the houses but the same size you go in there and reassess them it's 300,000 325 everything stay we stay in real area and we got people coming in real areas that are paying a lot more money now see personally right now I don't think nobody can do a fair assessment in Mils County. Okay. But I think they can do a reassessment that we go by. So now you know and and and talking by them paying the prices up and down. I just want to know how it handle because I think I'm using the cluster rule because just like you say you get so many houses and you put in there and and you all going to be checking each house. That's what I'm saying.

Yes, sir. I think you say y'all want to check every house to see what it's worth. So now I'mma change on this a little bit and at the end of the day are y'all going to give us all the houses at one time so we can see the reassessment or you going to give us each district now I'm going say like my district or the district I use which is harm the village if you're going to do harm the village first is it possible that you when I when you do them reassessment you go in front of view board they're going to look at it and most demand and then we have a general idea of how the assessment is running in the district that I am. Is it possible to do something like that?

Yes. Instead of wait till the end of the day and all of a sudden because as a senior myself, most of us don't look at it.

Most of us don't look until the day we open up and it's too late because you got a time frame there that you got to go in and do it. And you know what a time frame is? A time frame is a weakness in an individual not looking at it and you go back to do it, you know, and that's how they find it because I know that's how it is. And we talking about a reassessment and hey, you got a heck of a job, man. Okay. And I appreciate, you know, what you all going to do, but I definitely want to look at Harmony Village and see how the houses moving up and down. My brother Matt, he stays in Harmony Village. I want to see what happened to his house. And I'm not picking on that. I'm saying the float of the no

wait till swamp don't mean nothing. But I but but I but I understand the the process. Don't get me wrong. But I just don't and and and and like Matt was saying, you got to go up to uh Richmond where they don't really care because they see what's happening. We saw it happen 20 years ago when people came being in rural and when I was working I see them come down from up north. They going King Queen. They pay $750,000 for a house. Said why you all man this ain't nothing. I got a million for mine something off. I have to know where some of them stay. I You got a million for that. But they came down here and I said, "Man, y'all going to put a hurting on us?"

And and and right now, yes, we'll run the older or the elderly elderly homes if we start valuing the property so high. And I know the last time I'm going use Chico Grove because I like Chico Grove. I guess I'm pronouncing right because that's the development. I definitely want to pay attention when you do that one. And how their uh reassessment was done, you know, and the reassessment was done when some get 14% increase, some got eight, some got four. So I'm saying to a gentleman that stays down here, man, how come y'all can't go up the same percentage that everybody else? How come it's inconsistent? And the different ones I talked to said, "Well, mine's a weren't that bad." Well, I'm in position and the rest of them on the board. We care about Mills County. We want to make we need money to run, but we want to make sure everybody is created equal in the way the assessment doing. You got a heck of a job cuz man, I I might like the percentages, you know, if you ever can get it right. But I don't I don't know. Just keep working on it. And I I would just like to look at Harmony Village. You going to do everything in Harmony Village first? Yes, I would like to go over and see. You can go in front of you board and it's public information anyway. I want to see how it floats.

So, so two more things I would say. Um, you asked like would you be able to So, I'll give regular updates to the commissioner of revenue and Matt and things like that. So I'll do the initial going in ratio study and then I'll say okay midway I'll do another one that's guiding and then I'll do two or three towards the end just to validate and revalidate and check the sales and recheck the sales over and over again and then he's going to he's going to be asking me for numbers anyway for the budget potentially and like so we can make planning stuff. Yeah.

So there'll be multiple eyes you know throughout the process doing it. But then the other thing that I was going to say is that it won't it won't be a uniform increase across the county and that's what you want. You want it to be tailored. You want it to be like, you know, the older houses are increasing this percentage because that's what the sales are doing. You're always going to the sales. I don't want a uniform. You pay $10 for something. I want you to pay taxes on $10. Okay? So it won't be uniform. It be ups and down. And the budget that we talking about with the money we pay with, if people paid the money that they actually paid for their real estate, then our budget be in some kind of good shape. Well,

okay. And we could do anything we want to do with it, but it's not set up that way because that's too simple. It's too simple. But when you go out and buy automobile, you pay taxes on that depreciate. It's the same type of formula. Well, the only thing different here in Virginia, we got to pay tax on a vehicle putting it on the road. That's another thing. So, I need that word. I I think we need I think we need to chat with May a little bit about our elderly program in particular and see if we're doing the most we can with that. Elder program don't pay. If you don't have nothing,

if you don't have nothing, guess what? You going to get nothing. Okay? So, our program basically saying if you don't have no type of retirement, you're not going to get no help. And the idea to me is just if you're already living from week to week or the month to month, I'mma keep you that way. That's the kind of program we got and most of them got. You don't have the people that people don't I don't know if you don't have the ones who don't have it. You're not going to set nothing up because they don't they have them, you know, they have some money, but it makes it makes it hard. Then you go back to the kids. So if you do a survey, your kid get a good job and you go back and you and and you help your parents out and and stuff like this. Oh, your parents got all the money. You gave it to the bad kid and you know spend it all. They put their parents out, you know. So but

one of those bad kids. I appreciate their help, but you know, you know, you and I going to feed off each other. You know, I guess I'm talking to But you all property. Y'all going to recess all property in Mils County. Yes, sir. And then watch this question now. All property is going to go up in value. All property or it's going to go down. Property got different classification. Okay. Are you telling me that it's going to be all property that you're going to reassess? Yes, sir. And all right. Okay. I'm good. Well, and I'll add to that may ain't got to do nothing, right?

I think I know what you're concerned about. And one of the things, and I'll just say this, they just finished the reassessment in Lancaster. Lancaster's got the same issues, maybe even exacerbated that we have. I mean, they got some serious money has moved into Lancaster County. Mhm. But you got some really poor people in Lancaster, too.

So, they're familiar with that. We we talk about the early but you know there's some families that have had the house for 15 or 20 years and when they get sold on each side of them they can't afford the taxes on a million dollar house when they paid 175 for theirs either. So somehow another needs to be a balance in the people that are raising their families living here for ever and not selling and moving and so forth and so on. If you owned your house for a long period of time that everyone besides you paid an enormous amount of money, somehow another we need to take that in consideration for that.

And the the other thing is um you know maybe I'm getting a little too far in the weeds, but let's say the reassessment results the the taxable value goes up 30%. Right? You don't all of a sudden just need 30% more money, right? you may or may not actually, you know, the budget, the county may not just all of a sudden need extra 30%. So, there's things that you guys can do without without the without the state, you know, coming in and changing the laws because, you know, the law say every all the properties have to be at 100% of fair market value. So, um anyway, yeah, right. We're happy. That's all you got.

Thank you for coming in and We appreciate you chatting with us a little bit. We appreciate it. Yes, sir. My pleasure. So, I recommend the board authorize either you or me to sign the contract and get them going. Okay. Give me a motion. So, move by Bill Harris, Cowan Company, and second by Mr. Williams. Any further discussion? Roll call, please. Mr. Kittinden. Yes. Mr. Jesse. Yes. Mr. Williams. Yes. Mr. Bill Harris. Yes. Mr. Don Harris. Yes. Motion is approved.

Okay. Come on up, Mr. Long. Sorry for Oh, it's okay. It's okay. Uh, we're going to keep it brief. Uh, okay. We want you all to sit back, relax, and enjoy. way. I just want to introduce Faith Lewis. She's our summer intern this summer. One of her tasks before she finished up was to come in here and present to y'all. So, I'm going to hand off hand off the mic to to her. Oh, okay. Great. Okay. Go ahead, Faith. Okay.

I can't believe it. She's been at the podium 30 seconds and y'all haven't asked her who her people is or where where she's from. I'm going to say all some of it. Keep it short.

Looks great. Okay. Good evening everyone. First off, I want to start by thanking you all for allowing me to come and share my experience with Virginia Cooperative Extension um with you and to the public. So, thank you to everyone who came to support either me or future BCE intern programs. All right. So, my name is That's fine. My name is Faith Lewis. I'm 20 years old and I was born and raised in Matthews County. I have a family background in both agriculture and aquaculture. My father's side has been farming for over 100 years in Cobbs Creek down in Matthews. And my mom's side, my grandfather was a waterman and my uncle currently works in oyster restoration. So, I have background experience in both. Um, I also, yeah, that's fine. Have an educational background in the environmental sciences. I went to Matthews High School and graduated in 2023 and was a student at the Ches Bay Governor School for Marine and Environmental Science, which I have to give most of the credit to for sparking my interest in environmental science. In two weeks, I'll be starting my senior year of college at Clemson University in South Carolina, where I'm earning my undergrad in plant and environmental science with a concentration in aronomy. Currently, I'm looking into getting a minor in aggro business and hoping to pursue a master's degree in agriculture with Clemson. All right, so getting into what I actually did this summer with VCE. Let's start with the 4 summer camp with the Jamestown 4 Educational Center. This was my first time ever being at a 4 summer camp. I had never gone as a camper, but the campers were great and I had a great time. I felt like a kid again. Um, but going as an adult volunteer, I got to watch these kids grow through teamwork, problem solving, and hands-on learning. But 4 was more than just learning how to make box braids or swimming or playing

gaga ball. It was about teaching the kids the pillars of character and them then seeing them display it. The 4 pillars of character are trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizen citizenship. Watching campers support each other, try new things, and grow more confident throughout the week deepened my appreciation for how extension positively shapes the next generation while also giving the youth a safe and memorable summer experience. Camp consisted of kids from Gloucester, Essex, and Middle Sex, totaling 150 campers, 13 of them being from Middle Sex. So, this was the first pop-up program that I organized, and it was a great success. On July 12th, I hosted a grow-Ir seed starter booth at the Urbana Farmers Market. The workshop focused on helping children and families learn the basics of starting plants from seed. I guided participants through the planning process, explaining seed depth, light requirement, and proper watering techniques. While kids and some adults enjoyed hands-on planning, many adults engaged in conversation with the ANR agent, asking questions about gardening challenges, pest control, and landscaping tips. Whether participants were expanding their gardens or giving gardening another try, everyone left with knowledge and enthusiasm. This event was a great example of how extension programs bring together people of all ages, spark curiosity, and create meaningful one-on-one learning opportunities that support healthier gardens and communities. We had over 75 participants with engaging activities like spin the wheel to decide what seed to plant or get a chance to win a special prize. We also had a poll for people to answer to draw their attention to the booth. Um, the question was, "What is the best veggie to snack on straight from the garden?" And cherry tomatoes, one.

All right. The next educational program was designed to teach middle schoolers about the importance of soil and how it supports life, farming, and water quality. This was held at the Deltaville Public Library on July 22nd. This session featured hands-on activities where students employ explored soil layers, identified different mineral types, and observed microorganisms under microscopes. Although only two students attended, the small group setting allowed for a more engaging and in-depth discussion. We connected soil health to real world issues such as the Ches Bay's condition and the importance of soil conservation in agriculture. This program was a fun and meaningful way to introduce students to our natural sciences and environmental stewardship while emphasizing the role of healthy soil in sustaining both ecosystems and communities. All right. I also accompanied the ANR agent on several site visits in Middle Sex and Matthews where we addressed concerns ranging from lawn and garden issues to soil quality and pasture health. These visits were a learning opportunity in both technical knowledge and communication. I saw the importance of listening, asking the right questions, and breaking down complex information so that it's accessible and doable for clients. It gave me insight into how VCE supports both commercial agriculture and residential land owners. Okay. I assisted with planning a soybean research field right up the road here at 17 in Townbridge Road by keeping record of the seed varieties in the planning order. This experience gave me insight into the planning and precision precision involved in agricultural research trials. I learned how careful documentation ensures that data collection later such as growth rates, disease resistance, and yield can be accurately connected to each specific

variety. It also highlighted the importance of teamwork and attention to detail in the early stages of a research project. In support of that same soybean research project, a few weeks later, I helped collect tissue samples, specifically upper canopy leaves at key growth stage, to be sent to Virginia Tech for lab analysis. This is how nutrient levels are monitored to make fertilizer recommendations and assess crop health. I learned about the important importance of timing and consistency in sample collection and how this data these data points feed into larger extension efforts to develop more sustainable sightsp specific nutrient management practices. It was a great example of how small field tasks connect to statewide agricultural advancements. I also traveled to local research fields in Middle Sex to perform stand counts in corn fields. This hands-on task involved counting plants within set row lengths and calculating population averages to estimate yield potential across different hybrid vehicle vehicles varieties. It was eye opening to see how even small differences in spacing or plant emergence could influence results. This experience taught me the importance of precise field data and how stand assessments are used to guide both research conclusions and management decisions for future growing seasons. I also visited the Eastern Virginia Agricultural Research and Extension Center, the ARC, where I had the opportunity to observe wheat variety trials and learn about ongoing research efforts aimed at improving crop performance. The day was filled with conversations about disease and pest resistance, grain quality, and how wheat responds to different environmental and management conditions. It was my first time seeing a large-scale research plot,

and I gained a better better understanding of how extension works closely with researchers and farmers to develop and promote practical solutions that improve yield and farm profitability. Uh this a wheat tour we this was a dayong tour of multiple wheat fields across the northern neck region alongside extension agents. I participated in collecting yield estimation data for area farmers. This involved counting heads per foot, average number of kernels per head, row spacing, and examining crop conditions to provide timely researchbased insights. Through this experience, I developed a stronger grasp of aggronomic pro practices and saw how extension services offer real-time support to producers during critical decision-making windows. It was also a great way to see how each field's condition reflected different management styles, weather impacts, and soil types. And we had six fields across King and Queen and King William. All right. going into a marketing project I got to do. I created an advertisement for the river magazine. Um the goal was to raise public awareness of the Virginia Cooperative Extension's presence and resources across the region. The ad included contact information, locations, and phone numbers for 10 of the VCE offices within the area. This project allowed me to apply both creative and strategic thinking, ensuring the design was visually appealing while also effectively communing communicating key information. I learned how marketing plays a vital role in extension by connecting communities to trusted research-based support in agriculture, natural resources, family services, and youth development. Some other things that I don't really have slides for is I got my pesticide application license. I attended the ANR

district meeting and I attended a Tidewater soil and water district meeting. Okay. I want to give thanks to the Urbana Farmers Market and the Deltaville Library for helping me set up my programs. Um, special thank you to my bosses and co-workers, my extension agent, Frank Long, the administrative and fiscal assistant, Roxanne Johnson, and our previous 4 coordinator, Danielle Brown. And a special thank you to you guys, the board of supervisors. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to gain hands-on experience and valuable knowledge in the field of extension. This internship has helped my understanding of agriculture, education, and community engagement. I'll carry these lessons into my future endeavors, and I hope the VCE summer internship program continues so others can benefit from the same meaningful learning experiences I have. Any questions?

Well, thank you very much for coming and uh giving us that presentation. You've been pretty busy this summer, haven't you? Yeah. And it's been hot. And tell me again, your major is what? Plant and environmental science environmental science. Concentration in aronomy. Okay. Okay. Big title. Well, good. I do have one question. Do you have any dealings with bioolids? Bool solids. Bioid. Did you have any dealings with that? Okay. I was just curious. Oh, okay. All right. All right. Okay. All right. That stuff don't smell too good. Right. Any other comments?

Thank you very much, Frank, uh, and Faith for coming. Yeah. Um, and, um, good luck, uh, on your senior year. Thank you. Are you going to finish on time? I'm actually kind of early. Oh, your parents must love you for that. Well, I didn't happen to have that uh, scenario with mine. She mentioned Governor's School. She probably transferred a lot of credits down there. Good. There you go. God bless that. Did you uh go to class with William Walker? A really goofy weird kid. He's in my class. Yeah, that's my son. Really? Weird kid. He was small world. He's He's a tiger, too, but he's at Rochester. Rochester Institute of Technology.

Thank y'all for coming. Thank you. All right. Where are we here? Introduce. Oh, yeah. Back page. EDA software update. Mr. Ricardi, ERP, close enough. Oh, did I see late in the day? You're getting worn out. Um that unfortunately my presentation is about 25 minutes on this. Um because I we're going to go I thought it was an hour. Well, I cut it in half. You cut it in half.

You cut in half. Now, the purpose of the sheet that I presented in your package is simply twofold. It's number one to let you know where we are in the process. and that is that the the team that is the ERP valuation team that's the financial software team is going to be interviewing um three vendors that are the the top candidates for um your ERP software so we'll be interviewing those these are going to be eight hour days two days for each so this is going to be a very grueling process and that's only just begun the second part of why I'm printed this out is I wanted to remind you that this is upcoming a very complicated process. I want to make sure is we want to manage your expectations that this is not going to be easy. This isn't something going to be that next Tuesday we're going to plug in something and make it go. Once you approve a software, it will take us and the fin and the financial end of that. Um it will take us 18 to 24 months to get probably the most of it done. Um it could take even longer and it's going to take a lot off your staff. We're going to be working hard on that. So, I just want this is simply I'm going to keep reminding you this is not easy. What we're getting into in this isn't easy. It's important. It's valuable. You're going to like the results, but there's a lot of hurdles. So, that's all I had to say about that. You don't have to take any action.

Okay. Wonderful. Well, we didn't think it was going to be easy, but we had the right people involved in taking care of it. So, we feel very good about that. I do feel good about it. Okay. Well, take all the time you need cuz we don't want to have to uh go relook at something later. Let's let's get it right the first time, right? You know what? That's a very good point. Thank you for saying that. Absolutely. Yeah. Don't stress out on the time. Appreciate that. Uh okay, moving right along. Um and Marie, you're still on the hot seat for multi-state opioid settlement.

This is simply um every now and then there will be another opioid settlement agreement. This time it's with um Purdue Pharma and members of the Sackle family again related to the um marketing and distribution of opioids. When they get into these settlement agreements because Virginia joined this group, if we agree to this particular settlement, we will get our share. It's a very easy process. It might be $1,000 a year. We don't even know what it is yet. It just depends on the number of people we it's our in our best interest to take it and smile. What we've been what we've been doing with it is um last year these schools spent it on prevention activities for their students and we're hoping they'll again do that this year. So again, at this time, I re request that you adopt the resolution approving the county's participation in the opioid settlement authorizing the county attorney to execute execute the necessary documents.

So moved. Thank you. So moved by um Mr. Bill Harris, second by Mr. Williams. Any further discussion? And this is by the way the second reg resolution. Is that correct? Oh, we've got So we've had multiple. It might even be more than that. I think there's each time a new company is added, right, you're probably going to have these. So, this is the same scenario where we're trying to get all the localities to sign off. Well, the attorney general's office is. Got you. So, and again, at no cost to us because we did not join the big suit. Correct. We just signed up after. Thank you for for updating that voice. Uh any further uh discussion? Seeing none, roll call, please. Mr. Jesse? Yes.

Mr. Williams. Yes. Mr. Bill Harris. Yes. Mr. Kittinden. Yes. Mr. Don Harris. Yes. Uh motion for the resolution of R2025- Z007 is approved. M. Ricardi.

Thank you. Yes. At my last VIPA meeting, the Virginia Peninsula's Public Service Authority meeting. Um the VIPA announced that for their convenience center workers they were going to hold a comprehensive training session on Monday, October 13th. The training is going to include compactor maintenance, CPR, first aid, site safety and incident responsive incident response and most importantly customer service and deescalation techniques. We are I want to make sure we are not the only ones that are having problems with deescalation techniques and customer service. there appears to be a groupwide problem. So at this time we have at that time I said may I join may my employees come and they said why don't you shut down your sites and join us because we're shutting down all of VIPSA will be shutting down on Monday October 13th to allow their convenience center staffs and we'd like to do that as well. I consider this extremely important.

Okay. Do we need a motion for that? Okay. A motion for October the 13th to shut down convenience centers. Air convenience centers. Is that it? So moved. Second. So moved by u Mr. Kittin. Um seconded by Mr. Jesse. No discussion. Roll call. Mr. Bill Harris. Yes. Mr. Kinden. Yes. Mr. Jesse. Yes. Mr. Williams. Mr. Don Harris. Yes. Motion's approved. Uh Micotti.

Yes. Um I have two vacancies that are still not filled. So we just mentioned that that the um BZA in Jamaica Planning Commission Pinetop both have vacancies. However, at this time all we're asking for is a motion to reappoint um Casey Muborn to the Tri River Asap VA. So Oh, you got something to say? No, that's it. So move. Sorry. So moved by Mr. Jesse, second by Mr. Williams. Uh I just have a quick con. Uh the um planning commission is that saluda district. U planning commission is Pinetop. Okay. That was Mr. Powell,

right? One of the vacants. Any further questions? Seeing none, roll call, please. Oh, um uh where are we at? Oh, Mr. Williams. Yes, Mr. Bill Harris. Yes, Mr. Kittinden. Yes, Mr. Jesse. Yes, Mr. Don Harris. Yes. Motion's approved. Uh, moving right along. Administrative updates. Cigarette tag. Wait, what? Before Matt takes over on that one, there is one thing under administrator updates. Um, I normally don't talk about the animal shelter. Okay. Um, but I want to give you all a very brief update about

um, and in our feelood news. is our animal shelter under new manager Barrett Willy is really making some success stories. The big project that the animal shelter wanted me to ask you or tell you about is we're trying to create a meet and greet training house. That is a tiny house, one that most of you guys would call a shed on site with doors, furniture, windows, cabinets that the trainers and dogs can use for both meet and greet as well as training for dogs who have never been in a house. Um there is a Pyina grant that's going to pay for everything. pet friends are coordinating the grant. They're a nonprofit, so it don't won't require any funding or approval from the county, except that it's on our property. Um, but at this point, I just want I was so proud of them for coming up with something that's it's such a feel-good thing. Um, they even have their own new motto. It's called the little shelter that could. They've got it on t-shirts and sweatshirts. So, I'm telling you, they they're really they're making a difference in the world. So, I just wanted to give a shout out to them.

Yeah. Thanks for that update. Okay. Uh, administrative updates. Uh, cigarette tax report only, staff reports report only in your booklet. Uh, Mr. Walker, you have anything? I would not dare. Thank you very much. Yes, that'd be very That's very smart. Thank you. Uh, county attorney update. But I would No, I'm teasing. Are you good? Pass. Pass. I'm going to pass. Yeah, I'm good. Thank you. Okay. Uh, all right. We're going to move into unfinished business here in a second. Yeah. Who was it that said we'd be in and out of here very quickly? Don't tell me. You all say this is going to be a short meeting. Don't even try it.

I know it was said that jinxed it. Unfinished uh and new business. Unfinished business. Body cameras. Um, Mr. Herd, do you want to have anything to say before we finish? put together a um a worksheet or presentation for you which has been passed along and hopefully it can be put on the screen.

Yep.

Yeah, it was a hand app. There you go.

All right. To begin with, um I think we need to go through some fundamentals here. I'm sorry to take up your time, but hopefully tonight will take care of the issue. Um it's fundamental role of government. Sometimes it's said his primary role of government is to protect its citizens. Body warn cameras are expected these days. It's considered as critical evidence uh goes towards the prosecution and defense to say what is the real story. It's an undeniable fact that body warn cameras mean the prosecutor having to spend multiple hours reviewing the footage. It has been said tonight that well um it's just the um serious issues or complaints that would be reviewed. That's speaking of law enforcement. The people who have the cameras, their administration, why they look at the camera footage has nothing to do with what the prosecutors look at. And we're preparing for cases. We have to review our evidence and also disclose exculpator exculpatory evidence. Undeniably that adds to the workload. Next, for cases, and I say for cases because there's a difference between all body warrant camera footage and there's what we get for the cases themselves. For the cases, the time the law enforcement officers spend with a defendant and witnesses must also be spent by the Commonwealth attorney. We have to review the footage. So, think about that. You've got an one hour witnessed by two officers means two hours of now having to view view by the comm. So a lot of those times on the street now we're having to watch it as as as well. I've given an example before of search warrant eight officers there for the search warrant for um animals. Miss Lewis is ningy her head because she was involved with that. Now you got 80 eight body cameras for that one event. Um,

so an outside attorney or attorney just reviewing the footage only is not acceptable as the best way to serve the public. Attorneys viewing the footage needs to know the intricacies of what are you looking at? How does it affect the case? How is a prosecutor handling the case going to be prepared? This is a question without viewing the footage. We have to do that ethically and practically. you need the countless attorney handling it to look at it. Now, I know there's been a couple other jurisdictions have tried it other otherwise. I know one jurisdiction just gave up on it. Uh it was not a not a good arrangement. A part-time prosecutor would not be available at all necessary time such as for domestics, but also importantly not much of a workpool for part-time. I'll say I was at a conference this weekend speaking to the deputy cow's attorney of a suburban jurisdiction in the Richmond area who told me they have four positions available for part- timerrs and they're giving up on advertising it. They can't find anybody. Um and our workload I think is going to be more significant than just you know what what there would be for a part-time prosecutor. More hours are involved in dealing with bodywn cameras than just watching it. There's also the discovery and you find out more about your cases now have to talk to witnesses about what you just watched, how does it affect your case, etc. So, there's more to dealing with body warn cameras than just watching. You watch it, you learn other things like I just watched uh interviews uh several days ago which were not available to me previously about witness interviews and it completely changed the case before the jury trial is when it was given to me. And so it's very important to watch this stuff and it does add to the case load and just watching it can

add to even more hours. So, it's just not x hours of watching videos. Um, and we it break up breaks it up in time as well. I mean, I'll tell you that Mr. O'Donnell was looking at Virginia State Police dash cam the other day. It took him two days to look at one and a half hours because it's broken up between all the interruptions, all the other work that is going on. Um now loca number 10 localities having bodywn cameras must pay for one ACA per 75 bodywn cameras. Now this ca there can be other arrangements made um and there have been other arrangements in some other office but but you have to look at what is in the need in each individual office. What is best for that office? And some of these offices made arrangements back prior to 2021 before we had the explosion of jury trials because they did away with jury sensing. And that's not working out very well. Um, number 11. From when Matthews initiated body warn cameras in November 2024 to February 2025, they were short deputies due to injuries. There's one guy took out a couple of them in a fight. Um, 162.64 64 hours of body warn camera footage sent to the commos attorney. Now, Matthews has less deputies, less case load than we have. You may remember one of our prior meetings, Sheriff Bushy was up here and walked up and said he agreed with me. He he said, "Look, Mike's going to need another assistant. They have less deputies, more case load. The amount of footage they're seeing, ours is going to be much higher." Matthews Board of Supervisors has approved local funding for an assistant common attorney at the minimum compensation board salary. I spoke to the Commonwealth attorney yesterday who said she has spoken to two candidates who are not interested in the pay that they are offering which is at the minimum. Number 13 question I hear sometimes is well did

the Middle Sex Board of Supervisors fund a new assistant colos attorney already? The answer is no because the board of supervisors approved a locally funded assistant countless attorney but then the position was funded by the state compensation board. So the state pays for that assistant columnist attorney at the minimum salary and this board is paying a supplement to make the salary competitive. Um, I have heard someone say, "Well, X county has Y number of assistants, so why would we need an extra one?" Well, we get to number 14. Just because a jurisdiction has assistance does not mean there's not a need for more in that jurisdiction. Look at number 15. In 2024, the compensation board recognized that for mandatory prosecutions, it's most felonies, they needed 134 new ACA positions. If serious misdemeanors were considered, the estimated need was for 392 ACAs. And how many did they actually fund? 29. And that left out 105 positions unfilled or 363 if you include the misdemeanor. And misdemeanors are important such as fights at school, stalking, um violate protective orders. Um just because something is a considered a petty lararseny is not really petty to the victim. Um, so I've also just learned that I saw that in the state budget, and I don't know if it made it into the final budget or passed, but looking online, the state budget, there are 70 new positions that were recommended to be well, supposedly

funded. I don't know if that was a final done deal or not. Um, number 17, need to understand that technology adds to prosecutions. It's not just like the old days with reports. Now we're reviewing 911 calls, jail calls, jail video, VSSP dash cams, texts, emails from defendants to victims, cell phone videos, etc. And victims want to hear from us. There case law changes. We are supposed to be advised of motions, etc. And then I forgot to add court on there, which is a biggie of where we have to spend a lot of our time. Um and we have an increase now in uh our number of general district days. Number 18, the elimination of jury sentences. Sentencing caused um an increase in jury trials. Just one can take around it just depends 20 to 40 hours etc. I just spent about 40 hours on one that I was just talking about that ended in a plea agreement uh right before court. countless attorney has had several jury trials and scheduled jury trials this year. Both the CA and ACA each have we each have two pending right now and we've gone from me doing mostly felonies and the assistant to doing mostly misdemeanors that we're we're handling it all. Um he's got a lot of the felonies now as well, especially a lot of the preliminary hearings that now go to felonies and that's how he also has two jury trials right now. Um because we we're both needed on everything. Number 20, where is the time to review bodywn camera expected to come from without another assistant CA? Number 21, in Middle Sex, the countless attorney, assistant council attorney, the administrative assistant, we all work late hours. Thankfully, the administrative assistant, not as much as the attorneys, but the current workload takes up more than a 40-hour week for each of us. Way more. example, you know,

I was here to 8:30 last night. Last week of July, I worked a total of 62.5 hours. You know, working one night till about 10:00, most nights till about 8:30. Uh, especially because a jury trial was coming up, but there are other times when it's just overwhelming. Um, and so working late is the norm. So, where is that time supposed to come from that we're expected to put into the extra extra workload? So some jurisdictions accept accept extra pay instead of another assistant. We can't do that. We just don't have the extra time to give and we have to look at what is going to work for this office. I'm asked sometimes there actually crime in middle sex and if we handle this as being time consuming. So I'm just going to talk I've listed it for today just the indictments that we had in today's grand jury which is it's every other month and we have a lot more cases than this. This is just what's indicted just for today and what's ahead of us. Um, felony hit and run and unauthorized use, possessed cocaine, torturing, maming a dog with two different defendants for the same dog, grand lararseny auto, possessed methamphetamine, unlawful wounding of a co-orker, torturing, maming another dog by somebody else. We have a lot of animal cases these days. Fail to register as a sex offender and go into a school by a sex offender. Grand Larseny Auto. Again, 11 counts of embezzlement, 11 counts of financial exploitation of incapacitated adult. Let me stop and say this case has been looked at for over a year. Detectives have been involved. AG's office is involved with an investigator. Mr. O'Donnell's put way over 20 hours in it. I put more than 20 hours over in it. And we're just getting into the indictment stage right now, just at that stage alone.

um distribution of meth, felony construction fraud, and um five counts of assault, battery of correctional officers. This comes from the jail. Uh rape, animate object, sexual penetration, and I won't go into all the intricacies of the child sex abuse at the very end. And we have a lot of those. Um, last page number 25. Current minimum salary is 77,976 for an ACA. Counties are finding it difficult to find ACAs for that salary. Adding 22,000 to a minimum salary brings to a 100,000. Um, I'll say King and Queen has now been one of the jurisdictions that's been awarded a um assistant attorney by the state. Uh, they have less of a workload than we do. uh they made their arrangement in regard to body warn cameras years ago with a former countless attorney and I think it was in regard to salary for the for the administrative assistant. Uh Lancaster is advertising for 120,000. So finally, what about delay? What will delay cost us? It will not decrease the need for body warn cameras. It will not decrease the workload of the com attorney if you delay. Delay. Delay will not make an assistant com attorney more affordable. Salaries are not going down. Only benefit to delay that I see is not to spend the money now. Not to get these services now because we don't want to spend it right now. So putting off public safety and let the cost of the body worn cameras and salaries increase and spend more next year so you don't have to spend it now. In summary, finally, uh, delay pushes out the inevitably more cost and depriving the law enforcement officers of body warn cameras and then you're just taking a risk. I mean, I've seen

many cases, many cases where bodywn cameras would make a difference. There is one case, too, of officers having to shoot at a fleeing vehicle. Thankfully, that they didn't hit the person. Um, but those are the type of cases where you wish you had the cameras. There is a saying justice delayed is justice denied is not one of my favorite sayings because it is misused a lot but I'm using it today. Um increased workload is not just for extra hours of footage. There's extra work involved. Um and then part-time isn't an option. The workload is expected to increase beyond that and increasing the workload without increasing staff is not an option. There's we have no more extra hours to give. You know, some people will say, "Well, you got an assistant, so why do you need somebody else now?" I think I've covered that where the state said, "We need an assistant for the workload that we had." And they're stingy on giving out money. Okay? So, we have the need and we're putting the hours not because we like it, not because of our health, but because it has to be done. And so with the commitment to the citizens, I'm asking you also for the salary to be competitive because a delayed hiring can delay implementation of body warn cameras. In other words, you get it to where we only at the minimum recognize we can do that, but it's going to delay probably in getting somebody when we have other people, other neighbors who are looking for the same thing. Thank you.

Any questions for Mr. Herd? And Mr. heard. I apologize. Uh we all thought that we would get to this a hell of a lot sooner than we did and thank you for being here and sticking through the process, but uh I've explained to my wife it's her birthday and she's with my family. Well, you should maybe head home. Okay. Go to a birthday. I I I ordered a crab cake because I figured that's the thing on the menu that we keep to eat cold. Anyhow, I'm used to this, unfortunately.

Any other questions from Mr. hurt. I I just got something to say. You know, I can't exactly understand. You know, you got law enforcement and if you start, we talking about body cams. These jobs was done when people got, you know, you stop and give them a ticket. I mean, all these things were done. And a day we are here and been here for six years to say that because I can see the picture that can cause more of a workload. And I guess deputies write the report up based on what they seeing. So also they got a video looking at the video. It's going to take them a longer time to write it up than it is freehand. All of these things we talking about is being done and we blame it on the cameras. And this this how I'm looking at it. I would think the camera is a help to our jobs. It should speed us up. So when you saying that it's going to slow you down because you got to look at it. You want to do it right because you said in your remarks a few minutes ago that you look at the body cams and you saw something that you didn't see. So now all of a sudden you got the picture looking right at you. You know we putting a computer system in of the county that going to cost the county a lot of money. Now I would hate to think we putting it in that we got to hire a whole lot more people than we had at first. Are we going to be more efficient? And what I'm seeing now and and not only on what you're talking about everybody needs somebody else. We give better equipment. We need somebody else. Um, body cams is what the uh county want. And evidently, you know, tonight we're gonna make a mind up, you know, where you gonna get them or not. I understand the part you saying about just delay. Was it just delayed or just denied? But

all of a sudden, you just use imagination that here I'm going to look at something happen. I'm looking at a video. I got to look at it with my eyes and write it down. Which one is quicker for me to do? I see it and I'm looking at the video and I got to write it. It's not secondguessing. If I got the cell phone sitting here right now, this how I see it. If I put it on record, it will record what I want to record and it'll play back to me. I pluck another button, it's gone in the cloud. Well, I don't want it today. I can get it anytime I want it. Now, everybody wants something else. And what we trying to do, and I said in the last meeting, how come we always want more? and and and we gave you, for instance, we didn't give it to you, but you fixed it up a little bit. We gave you someone to help you last year. Uh, and then you turn around and say that, "Hey, uh, you didn't really give it to us. The state gave the money back to you. I really didn't ask what the state gave back to me." The idea of that the county did have money provided through your good work. You done good work because you you look for the things, you know, and you got somebody to help you out to make it easy. I don't see this really making your job hard. I don't see it, but I'm not looking at it through your eyes. I look at it as a way that can speed it up and and you can be more accurate because that's what you say as far as accuracy. So, uh and uh these salaries now, we can't keep on just giving away something for nothing. When I was working, they gave you more money, you did something else. Now we give away money and they're not doing the same thing it was at first. These kind of things got to change and and that's how I look at it. I'm not g I'm not gonna set you in whole night. We got a cost here

of $44,000 for body cam. Well, I don't agree with that neither. I don't think you should have more than 14. But uh the asking price is written up is 44. We looking at a budget here. And and uh Mr. Herb, I'm I'm I'm saying right now it's no use me wasting a lot of time because right now we don't know what we got until we try. What is wrong with trial and error because we got a way that we we can store it. So all of a sudden you doing the job now. Whatever you say that we got,

you doing it now. So why we can't just give it to you and and uh just let you go ahead and keep on doing what you're doing. Mr. Williams, if I am going to present body warn camera footage to a judge or jury, I am going to look at it ahead of time. Okay? Shouldn't be expected to do otherwise. Mike, sorry. If I'm going to be presenting a bodywn camera footage or any evidence before a jury, I'm going to be looking at it otherwise beforehand. Okay, I'm not going to be surprised. So, it means we have to review this. You go in front. Turn your mic on.

Same case right today. You go in front of you don't have body room and you go in front the judge. What are you going to tell them? I don't have body warn cameras. You going to put your case out? Juries don't like that. They expect DNA. They expect fingerprints. They they watch CSI. They expect body warn cameras backwoods place that you don't have body warn cameras. That's what I hear from defense attorneys. I I can I can Okay, that's what we hear.

It's no use, you know, it's no use uh to me. We sitting there debating on that because I just said earlier to me if we didn't we didn't talk about body cams. All we talking about now, we've been done. You would present your case in front of a a jury and the jury or the judge will decide what you're going to do. Now, body cams to me is giving you something that you can speed up, that you can be accurate because of your words. I look at and I found something different. Now, you're saying, "Well, send me two or three more people." So, and that's where I'm at with it. That's where I'm at with it. All right. Now, I would like to say you did a well job. Uh you you explained everything. Thank you.

And we in a different time now. Just think about it. Body body cams, you know, you got to have them cuz think about it. If your child got shot by a police officer and he ain't had the cam and he did something wrong and never never committed anything, he's dead and you going by what the the police officer saying and and and that's what you also all you can go by. You got the body cam, you going to say, "Well, hey, he had his hands up. He shot him." So, it's both two sides to this thing and either you going to want them or not. Yeah. This is the this is the time in life that we're in. You you have them or you don't have them. You explain to us why we need it because you don't have him now, but you got to have another person. State gave him another person for the job he doing now. They didn't give him uh uh money for a person to to look over the body cam and and the hours that go to. I'm not in your office, but I can understand some of that stuff you wrote and you explained to us the hours to do to make an accurate case for this day and time. That's what you got to look at. Look at this damn time. We ain't looking back way back when you didn't have them and everybody got them. And that don't mean we have to have them, but we do have to have them because you got to keep up with times. Computers, that's the same thing. You got to keep up with the time because if you don't keep up with the time, you going to be behind. Then think about that because uh uh even with the um you have uh uh cipher uh security and all this stuff, cipher and and and Kevin keeping up on that all the time. That cost Yeah, it it's it you can say it's easy because you see see it there on video, but you know, you just got to think about it. We in different times now. And if you keep saying, "Well, hey, I'm not going to pay for this. I'm not going to pay for that. I'm going to go back and you do more work and and and I can see it now. If you do more work, you get less accomplished because you you burnt out." And and and you know, that's just we in different times and we got to step up to the plate and think about what's going on. And we we have funding for this if if if we want it. And I I'm thinking about right now it it's been

going on I guess cuz I've been here for 6 years. But is the price going to go down for somebody? No, it's going to keep going up. So we going to wait till you can't hardly find nobody. But if we get somebody now that likes Middle Sex County and and and we don't have a whole lot of crime going on, but we still got a lot of things that are happening that you have to present in a case. and and it's either you going to step up the plate or say, "No, we going to wait and and wait till everything go up and hire somebody else and all this kind of stuff." And I and I'm not going to do your job and say you don't need it. I think you put out a good presentation today and tonight you explained you went down and you you you covered all your expectation of your job. I wouldn't want it for nothing in the world because you got a lot of things to go over and if you do something wrong now you got a big suit. I don't want the county to be sued over a whole lot of crazy stuff when you can pick up the video and look at that cam and look at it and say this is exactly what he did. Think about that. This is exactly what he did by the way. and and and and that's going to come up and it only take but one or two cases and and I I'm just saying you know I I think we need to step up and do what we need to do for the citizens of Middle Sex County instead of wait and worry about oh that's too much and he can he can do it he can do it there and then you burnt out and make mistakes. I you know I think we we as a county we want middle county we in pretty good shape. We not like Matthews or nobody else. Let's keep Middle Sex County on top. And that I'm just saying we've been on this for six years. Let's go ahead do what we need to do and and we got we got some some estimates here and and some and we also got some grant money a little bit for this to help get this thing started cuz it's going to be like that from now on. Just think about it. We can't be back in the in the in in the in the old days no more.

We can't we can't. And after a while we going to have and I I'm going to cut it off. We going to have AI. We going to have robots. Think about that. Yeah, it's coming soon. AI doing stuff now. We going to have robots that going to be hire here with guns and they going already had the body cams on. So, I'm I'm finished. All right. Hey, maybe we can get Mike and AI.

I I just want to say that first of all, I love the idea of body cams. I really do. I think that uh if if the uh I do believe that it will help uh help you prosecute cases. I I didn't need any of this cuz I know I understand exactly why you need an extra hand if if we're going to have body cams that you need that because I know that it's going to increase the amount of time that you're going to spend on each case. Not that you necessarily may have more cases. I you probably would, but but I think that you're going to need uh another hand to be able to do this. And I understand why you don't want to have it separated out with this person looking at it and then this person prosecuting. And I understand that entirely. Um the only thing that's missing from any of this is how much money you need because we don't know. And and so so if we just say, "Okay, we're going to go ahead and authorize this right now tonight," then we're basically giving you a brand you blank check and saying, "Well, you know, just find one and whatever it costs, that's what we're going to do." So I don't know that that's

that's the responsible way that we can do it. Uh I was going to say, actually, I did do the presentation. This is the same presentation as we did to um last month that included the cameras with the 5-year warranty, the body worn camera clerk for the sheriff's office at 72,000 which includes the benefits, the assistant commonwealth attorney at salary plus benefits. That's still the $80,000, but bear with me. It's only for a partial year. So he's saying that he needs it for $100,000 now for the full year. But are we gonna be able to get one for that? for 100,000 that until you advertise, you don't know. Sometimes they surprise you. Yeah. They said one one said so $120,000. He couldn't get one.

Well, he he has an advertisement so long. Maybe only maybe a month. So you're So you're confident he's going to get one for $120,000? That's more than a lot of the other areas. So he he might Yes. I mean that that's my that's my problem. I think if you came and said, "I got somebody or this is how much it's going to cost," then it'd be a lot easier to do. But but without without that, I mean, I don't know. I'm just I'm I'm not comfortable with with saying

we're going to authorize it, but we don't know how much it's going to cost. I think the board needs to decide how much you want the base salary to be, and then Anmarie can take it from there as to how much the benefits, etc. will be such as do you want to go for the minimum salary or do you want to go for 80,000 do you want to go for 85 do you want to go for 100 and that's I put out the reasoning why for the different salaries and it's up to you guys as to what you want to do but that is what he did when he hired the last assistant commonwealth attorney we right we said it was 80 though we started at 80 and you had to come back and you he had to come back for more funds because the board set the limit this is what we budgeted budgeted it at it's a hard word and you the board. He came back and he said, "Can I get more?"

Right. Well, that a little different and that was the minimum from the state and then you got the supplement over top of that. Right. But here it's going to be all count. It's all ours. Right. And forever. So, so we want to make sure we have it right. Well, I had the opportunity to go over to your office and I appreciate you having me in. And I um to be overwhelmed is not a very good term for me, but my vocabulary probably doesn't have that word in it that I need to be able to say cuz it definitely I was overwhelmed by the amount of stuff that you have to go through. And like Wayne said, I would not want your job, but you do a darn good job for Middle Sex. Thank you.

You're you're really good. The citizens have a problem with three Commonwealth attorneys. I see you showed me the amount of work you got. It's amazing. And then the first thing that you said here that fundamental role of government is protecting the citizens. The citizens see three commonwealth attorneys at the Commonwealth attorney for every 3,500 people. It just seems like we're getting body cameras and now we're going to get prosecuted even more. Well, some of that stuff you said that yes, there will be more prosecutions when you get more cameras. There seems to be a portion of the county that wants the body cameras hardcore and then another portion is go other way. But both portions don't want a third Commonwealth attorney. I'm it's it's hard it's hard for me to go against them because I think they're feeling scared because three Commonwealth attorneys gonna start prosecuting everything. I can't help where their mindset is or anything else. Just the numbers tell them that's a lot for 10 11,000 people. This board here is not going anywhere. And I I don't know how the vote's going to go. But I will tell you this, you have a lot going on in your office. And I don't want the citizens scared. I want them to be able to feel comfortable with you because you do because you do do a good job. And if you don't get a com assistant's attorney, the board's here. We need to figure out a way that we can accommodate you and help you with your workload and the citizenry is not scared. I don't know how to accomplish that, but I think we can work together some kind of way if that's what we need to do. But I do commend you for the job you do.

Um, thank you, Mike, for sure. Uh, and thanks to your committee for putting together what they think or don't think. I think as a little at least from what I've heard third party that everybody wasn't on the same page even on the committee which that is what it is. Um there's also some uncertainty of this countyy's doing this, this county is not doing this, this county has an assistant versus a commonwealth attorney. So all those things make it more difficult for us when we're trying to decide what actually we should do or not do. Um and we want to make the right decision. No question about that. I'm ready to to to vote yes on purchasing the body cameras today. However, the other numbers out there give me some a little bit of cause. I do think that yes, it may or may not increase your ability to defend a case whether you decide not to defend it or whether you decide that you're going to defend it and you know and go that direction. Um I hope that it's not that well I don't have the time and I don't think I want to defend it. I think Reggie's right. It will make your job easier. It'll make your job easier in that it may not even go to court because if you've seen it and you and you go to the other attorney say, "Here's what I'm asking for. What do you want or what do you don't want or what can you live with?" I have tried to be the middle person. You and I talked about that in your office in trying to find a reasonable expectation of what is needed uh and what uh we can do on all three sides to make it happen. I haven't been very successful at that at this juncture. Um

but I do think it's important for everybody to be on the same page. I don't care that it's been four years or five years or six years or 10 years or whatever the number is of of not having body cameras in the county. One, the size of our county and what other counties are doing and not doing comes into play with that, too. We're going to make the decision when we need to make the decision at the right time. And hopefully that's good for everybody. And if the decision is not favorable today for what anybody or what they want or don't want, there's still time to to experiment with this program and see how it really works as opposed to hearing 15 different uh views about they don't do this, but they do this. They've decided not to do this. Well, this is Middle Sex County. What is it going to take for us to make it work? Not what somebody else has done or not done. Not that one county has four Commonwealth attorneys and one has one or two with assistant. I don't know the answer to that. It's not enough data out there for me to make that decision. I hear your opinions. I respect your opinions for sure, but I got opinion as well as well as the the other four people here. So, with that said being said, I'm going to get off the soap box and see what needs to happen at this point. Is there a motion? And I'll let me be very careful. Is there a motion for what was presented at the numbers that were presented or is there a motion for something other than what was presented? I know I know I'm not going to have the support, but uh I'm I'm going to make the motion that you know we we we go with the cameras of the 5year warranty $44,44

and then also uh with with the benefits and salary 72,400 and then assistant commonwealth attorney salary with benefits 105 one one $18,832. $2 and the total requirement is $225,636 to get uh the sheriff in his new apartment in his new building up and getting ready to run to be already set up when they get time for this if it's a start. I know there are steps and that's my motion. Uh you can clear it for me if if

you you got it. In other words, I I I want to buy the cans of what's presented and and we work really with it to because he's in he's going in another building here. He's got everything in there and and whoever he trains or whatever they need to do to get everything going with the Commonwealth attorney and everybody working together. That's all I want. I mean, I don't I don't want to see camel sitting on the shelf waiting and and still going to be waiting. They be obsolete by the time we get time to use it cuz cuz everybody up here going to have a different opinion and they going to sit around and and I've been on it long enough to seen you wait price still going up. That's my that's my motion.

Thank thank you Mr. uh Jesse. The motion corresponds with what was uh given in the in the board packet uh that you just um spoke about. So thank you very much. Is there a second? Seeing no second, the motion dies. Any other motions to entertain? Seeing none, um we'll move along to what's next, Miss Attorney.

Um next is your new business. I'm sorry. Next is new business. Um or are you Thank you very much. 8B. Thank you very much. Is there any new business?

Okay, seeing none, uh matters presented by the board. But I'll start with Mr. Williams. You know, I'm going to say something about the body cams itself. Um, I think it should have been a motion one way or the other to accept these body cams. And by turn them down, I I kind of don't feel that was the right thing to do. I mean, even if you got to give the um uh what do you call it the BF something on the u position and and I can't act if they won't set them on the shelf, then I still think we ought to buy them. I think we ought to buy the body camps. And if they set them on the shelf, we got people in place that if they won't set them on the shelf, let them sell them on the shelf. Now we just we we're giving away money. We just gave away money people that I don't but you would ate me up and was more than what what I'm talking about when it come to body cams. Now if if if constitutional officer don't want to use the body cams it off us we got a price for instance of $44,000 some dollars and if we want to do the clerk salary and benefits at 72 that position is costing us $48,000. So if we want to do that, that is putting the body cams in somebody hand so we don't have to make a decision. We got to take it out our hands. If they refuse to use it, then it's in their hand. They can't come to me and see what we didn't do. And if we need them, we got to put it in their hands. And we can't sit here and go home at night and be justified by not putting them in hands. Because that's part of us not agreeing to anything. If I can't have exactly my way, I'm not willing to compromise. So, and that's

where we at. And if we let them control and this don't remark, if we let them control this, we can we we got to get these body cams.

Okay. And and that's how I feel about it. And and that just remarks I feel we got to get the body cams and empower administration to go ahead and do them. If the person that's in charge of using them don't want to use them, then that's on them. So are you thinking of a motion that would the 44,000 and the 72,000 put them together and make a motion to pass that basically not commonwealth attorney not com attorney and I'm going tell you something else being you the amongst ourselves it seems like we couldn't agree with nothing then all of a sudden well something Wayne said about set them on the shelves right we don't need them more than 14 we can save seven or $8,000 just if you want to set them on the shelves So, I would go with 14. And and the reason I'm going with 14, if you don't use them or what, you change your mind and say fine, then you come in and say you need a spare of something else if something go bad. We got to start being consistent in doing our job. And anytime you got one or two, two people is pretty simple. Herb is pretty simple. He got two people in his office. He got a workload. And to me tonight, he's doing everything that he told us about. Now we give him something to help him out and you say I don't want it and I got to get somebody else and we justify being heavy. We're getting too heavy at the top because we're hiring everybody to do everything. So we setting back. We haven't got the pandemic yet. But I'm tell you something we should in my opinion we should empower the administrators. Hey you call whoever going to use them. You call them and say we ordering the body cams and and and how they got there. Y'all got fiveear warranty on it. If they don't use them for five years, well, you still got the warranty. So be it. Because just like some things that we have turned down, we throw it away money. We have did it to please people and still making good decisions. What I'm saying now, we already gave it away. Go ahead. It's 40.

If you add the BWC clerk in, well, you go ahead and add it in because it cost you $48,000. But then I don't know it's cost you 48,000 because it's not 100% clarity on that. So we got a little mixed things. It's not 100% clarity. You talk about I find the money. That's not clarity to Reggie. You don't find nothing. I I think Okay. And and I'm just saying that. So I'm just in it pleasing to say 72,000. But I don't like the idea of doing 72, but I love the idea of buying the body cams and I like 14 the best. I just be honest with you. I I I talked to a sheriff the other day and uh he he indicated that that if if this particular thing doesn't go through and I don't like I don't like being put in the spot like this, but he said if this doesn't go through tonight, then the he's going to lose that that person that wanted to be a body cam clerk to to a different they're just they're going to give up here and they're going to go to a different department And I don't have any problem with with with buying the buying the cameras. I agree with you. I mean, I think it's something we're going to end up with anyway. And I think we could go with the cameras, go with the body with the with the body cam clerk for the sheriff's office, but then have have Mike Herd come back here if he finds somebody who's I mean, if if he's still he's going to end up with more work with this stuff with it with with himself and this and his assistant. And if that gives him an awful good incentive to find somebody who's going to come in and do the do the job, he's going to need a third person. I'm convinced of that. And and because

But is it a third Commonwealth attorney for the county, Kenny? Yeah, I I think I think it's going to be a third Commonwealth attorney because have him now though, Randy. He don't have him now. He don't have him now. We don't have people going over body cam. No, it's not. We keep throwing body cams. Well, you know, you got another person. No, but you No, but what you doing? That's going to be more work for me. But but what you're doing, we saying it's going to be more work. You're doing the job now. You're doing the job now. Now I'm going to give you something to make your job easier and you tell me I need somebody else.

Yeah, but you see, but but the thing is that that what he's going to do is this opens up a door. What happens is now the the the defense attorney is going to say, "Okay, I need to look at that body cam footage." And then he's going to come back and say, "Well, my defendant said this, and I think that that that we need to straighten this out because I I think that proves he's innocent." That's exculpatory. So then now now Mike has to go back or whoever the assistant is has to go back and they have to reinvestigate that or now all of a sudden they've got more more camera footage to look at to start picking evidence out and to also look for stuff that might prove the guy innocent. And so, so it it just it makes more work in every case. It it helps them prove the case better, but it also makes more work for him. And I think that that that he he and his office work really hard. I know that. I know they put in tremendously long hours. I think that that if uh it's I don't I would if he came in here today and said, "Look, I found somebody. he's gonna come to work for $100,000. Then I say, "Okay, fine. I I'll go along with it. I I'll vote along, you know, with Wayne." But but the thing is, he's not able to say that. And until I got that from him, then I'm not going to to approve say, "Okay, we'll go ahead and spend $1,832, you know, for for $108,000 for that because I don't know if he's going to be able to get one for that. He might be he might come in here later on say, "Well, I need I need $140,000 for it. That's the cheapest I can find." Then that's something else we're going to have to wrestle with in the future. But I think right now we know how much body cams are going to cost. We know how much the clerk's going to cost. And I think we should go ahead and and uh I'm

I'm okay with with uh with going with with funding them tonight. It's $116,84 if we add those two figures together. It's right down in B. Matt. Matt, let me let me I would I would support that too if that's what we want. Let me hear something from Matt. 116. I would add these two together. Basically, you're not approving the comos attorney. I I would like to hear something from Matt. He's sitting there mighty quiet. That's all. Wake up, Matt.

I've talked to a couple of y'all about this already. I've seen we may have access to a grant. Uh, one of the duties you gave our staff is go out and try to find some grants. So, we've been working with PDC. Clara with the PDC. Sarah has been working with her pretty close and Sarah served as staff to the committee. There's something called a JAG grant. It has, according to its information information sheet, it has a due date of September 30th. Uh it's a 25% match. It will pay up to $75,000 of the cost for body camera. So, if we're successful in getting that grant, that could go a long way to offset some of the cost. Now, there's a little bit of a wrinkle in this that came up today because we heard from the DCJS person that's overseeing the grant and she's like, "There's been a little bit of miscommunication there because the grants information sheet says September 30th, but they had a deadline of April 8th, but they may not have all the uh monies distributed, so we still may be in running. And if not, we may be able to buy them and get it reimbursed later. We're gonna we're gonna follow up with Sarah Clara Sarah Clara with the person from DCAGS to see what the ramifications would be. I talked to Sheriff Bushy today. Bushy wants Rachel andor Dave Layman or both to work with Sarah and Clara on developing that grant if y'all move forward. So, I wanted to chime in and say that, but y'all were having discussions and the cost of the cameras, I don't think, for the countyy's ever been really the issue. It's always been the Commonwealth attorney in that extra position.

We've explained that to Mike and I would like to think I kind of parallel where Randy is on this. I'd like to think that y'all have been there for anybody when you they've needed you in the past. if there was a willingness to just try something shy of a full-time, you know, 120 $108,000 comos attorney and it didn't work and he could come back and talk to you'all about it. I mean, he's got all of your cell phone numbers. We're a small community. We know everybody. So, I mean, I would hope that that we would be there for him if he if it was something that just, hey, for whatever reasons, we're we're kind of a nuance situation and you were a county of 11,000. I 11,000 people with three come attorneys. I I've got a little bit of a thought on that myself. Like Bill said,

speakers that came up. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Hanging out there either. That's why I tried to tried to say that the board of supervisor is not going anywhere. That's right. If the vote doesn't go the way you hope tonight, we're still going to be here and when time comes, we're going to have to be able to help. Yeah.

I I'm I'm struggling with it. And I think the nuance for us is this. It's the same thing that bites us every time with the comp board. We're a county of 11,000 people, but we grow to 30,000 people in the summer. I think that has an impact on case load. And you know, Mike doesn't, and you know, Heather reminds me this often, Mike hasn't come in and asked for much ever. I remember I made him by shelves one time. So, he's sincerely worried about his workload.

I I think Wayne's spot on on that. and and the fact that he does not have the track record of coming in and asking for too much too often. Maybe he knows there's I don't want to know anything about the criminal justice system ever. So, it's it's a tough decision, but I think the most important thing we can communicate or the board can communicate to Mike is regardless of what you decide to do with body cameras, you're going to be there for him. And he's got to trust that. I got a question. Heather, can we make a motion now on the body cam? Yes, sir. You absolutely can. There's no uh procedural rule prohibiting you from doing that.

All right. I'll make a motion that on the body cams that costing uh $44,44 and the BWC which is the clerk salary and benefits at $72,400 which equals to $116,84. That's my motion. Okay.

Okay. Motion made by sorry motion made by Mr. Williams uh to um for the purchase of B body cameras uh and the BWC uh clerk salary. Um and I think Mr. Harris or Mr. Williams gave what that total is. I think 116. Is that what you said? 116 and some change. 116. 116 804. I second. Okay. Uh so we have a motion by Mr. Williams and a second uh by Mr. Kittin uh in the total amount of what is it again please? 116

804. 804. Thank you very much. Any further discussion? I just want to say one thing.

I just want to say the one thing right now we don't know when they going to get them. And that's my problem. My problem is you got a problem with another assistant commonwealth attorney and and that's what the problem with most the boards got with but but but look at it like I saying seven eight month seven to eight times of the uh months of the year our our on weekends and stuff like that with these campgrounds our our population doubles and triples sometime and we going to complain and fuss about the 108 $108,000 when like I'm saying our county going to grow people coming here people coming out of the military county. We got we got a safe pretty safe county, but what I'm just saying, uh I know I'm I'm I'm talking on deaf ears, but I'm saying if you going to do something, you might as well do it. Why say, "Hey, we got it. Put it on the shelf. Now we did our job. Now you got to do yours." When they going to do theirs? If they can't get the money, they ain't going to do it.

Are you Do you know that they're But do you know that they're going to be able to get an assistant Commonwealth attorney for $18,832? That's my question. But you they may have to pay a little more. But but you give him if you can't take that first step. You can't do anything else. But what I'm saying, he can see what he can get. He can find out what he can get. And if he can't, he can come back and then we see exactly what it made. If you got a problem of what the total made going to be, he can't do it till he get somebody. And he can't do a whole lot till we okay it. So now you giving the first step. Hey, I'm going to give you thatund $108,000. Well, 116 and then 108

108. Okay. Yeah, cuz cuz they added the total. I'm I'm take it back. It's 108,832 for assistant commonwealth attorney. He got to he got to go out there and see what he can get first before he can do anything. Right. So, that's what I'm saying. Why don't we just say Matt can tell him call him up tomorrow and say, "Look, we've approved the the the the deputy or the the assistant, you know, the person in the in the sheriff's office. We've approved the body cams. We're waiting for you to find somebody to to come in here and you bring them in here and and we'll vote on it. Yeah, but but like I'm saying, you got I'm sorry. Go ahead. You go ahead.

I apologize. I just wanted to So that's an excellent point and and what I Matt will be joining us instantaneously. Thank you. We need you, please. So, so, so here's a little bit of a hiccup. So there was an important question raised. So the one of the questions that are being raised that you could give us some insight on is as Wayne was just trying to say, Mr. Herd can't advertise for the salary position unless the board oays it. And then the concern is from board members, but is there an at It's like the chicken or the egg. Is there an attorney to respond?

We talked about that in a work session. I I think I heard the rest. Um, one of the things I mentioned to Mike in one of my telephone calls with him in between all the work sessions is what if the board authorized you to hire an attorney and then you can't find one? Now, we've moved forward with body cameras. We've got the whole program running, but then now it's just you and Pat, you haven't been able to find anybody anyway. And uh, but he can't he can't advertise unless y'all authorize a position. So, so if the thought is he needs to advertise to see who he can get, if he can get anyone, he can't do that without your permission. That is my only thing I just want to

if the board is thinking that they want him to see what's out there, you have to at least give him the opportunity to try. Otherwise, he can't cuz you're you control the first strings. So, I just wanted to clarify that like he can't find out who's there unless you say he can.

Okay. Well, where we are with a motion and a second on the floor, that discussion really is a little bit uh I I get it. Uh but I'm not convinced and there's several other people here as well are not convinced number one on what the overload of how many cases you're going to have to have to view body camera information. And number two, can it not be done with who we have now in the Commonwealth's office? All of that's unknown. Yeah, everybody's got opinion of it, but really that's unknown at this point. So until we know something more on that, um I don't know how we would go any further than where we are. And the board really uh already made the vote on the motion that Mr. Jesse made. And really, you could say, well, that was a gun deal. Some of the board members now have said, okay, I will try to move to the middle and try to help the process, which is what we maybe could have had right from the beginning, but everybody dug the heat in feet in about what they wanted, what they didn't want. And I'm not casting any judgment on that. I'm just saying that's the way it ended up. So now we have a motion to approve the top two items on the um what was presented to um or what Ann Marie prepared. Um and a second.

Any other discussion? Roll call, please. Mr. Jesse. Nope. Mr. Williams? Yes. Mr. Bill Harris? Yes. Mr. Kittinden? Yes. Mr. Don Harris? Yes. Motion to purchase the body cameras and the BWC clerk salary and benefits have been approved. Okay. Where are we? Uh

Mr. Chairman, may I ask just uh one quick point of clarity? Um I will be probably talking to Mike Herd sometime in the in the days ahead. uh can I extend to him some of the sentiment of the board that hey look if this does become very problematic reach out to us and let us know because I've heard that that you're not going anywhere and but in a way that we can address the public's concerns of having a commonwealth attorney for every 3500 people. Maybe maybe once this gets going a little bit, maybe something will come out to where there's some other type of title that someone can have in his office that would meet his needs and we would not be scaring the public.

I just heard that sentiment and I think that would be very important to convey. Yes, you can proceed on with discussing that with him. I'm not looking for him to come in September and say I need this or need that. I'm not looking for that myself personally. I think that's something that Wayne already addressed too. it. If we bought these things tonight, there's going to be a lag on when to get implemented anyway. Right. Okay. Um I'll open the floor up for public comment. Seeing none, hearing none, I will close public comment. And um

All right, Mr. Chairman. So now we have a closed session. Um and so we will be in this room. So, we will be asking the public to leave. I do not anticipate um Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. We got to make motions. I do not anticipate action afterwards, but I always reserve the right to change on that. So, with that, Mr. Chairman, you need a motion to convene in close session pursuant to 2.2-3711 A3 and A8. This is so the board can have a discussion about the acquisition of real property for a public purpose where discussion in an open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining position of the board and so that you may consult with legal counsel regarding specific legal matters, procedures, and questions about the acquisition of said properties and to address um a personnel matter under 2.2-3711A1. This is so the board can can discuss personnel matters specifically involving the county administrator and the county attorney.

So move. Thank you. So moved by Mr. Jesse, second by Mr. Bill Harris. Any discussion? Seeing none. Uh roll call, please. Mr. Williams. Y'all are killing me, Mr. Sorry. Go ahead, Mr. Williams. Yes. Yes. Mr. Bill Harris. Yes. Mr. Kittinen. Yes. Mr. Jesse. Hi.