Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Let us pray. Gracious God, our father is once again, Father, it seems like the same time, Father, that we come, Father, asking you for guidance and asking you for understanding. For we know that if we follow your handbook and you you you would teach us how to do forgiveness and love, Father, that we can do things that not only this county can be proud of, Father, but also you can be proud of in Jesus name. We all do pray. Amen. Miss Hammond to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands nationy and justice for all. supposed to follow.

Miss Hammond, roll call, please. Mr. Williams, here. Mr. Bill Harris, here. Mr. Kitten, here. Mr. Jesse, here. Mr. Don Harris, here. Thank you. Um, I'll need approval of the consent agenda. Um, but we're going to make a quick change and that is that uh under agency and staff reports uh item G will be Dave Layman uh for that spot and um other than that uh Mr. Walker, any other changes that need to be added?

I wanted to move the schools up. Yes. Yeah. We're going to move them to agency and staff reports. Instead of down at C, we're going to move them up to A and uh then the ERP presentation will follow that. Any additions to the um to the minutes. I'll make a motion we approve the the agenda the minutes with the proper changes. Okay. Second. Okay. We we approve for the consent agenda by Mr. Jesse, seconded by Mr. Kritten. Any further discussion? Seeing none, roll call, please. Mr. Bill Harris, yes.

Mr. Kittinden, yes. Mr. Jesse, yes. Mr. Williams, yes. Mr. Don Harris, yes. The uh approval of the consent agenda has now taken place. And with that, we're going to move right into public comments. Is there anybody uh on your list, Mr. Cardi? I do not have anyone signed up for public comments.

Is there anyone in the gallery that would like to speak? Seeing none, I'll close the public comments. And moving right along, Constitutional Office, Treasures Report only on page 41 to 48. Commission of Revenue Report. Uh only page 49. Any discussion of any of those two items? But I would like to note that both the commissioner of revenue and the treasurer are here in case you have any questions.

Any questions for either one of those? Okay. Wonderful. Uh moving right along. Um item four, agency and staff reports. and we'll have the school come up, please. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. And thank you for moving us up ahead of your next presentation. I do appreciate that. We try to be as helpful as we can when we can.

I appreciate it. So, it looks like we're on pages 61 through 64 in your packet. It looks like there's a lot of items on here and so I will lead with we are not asking for any new money. it is carrying things over mostly from FY25 to FY26. So I'll start on page 61. I'll give an overview of those items, but then I'll be happy to answer any other specific questions. And so the carryover is a result of the first large amount is the all-in Virginia grant was a three-year grant from VDO VDOE and we still have some monies to spend by the end of the fiscal year. Um, and then we have a section of federal awards that we are allowed to carry over certain portions of those. We have an insurance. Oh, there's a another piece that Karen just pointed out, the 3500 that is specific to Mosley Architects and the amount that we have left to be build for the master plan study when we first did that a few years back. carrying that over to pay for their last invoice when we do receive that. Next section on titles, those are federal awards. I think I said that that we were able to carry over those amounts. We have some insurance refunds based on some work that we had done to vehicles. The MPSRGS is the middle peninsula summer regional governor school. We are taking over the fiscal agent and operation of that and hosting of that for the next two years and then it will rotate to another school division. So those monies come into us from Matthews County. And then the the last section, the excellence in co- teaching teaching initiative is a grant from VDOE that we received for two of our eighth grade teachers. So I'm happy to answer any questions on this

first supplement request. Any questions? Uh, start on page 61 where you have um school fund balance 67,6541. Where where's that money at? That's the um that's from the All-In Virginia grant from the Department of Education. It was a three-year grant and it has to be fully expended by June 30 of 2026. That's the amount we have to spend out for this year. But where is it at? Where is it at? Yeah, it's in the county funds, right? And it has to be appropriated to us for FY26. Yeah.

Okay. So So that 67,000 is in county funds. The reason I Wait, wait. It's It's not It came from the Virginia Department of Education bookkeeping wise. It has to be appropriated to us for the next fiscal year. It's appropriated. So it's not there. So we got to put the funds. No, you've already gotten it from the Virginia Department of Education, but we don't have it in the treasurer. Yes. Yes. It's in our treasurer. $316,000 grant. Yeah. Okay. It's only a bookkeeping, right? It's a bookkeeping thing, you know. Um Yep.

You know, but we I you know, my treasury report didn't say was $67,600 some dollars there. Now, I'm not saying it's not there. I just want to make sure that it's there and we're not appropriating something and waiting on something. No, no. It came I think it was 316,000 and some change. This is year three of the grant. This is the remaining funds, but it it it came from VDOE all in one lump sum. And so each year we've been appropriating the remaining balance until it's spent down. So we making simply complicated and okay. I just want I'm just trying to

Well, I don't care about Do what you calling, but what I'm looking at, you know, I'm thinking about in the money. Where is it at? You know, you know how we using because if it's already there, it's sitting there not doing anything, but you all waiting on it, you know, and I don't know if we accumulate anything on that money or not. We can't invest it or do anything to it. So if we we we looking at money that we got sitting in our tragedy that if you all telling me it's nothing we can do with that money. If I find that pretty interesting because all of a sudden just like I give you money said don't spend it to uh so and so and you got to leave it there and do nothing. I just don't know. I just happen to to just look at it and I'm just wondering because I know some strange things. We're looking for some strange times coming up and I want to make sure we have the money that whatever we do that the money is set there. So you did answer my question. You say the money is in the our treasurer,

right? And we planned on it for three years of additional tutoring and things like that for in the classroom. What we didn't do is spend $300,000 on one year just to spend it because we had three years to spend it. And so we balanced out what that what we could do in the classrooms over a three-year period. This is the money to get us through until June. So the plan is in a three-year period, we're gonna spend this money. Yes.

To to help somebody. and we see a reflection sometime when it move so when the taxpayers or whoever get the money can see actually that we are helping kids at this particular time. That's all I'm concerned about is the money we have not so much that what the state and government is getting at this level that we at. We're a small community and everything. And I just figure that we want to make sure we see it. You know, we don't see it. And and and when I say we, I'm talking about me. I ain't talking about everybody else that see it. Okay? So, I'm just talking about me. You know, if I don't see it, maybe well I don't see it. I I that's I just had to ask that question. You say it's already there, so no problem. So that's separated. A no other fund that we have because we can't if we're not allowed to put that money in no other fund, it's got to be sitting there.

Yeah. This is all state and federal funds. It's no local funds.

Right. Right. It interesting when when I'm told that I got money to hold and I can't do nothing for money that I got for three years. That get interesting to me. It's very interesting to me. I don't care what they done in the past. I'm saying that part is very and I'm not picking at y'all. I'mma let you know right now. I'm not I'm looking at money in one place that we have that we don't we are not doing anything to it. And you know and I think we could be spending you know spinning the wheel. You get something from $300,000. You know, it's, you know, even if you invest onethird of it, you say we can't do it because government don't allow us to do it. But, you know, that get very interesting, too, because it's in somebody's pocket. Now, you're going to tell me I can't do nothing with it. I just want to make sure that we got our our treasury. That's all I want. That's that's all.

Yeah. We submit plans and updated plans to VDOE for this funding when we first received it and then as we've continued to update it. So, it's Yeah, VDOE knows what we're doing with it. Yeah. But I'm thinking, but if you got it in your hand, it's still our money. You know, once they give it to us, it's our money. Videos bunch of people just like we are. And and C2, uh, I just don't like the idea saying we got to leave it there and do nothing with it. That's all I'm saying. We We can't leave it there and do nothing with it. Yeah. Like I said, we had to put in a three-year plan when we received the money. We have to spend it. Yep. Okay.

Any further questions, Mr. Williams? No. that I just put in. Okay. Anybody else have any questions? Then um it would be in order for a motion for FY2026-4 to approve um the supplement request. I'll make a motion that uh we approve the budget supplement request form FY26.04. 04 motion made by Mr. Jesse.

No, I was going to do the the second one, which would be on page 63. So 61 and 62 is all the same thing. I was going to let you vote on that one and then go into 63 just because it's a little bit different. What you've got on page 63. Well, actually 61. Um, so on 61, I think I'm all right on page 61. 61 is it's what's coming in to be appropriated and then that goes all the way over to 62 on how the funding is spent. Yes. And then 63 is a different one.

We're going to approve the second one secondly. So the first one uh there's a motion uh by Mr. Jesse. I need a second. Second by Mr. Bill Harris. Any f further discussion? Seeing none. Roll call, please. Mr. Krenn. Yes. Mr. Mr. Jesse. Yes. Mr. Williams. Yes. Mr. Bill Harris. Yes. Mr. Don Harris. Yes. So FY2026-04 has been approved. Moving along. I think the next one for you is uh 20265. Correct. That's correct. Continue.

Yes. Okay. So the first six items on there, the titles all the way down to the two idea, those are all federal funds. This is appropriation of the actual amounts. And then the next three basic aid down to CTE equipment grant are state funding. Again, it's the actual amounts. And so when we do the budget for FY26, the state doesn't have those exact numbers. They ask us to use what their actuals are, for example, for 20 2025. And then any other guidance they give us on if they expect the numbers will increase or decrease, that's how we build the budget on that. And then at this time of year, they give us what those actual awards are. And so if we need to make adjustments, this is where you see the adjustments.

Wonderful. Questions? Everyone good? I'll make a motion that uh FY 2026-05 be approved under the budget supplement request. And um I need a second. Second. Motion made by Mr. Krin and second by Mr. Williams. Any further discussion? Seeing none, roll call, please. Mr. Jesse? Yes. Mr. Williams? Yes. Mr. Bill Harris? Yes. Mr. Kittinden? Yes. Mr. Don Harris?

Yes. Motion's approved. All right. Very good. Anything else on any? We do not have anything else. As long as you do not have anything else, then we can move on. I may have something else. Okay. Um Karen, are you staying for the presentation on the software? That's all I needed to know. Thank you very much. All right. All right. Thank you all. Thank you.

Okay. Uh agency and staff reports the ERP uh ERP presentation. Edunds, Edmunds, and Affinity. Who wants to go first? All right,

hold on. Let me just grab my PowerPoint here. First of all, let me catch up to speed. As we discussed at the last board meeting, um following a very comprehensive year-long um project, including an evaluation of various system capabilities, imple implementation strategies. The ERP review committee is recommending pursuing a best of breed approach for selecting a ERP um the inter enterprise resource planning software system. Um the best of breed approach will allow us to select and integrate the strongest available software for each of our var each of our various functions. The two software systems that we are recommending to complement one another will include admins to do basically the financials, the payroll, the permitting and the purchasing and avenity which is a strong tax and revenue only um software. We have invited both vendors to provide brief presentations highlighting their key functions and their functionalities. And before we do that, I would like to kind of show you um what we do. Let me see if I can't drag this over here. do a little slideshow. I want I think it's important that you know where we are and this is going to be this isn't interactive. This isn't live. This is just a PowerPoint of hey Marie what's our account look like. So this is our main screen when we go in and I say well you clearly want general ledger. So I'll um we don't by the way we don't have all these modules. We don't use depreciation. We don't have purchasing. We don't use human resources. We don't own that. Um we don't have fixed assets. So not all this is nice but we don't have all that. Um anyway, so I select general ledger and I say, "Okay, I know what I want to do next. I want to go into an account. Um I want to look at my account." So I'm going to select number one. Then I'm going to select number 14. I'm going to inquire into the chart of accounts. And I'm sure had you seen these screens, you would have figured that out automatically. All right. Then from here, I'm going to pick my company number. And I'm not

going to cheat and tell you my password, but if I did, I'd get in right here. And I would type in the general ledger number. this 12010. That's my account number. That's the county administration office. And I just picked a random number so we could get there. We get there. And you can see that happens to be the um VRS account number. That's not what I'm interested in though. So I scroll down and I put a seven, which as you see is deploy display year-to- date inquiry on professional services, which by the way isn't what I actually did. You'll see the next screen because what I picked was 30006, which is printing and binding. And because that's really what I was interested in. And when I'm looking at this, I say, "Whoa, my budget was 400. My year-to- date was 72. What on earth? This was me. This was me when I saw it, by the way. What did I do?" So, I would like to know what that $7,200 is, right? Oh, you can't do that from here. You're at the end of this screen. You have to go all the way back to the main menu. You remember the main menu? We saw when I first opened this, and I've now got to go into another silo, which is called the accounts payable directory. Um, I'm going to go into, strangely enough, inquiry 1099 reports. And from there, I'm going to go to inquiry open and paid. And from there, you're going to hear because every time, by the way, sorry. But every time, I always hit the wrong password on this one because it's got a different password. That's when I get the unauthorized access error. Eventually, I will get here. I will type in right here that same account number. You recognize it ended in 30006. That's my department. I keep wanting to hit enter because in my world I'd be hitting enter right here. And this is what I get. Huh. Those are all the accounts, all the p that have been through this account forever from 2017, 18, 19, 25. I think, okay, well, let's look at what that is. So, I'm going to hit a five right there with a detail, and it's going to say it's Civic Plus. And I say, oh, cool. Let's find

out what that is. Oh, that's the end of this line. Now I have to go to the paper fine files to find that invoice or go to Microsoft access to see if it's been scanned in yet. Either way, there is no access from where I'm backed up a page from where this is to find out what the invoice is. You saw the end of the line for both accounts payable and general ledger. So um next I want to run a report. So once again I back out to the main menu, back to the general ledger menu. All those screens you saw. This is important because where do I go from here? I pick this I get print budget read reports and I think I picked number two here and who knows what this means right not a clue when it says reports format you put a J no idea why but that's what you put there and then you get a report that looks like this you will get this report pretty much every time no matter what you do because that's what comes out of the system has been two minutes my goal was to do this in two minutes and I want to show you that in these two minutes you saw what our system is missing in a in a modern-day accounting system dashboard interaction and intuitive interface data summaries drill down and ease of reporting drill down would be when I saw that that invoice was to civic plus I would have liked to have gone to see what was that for what did it say so um anyway that's my account says stop my notes say stop here so I'm going to stop here and go on to the next at this point Um, I guess I'm going to turn it over. Let me escape out of this and you don't get to see any more of that. And I'm going to turn it over to my two vendors. Let's pull them over. We've not done this before. Not like this where I've actually allowed the vendors to do a presentation of what they'd like to do. So, um, Ross, are you here? Would you like to give a little intro or you all remember Ross? He was

here at the last meeting. Hi everyone. Um, yeah, happy to give an intro. We do have our two vendors here. Um, Mark, uh, Mark, actually, I'm not going to try to say your last name. Uh, sorry buddy. Uh, but Mark with Edmmonds. Um, I believe John Ray is also on the line with Edmonds. And we have Leaf Aar uh from Aventity. Um, believe that we wanted uh, Edmmonds to go first. Is that correct, Amory? Yes. Yes, that sounds right. Um, do you want me to do their pull up their PowerPoint or are they going to pull up their PowerPoint? Uh, do they have um, excuse me, do they have uh, they can share the screen? Yeah, screen sharing capability then. No, they they can drive. Okay.

Okay. Thanks, team. Go ahead, Mark. Beautiful. Uh, thanks, Ross. Um, yeah, my name is pretty brutal. So, it's Mark Priscalowski. Super long last name, but uh, I'm the regional seller for the state of Virginia. I'm actually in Virginia right now, so I apologize if you hear background noise. I'm in a hotel room. I'm at the Virginia GFOA in Charlottesville as we speak. Um, and then with me, as he mentioned, is our VP of sales, John Wright. And then my co-orker, Connor Wheelen, is also on the line from Edmonds. So, let me share my screen. Uh, and can everybody hear me and see uh the screen here? Yes.

Yes. And yes.

Awesome. Um, so the goal for this is to just do a quick just company highle overview of who we are, what we're about, what we have to offer. Um, and then I'm going to pass it over to my co-orker Connor and he's going to drill into some of the the issues and and things that were just touched on. Drill down capabilities, efficiencies, dashboards, all that from the software side. Um, we'll go at a super high level as well, but uh I think numbers are important. If uh everybody in the room isn't familiar with Edmonds. This kind of paints a good picture of where we stand today, uh we're currently in 30 states. We're ining up to 2,300 customers in those 30 states. Uh we have 40 Virginia customers as we speak today. Um and close to half of those 40 customers are are BAI Bright Migrations, which is the plat platform and uh software you're currently on. So, we're extremely familiar with what the process would look like to convert and transition uh the county over to Ed and Scute. Uh we are located in New Jersey, but we do have satellite offices in uh Pennsylvania and Raleigh, North Carolina. Uh we're still family-owned and operated uh for 50 plus years at this point. Um which is pretty cool for as as much as we've grown and expanded over this course of time. We only sell the software to local government entities like yourself too. Uh and in my opinion, the most important part of this entire slide is those bottom two bullet points. Um it kind of ensures you that uh once you are live with us, we're with you for the long haul here. So 99 client retention rate. Uh and a couple reasons for that is we put a lot of emphasis on the end uh customer like yourself. Uh we have as of last week 232 employees at Edmonds and close to 80% of those employees are dedicated to two different departments. One being customer support and product development. So we're always

supporting our customers trying new ways to interact and communicate with our customers um improve KPIs and response times. Uh but more importantly the system's always evolving and improving uh with product development. So the system and demonstration that you see today and and the staff uh saw previously is only going to improve over time. We do quarterly updates. Uh as I mentioned uh huge emphasis in in the state of Virginia too. Um you can see a couple of the customers here uh which we highlighted. The most recent is actually Smith County. Uh they just went live with finance two weeks ago. Um but you can see a list. I just provided a couple here. Um, Carol County, Buchanan County, uh, BAI. So, um, but you can also see a couple of the, uh, towns, smaller towns, uh, like Urbana Town in in Middle Sex County, uh, is relatively close to you guys as well that, um, that migrated over to Edmonds. So, the system's extremely scalable depending on who you are, population sizes, which specific modules you go forward with as well. Um, and I like showing this because it really does show the entire uh array of solutions Edmonds Govvek offers. We have over 30 different integrated modules. Your staff has done a great job of obviously identifying which ones are going to be a fit initially um which is a hyper focus on the financial super suite uh the code enforcement and permitting and the personnel suite. Uh but I also would like to show this too because this is how our staff is essentially assigned at Edmonds. So when your your uh county calls in with a support question, you're going to be insured that you're going to speak with a support uh finance expert when they get a finance question. And then same thing goes depending on the modules that um they have questions throughout that time frame. Uh and also keep in mind too

uh this shows uh the different user experiences that uh somebody at the county might uh occur occur when they um interact with our software. Uh so what I mean by that is hypothetically the code enforcement and permitting solution there's ancillary pieces that the county has interest in adding on uh like the online permit application. Somebody has the ability to request a permit online. not only request it but also make a payment through our whip portal. Um so uh you can we can grow with you. Uh there certainly you're not requesting and going into all these specific modules but we can grow over time with you too. Um and then the modules that are are quoted for you um the cloud hosted environment financial supereuite the financial dashboard which I know that was a a big talking point. We're going to show you that. We're actually going to start with that today in the product demonstration. It's an extremely good tool especially for everybody in the room there. Um before meetings like this, we can really narrow focus on uh the financial data uh without even going into the back end of the system too. uh pre-requisition approval process before POS are generated, the P full personnel suite, HR payroll ESS, the AR and business licensing which is specifically tied into the code enforcement and permitting module and then the uh online permit application that I just referenced. Um and then a couple of advantages uh more so than anything you can see in that prior screen, we're not new to this space by any means, 50 plus years. We're not new to Virginia. Um but uh when you start talking about our software specifically uh the big thing you can hear is the integration component uh the no more duplicate entries uh everything flows back into the GL um and and the financial super suite your auditor will be happy full complete audit trail who makes changes when and you'll be able to

report upon it user setup and security everybody's a little bit different everybody's going to interact with our software a little bit differently so um during the implementation of this software will define the roles and specific um use cases with the software depending on who you are. Um there might be somebody that only wants readonly access and other individuals that might be what we call super users who has full access to our entire system. Uh but for the most part, the system's extremely scalable as I mentioned. Um and then more so than anything, uh the thing that separates admins from a lot of other vendors out there are those bottom two bullet points. Upgrades, consistent upgrade path, quarterly updates, always improving, always getting better. Um we actually get those enhancements from our current customers, uh from ideas. Uh so that's always consistently happening throughout the course of the year. And then support. Uh we take a we put a lot of emphasis on how we interact with our customers. Uh whether it's postgo live, the implementation process itself. Um we actually just did our first user national user group in person uh for our customers where um if you guys were a customer hypothetically now, you could have attended that in Charlotte, North Carolina. So we've had users that were there that have utilized our system for a year and other people that have utilized it for 20 to 30 plus years. So, not only do do you have the ability to interact with those individuals in a setting like that, but also uh the individuals at the Edmonds Govve Tech team, whether it's developers, support uh reps that they're consistently calling in uh speaking to on a daily basis. So, um I just wanted to touch on a couple a couple of the advantages. I'm not sure if anybody else has any other questions. Uh just want to do a super highle overview. Uh hopefully that kind of painted a good picture on on the Edmonds Gulf Tech software itself before I pass it over to my coworker Connor.

Did anybody have any questions on that portion of the presentation? No sir, continue. Awesome. So Connor, I'll stop sharing my screen and pass over to you.

Yeah, wonderful. Thank you, Mark. [laughter] And good afternoon, everybody. We really appreciate you allowing us the opportunity to present our software today. As Mark mentioned, my name's Connor and I'll walk us through a brief product demonstration. And what we're going to start with today is our finance view located out on the web. That's going to take your financial information within the base admin system and format it into customized reports here. Now, because it's out on the web, that means you'll have onthe-go access. You'll be able to retrieve this information from a home computer, a laptop, a tablet, or a cell phone. And from here, as a super user, as I am on my demonstration profile, I could look at expenditure information. Maybe I'm curious about revenuebased information or general ledgerbased information. Maybe I want to look at my budget if I'm preparing for the next year's budget. All of that information would be available for me to see. But beyond just having full access, I can have us defined access. So if I as a user only needed to see a few key reports, maybe I don't need to see every single tab available to me, that access could be set up. I could be a board member, department head. As a department head, maybe I need access to expenditure, but within that range only accounts relevant to my department per user login. So as a current user in this dashboard I have some budget versus

expense reports, some expense breakdowns and most of these are graphical but I also can have tabular based reports. If I just want to see things by the number, maybe I'm fond of Excel or used to working in Excel, I also can have this view supported for me. Of course, with our tabular-based reports, we do have the capability to export to CSV or to Excel functionality. So, if I need to see more granular information to be presented to me, I have the capability to do so. Now, there's more than meets the eye with this dashboard. Two other features I want to bring up are the idea of threshold alerts. as a department head, instead of me needing to log into this dashboard, which I could, and it could be securitydriven, or reaching out to someone in the finance department, if I want to know where I'm at with budget utilization, this dashboard can notify me, can let me know when I reached 30%. 50% or 70% of budget utilization. And with the idea of automization, we can take it a step further. We have the ability to do something we consider timely reporting. I can decide the report or reports, the person or people, and the time basis these reports should be sent out at. Is it a monthly report for my board meetings that I need sent and refreshed with updated financial information? Is it a managerial report to get me to caught up on my week that I have sent every Friday? This viewpoint dashboard would have the capability to handle those needs for me. Before we move on to the permitting piece and how residents could apply for permits online, does anyone in the room have any questions on the viewpoint dashboard reporting tool I'm showcasing currently?

Doesn't appear so. Continue on, please.

Yes, sir. So for our residents, we will be able to offer for your residents, we will be able to offer the ability for them to apply online for their various permits and also pay invoices. So as a resident, when I want to apply for a permit on my online permit application page, that again is available out on the web. So, on the-go access for residents, home computers, laptops, tablets, or cell phones. I can come over to my permit management and select to apply for a permit. We have it outlined in six easy steps for your residents and contractors. They shouldn't need a computer science degree to be able to apply for a permit. I can search for my property, maybe 123 Main Street, or I can have properties associated with my account. multiple or I'm a contractor working on multiple. I can choose to apply as either a homeowner or as a contractor. And then I have the option to choose from my different permit types. So within my different permit types here, we could have your pool permits, your fence permits, zoning permits, anything of the sort would be available online for your residents to be able to apply for. For example, when I select a pool permit here, information relevant to that permit type is populating for me. maybe a notice to contractors, any documents that I think residents would need access to. And I also can have a questionnaire that they're able to fill out. Maybe they need to fill out a description of work or lot size. Is this going to be an ingground pool and more?

All those questions will transpose their answers to our base admin system where the permitting staff will be able to review that information. We also can have documents included during the submittal phase. Blueprints, plans, copies of contractor like for them to submit can be submitted through here. This can be optional or mandatory. Now, as a resident, after I've applied for my permit, if it's been approved, I have the capability to also pay online. Under my invoices area here, I could see the invoice I have to pay. I could click a link that'll bring us out to our online payment portal. I could see the exact invoice I'm paying. In this case, it's invoice 2263, and it's for permit 2232. And then I could make that payment. I would again like to reiterate this is our admin's payment portal. So payments made through this payment portal. Well, no need to create journal entries or track down payments. Do we have any questions over the online permit application portal or the capability to utilize online payments? doesn't appear. So, continue, please.

Sure. The next area I'd like to showcase is a report directly within our system. This report does a great job of showcasing our drill down capabilities. is called D expenditure year analysis report. It's basically your budget versus your actual and in the introduction we talked about the ability to drill in. So now if I want to see what's happening on an account populate it'll show me any checks got in against an account any transfer in transfer outs or journal entries against it. I also would then be able to see further, drill down, see the journal entries automatically created by a check being cut or the life of that payable, who entered it, who approved it, and who cut the check for it. That's what I had on my docket to showcase today. Is there anything else we'd like to see?

I think we're good. Thank you for your presentation. Wonderful. Thank you so much for the time. I appreciate it.

Okay, Miss Ricardi. Sorry, Mr. Defal can take it on to introduce the next. Yeah. Uh we'll introduce uh Leif with a venity. Um Edmond's team, thank you very much. Uh feel free to drop. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. and Marie uh Ross, thank you so much for the introductions there this afternoon. Um I am seemingly having an issue with my camera, so bear with me today. Uh but again, thank you very much for the board for your time as well. Can everyone see my screen and hear me? We can. Yes.

Very very good. I understand that um I have a 15minute window this afternoon. So I will be respectful of every everyone's time. So, first and foremost, uh who are we? Um Ainity has been providing billing and collection uh software solutions to Virginia municipalities since 2005. Um I know our evaluation committee uh heard me say many many times that Aventity does understand the Virginia tax code and the everchanging uh day-to-day operations of elected officials. Being that we are exclusive to Virginia tax, uh we truly do believe, you know, that our software suite enables users to effectively use the best to tools available uh to increase revenue generation and that's really through the mediums of increased collections, reduce training, uh utilization of our taxpayer portal, which I'll conclude our demonstration today with and of course allowing both respected offices to allow their users to focus on high impact tasks.

[clears throat]

So as the committee is aware um our proposed solution to Middle Sex County is three-fold. Uh what we call county 1 is comprised of three primary modules. First and foremost that is revenue one. Revenue one will be utilized by both the commissioner as well as the treasur's offices and it was designed specifically based on Virginia tax code. Pardon for the background noise there. Uh second to that is cash one. Cash one was was built to seamlessly integrate into revenue one. Uh cash one will be utilized exclusively um by the treasur's office for taxpayer collections. Last but not least is our county 1 taxpayer portal which is the public facing extension of revenue one utilized by your citizens and businesses alike um for online taxpayer self-service. Um, a good place to start is to understand what County One isn't. And County One is not a financial system or cashiering solution that was later modified to include just basic assessment and collection functionality uh resulting in a flavor of of software for the state of Virginia. County One's smart. County One is smart because it understands the Virginia tax code. Um, by smart I'm implying uh accurate calculations of PPTR. It understands proration for those localities that prorate uh personal property. It also understands the respected tax relief programs recognized here within the state. Uh county one we like to say that it works for you and not the other way around. Uh county one cues up work for various users. um so they don't have to maintain any sort of uh to-do list or do exhaustive searches across the system to have basic followup. Lastly, it's easy to use and use all day

long. Um and once you know one tax type, uh you can work them all. Okay. Um being exclusive to taxation, uh we like to say that county one fits into your environment. uh by fitting in. Um I know we had some um conversation with both the committee as well as Ross and Kate at Barry Dunn regarding interfacing. Um in our proposal to the county um critical interfaces are indeed included. Uh what we consider critical interfaces is of course a interface into uh KMA or mass appraisal within the commissioner office. um obviously an interface into a newly um proposed financial and GL solution as well as a credit card merchant of choice for the treasur's office. Um in addition to what we call critical interfaces, um you'll see many recognizable entities there on the screen. Um these are interfaces that simply come out of the box um to be utilized by the respected offices um as proposed. So things like uh connections or interfaces to DMV. Um examples would be vessel valuation for boat assessment information, JD power, a big topic of conversation over the last couple of years. Uh to also to include interfaces such as the VEC, um VA tax for debt set off, thirdparty lenders, uh collection agencies, etc. Okay. Um on the screen here you see our growing list of uh business partner partners across the Commonwealth. Um as you know we serve localities both larger and smaller than Middle Sex County. Of course the largest is Prince William County. The smallest being the city of Lexington. Um the lefth hand column there is our current installations in the state. Uh the second column is those

that are currently in our production queue. Um, all of which have been kicked off. Um, Augusta actually just started today. Well, if you have to excuse me. Uh, okay. There it is. We're um when you transition slides, we're uh lagging behind quite a bit. Okay. So, Ross, what do you think? Just give a few seconds between each transition. Yeah, that that may that may be helpful. Yes. Okay. Very good. Can you hear me now, Ross? Yeah. can we can certainly hear you fine. Uh just the transition isn't um isn't very smooth. Um if this continues and is it possible to pull up the PDF that you that you shared too?

Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. [clears throat] Okay. Um again, we like to say the system works for you and not the other way around. Um our clients continually say that our county one applications are easy to use and use all day long. gives them the ability to collect more revenue, uh provides better taxpayer service, easy to extract information, um helps cut cost, um as the committee is fully aware, it does provide very robust user-friendly reporting um to be accessed by established user permissions. And of course, they're provided by a Virginia company uh that takes supporting its clients seriously.

I'm sorry to interrupt. Can we have the other screen because on our end, we cannot see it. It's It's not clear at all. The transition is still there. Can we have it in PDF or something else? Uh, sure. Let me see what I can do very quickly here. Thank you. I think I can pull it up if you can't. All right. Just if you give me one second, I can find it. I know I just sent it over to Ross. Okay, there it is. Oh,

any better? Yes, so far. All right, excellent. Okay, so we like to say that County One grows with you. Um, just because our team uh developed County 1 from the ground up back in 2005, we say our work is far from being over. Um, we continue to listen and refine based on the changing needs of Virginia localities and hence we like to say that every new client uh um benefits from and contributes to the continual growth of county one. Can you go back to the counties? So, we haven't been able to see clearly your slides for at least three or four. Could we go back to like the list that actually uses you, please? Absolutely. Thank you.

I can see it in the background there, and I think we're lined up now. Yes, sir. Now, we are. Thank you. Yep. So, uh kind of going back here, that left hand uh column is our current installations across the Commonwealth. That second column, um those you see in bold and italics are the ones currently in our production queue. And like I mentioned too, we started Augusta as of today. Were there any other questions that you missed along the way during the transition? No sir, we just couldn't see your screen. So it was we were looking forward to seeing what other localities were using you and so thank you for clarification.

Understood. I can see. All right. Here we are. All right. So, we understand that the county would be converting away from Bright um to County 1. Uh we have a growing track record in this capacity. On the screen here, you'll see the six localities that we have successfully converted from Brightite into our county one environment. Um we're we're adding two more now being Guland as well as Augusta County, both of which are transitioning away from Bright. Um so if you look at our entire client list combined with our production queue that's 20 localities. So therefore we are about half of which you know have come from their legacy bright environment. Um over the last couple of years too we have um grown our bench um for data conversion and implementation. Uh we have a few individuals now who've been working directly and indirectly in bright systems for both over 20 years. We understand data conversion uh is a tall order. Um we understand that we have the experience to deliver uh this project to Middle Sex County both on time as well as on budget. Uh just two more slides here before I pivot and show the board our taxpayer portal. Uh but before I do so, um here are some excellent case studies um for current users of our county 1 taxpayer portal. Two of which I do want to call out of course would be Clark County and Madison County. Um they're most similar to Middle Sex in means of population. Um, but when when you start looking at annual payment amounts, annual payments totals, total user accounts, you can start to peel back and see what kind of downstream um impact it can have in both the commissioner and treasur offices alike. Um, Clark County and Madison County have done a great job. Um, they

now both have anywhere from 23 to 32% of their entire population with unique um, account loginins. Um if you can achieve such numbers in the next couple years, we truly believe that the portal will assist in paying for itself um allowing both respected offices to f focus more on high impact tasks such as new revenue discovery as well as increased um collection rates. Okay. So um per the request of the selection committee, I did want to just take a couple minutes um to showcase our taxpayer portal. And I can see that it's now updated on your end as well. Very good. In respect of time, um, again, we again this is our taxpayer portal. This is the public facing extension of revenue 1. Um, in respect of time, I've logged in as a business just to simply showcase what the screens would look like. Um both individual taxpayers as well as businesses alike will have very similar uh screens here on the portal. Um as you'd expect with any modern uh public facing uh portal has various account information to include balances all the breakdowns of their established um accounts um within the commissioner and treasurer offices. Taxpayers have a variety of different selections that they can um make using the portal on their own times. Things such as requesting change of address, reporting um addition to or removal of personal property, management of prepayment plans, searching uh historic payment information, requesting access to other accounts, etc. Um so this particular uh fictitious business has six accounts here on the portal. I'm going to pick on the business license account.

[clears throat] As expected um each account screen has the various uh summary information here at the top of the screen. Um businesses and individuals alike have the ability to manage their own e notifications. So, notifications of tax bills are ready to be viewed. Um, your annual returns are now due. We haven't received them as of yet. Payment reminders, what have you. Um, a variety of other informations here on the um, account screen. Businesses and individuals alike can view any outstanding receivables. Looks like this particular business doesn't have any recent payment history, though they do have a pending echek payment. Online [clears throat] filings for businesses is important in this day and age. Um, businesses do do have the ability to do their various business license online filings through our portal. This is just what they submitted um in our hypothetical tax period 2020. [clears throat] In addition, on each account screen, um taxpayers can also view any correspondence that is indeed associated. um for a business license. Um it looks like their 2020 return has been filed. All their accounts are indeed no longer delinquent. Um businesses at that point would have the ability to obtain their business license through the portal as well. That is a very expeditious run through our portal. Um Barry Dunn as well as the selection committee. Um they understand that we spent five to six hours together uh reviewing all these various applications. Um that was a lot of information. Does anyone have any questions?

Mr. Chairman, I have one. I got one. Oh, go ahead, Randy. Go ahead, Mr. Williams.

I think you said that uh the system would pay for itself. So, how do you project or how do you think it's going to pay for itself over a period of time? It has the through technology and through the level of functionality available, it has the ability to pay for itself. Um, that obviously is no set guarantee. Um, we like to say it pays for itself because it allows your users both in the commissioner and treasures offices kind of as Amarie demonstrated earlier going through various account screens to save a tremendous amount of time during a during day-to-day operation. Um that has tremendous downstream effects when you're saving time to then one enhance customer service, two allows for more time on the commissioner side perhaps for more revenue discovery as well as more time on the treasur side uh to increase the collection rate as well. So in that breath we like to say you know it has the ability to pay for itself um through leveraging the technology available in our various applications. So basically you're saying it's more efficient. So the more efficient you are by using the software then the less people you need to to uh do the same thing that we're doing there. Not necessarily the case. Obviously that is you know on a case-byase basis. Um I think efficiencies can be um argued such that it could lead towards um just improved workflow overall. Thank you. You said less workload, so I I get my answer. Thank you.

Any further questions? I I have a question. How about the safeguards and things like that, you know, for hacking in the system if you want to pay online and things like that? Uh what are they? I mean, do you have good safeguards and different things like that? Because when you try to pay online and do all this stuff like that, I was just wondering how that system stopped you from, you know, hacking or somebody get in there in your system, get your credit card.

Well, yeah, of course, when talking about credit cards, that is on the merchant side. Um, so we discussed with the selection committee as well as Barry Dunn that we would interface with their merchant of choice. So credit card information obviously that is protected through all the various certifications and standards through your selected credit card merchant of choice. We are simply interfacing to that. What about your system and the data that's being put into your system? What security safeguards are there for that? So uh we have proposed to the county on prim um hosting. So all of our applications would be hosted on the county's environment or within the county's environment.

Uh one question I would have is uh we have two different software systems that we're looking at and how well they would interface when they have to be involved in the same transaction. for instance, if there's a uh someone applies for a building permit, it would maybe be on one. Uh the the payment would be going through through the other. Just want to make sure that the these two systems would work together. Uh Ross, that may be something you could uh um join in on the conversation. I know the interface that we have discussed thus far was interfacing into financial GL. Um I don't know we've touched on permitting, have we, Ross?

No, we haven't touched on permitting. Um, we only recently received contract documentation. There's still a uh there's still a little ways to go as far as um scoping out what some of those particular business processes look like. It's a great question um and it's something that's top of mind that we'll be discussing with your selection committee and project management team next Friday during a bi-weekly call. Further questions? Thank you sir for the presentation. Yep. Thank you for your time. Mr. Ricardi, what else you have on this item?

It is actually one more item. Let me see if I can't pull that up. This was something I thought was rather relevant. So bear with me. I don't want to current slide. And that is we're just looking at the one-time costs here. I wanted to showcase for you. We received one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. I thought there were 10 different options. Surprisingly, the two that we picked, and this was a unanimous, I mean, there was no question. I've got my team that was here and in the back of the room. Surprisingly, we didn't go for the Apex and the NOVA and the use it and the aluminina that were the $4.5 million to implement. I just I I guess I know this is going when it comes to the end of this it's always a sticker shock but the fact that we willingly without question skipped over even though RDA is an amazing product you know everybody knows I was a Tyler user um Keystone is also a great product but despite that we ended up with a vanity and Edmunds so I wanted to showcase that real quick and I think that's all at this time I think I made it clear we're not doing anything today this was to share with you the board. What we have, just a touch on what we've been reviewing. Our next step, as Ross alluded, let me get this out of here. Um, is to we're going into meetings next week, I think. Is that what you said? In two weeks, maybe it's two weeks to start discussing how we want to contract with these um vendors um in terms of timing. The timing is kind of key. Um, I guess I could do something horrible, and that's sharing the cost of the solution. This isn't exactly for public content yet, but the cost of the solution, the implementation of admins and the implementation cost of Tyler based on their bid is 155,000 for admins, 287 for aity. The one-year subscription fees, as

you can see, is 55,000 115,000. What your team is going to try to do is figure out how do you want to implement that? What goes first? because we weren't counting on, if you can see, if we did it all at once, $611,000 in that first year. That was not how we'd planned to do it at all. So, do we want to implement Edmonds first, which is what this shows, and the next year do Aventity? And the only other thing I wanted to touch on because you everybody's looking me at the implementation cost and saying, "Oh my gosh, that's a lot of money." That's the biggest part of the project. That's where the heavy lifting occurs. That's where the um they design our workflow. You saw it when um life was um showing you the drop-down menus as was I think column was column was they were showing you the drop-own menus. Those are scaled specifically specifically to us. So each of those is extremely important. That's where the workflow design data migration that's taking our junk converting it to their data. And I'm telling you, in some place we've finance has already been taking care of some of our junk [clears throat] where we had probably four or five vendors with the exact same name and address trying to clean that up. Um, of course, the customization, the conversion of the data, taking it from our system, putting it in the next system, and making sure that that comma in my system doesn't make it go into the wrong field into the next system. Um, training and change management, lots of that going to be going on. Um, and of course the final testing. um you know what happens when we do a payroll run. Does it work? Does it work exactly like we all thought it would? So um anyway, that's what we are going to be working on over the next couple weeks as long as there's no pain going on right here.

I think um answer to Ry's question about making sure that they interfaces for us to get that straight where they should have to interface with one another before we start cutting any checks. AB, you are absolutely correct. I see Ross wanting to answer that as well. I was going to say that you're absolutely correct. I mean, Amry's right. Uh those are conversations that we will have. Um Kate, if if I'm wrong, you let me know. But they are conversations that we will have and we are going to hash out, forget about before cutting a check, before anyone puts pen to paper and signs a contract.

Right. So how that's going to look is part of the next phase of the project. But we just we felt uncomfortable bringing um Avenity and Edmunds together. If you the board were saying ah you know what we didn't really want this after all and backed us off that's okay too. I would prefer to keep going because this is I'm telling you this project as you all saw is an amazing product for um the three the three of us the four of us that are sitting here um just think that this can make a difference to the data we present to you and the data we present to the public and how we analyze it in the future. So I don't know they're here if you'd like to ask them any questions.

Are there are there any payments that we're um maintenance payments that we're making on any kind of accounting system now or Yes sir. probably spend about $58,000 a year. I could be wrong and I should I'm sorry I should. That's okay. But there is there is a sum that we're spending. Absolutely. So when we carry a conversation further down the road, it might be good for us to realize that hey

you're netting that out. Yes, sir. Right. So you're currently got Bright. You do pay for accounting system called Brightite. Um $58,000 a year. And what that does is that makes them do exactly what um Connor I guess it was Mark was saying earlier. They respond to our phone calls. They respond to our emails. They update us quarterly, make sure that when the tax rules change, when the state tax laws or the federal tax laws change that we have that information. So, we are currently getting that type. Does that mean I got to stop? Yes, [laughter] sir. Um, so yes, that that that is something we pay for now and we would pay for with the new system. So, that would go away. The $58,000 a yearish would go away.

I got a couple questions. Um, would you in introduce or at least give the names of your committee, please? Yes, Mr. Chairman, if I could add to that. Uh, you when I see people hanging out in the back of the room, it's the Baptist and me to ask them if they want to, you know, participate have anything to add because I know I got some calls from a couple of people on the committee saying they were really happy with the products. So, I was going to invite them up to say a few words if nothing else, but I'll leave that up to you and them. So, absolutely. Let's introduce Let's start by there's Karen Murray with the school board. Stand when you introduced. So, Karen Murray with the school board. Okay, we've got May, the commissioner of revenue. Yes.

Um, she was on the committee and treasurer Tracy. Um, and May, did you have something? I think May might have had something she wanted to say about the software or no. [laughter] Okay, she chickened out. She did before I see.

But I will say that May was the one that came into this pro into this project kicking and screaming. That might be a strong word, but but I think I'm close. Okay, that's she admitted that's the truth. And then her team, she had her whole she had her team in on these interviews and they walked away saying, "Didn't know that was possible." Now, I've been I've had other software, so I knew the possibilities, but to hear somebody who had only seen Bright say, "Wow, I didn't know the possibilities all of it." And she saw the possibilities of multiple vendors, it it really made a difference. it made an impact for me to accept that okay ainity really is that good. So um like don't don't let the um ainity people hear me say that please. Thank you ladies. So so no particular questions that y'all may have or I'm assuming that the committee is in total agreement of the direction that you're you're researching. Is that correct?

All right. Wonderful. Oh, and might I add that Kevin Gentry in the back of the room is also part of the committee. He's been on every meeting as well. Yep.

So, I is there a potential time frame here when you're going to come back um for us to um approve your project? Yes, sir. Um I it probably could have been December except that um I don't Russ shake your head. I don't think we can do it by December. Probably January we'll be bringing contracts forth. Um there's so many hands involved and we'd be looking at starting this in 26 27. Is that correct?

That [clears throat] will all be part of the discussion process because some of these um like for example the um commissioner of revenue, she can only do things on certain target times. she can only convert payroll. We can only convert at certain times. So all of that's going to be dependent. Um we all kind of have to that's that hashing out that um Ross was describing. I can let me rephrase that. Of course you can do pay you pull the plug on payroll anytime, but the best time is going to be on a January so that your new system covers your entire um W4 W2s. So that's going to be the type of things that we're going to be discussing. When do you do payroll? do under general ledger starting the first of the fiscal year so that your new fiscal year is all on one system. So and I think that um the treasurer and the commissioner of revenue have again their own time frames that they want to make us work around.

Okay, my last question is I see and I think the chart that was up there costwise gave me the answer I was looking for, but I think I'll just ask it anyway. Um from a functionality standpoint, I understand that um each one of each department has a little bit difference of what what they need or what they want. From a cost standpoint, is having two vendors versus one vendor that would do it all even though that may be some shortcomings. Have y'all looked at what that would be or not? We examined I would say we examined all of them from that perspective. Um our first goal was to do a all-in-one approach. Um the every when we did the um reference checks of everyone the commissioner of revenue and the treasurer's office every one of them complained about the all-in-one options. They said the conversion didn't work and the software didn't work. Um, and I think I know Matt could agree with me if he was okay. He's he's over there because he actually heard separately outside of the interviews that we did, outside of the references that we did, he personally heard, don't go with this. You've got to pick up something different for the commissioner of revenue and the treasurer's office. So, it has been a strong advice from professionals in the field to do it as this, I'm going to call it this um, best of breed approach. Um, and again, that was from our research as well. Everybody out there agreed with that research. Um, you know, Karen and I don't have a dog in the fight.

We we were shown quite a few from the different um vendors here. We were shown quite a few counties they work with. So, we're going to assume that all those counties have to have two systems, too. They're not able to get under one.

They might have more than two. That is correct. Now, some systems do actually. I mean, just like us with Bright. Absolutely. Bright work is one system and it works for the entire agency. It's just excuse me. Is it the best? Is it the best way to move forward? No. So, you want to go with what is the best way to move forward and that's been the again based on the committee's research. Uh the the bfold approach was definitely the best. I'm just glad we didn't have to go with a third because that would have made things a little bit um even more trying for our IT department. they try to balance this which again that's why I'm going with the which is why I was thinking of recommending the over two years approach uh because I just don't know that our staff can manage

just seeing all those other counties and the in fact we have to use two systems I would like see some kind of breakdown maybe from the other counties what two systems are they using because one system is showing some counties and the other one shows some different ones so when pick either one of the vendors um and just go through some of those counties and say okay you're using two different softwares to manage your county. What are you two you're using? Okay. I think actually I think at one point Aventity did provide us that because Aventity being the Avenity is an odd man out because they only do treasurer and commissioner of revenue data. They don't do the general they don't do general accounting. We could not select them. So they are awesome at what they do.

Um but they were the ones who said we are these are the teams we've worked with in the past at the county. So I could get that from them. That's But that's a good That's a good Any other questions? Okay. Well, before we have to make a decision, you and I get together. I I'd be curious to to roll over the numbers a little bit. Fair enough. And Mr. Chairman, if my memory serves, we have the budget kickoff meeting scheduled early January. And this, I believe, my memory serves as one of the major projects that you'd be scheduled to get an update on in any event.

Correct. Okay, any further questions? Thanks. Thanks for everybody that did a presentation. Um, thanks Ann Marie and your committee. I think y'all are doing a great job and I think we're going to get a heck of a lot more efficient once we get that squared away. So, thank you very much. All right, moving right along. Uh, VDOT is a report only. Um somehow or another we need to get the message to them about the um the stoplight down there by Harmony Grove Church. We had another accident. I mean it seems we have a lot of accidents there and a a lot of people complain about and me included the yellow turn flashing. People come up and challenge that and I don't know what the answer is but I I I really think we got to get the message to um D. They got to look at doing something different there. Um, do you want to schedule?

I will. I'm going to invite them to the December meeting to be in person, too. Specific specifically for for that. Yeah, we want to talk about that. Yeah, I think we're due for an update, too, on the multi-purpose path. Chen, will you make a note of that so I can get that request to leave? If you could call them or just chat with them prior to that meeting, too, I'd appreciate it. Thank you.

Okay. Uh, moving right along. Item 4 D, social services. That's a report only. Uh I'll just ask our county administrator um because I know he's had some um some discussion with Miss Morgan, Mr. Walker. Um where do we stand with with the federal funds? Uh,

I'm glad you I'm glad you uh said the magic words. Uh, I was going to give you a little bit more of an update. From what I understand from Rebecca, and I think it's in her report, the governor has signed an emergency provision where we're covered through November. And they are actually at the state social services conference where the state and the social services directors are going to be meeting on this very subject tomorrow and coming to some conclusions. I I think everybody in this room has probably heard the rumors. It's all over the news and social media that all this budget shutdown stuff is going to uh be taken care of as early as tomorrow uh after the elections, but we don't know for sure. Those are just rumors. But we are funded through November. And I have a letter that I have drafted along with Rebecca to the state that basically urges their use of emer state emergency funds if they need to to fund SNAP. So, uh, I'll keep you posted through the month of November, but for for now, we're good. And rumors are it's going to be a non-issue soon.

Wonderful. Great. Thank you for that update. Have you sent your letter yet? I've kind of held it in in hopes that the rumors are true that the budget shutdown will end after the I don't know that it would hurt whether it ended or not. I'd send a letter just to show more concern from counties everywhere. Cool. We can send it. I'll consult with Rebecca in the morning. I'll leave that to your best judgment. Very good.

Okay. Uh item 4E, Bay Aging Workforce Housing Update. Um they have passed out they have distributed a handout for you. It should be in front of you.

Good afternoon. It's very nice to see you all again. I'm Kathy Vesley. I'm president CEO of Bay Aging and we are very pleased to have worked on this project uh the residences at Raleigh Park for the last um well since 2021 and during that time our job uh it came about as the Middle Sex Foundation handed off the project to us because they could not locate the funds to actually build this workforce. housing. Um we worked on it and I mean quite actively strenuously for years and finally this past year um I [clears throat] went back to the uh folks who originated the project and one of them was Neil Barber. He was very active with the Middle Sex Foundation in 201718 in structuring the Cooks Corner revitalization project that led to a successful vibrant communities initiative um from Department of Health and Community Development. Now, that was workforce housing, a commissary kitchen, a brew pub, and improvements to the cooks corner government uh complex. And as we know, a variety of things have happened that have impacted those plans. Uh but we have stayed the course and recently I went back to Neil Barber and asked him uh in his capacity of as president of community futures if he could advise us on where to go because so many of the funds that we had um looked for the funding was just not

available and uh we did not see a way forward. So asking outside eyes outside of our staff here and our staff here will talk to you in a few minutes. I have Josh Demeric who is our vice president of our housing services over at Bay Aging, our multifamily housing, but also Alan Walker who has addressed you several times on this project. And I will allow Allan to give you the good updates, but then also um I have Neil Barber who is um on the screen with you today to talk a little bit about uh some of the realities, the grimmer realities of if our current um hopeful suggestions don't work, what the future looks like. But we want to be thorough today and make sure you know where we stand and what we've done. And I will also be here to answer any questions you may have. So, thank you for a few minutes of your time.

Thank you for being here.

Good afternoon everybody. Uh my name is Alan Walker. I'm assistant director multif family housing development and the aging. Uh, so I mean I guess I'll just get to it since Kathy said I'll give you some good news. Uh, so on the very back page of the handout that I gave you is a timeline of the project from 2017 when it started with uh with Neil and the Middle Sex Foundation to when it transitioned developer relation responsibilities to Bay aging to now. So, as you can see, in 2019, the construction bid was 4,149. Uh, currently for this year, we've got one at 5,818 470,000. That makes sense because construction costs are high, but that also goes through COVID, that goes through everything else. So that is it is consistently getting higher and the longer this project goes on the more expensive it gets the more money that we need to find. Um under planned submitted and planned applications you can see that we actually have like a rundown of applications that are either that have been submitted and that we're waiting on awards or just award notifications or non-awward notifications. Not to say that we're going to get them but it's a competitive process. um or ones that we're planning to do in the future or next year. So, it's, you know, roughly $900,000 from the Virginia Department of uh Housing Community Development. We've got 250 that I'm waiting on from the Mary Morton Parsons Foundation. Uh Cabell Foundation is for the beginning of next year just due to their capacity this year. Uh Virginia Workforce Housing Investment Program is one that we applied for last year and it has to do with the jobs that were created in Virginia and they have to be a certain amount of distance from the location. It was a pilot program that

did not quite cater to this area and the job announcements. So, they revised it for this round and it's way more favorable for uh for us this year. So, that is due on Friday. So, I'll be submitting that on Friday. uh Virginia housing pilot program, which is the one down at the bottom that I I kind of want to talk about a little bit here. That is something that has come about very recently. Uh Virginia housing, this pilot program, it doesn't even really have a name. It just happened. Um and so this is workforce housing money in rural areas for uh communities that are that have rents under certain AMI levels. It kind of is it is something that is kind of just kind of geared towards us. They've not done this before. It's a pilot program, but we were invited to apply for it. Um, so we would be the first ones. Now, this is not a grant. This is a loan. Uh, and it, you know, it's a low interest rate loan, but it's it is a loan. moving that forward. All of these the money that we have already through Virginia Housing and the River Counties Foundation and the Jesse Ball Dupont Fund. If you mix that with all the things that we have submitted and are going to submit, that puts us in a really good spot. It puts us in a position where we are just about shovel ready. This project doesn't need anything else. The the plans are done. Everything is completed. So, we are just waiting on funding for construction. That being said, if one of these drops out, one of these $900,000 grants drops out, that puts us in a really rough position because at in August of 2026, we start to lose funding. We start to watch the money that we have awarded get taken back because we haven't used it in a certain amount of time. So, as Kathy was saying, we were working with Neil to try to figure out, you know, what would be a good path forward.

Is there a path forward? What can we do that we're not doing? And I we kind of came to the realization that there really isn't. Uh like we are hunting down as much money humanly possible for what we are looking for. We have applications out there for everything that works for this project. We've tapped everything that we can. And so I this is kind of like the last stand for Bay Aging in looking for funding for the project. It's getting to a point where things are now getting more expensive. It costs more for us to do this. That bid's going to go up the more time goes on. So want to introduce uh Neil Barber so that he can talk to you about his report as well. Neil, are you there?

No, I'm here. I'm [laughter] Hey, look. It's Neil. Um Neil, if you want to give everybody just a quick rundown of, you know, your report, uh your findings and how you got to that

conclusion. Yeah. Thank you so much, Alan. And uh good to good to be before the Middle Sex Board of Supervisors again. It's been a number of years since I've uh been before you all. Uh as Allan has described, I was uh engaged in the project early on. um and had helped uh the Middle Peninsula Planning District Commission submit an application which was not funded uh to VHDA for a regional housing initiative which would would have provided another uh $900,000 in uh to the project. But uh Kathy had invited me to to take a independent review of of the uh f you know the possibility of funding uh the viability of the financing of the project as it was structured as Allen has uh outlined uh the the project is a multi-layered multi- uh funded project from a variety of public and foundation sources. Uh the currently the total project cost while the construction the total project cost is about $6.5 million uh there of which there's about $3 million that have been currently committed. Uh that leaves about a $3.5 million gap uh to be filled in the financing uh out and had uh indicated they do have a current uh grant applications out for uh a significant portion of that. But that still leaves a significant amount of funding that needs to be raised in order to uh go to construction on this project. and as Allan has um there. So my task was to review uh the funding

sources that are committed uh already to see what their longevity was and as Allen has said some of those expire in the near future and to review other potential funding sources that could be made available. uh as Allan had indicated u the review of that based upon the the way the the project is designed uh there is very limited sources of funding that is available uh there if the project was restructured significantly the terms of the number of units and the target um income population it is it could potentially be uh eligible for uh low-income housing tax credits, but uh it would require a a total overhaul of the project and would require another couple of years in terms of doing that. In that time period, we would expect cost to rise and uh bay aging would need to put in addition uh considerable additional staff time and consultant time in order to to accomplish that. So at the present time that is not a realistic opportunity for uh the short term. uh at Allen and had also mentioned um just recently uh within the last couple weeks uh the opportunity for the VHDA uh work rural workforce housing initiative uh to be launched uh gives us a a ray of hope and I say that there that that it could come to fruition uh within next few months. uh for the project to be financially feasible, all of the current um funding sources that

are pledged to it would need to to be able to continue and that all of the uh currently uh sources that have been applied for, all the applications out there would have to be funded and you would have to have some uh additional support through the pilot project and possibly from from the uh local EDA. So, um my advice uh to Kathy and Bay Aging is that you know proceed uh with the the current u applications that that they've got uh for the next few months. Um, and if those uh do come to fruition, then there's a real possibility to go in uh to construction early part of or I should say latter part of next year. But if those do not materialize within the next uh several months, then uh my advice would be to uh relinquish the uh sponsorship of the program uh [snorts] to the county or to the foundation or to another developer uh that could con could uh pursue the project there.

Thank you, Neil. I'm looking at your handout sheet. Uh I have a quick question. Um submitted planned applications. You got uh Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development 900,000. Uh I'm not sure what the 925. Was that good through 925? That was the day I submitted it. It was September of 2025. I was just trying to give you some kind of a Okay. So that none of those dates that I see there are expiration date. No, no. I I apologize for the confusion. Those are just uh those are months that I applied for them so that you could see that these were done this year and the ones that were moving forward into next year.

And you have Middle Sex uh EDA authority on here. Have they pledged 100,000 for that or is that um maybe I I have spoken to the well we have spoken to the EDA and they were very optim they were very forthcoming in that they wanted to give uh be aging funding for this but it was not an official pledge. Okay. I'm not trying to [laughter] I'm not trying to hold your feet to the put it in there. They they were very they were very nice. The meeting went really well. They were really interested in the project and whatever it is that they could do and Trent has always been Trent Funkhouser, I'm sure you all know who he is. Yeah.

Uh has always been very supportive of the project and Beijing working with the EDA to try to make something happen. Okay, good. Uh and I hope that happens for sure. Absolutely. They just have some other big things on their plate right now. Uh which is why I asked that. um in looking at your drawing the conceptual drawing of the um here. Yes. And and I don't know maybe my uh look at it is different. This looks substantially different than what you have uh right outside of Urbana.

Oh, you mean um Porttown building wise? Yeah, it is. It is very different. These are actually modeled more towards Mercer Place and Komarik. Okay. Well, and I you guys decide what you want to do and how you want to do it, but um has there been any discussion of maybe that um maybe the project needs to be redesigned or relooked at sizewise. I don't know. I'm just asking the question.

No, it's a great question. Yeah, we have had this conversation internally a lot of different times. This building was a part of the project the way it was when we got it. So, this is not our design. This is just the project the way it was conceived by the Middle Sex Foundation. To change the building and to make any kind of changes to the footprint of the building is going to cost a substantial amount of money. as it is right now, the footprint of this building, if you change that now, you're going to have to change storm water calculations. You're going to have to change a lot of stuff and it's going to cost a lot of money.

I get that. But the the physical construction cost could potentially be lowered depend depending on the design. What? And right now you're at what a $3 million deficit at this point. Yeah. Sub yes, it could it could. You see my reason for thought on that? I do. But I'm not 100. Yes, you're right. There is that small possibility, but I don't know that it would work itself out to change the buildings to pay for the engineering and architecture for the buildings and the plans and then to do completely new studies to to make this all work because these plans were originally um conceived in 2019. So, yeah.

Yes, you are correct. That could be a possibility, but the amount of work and time and money that would go into that I don't that it might not work out. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Along that same line though, how much money do you feel confident you have? Is it three million or is it five and a half or neither one? How much money do I feel comfortable that we have? Yeah, I added up some figures there and I come up with like five and a half million, but I don't know if that's I mean, not all of these sources. So, let's see. Maybe a clarifying point is what do you actually have in the bank versus because the nothing because some of these aren't guaranteed, right, that are listed on the sheet at all. None of these are guaranteed. They're all possibilities.

Yeah, they're all possibilities. Uh, awarded funding is a little over a million. Okay. Okay. Because it's just misleading to I thought you had all this. That's why I was like trying to figure that out. I apologize if it's misleading. I believe the current figure was probably somewhere around 6 million. The thought process was $6,560,000 for total contract. So you're looking at over 200 for the units and the size roughly you're looking at a little bit over $250 a square foot. Yeah, roughly. And this you're talking about two buildings like that. Yes, it's two buildings uh 12 units a building.

I mean I know you say y'all look at stuff and everything, but we constantly look like we zeroed in on this apartment. And I know what you're saying about engineering if you got to go back and redo something, but I would say some kind of way we could lay it out to where it looked nice and you could have designed one 1,000 ft small house and start putting them in there in a way as you had funding or whatever and start putting them in there as individual units and you can make them look nice. I mean, and make them look so they all have a view and turn which way and so forth and so on. Maybe a little porch on the front and a place to park the car and you know, whatever. Yeah, I just seem like you have some money, you have a whole lot of talent and maybe a different approach. And that way your design is on one building, one 1,000t building. You're just using it multiple times. I just that's kind of where I'm at. I don't understand why that hasn't been brought up.

And you're right. You're right. I am very talented. Thank you. I appreciate that, Mr. Harris. No. So, the money that we do have is towards this layout. And for us to change anything about it to do to do it in phases to do it in halves or anything like that would then negate that funding and we would have to start over. I've looked into doing tiny houses. I've looked into [clears throat] I could add in Sure.

I just want to say thank you for your brilliance because I have been arguing for the tiny houses over there. They call them small houses. Tiny houses saying it's got to they're cheaper. you know, we can go buy one at Walmart for 2025,000. Why are we looking at all these millions? And then the experts come back and say, "Yes, but all of the water and the sewer and the electric lines, which people are going to want, are going to be a problem." But I think we've cut something here. I think it's a Yeah, it's all in how you Yeah, it's all in how you sell.

Well, I think it's a great idea. I've actually explored I so when it comes to this lot I have redesigned this thing a hundred different times trying to find a way to make it cheaper and the building that we have now is taking advantage of every value engineering option on earth that we can that we can make happen. I've worked very closely with our architects and engineers and everybody at Bay Design. Um I've looked into tiny houses. I've looked into container homes. I've looked into everything that you could think of to be see that's why container homes didn't work out very well Mr. Paris because of that face that you just made. But still, we have explored all of these options and it does not get around the fact that construction's expensive. And even if you're doing pre prefab homes or modular homes end up being very close to the square footage price that we're paying for our stick build, it's just just expensive. And you know, just a comment, we're not really drilling you. Sort of. We don't want to see the project die.

I don't either. That's why the questions that that you're getting from us, have you thought about this, this, this, and this. Um, yeah. So, that's kind of where we are.

I I can tell you that I I am the last person that wants to walk away from this or anything. I mean to be honest but this project in particular I have I I feel as if I have explored every option humanly possible and I don't come to this conclusion lightly and I don't like sitting here telling you that you know we have a glimmer of hope because of all these things that have worked out but if something happens it won't work. That's just the way funding works. It's a house of cards. One thing is based on something else which is based on something else. And if one of those things falls now we're in a position where well we have a million dollar gap. million dollar gap is way better than $3 million gap, right?

But as soon as August gets here, we're going to lose more money. And so it's a it's a race. So yeah. No, I I really have I I me and Josh and Kathy have talked about this a lot. also know you know I'm on River County Community Foundation you know and you know they like to see project completed completed completion but you know um

with the um what's the lady's name the the Harris fund and and with the Harris fund you know I know that you know you can come back and get more every year but uh you want a a target of how much you're going to get every year I understand that but I do know the fun there is funding in the Harris fund and I'm not saying you going to get 500,000 every year but you know they like to see when the project gets started and I don't know about Jesse Dupont I don't know about them but I know with with uh the uh River County Community Foundation when you get something started they like to have it complete get it completed and they will give you lumps of money down the road but I know that's not going to help you right now. Well, so in speaking uh about River counties, they've been very generous with us. And that's a mult that's a multi-year right as it is anyway.

And you're right, there's a lot of foundations that will give small amounts of money, but now you're you're nickel and diamond. It takes so much to get to that point. Um yeah, no, I agree with you, but I was just let you there is funding that would be for that, but you need more, you know, upfront money. Yeah. And I understand that. Mhm. You know how they uh I guess how the system work, y'all got to get all the grant money enough to pay for the building before y'all do it.

Yeah. Um, and I think if I mentioned one time before that the residence gets in it and you got revenue come from property to build the other one or another one they keep on it's a multiple thing and it's it seems to me nobody's making you know like a private entity at 0% interest to give the money and you try some way to pay the money back. You know, I'm not going to tell you the one Mercer place look good. I I mean you've been up here now for a good little while. I think follow here too cover and I know she been but I I look at it I accept things for what they are. We are that close but the in the way I see we are that close but we can't get another partner. No.

And and you know we can't get another partner because we don't think that another partner would lend some money that can be paid back that we're going to use to build the other place. Yeah.

Because y'all going to do that build another place. So when we are not allowed to do that, we take the partner out. Even if you could find somebody, you know, that did it for 1%. You know, can't get money away anyway. But anyhow, give it one give it that 1% then you could build a place. And hey, man, y'all, I hope y'all get this project done. I like the way it looked. I see the cost has gone up. I think was Yunken. He was the last governor, right? When it was doing the bridge, he kept on saying, "Do it yesterday. We should have did it yesterday. Yesterday we should have did it yesterday." But let me tell you something. Yesterday he was right because they couldn't make a decision but four five years and the project went up a five times more than what it was. We talking about you know buildings we talking about also a place that uh people can't afford it. See we living out affordability and how it work and sometime we got to make a sacrifice to help the ones that's real needed. a person getting a check all the time, you know, it feel pretty good to that check cut off. That just like, you know, the government in a freeze and we hope that they don't because I already had calls that people getting snaps and medicade.

Yeah. And they, you know, they'll scared to death. And I would, you know, tell them cuz some of them I know. I said, "Hey man, you know, when you was young, you didn't compare for cloudy day. Now you got to wait on somebody that don't really care about you." Yeah. So that's y'all keep I hope y'all get this extra for n 900,000 if everything go through y'all need if everything goes you got on this sheet. Yeah. How much do y'all need? Nothing. If everything works exactly the way it if everything work. Okay.

And and that's the last that's the last thing you say right before something falls. [laughter] But that is the truth. the the Virginia housing pilot money came out of nowhere and it's it's based it's based on the relationships that we have with these places that we've been dealing with them for years on multiple projects that they feel comfortable enough to allow us to do stuff like this that has not that they have not done before. Um, and so Virginia Housing is super great partner. Uh, very generous and you're right, we are we are but you know basically don't take any risk. That's the hard part. So some projects can't get done. I mean really you know the $3 million loan is not a small amount of money, you know, but it is what we can do.

So we're going to do it. But we do need the rest of this stuff to kind of pan out. Not that it's all doom and gloom. I'm sorry. Kathy said I'd give you good news. It sounds like I've given you a lot of bad news. It's not how this is supposed to go. It is. We are very optimistic, but if it doesn't work out, like we're going to have to get to we're going to get to a point where we're going to have to just call it. I got a question. What's the time limit before you say, "Hey, this is going to you going to lose some of that money and everything going to go?" And I want to extend that remark if I could, but go ahead. Yeah. Uh so these other grants, this 900,000 from uh Virginia Department of Housing, Community Development, and the Workforce Investment Program, those are big.

We could lose one of those. You have a gap of a million dollars. That is possible before August of 2026, which is when we're going to start losing the money that we already have. Um but losing them both would be tough,

right? because I was I was just wondering just in back of my mind, you know, I say, you know, this going to benefit a lot of citizens in the county here. Um, and I know I know we have loaned money before, but and this something we can talk about later. Um, if we have money that we could loan to get this thing going and get paid back over a certain period of time, that way, you know, you still get that workforce housing here and Bay agency will be paying the county back in lump sums. But I mean, I'm just throwing it out there. [laughter] It says they don't want to do that. We definitely think about doing that. What you talking about?

But but what I'm saying, you know, I know you're not EDA, but we loan EDA some money and we gonna get it back, but you know, it's it's all in how you do it and you still get the workforce housing there. It's just something I'm throwing out there to look into. It may not work, but it's it's something out there because I hate for us to have something here and then we lose it and then it's come back again. It's three and four time that much, but you know, it benefited citizens, workforce citizen in Middle Sex County and and we got to look at that, too. And and and that's something you got to look at because once those homes get in there and and you know you got you got people there paying taxes or whatever and you know they got places to stay cuz uh they some of them stay in other counties.

So the way they stay in other counties that's where you know they shop and do everything in other counties. They some of that uh economic impact can come here in Middle Sex County. Just throwing it out there to think about it. Having your workforce live in the county that they work will provide funds. You're right. It's a great idea. I I would be happy to discuss any of this stuff uh outside. We got to be got to be consistent with all of us. No, I think it's a great idea because we you know, Bay Aging and Middle Sex are like two peas in a pod

and if I if our agency can help the county, we're happy to do it. And if we can get something from the county, then that would be great, too. When I'm walking down Wayne Jesse hallway, [laughter] don't worry. We got a We got We got a Reginald Williams wing, too. Don't worry. There's two buildings. Remember, there's two buildings. They named a bathroom after me. Yeah, that's right.

Got a question or a comment real quick, Mr. Chairman. Go ahead. before before I would see Bay aging kill the project if it gets that bad, I would hope that we would circle back and and Bill triggered this idea with his comment potentially redesign to a duplex townhouse small cottage type layout that may be significantly less expensive to build even if we had to go back and modify the design. Uh, I would add to that that we may find the cost savings of doing duplexes, small cottages, things of that nature outpace the amount of money that we would have gotten had we pursued all the federal funding and all the state funding. It may even be worthwhile with the amount of cost savings that you could achieve. I've had conversations obviously with our local Habitat for Humanity and I see what they can put small houses up for. And I would just like to add one of the reasons this design was chosen is when all this started uh before the foundation we patterned this very much after Mercer Place in Kil Martik as many of the board members know I know Wayne how many tours of that did we take over the years [laughter] and that was in our mindset but I would hate for us to get so laser focused on we got to do it this way that we don't think about maybe a broader okay that's just not going to happen cuz we're a million short or what have you.

We'll just not do anything because I mean we have nowhere further to look than our campgrounds to see what they're doing with small cottages. Those are livable homes. Yeah. I mean if they're built to the right buildings back they're live year round and they're not five six million. I think that's a I think that's a good idea. Well, it's a possible idea. I just throw it out as a possibility. I still like this design. We won't have anything like this in the community that I'm aware of other than maybe some town homes down in Deltaville and in whitest creek. Yeah. So that's be all

I think it's a good idea and like I said before I have reworked this lot about every way you can and the biggest problem with redesigning is the footprint. Soon as you change the footprint which is the overall size that's when you run into problems with storm water management when you start running into problems with impervious surface. if you can utilize the square foot like the footprint that's already there. You've kind of like you like you're halfway there. So me and uh Ben at uh Bay Design, we've we've talked about this quite a bit. So yeah, I I agree. If we get to that point and we are like this, we can't do this here, I would be more than happy to sit down with you and we could see if there is another option doing something else with different funding. But then we'd have to look into the funding that we have and see if that's even possible. And if it was flexible enough, we may be able to find a local partner with our corporation that runs the campgrounds in our community. Uh they have a need for employee housing as well. That may be a private partner we can look at trying to bring on board and help us with.

Wonderful. What else you got? And that's really it. I apologize for not giving you better news. I mean, it is good news, but it's kind of like the caveat. So, Gotcha. Well, thank you for keeping us up to speed on how that project's going and what's going on with it. Thank you, Mr. As you can see, we're still very motivated on that project being completed if possible. Well, if there is anything that the county can do like Mr. Jesse was saying, or if you have any other outside ideas, please let me know and we can talk about them and see how you if it would even work. Wonderful. Conversations are free. So, thank you all for coming. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate everything. [clears throat]

Yeah. Good to see you. Hope you feel better, man.

Do any of y'all need to take a five minute break? Okay. Uh, we're going to take a 7 minute recess. social service.

Would you send me? Yes. I will talk.

Oh yeah. That was all Yeah,

good. Right. Okay. application this even

reminded we're not feeding you tonight. So we're not feeding you tonight. So enjoy what you got.

Well, I think we'll identify any uh How about that? Yeah.

Europe. They don't know that. I want to get the whole Next step.

Okay. Over there. Right. Right. All right. I just gave

I don't have my stuff together yet. I need to speak to [laughter]

I don't know how it depends on what day it is. Girl,

not Make sure this is on. Yeah. Yeah. Good afternoon everybody. Um I have an update on the uh comprehensive plan that uh that's uh currently underway. We kind of kicked off the uh we've been doing this for several years now. Um actually about a year ago we had the Berkeley group do a diagnostic in your board packet is that diagnostic that they did or or evaluation of our comp plan of um out of that u out of that document um the big takeaway there's nothing in there that's really surprising on my part. Um I'm not going to go through this is about 50 pages or so. I'm not going to we're not going to go through every page, but um basically the required revisions that state codes requiring us uh to do just in a from a high level area uh update existing conditions data. This would be your census data. Any other data related to demographics, nothing there's no surprise there. Uh update your transportation component. Um that has actually been sent to VOTE and VOTE's actually got that back to me. I have to study it. So, that's one off the checklist right there. Uh there's also recent code that's been put in the past few years uh that the uh state code requces more uh wants you to address manufactured housing a little bit more detail in your comp plans. actually uh when we researched our uh we did a lot of research on this particular uh component couple you know past year or so uh due to some recent applications

and actually probably our county is not in bad shape in that in that respect uh we have about well I would say about 80% of our land mass supports uh just just a rough estimate I know about 66% % LDR and you probably have your resource husbandry that allows it as well. So a good portion of our county u actually supports and allows manufactured housing. We uh which is just small nodes that do not allow village community and residential. So, uh, probably to fix that component, we just basically pat ourselves on the back, I think, to some degree and note that we, uh, we do allow it in these sections and probably look at maybe other methods to probably go forward and expand that that uh, component uh, public transportation component. Uh, even their analysis there's probably not a, you know, there probably we need something in that realm. We do have uh bay transit. So probably just some uh language that supports that uh that component. What's odd is uh actually they uh noted uh recent uh code requirements for broadband which is uh we've already gotten the front side of that because we're in the installation phase of broadband in certain areas. So we could certainly uh get with the broadband authority to help us with uh uh language to help boost that that evergoing initiative that we have and also resiliency is become a big component of any comp plan. uh we you know our climate change and you know we've noticed our tides and not just that resiliency but also other other matters that could come of come to be with you

know as far as your citizens and keeping them safe and that type of thing. So um in that com in that com in that evaluation there's a lot of recommendations that uh to add mapping in certain instances it notes that we've addressed something that we may want to enhance maybe with some mapping or something of that nature that we can take care of. Um, one thing that as through the progression of this comprehensive plan evaluation and and looking at it, um, when we looked in the rearview mirror a little bit, we couple, you know, up to just recently the, uh, the installation of sewer could have affected our development nodes. You know, if you put sewer in and that coupled with the water, you're going to fe you're going to naturally see more development and more pressure on your development nodes. So with that, since sewer has been delayed some time back, we I don't feel we necessarily have to address our development nodes right now. I think we can leave our f which is our future land use. Yeah, correct. our or future land use. That's that's how the comp plan addresses those future land uses. And sometimes your future land use is consistent with your existing zoning. Sometimes your future land use is suggesting that you you zone to something different like it may currently be LDR and maybe if it's on the outskirts you the comp plan might show it going to village community or something of that nature. So your future land use map shows you what you what you ultimately want to be zoning at. But with that component, that reduction of that sewer and that elimination of sewer, we we really probably don't have to expand those development nodes because you're just not going to see the pressure on it

for some time. which is also when you get into your future land use map, you're going to need a lot more community involvement because it impacts some imp impacts more folks as it could impact their properties where most of this that we're going to fix right now is is for the most part just nuances of the comp plan mapping. It it it's things that aren't necessarily controversial and should it should not require too much in the way of uh working things out with the public. It's mostly just tweaking some things. So, but there will be public engagement, you know, with the

any of this requires to ever establish a PSA.

Well, I was going to get to Yeah. Yes, sir. So through this amendment process, we're going to be looking at this and just um just as Mr. Harris just noted, last month I gave u our we we rolled out our uh our revisions to our uh site plan and subdivision ordinances related to water connection requirements. So, as as Miss Lewis and we've noted on several occasions to in conjunction with that with that particular amendment, you have to amend your comp plan and your it create service districts for your water authorities. So, just like Mr. Harris just said, we're going to have to amend that comp plan. And what we're going to do because we're going to probably roll out that amendment here in the next month or so, we're going to probably do this comp plan amendment in two phases. We're going to take care of that particular issue and then we're going to we're going to develop those service maps. We may fix some of these easy uh items that we probably need to fix and then maybe go to phase two of the uh amendment of it and take care of the the other components that more of the fluff so to speak in the in the comp plan. But it's imperative that we do get out in front of our ordinance and get our comp plan amended for these service districts. is important and we and just FYI so to speak the uh water authority did kind of bless the language of that uh amendment last month. So we'll be we'll probably be rolling that out in December to the planning commission. So it looks like uh this body may see it in J

and in conjunction with that we'll also be working on the cut. Hey Dave, I'm gonna cut you off, but I was just thinking about land usage itself. When we talk about land usage, u basically pay less taxes anyway. Is that right? We put the land use. Yeah. And uh if they get a development on it, they only pay taxes that goes back five years. Well, let me let me kind of separate the conversation a little bit. So when when planners talk about land use or or present land use as well, present or future land use, that's how the land is being used. It could be business, it could be,

you know, or commercial or residential or that. When uh commissioner's office talks about land use, that's a that's a tax

tax program that's separate. So sometimes it's easy to confuse the two terms, but in in our in our department, our world, it has nothing to do with with a tax abatement or a tax program. It's a it's a totally separate item. Land uses, you know, for the for, you know, certain types of properties, you know, such as farming or forestry properties can be, you know, qualify for land for the land use program and get certain reductions in taxation. So, but that that has nothing to do with the land use. When I say land use, it's a totally different term.

So, does anybody have any questions on that? We're going to proceed and that that's already started. VOTE's had it and we'll send them off to the different agencies. Yes, sir, Mr. Chair. No, continue on.

Yes, sir. Well, if that's if that's all we have with that, uh, let's see. The second thing I have is our uh just just our departmental report. I just want to go over this briefly. Uh usually uh I had Jody run this. I don't think we ran one earlier in the year. We usually, you know, try to keep the board updated. Um of course that first that first section is probably what you guys are probably looking at the most. It's the part with the building and how are our permits progressing with uh you know with residential construction or commercial or what have you. You'll see that um total inspections are actually uh ahead and and keep in mind 2025 is only through October. So it's two months short. The other the other two years are full years. So you'll notice that inspections are higher than they were the past two years. COS uh about on par. Now that this year the COS were uh you know you can see there's about a 20 20 unit u difference there. That's mainly attributed to the Ryan subdivision that was built over by the golf course. You can see those building permits. So if you go back to last year to see the building permits, new dwellings ex, you know, were pretty high. So what you can see is our numbers. If you go down to new dwellings, 2023, we were at 41. We're at 40 through uh 10 roughly 10 months. So it looks like we we're staying steady in that in that uh in that space. You can also see that, you know, we've had a little bit of uptick in manufactured homes. Right here it says mobile homes, but they're actually manufactured homes.

What is what is tourist home?

Those are what we consider air the Airbnbs. Uh short-term rentals is what they call them. So they originally when the ordinance started we call we call them tourist homes and state code kind of cut off cut caught up and they they kind of switched the the uh the term over to short-term rentals and we kind of picked that up and amended our ordinance. Actually our ordinance has that in there now. So but you can see uh this is just through the past three years. You know we have about 75 short-term rentals being operated. I think there's probably more than that because we started that ordinance probably when did we do that about 2000 2019 somewhere in there. So I would say at least half again as many as that. And I'll add that we really haven't had very much trouble with that. You know most of the negative feedback we get or when somebody hears that they're having one put in. But we put a pretty good uh layer of restrictions on these uses that um you know if you're a bad actor you're going to going to hear about it. So and I I have to say that we've had pretty good track record with people behaving. So and the rest of the uh report just basically uh speaks of you know incidental things your land disturbance and your CBA permitted and that type of thing. So planning commission meetings are about on par. We'll have six this year just like we have the past three years. So, and uh the planning commission meeting and we have our our CIP. They'll meet in December to act on the CIP that'll be sent to you all in in January for final approval. So, that's the report. Any questions on that? Pretty straightforward.

I have a couple questions, Dave. I noticed we don't have major site plans and we don't have minor or major subdivisions listed in a report anymore. Is that because it's been god knows how long since we've ever had one? That that's a good question. It could be deleted. We I mean I can't recall when was the last major subdivision we had come in before approval. Right. Well may have we have not had I have not pended it may have been under planning administration. I I can't recall one since. Uh I think just after Wall-E took one and it never materialized. There you go.

Up in Delta. So, but um there we still do have m even with the code changes there's still major and minor subdivisions. You know, something like if you had a simple change of use of a business that would initiate a minor sub site plan. So, so anyway, u pretty basic. Any any other questions on that? I do. um doesn't have to be lengthy. Just get give us a little bit of um information on how the Rosegill project is going and where is it.

I'm getting some questions on that. There may even be an article in the paper uh about that. To date, we have not received an official application. We are doing a courtesy review or a highlevel review. Uh I've sent it to the different agencies. We're, you know, at this point it's basically just looking at the concepts. I I'm not going to do a nuts and bolts review without an application. I'm going to look at it and say this. I'm looking at things that are going to blow it out of the water, you know, like they added 50 lots over here or something like that or or completely done something haywire that that I'm looking at the concept and maybe some of the basic things. Now, VOTE, it's been sent to VOTE and VOTE sent comments. Uh they're [clears throat] they're or they're in the process of sending them. I've had some conversations with VOTE. I sent it to VDH. Uh they want more information. Um, so it we are going to give them a pretty good and I'll give you know a little bit into the weeds but not too much. We um my policy is I'll and I've discussed this with Mr. Harris. We had a conversation at the uh water authority meeting. I will do a basic courtesy review. It's a high level review. A lot of times you'll get consultants that want you to do a complete review and they what it does is it places every it places a an application hasn't been paid for. It's not complete in front of somebody that's paid for an application and expects a speedy u a speedy review. And sometimes they get irritate irritated because I don't respond. Well, it's at my leisure if I don't have money that goes in that goes for an application or an official application. So, I I do respond to it and I do it as a courtesy. I do look at things, but and

that's where I'm at with the Rosekill. I do I do not have an application. So I if somebody drops an application they've paid for on my desk, I have a regulatory duty to move that application forward more so than somebody is asking me a favor to to review that application. Do you have any indication of when they may submit an application? They were they will well I wouldn't expect one until they get results from the different agencies as far as feedback. Okay. Um maybe after the first I can't imagine they'd probably want to submit before the first of the year. Um, isn't there some sort of uh

I can't I can't I can't assure that they'll aren't they working on a uh don't they have a date uh particularly with water connection that they have to live with other otherwise that can change and when is that date that 2027 okay about right yes that's what the water authority they have up until a certain time to buy those water connections at a discounted rate. Correct. I don't know the month, but the year I think it's definitely 2022. Okay.

Yeah. um a a couple of months, I think it was ago, we had discussed um the possibility of some sort of a a grace period or whatever given to people who like that, you know, the unfortunate lady up in I think up in Remlick area that had her house burned down and she was there temporarily in a trailer and she had difficulty there. We had another one in in uh in Deltavville on Kittton Road. And I was just wondering if um if you had any recommendation, anything that we can do uh ordinance-wise or whatever to help uh to pe make make it facilitate it so the people who are honestly trying to get their place finished have a place to stay. It

it would take some type of ordinance amendment. There would be an emergency provision for for living in a I guess you're assuming they would be asking to live in a camper for a short amount of time. Yeah. Yeah. Just if they had a trailer there or something just temporarily and it it it is a possibility if it's if it's the will of the board to initiate it or or ask a planning commission member to initiate it. Um there's things to think about going forward on that. Um I I don't want to discuss too much a particular case that that one down there. I don't know that you'd have to have a you would have to have a a date a deadline date, right?

And sometimes for certain people that might that might not work either. So, at that point, somebody's got to be take a really strong uh stand and you might be in the position of throwing somebody out if they're not moving forward with [laughter] what they're supposed to be doing to achieve that that particular right

goal. And that's that's that may be harder than telling them to not do it in the first place. It's it's really a tough call. And it it it did it did gather a lot of interest that particular case and it I'm not sure to what degree it exists today. Um we have not received a complaint on it. Mhm.

But um it's you know you and we have a two this becomes kind of a we have a a community that has a lot of campground and we receive calls on a daily basis people wanting to buy a lot and live in a camper because they keep this surplus in

I think that's part of it and for for a variety of reasons we we seem do it. Well, somebody, you know, somebody could buy a lot somewhere on the water. They could, you know, come down and put a camper and it's a lot cheaper than building a house. And, you know, next thing you know, you have a generator running, you have a neighbor complaining because there's a generator running or they're living in a camper, you don't have proper sewage disposal. There's just a just it doesn't the health department doesn't approve them. I mean, it it's a it's a whole it's a whole line of different issues when you start having campers. And I think any locality that's probably bent enough to allow campers probably regrets regrets that decision going forward as as housing.

Okay. So, all right. Thank you. It it is something the board could think about. Maybe if if if it's the will, I mean, you can have emergency provision and put a hard stop and say, "Okay, you get six months or a year or whatever and at that point you're out. You have to, you know, it's it's a hard it's a hard decision and it's not easy though,

right? And then, you know, if we put out, then we look at we like the bad bad person. But, you know, you think about it, everybody's not going to do the same thing. And and that's where the problem comes in. You know, uh somebody might do it and say, "Hey, yeah, I got my six months. I'm going to do it and do it." Then you have somebody else there that they they're gonna stay there as long as they can and they're not going to do nothing. And that and then you know if you set that up you know it's a whole a a bag of worms. I'm just telling you right that you and and it's just that human nature everybody not going to do the same thing and people that going to do right and the ones that going to do wrong going to make it bad for everybody. I'm going leave it like that. [laughter] Okay.

Yeah. We've had we've had I've had discussions with board members about certain situations like that and it's it's unfortunate but we are you know we're staying where we're at for now unless directed otherwise. Continue on sir. Yes sir. Any other questions on the report? All righty. Dave I do have one question. And I'm curious what this building down here in Saluda, what is that going to be? Right across from uh parking road. No, no, right across from uh the chiropractor. They got That's a good question.

What is that going to be? I see that he put windows and and upstairs. And we've we've had discussions with that gentleman and I'm not sure he wants to do. We've told him what he can do and what he can't do. Oh, so you don't know where. So right now he just has a building permit and he's fixing up a building. So All right. Okay. I was just direct. We've had numerous conversations about what he, you know, he's had various dreams he wants to do. So, yes, you could do that, but you can't do that. That type. Yeah. Cuz I know it was French Art Gallery back in the day, then it was floor and man. It looks like he's kind of gutted a whole building. Yeah. Didn't put put rooms upstairs. I mean, windows upstairs. Right. Right. [laughter]

So, I'll move on to my third item here. Um, I've got good news on the wake boat landing. They've uh

little [laughter] Well, I guess it's good news. So, we have uh we've gotten an authorization from the core and PMRC and they've actually synced the two permits together. They're uh in line with each other. So, we have a few conditions and restrictions that apply to that permit. One of them was to contact the uh adjoining oyster lease owner who I've talked to personally. I know him. So, and he seems to be on board with us getting started. He supported the project. So, um we also uh one of the requirements is a pre-drredge meeting. Um Mark Longest has set up put out the feelers for all the uh regulatory a agencies and their representatives their uh engineers and staff to to set up a a u what they call a pre-drredge meeting. It's a conference to any it was customary for any project like this. So, um, and I I spoke with, um, William Wright, and he's, uh, provided, uh, as you know, he's gonna what we understand, he's going to get this material, and he may have another contractor he works with, which is fine. Uh, and he's given a price. The only thing he's requiring us send us an invoice for is for a turbidity curtain and a uh and and mat. So we want to protect that dune that's to the east side of that that little basin. So I guess I have two two requests of the board I need action on. So, the total of the two items came to uh $3,51360. I [clears throat] need authorization for that. And I've also uh drafted a basic contract. Mrs. Mrs. Lewis and I, she had

a few comments. We're going to work that out. We'll we'll talk about that. I don't think there's anything major, just one or two items. I think we're close. And um I need I'm not going to make anybody else responsible for this but me. [laughter] So I just ask that the board authorize that amount and authorize me to execute the uh the the contract. And that's that's all I'm asking for the from the board. Let me ask you one question, Dave. It says the permit and it's in effect until 2028. Then it says finish prior to March 1st of 2026. What do we What? Um Oh, wait. Is that 28? Yeah.

Issued Virginia Marine Resources Commission permit and is in effect until 2028. Then the next sentence permit can do that'll be done by that have to do with the tiger beetles thing. Yes. Yes. I'm I'm I'm trying to read it. Okay. Yeah, I believe that's the restriction for the tiger beetles or the or the uh So, we can go back in there. Pardon me. We can go back in there if we need to or we got to get another permit again. No, we're good till 2028. We just have to So, we just have to we have to do the dredge within the restricted time.

Okay. Which is has it been defined? I think I think like between now and March is the time we can do it. So if we get a storm here in June and it closes in, we probably can't get Yeah, I don't think so. We'd have to check with the regulatory agencies. Now, anytime we do a dredge, we have to notify those agencies and go through the same process again with with respect to the pre-drredge meeting. They have to be notified and that type of thing, but the permit's good until that. That's a big

Yeah. So anyway, um and also uh we've gotten permission from VOTE to do the job and I'd rather should I discuss shall I discuss DWR?

So DWR Yeah. So DWR I I spoke with the gentleman that we've been speaking to about possibly taking over the boat ramp and I I contacted him and emailed him mainly to ask not necessarily for any direction basically that we were going to do this and just to kind of get out of the way. We weren't asking for an opinion or anything. We just wanted them to make sure that they were okay with it. Evidently, there's been some shift in management and and this particular person we were talking to evidently is been shifted over a new department, a new director, a new boss. And evidently the long and short of it is he sent an email out today other day that says DWR wants out of this completely totally. So that that was kind of surprising given the conversations that we had had previously because this particular individual seemed very receptive to maybe jumping in and doing what we're doing. I was doing this more for educational purposes for them and let them observe what we're doing to show them how it can be done. And they they seem to be taking a totally different tack. So and I think it's not this person's decision. I think it's somebody else above him has decided.

Yeah, that's Yeah, I'm sure this person has a new boss and you know, so so anyway, we'll see how that goes. U there's some other conversations that we may have to enter in with Lee on that as far as maintenance and that type of thing. But for now, we're going to do a dredge and we're going to get that done hopefully in the next few weeks. Yeah, because you almost need for one party to own the boat ramp and the parking and everything rather because that's been kind of the problem. Middle Sex owns a dock and then Yeah. Game Fishery owns the ramp and VOTE owns the ground. Yeah.

Yeah. It's a it's a it's an odd arrangement. It's something that's it's there's several uh DWR has lease agreements with VOTE on many sites in the region, but this one they seem to be want. So anyway, that wasn't the best news I heard, but at they haven't done anything to date anyway. So we we'll just see how it goes. This is of course this is a band-aid. We know this is Yeah, it's it's not an expensive fix right now, but keeps a boat ramp open and we we'll go on and live live to try it another day.

But I do need action on this particular item. So, um, if you need that, um, Chenade, do you need that or does anybody for a motion need that amount? Okay. Yeah, we need the amount. Yeah. 351360. Yeah. 351360. Okay. So, what is your motion, Dave? What would you like?

Uh, a motion to authorize was it's a dual. It's an emotion. A motion to authorize me to execute the contract and a motion to authorize $3,51360 for the cost of the project. I make a motion to execute the contract in in the uh in the amount the amount and in the amount of 351360 51360. Seconded.

Okay. Motion made by Mr. Bill Harris, seconded by Mr. Jesse. Any further discussion? Roll call, please. Mr. Williams? Yes. Mr. Bill Harris? Yes. Mr. Kinden, yes. Mr. Jesse, yes. Mr. Don Harris, yes. Motion is approved.

And one quick thing, this won't take but a second, but I want to put a plug in for one of my guys in my on my staff, Mark Longest, just uh passed uh the the DEQ. He's he's now a combined administrator for erosion and sediment control. So you have a a very loaded staff right now for that particular component of you know when you hear uh you know with the solar facilities and some of the pickups that happen internally that you know or any type of development where you have ENS issues you know I can I can attest that we have a good staff for that because that that that it's not an easy test it has hydraulics and engineering on it. uh not a high component but it's you know a lot of law and that enables him to run the program to do all the inspections to review plans and it's it's it's a good achievement. Just wanted to give a plug from the staff.

Excellent. And Mr. Chairman, if I can extend that last remark very quickly. One second. Uh would you extend our appreciation of where he is with that? Uh that helps the county. Yes, sir. We Yes, sir. Mr. Walker. I want to extend a plug to one of my employees and that's Dave Cretz. Uh whether the board may remember or not, you had some doubting Thomas' on this. Uh Dave was able to get done in three months what Louie and I neither one of us thought could be done in six. Yeah. At a price less than what was dredged last time. I think

uh it's my intention to figure out how a way to give a man like that is exudes this amount of optimism and take charge attitude and creativity a bonus. You have to take it out of my check to write it. I'm at least going to give him a pizza party because I want to reward this. And uh likes red velvet. He likes red velvet cake. Well, see, she's already planning it. But I really want to commend Dave on this because I didn't think he could do it. I don't think anybody thought he could. And well, let me see. And I know at least one citizen who's going to be very happy that government was creative, optimistic, and had a take charge can do attitude in spite of tiger beetles. So Dave, thank you.

Yes. Thank you, Dave. Yes. Thank you, Dave. Well, let's let's wait. Maybe hold off on some thanks until I get this thing done. [laughter] Yeah. All right, that's that's all I have. Y'all take Thank you, sir. Thank you. [clears throat] Moving right along. Item uh 4G uh which was added uh Dave Layman.

That's as long as I can see. Hey, David, didn't you say you had like an hourong video on the presentation about the installation operates and everything? I was gonna say Kevin needs to pull it up, right?

No. Good afternoon, uh, or evening now, uh, board members. Um, thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak to you this afternoon. I'd like to briefly share a significant cost savings opportunity that could help Middle Sex County close a long-standing communication gap among their amongst [clears throat] their emergency services and do so at a substantial cost savings. Little bit of background. I sent you all uh emails, documents last week just to kind of give you a heads up because I only got this information last week. We received correspondence from L3 Harris Technologies regarding a special promotion on their XL200 multiband portable radios. Because of an overstock, these radios are being offered at 26 26 2,699 per unit, less than half the price of our most recent quote of 5,574 and60s per radio. A capital improvements plan request was previously submitted to Mr. Caret couple weeks ago. transition all of the remaining frontline portable and mobile radios to multiband capability. This upgrade is essential for improving communications interoperability amongst air fire EMS sheriff's office as well as our regional partners. From a cost breakdown, under the original CIP estimate, the total cost to equip 45 frontline positions, I need 36 more for fire and rescue, nine more to complete the sheriff's office, was $250,857. Under the current L3 Harris promotion, the same upgrade would cost $121,455 if the purchase is complete before November the 28th.

Additional accessories, including an external microphone and DC charger, are required, which is an additional $15,817.50, 50 bringing the retire revised total project cost to 137,27250. In total, this represents a cost savings of $113,584.50 compared to our original estimate. This project addresses a serious communication interoperability gap in our county's emergency communications. Middle Sex County operates on a 700 megahertz public safety radio systems while surrounding jurisdictions that we most often work with use a 400 megahertz UHF system. Because of this difference, our responders with singleband radios are unable to communicate directly with partner agencies during mutual aid events without multivan capability. Messages must be relayed through dispatch process that delays responses, increases the risk of miscommunication, and can endanger both responders and citizens. But put this in context. In 2024, our fire and EMS agencies provided mutual aid, either receiving it or given mutual aid more than 114 times. Each of these are affected by the communication barrier. Some examples. When New Kent and York County deputies come over to assist with the Oyster Festival, all they do is turn a knob or push a button on their radio because air frequencies are already pre-programmed into their multiband radios. Bill's familiar with the system down there

where we had interoperability with every jurisdiction around us down in the Tidewater area. we could switch and so forth. In contrast, when air fire and rescue units respond for mutual aid, for an example, to a brush fire, only one multiband radio is currently assigned to each piece of apparatus. That means only one crew member can communicate directly. The pump operator, for instance, cannot contact the firefighter on the hose line to relay critical information such as, "I'm running out of water. move to a safe location. This limitation becomes even more serious during structure fires where interior firefighters, pump operators, officers all need to maintain real-time communication. Approximately 6 months ago, air radio system had to be taken offline for 30 minutes for a critical software update. During that time, the county's communications went dark. As a contingency, we used the multiband portable radios and switched over to the king and queen system, which allowed fire rescue and law enforcement to maintain communication. This demonstrated a critical redundancy that multiband radios provide. We began this transition of our frontline emergency units to multiband capabilities about four years ago, funded through federal COVID relief funds and various grants. We've made strong progress, but the opportunity, but this opportunity would allow us to complete the portable radio portion of this project. When the county implemented the current radio system in 2016, approximately 190 XG 25 singleband radios were purchased for fire, rescue, and the sheriff's office.

Only 12 XL200 multiband portables were purchased were acquired at that time. Ideally, all frontline emergency response vehicles would have should have been assigned multiband radios to ensure interoperability. The XG25 singleband radio remains sufficient for our volunteers operating solely within the county. However, these radios are no longer in production, and all newer models have transitioned to the XL 200 platform, which has an expected service life of 10 to 15 years. If we [clears throat] do not take advantage of this opportunity, Middle Sex County will continue to face critical communication gap with surrounding jurisdictions. Our responders will remain dependent on in inefficient workarounds that will increase response times and risk particularly during complex and large-scale incidents where every second count. This is not really a convenience. It's a matter of safety. In summary, this L3 Harris promotion, a time-sensitive opportunity to complete our countywide radio transition, achieve full interoperability with our portable radios, and save over $100,000 compared to the original cost estimate. I respectfully request the board to consider to move forward with this purchase before the promotional process ends. I'd be happy to answer any question that you guys might have. questions.

Uh, is 800 megahertz systems now? Are they done with? No, they're still out there, too. Air 700 and 800. You can work those together, but I can't work an eight. I can't work a seven. I can't work a seven and a 400 total multiband. You know, we're talking about different counties having different frequencies and stuff. It really looks like to me we're at the point where we should look at some kind of regional dispatch and then we all would be on the same thing together. and we wouldn't have to be chasing when these people change and we get a new radio and then someone else has changed if we did a regional approach but to me it' be a whole lot of cost savings therefore

I don't disagree with you the other thing that we are trying to do right now uh on a side note working with Greg Hunter right now Middle Sex looks like this we we're in a little circle of our radio coverage area if I go outside the boundaries of Middle Sex very far I lose coverage on my Middle Sex [clears throat] If we are looking at trying to connect through a microwave our system with the regional system which in turn would turn it into like the York County system where the entire region would provide coverage depending on which system you're on. Redundancy and back.

Yep. And whichever system that you're on, whichever is giving you the strongest strength, you're going to be working on that. provided that you have a multiband radio. So, we're looking at some other opportunities that that actually might have be a grant coming up for that that we're checking on right now as well. How old are these radios far as this 200 XL or did they come out last year or did it come out? No, they've been out they've been out for a long time and this is really what they're pushing right now. Everything that concerns me a little bit. They're on sale. They've been there for a long time. What's the latest and greatest coming up? Next thing you know, we need the number. These are the latest 725 megahertz, you know. Yeah. I mean,

but with the multiband, these are the latest and greatest. And I was just at the Harris conference a couple months ago and these these are their newest models. So, they're future proof. Yeah. For 10 to 12 years, but I mean a a radio these days are computer. So, it's a software software. Yeah. But I I would give it I would give it 10 to 15 years. And this is their current most popular chassis. And to be honest with you, the promotional deal that they're offering has more features than what we were buying in just out of 200 XL radios. So on here you say 45 portable units.

Yes, sir. that takes care of ambulance, the sheriff's department, finishes volunteer fire departments. That finishes off all of the riding positions on the fire apparatus, ambulances, and a few sheriff deputies that don't have do not have assigned um multiband radios. That completes my multiband project. Portable portable side. Doesn't doesn't start on the uh mobile. That's still another project. Do they need a mobile to being off of that antenna to talk further? I'm sorry.

Uh, sometimes you can have a mobile a handheld unit and I can I can talk and I'll hit off your antenna on your truck to get me further. Do they work like that or not? No, it's not. It's not um being a repeater type deal. Yeah. Um, yeah, you can turn them one in your in your vehicle to into a a repeater kind of like you'd have to have we'd looked at that even at at one point in time, but it's so much expense to do that right now. It's not cost effective. And the mobile units have a little bit more power as well, more wattage, so you get a further Sure. distance. Yeah. The antenna's position better. Go ahead.

Yeah. No, no, I know you what Bill was saying, but you know the PDC is looking into that regional process, you know, cuz I don't know if you remember when the uh I forgot the guy from King Queen came in Greg Hunter. Yeah, he they all looking into that approach. Yeah, I know this is I know this is kind of a surprise, but I don't see it as a surprise because my eyes with a surprise a lot of times you got to take immediate action. This is a this is an opportunity. We've got an opportunity and you do have a choice and and the choice is going to be yours which way you want to move. But I would strongly encourage taking um taking advantage of this promotional offer because I've never seen Harris come down any [clears throat] cheaper than this.

Every so often I believe don't they have to be put in some kind of cradle and kind of like redone their software every now and then? Is any maintenance on them? I do when we do the programming and everything. So there's no hidden cost then like No, I do all the program. We've got a uh the computer to program because I've got to assign unit numbers. I've got to assign lids for both the regional system and our system. Okay. So there's no hidden cost. We got to have them. Okay. Is it a monthly fee once you purchase the radios? We still got to pay something. Do what? Reg.

Is it a monthly fee? No. This is the radio time cost. This is a onetime cost for 45 portable radios. I um I just like to say I think it's a a good definitely a good idea. Um you know health, safety and welfare is our job and uh you know just [clears throat] uh I wait till I don't know if anybody else want the same thing. I let you speak but I will make the motion. Don't make it yet.

But I know I said I will but I'm going to let everybody else talk first. That's what I say and I will make it but I make everybody else speak their peace. But uh it only makes sense to me uh because you know you understand um mutual aid if you ever been to um um in the years I've been to Tabahhanic King queen and I definitely different areas uh even when they had that big fire plan up there and you know it just to be able to communicate is very important and I they went to a old house over in [snorts] back in uh over in Essex County one time and I just I'm just letting you know it's a safety device and I think we need it and we have a lot of volunteers too and and if we can support them we need to um I appreciate Dave's your e expertise in what you do for the county. No question. However, um I do have two concerns. one. Have you talked to these people about if we will con to commit to the number 45, could we take uh ownership of half of them now and half of them after the first of the year?

No sir, I have not. Well, see, and here's where the time constraint is a problem because you need an answer by the end of by the end of the month 28th. This quote is good for 30 days. Okay. Which, you know, you don't have much time. It's either you take it or you leave it, right? It is. It is. It's that that is that's the whole thing right here.

Okay. [snorts] That causes me some issues. Number one, that's just personally me. I don't like being jammed up and saying you got to make a decision today regardless of when you got the information which I know you got it very you know a week ago a week and a half ago. My other concern is and the and the savings part is is great but I'm also concerned that we're buying 45 new radios. I'm not convinced that 45 is the number that we need. I've got the um the inventory sheet right here of all of the radios we have in the county. Mr. Chairman, I have gone through it twice and I have checked off the mobile units that are assigned to the fire rescue apparatus as well as the sheriff's office. Do you want to count my check marks?

No, sir. I don't need to do that. I I take what you're saying. I'm just saying I think personally me that we could operate less than 45 radios. Where when will the um the vehicle units come into play? Because we're talking about handheld walkie-talkies basically now.

We we've been trying to transition that like for I've been peacemailing. So, like with the uh river community uh river counties grant, we got four radio, five radios this year for the fire departments that we're transitioning into their tankers and so forth. I've got another grant out right now with Virginia Department of Fire Programs for mini grant asking for four radios for the frontline engines. So, we're trying to take that in little pieces and kind of cut down on that to reduce the cost. But I [clears throat] had I had put it in over a two-year time period. Portable radio is one year and the second year we were trying to transition to mobile.

It's it's currently capital improvements uh item on the upcoming capital improvements plan. Dave has in there for the mobile units to be switched out in 2027 and the portables in 2028. But if we did this tonight, the portables would be done and we wouldn't have to worry about the 28 fiscal year 28. That kind of bothers me. We're still We're gonna have half of them that have multiband and other ones that don't. When you jump in the truck and it's

No. No. Everything in the truck, everything in the truck will be multiband. The volunteers for like the chief officers responding around here and saying, "Hey, I'm marking in in route to the uh to the scene or to the station." They still use the singleband radios, but the multiband radios on the response apparatus, all the multiband radios portables would be multiband on a response apparatus. Okay, let me let me just uh for clarification for me, if you have these 45 new handhelds, why do we even need something uh additional to that? I need these

the mobile the mobile uh apparatus. I guess we were talking about the mobile's just for for basically for the pump operators and so forth. If we get enough if we get enough portables for every position that's the 45 we're talking that's the 45. Um the only the only advantage the mobile gives you is further penetration for the most part if further you go out distant-wise. But I could push I could push that off and try to get grants and so forth with that and try to complete that project that way.

So the mobile aspect of that capital improvements project could be less critical and get pushed out if we add the portables. Yeah. Okay. I could I could make I can make that work because we still got some grand opportunities here or there that we could push off. Now, what I don't what I don't have is frequently um is changing out the mobile radios in the U sheriff office vehicles. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you. What what frequency are they on? How are they set up? They're doing the same thing. They're they're set up with multi they're set up with single bands in their vehicles and the patrol officers right now. All except about nine of them have multiband radios and that's already budgeted for them to be changing those out. No, I've already done that. I've done that with grants.

Okay. With COVID monies and so forth. So, not all the police cars have a unit in them that are multi portable. They none of their none of their units have multiband radios right now. Okay. Okay. All they're they're working strictly off portable, but if we would approve this, they would all have multiband walkie-talkies, but they still have single band radios in the car. And you're working towards turning those into multiband as well. Yes, sir. I'd like to had I'd like to if I'd have been here in when this thing started, I would have been looking at multiband for all the response vehicles right off the bat.

Yeah. Yeah. He came so close to goal. [clears throat] Any other questions? A motion would be in order if if if you're so inclined to do so. Yeah. I would like to make a motion uh for us to purchase the XL 200 multiband portable radios for $137,272.50. And I also just like to say that um we got a lot of volunteers too. And just think about this as as we are board of supervisors and we going to hold back on things and one of these days everything will be volunteer. So now if you want to try to help your volunteers out and try to say, "Hey, now that cost too much money and you know it all, uh, just think about that. This is health, safety, and welfare. I always say it again. I don't have to repeat it no more. It's to help them." And I and like I say, being being a volunteer, you get up at night, anytime to help somebody out and and the county can't help you. And we don't ask for no money. Think about that. I I don't know if any of y'all been volunteer firefighters other than this paid one here. He probably involve a rescue squad. But I can tell you if you get up 2 3:00 in the morning and go to a fire, a wreck or something like that, you going to want the county to support you. And I'm that's I'm going to leave it like that. I I uh I know that both in law enforcement and in um rescue work there there's there's probably nothing more important than having great communications. It's It's your lifeline and so I'm going to second it.

Motion made by Mr. Jesse. Uh seconded by Mr. Kittin. Any further discussion? I know you're in with the volunteer fire department talking to them all the time. Did their chiefs all say, "Heck yeah, that's the way to go." They're all They've been pushing for this for four years. Roll call, please. Mr. Bill Harris. Yes. Mr. Krennen. Yes. Mr. Jesse. Yes. Mr. Williams. Yes. Mr. Don Harris. Yes. Your motion is approved. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, if I may, this is perhaps going to be the first time we use the Jesse fund, the emergency services set aside fund that we created in this budget of $500,000 to take advantage of opportunities like this or to react to surprises based on rescue and emergency services needs. Uh, so we'll probably bring some money in from that. Need an appropriation of that amount from that fund. That's correct. But we do have it set aside as Matt's pulled up on the budget. We have it set aside. We'll just have to appropriate it at the next available meeting. Thank you, Mr. Walker. All right. Uh,

item five, regular agenda items, temporary parking at Cook's Corner. Miss Ricardi. Thanks, Dave. Thank you all.

As the board may recall, back on March 4th, the county engineer and the planning director presented several options to the board for parking improvements at Cook's Corner Central Park. Um, the purpose for the improvements were to get parking off PE parking off this main driveway. Um, right now people are parking at my skate park at my my skate park at your skate park. I don't own one. Um, your basketball court and your playground right along this. They'll park here on this gravel area, but they'll also park along the roadway. Um, last time I was there, this gravel area was full, which holds like two people. And so I was parking here and I was with two or three other vehicles. So, um, but the project that we discussed, which doesn't really show here anymore, was to take a a driveway all the way down here and dump out here as you recall. So, it was to basically put people parking down here and um parking along here and exiting through here. That was the final plan. However, the project's been delayed in part because of our goals with the old um RCE building and that is we want to work together to make the perfect uh yes, the perfect site plan, if you will. That's the word, the site plan. Unfortunately, I I'm still having a trouble having a trouble having difficulty with people parking and their own safety. And what I'd like to request at this time is to use some of our parking funds, which we budgeted I think about $200,000 this year. So, it would take about a I think 10 maybe $12,000 if that to gravel this area right here just so I could get people from parking off the road. That does two things. First of all, aside from getting people from parking off the road, um it will also um provide some long-term assistance. So, when this project is completed, this area could maybe be designed for the handicapped parking or the pregnant lady style parking or the veterans parking,

whatever you choose to do. So this could in the end be utilized but I am asking for kind of it's kind of a variance on what we asked for in the budget which was paving money and that's to do temporary paving money. So that's all that's all I've got is I just would like your consideration to add about six spaces right here which was in plan A of what was presented back in March. And um sorry to interrupt you. You're fine. Um, and that's going to be gravel temporarily at this point in time. Correct.

That's correct. I only wanted to gravel it. Again, I don't want to do any I don't want to recommend any serious site improvements until the board does everything they plan to do at the RC building. I think I think that's excellent thinking outside the box. I think you do need some parking there, but um eliminating a mistake of how we do what we do down the road, uh the rce, if we're going to do anything with that, needs to be in play on that as well. So, good job on um coming up with an alternative that may solve some part of your problem at this point. Are we looking at graveling B?

Um yes, sir. Where that you mean where this B dot is? Yeah. So, you have A, B, C, and then along the along the road. No, we are not doing anything with A, B, or C at this time. Those were all of the other projects. I just think let's do something now. B's a little too close to that building. Right. Well, and we were talking about doing C. But if you're a I I'll just pick on this 63y old woman trying to drag two kids across that park across that grass, you're going to get tired. So, you're talking about the along the access road to sheriff's department. Oh, Matt's going to show us. Oh, thank you, Matt. I could have done that. Appreciate you. Have we got a price on it yet?

I do not, but it was right about it should have been about $12,000. We're waiting for it. And as Matt said, if we get to use our own gravel, it'll change it differently. Yes, he could. Also, offer his Also, we got some uh some asphalt down in there, some millings. So, we got mullings down there. We good to put that down first and then you can come over back. Should be nowhere near that because that will do the job, right? Um, but we are going to scrape it and flatten it because it is a little unsteady. So, we will Are you going to put that out for RFP or you going to just pick a contractor to do it? We should be able to get quotes. I should be able to get two quotes for it based on the price. It should be under It should be if it's under $12,000, we're going to be able to just get two quotes, local quotes. Yes, sir.

I would encourage that. Yes, we have one person who has won every quote so far. Okay. your banks. I think the ones that have been waiting on there's one too. Okay. Motion would be in order to approve the request uh for the uh parking at the Cooks Corner Park. So moved. So moved by Mr. Bill Harris. Second. Second by Mr. Randy Kittinen. Any further discussion? Roll call, please. Mr. Krenid. Yes. Mr. Jesse. Yes, Mr. Williams. Yes, Mr. Bill Harris. Yes, Mr. Don Harris.

Yes. Motion is approved. Moving right along. Citizens appointments. Amarie, you're still on the box.

Yes, sir. Uh, we have two applications received for the planning commission. One for Pinetop district and one for Saluda District. They're in your packet. Um Tyler Kittington is sub has been um has offered to replace the position that Mr. Powell filled and Tammy Putney has offered to fill the Saluda district. Um and before you even I do want to mention and this is extremely important that the Middle Sex Water Authority has noted that they have upcoming vacancies that they have two people. one has already told us that they're going off the board and the second one has indicated that they're going off the board. So, if in your wisdom over the next few months, we need to start thinking about how you want to fill positions for the five member water authority board positions.

Is is that the water authority help educate me? Is that uh district specific or can anybody serve on that? If my memory serves, it's not district specific, but they tried to arrange it where the people that are located along the water system in the area are served that had uh subscribers represented. I know in the past we've always had at least one board member. Uh in the past it's been Pinetop Bill's on there now. He's got citizens in Hartfield connected to it. So,

it it would be um prudent for us to know the two people what district they're in or not in. And I'd even go so far as to say out of the the whole board this out of the whole board, it'd be nice to know um how the districts are represented. Unless you know that, Mr. Harris.

Well, there's there's five positions and one of them's a board member. we're kind of going to get out of the flavor of being able to cover every one unless we leave one district out. Um, it happen I don't know if we announcing what areas they're from yet or not or just who they are because I don't know if they put in um formal notice or not. I'd like to I'd like to know it before I before I uh I'll ask Chip reach out with you and brief you.

That would be great. and anybody else that may or may not want to know that. What I don't want to see happen is you got three people on that committee from the Pinetop and not anything personal just three from the Pinetop and no other districts are represented. That would be problematic to me. Okay, we'll wait to hear some more information on that. Okay, so uh what else you got, Miss Ricardi? You need a Are we Are we voting them both at the same time or Sure. Can we do them both? You can

any any discussion on either one of the two applicants, Tyler Kitten or Merryweather Putney? I I think that when we put people on boards, we need to make sure that we have a little chat with them. Um I think we're very fortunate here. We got two individuals that I think everyone on this board already knows them and already talked to him at one time or another in the life. So, I think we're fortunate to have a couple citizens throw up through the plate that are really good.

Well, I can only speak to Mr. Putney. Um, I personally because we were missing a saluted district. So, I asked several people in the Saluda district uh and he was one that uh uh quickly and was excited about being on the committee. Any other questions? Uh, somebody needs to make a motion, please, for both applicants. I move that both applicants be accepted for the position on the uh the the planning commission. Thank you, Mr. Kittin.

Second. Uh motion made by Mr. Krin, seconded by Mr. Bill Harris. Any further discussion? Seeing none, roll call, please. Mr. Jesse? Yes. Mr. Williams? Yes. Mr. Bill Harris? Yes. Mr. Kittinden? Yes. Mr. Don Harris? Yes. Motion is carried. I would ask um uh Ann Marie if you would uh I'll also contact Mr. Putnney personally, but uh would you send some sort of acknowledgement to him? We do that. Yes, we'll do that. Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you.

And by the way, Chené just looked up that the um water authority is at large. Is that what she said? Water authorities at large. Yeah, I I thought it was that way. I just wanted to make sure. I would like to have a you know who's currently on the board and you know what what their district is that they're in. Okay, moving right along. Administrator updates. cigarette tax report only. I'm not sure what page that's on. Uh you got 136, Mr. Chairman.

Um staff reports is report only and item C which has been added which I don't think maybe is on your schedule but it may be uh veo um voting member uh historically that has been Mr. Jesse. Mr. Jesse, would you continue on that ticket? Not let somebody else want to do it. Okay. [laughter] You have to stay at the conference longer. Uh, that fix that.

Sorry, you're not. And not much luck on that. Um, [laughter] so a motion to confirm um Mr. Wayne Jesse as a Veco voting member would be in order. Move. [clears throat] Second. Okay. Uh motion made by uh Mr. Williams and seconded by Mr. Bill Harris. Any further discussion? Seeing none, roll call, please. Mr. Williams? Yes. Mr. Bill Harris? Yes. Mr. Kittinden? Yes. Mr. Jesse? Yes. Mr. Don Harris. Yes. Motion is approved unanimously. [laughter] Yeah. All right. Um item number seven. Uh

well, Mr. Chairman, I had just a couple quick things. Go ahead.

Uh the budget calendar was in your packet last month. Uh I again, you don't have to approve that tonight. Of course, you can continue to review it. I would ask for y'all to approve it in December if you're not comfortable with it. Let us know if you want to make any changes. Uh real quick, I've invited Jason Cowan and May Diggs. I keep on going to the caller B. May Digs uh to attend the December board meeting so we can discuss the reassessment process. We got some good data so far and also the potential rebates versus tax rates adjustments so the board could be better educated and firm on that. And uh lastly, it was this time about last year that the board considered when they may want to hold a retreat. Want to put that in your board's mind, plant seeds. So, if you're thinking about having a retreat in January or some other date, you can charge us with getting that set up. May be a little premature since we're trying to find a county administrator, but may want to keep it in mind on when you may want to do it. And there's time to niche a little bit.

You're still here in January. Think y'all, he's still here in January. Don't let him. [laughter] Okay. Um, yeah, we'll we'll chat as members about that and come up with something possibly later. Okay. You have anything else, Mr. Walker? He can't hear me. [laughter] Okay. Um, Miss Lewis,

uh, yes, Mr. Mr. Chairman, just a brief update on we had our initial kickoff meeting with uh Dominion Power for the landfill solar facility project. Um for a lot of people on the Dominion side, but um [laughter] but it it was a good kickoff meeting. Nothing of real substance discussion. it was more or less of who's going to be on the team and discussions and um who needs you know what paperwork do they need and what do we need from them. So I'm I anticipate having a more substantive update in December but I just wanted to let you know that we did have that kickoff meeting. Staff is very hopeful um and very excited about it and Dominion is as well. Um, also at the request of the board, I if you recall, there's the property owned by the school board down at Cook's Corner behind the RCE building. Um, the school board, I think approximately a year ago, did vote to convey that property.

They did. They did. So, um, I think there's some paperwork it may need to take place and I have been working on that and presented that to Dr. Sites. So, they'll be discussing that their schoolboard meeting. they have to declare it surplus and then I hope to have that presented to you in December. So I wanted to let you know that that was moving forward. Um and I attended my local government attorney's conference. It was the 50th anniversary of my organization and it was a phenomenal conference. It was very very good. Really enjoyed it and um I just appreciate the opportunity to continue to do so. Thank you.

Thank you Ms. Lewis. I'm glad you uh took care of that. Um, moving right along. Item number 8A, any unfinished business. I have some uh looking for a short um explanation. How are we doing with the and I I'll direct it to either Miss Ricardi or you. Uh how are we doing with the cleanup project at the uh courthouse? Our last mold test came back wonderful. So, there was no more mold found.

Good. Um, we are still scheduled to do a good thorough cleaning of the clerk of court's office, which is extremely expensive because each book will be pulled and dusted and put back in. So, every book she has will have to be specialty cleaned. and she asked to schedule that herself because she's she doesn't want people there when she does it. So, it's got to be done on a weekend. So, um that's where um Rachel Hartbach is going to be dealing that. I have not done anything more with it. That's where we are with it. Uh the next company is working with Rachel to get that schedule. And you are communicating well with the court house or Rachel or whoever.

Rachel Rachel and I are discussing this one because there's nobody else involved. Um although there is now that particular project when it's done will also include replacing a little bit of what's that stuff called the white stuff on a wall um stucco I don't know the inside um drywall the drywall needs to be replaced in the downstairs kitchen. So that incl that will be included right after um Rachel's project. So there's there hasn't been any aside from the fact that the air is the air quality is good and there's been no more no mold there hasn't been any other discussion and of course the weather's been perfect so we haven't had any concerns about the HVAC system functioning or not functioning.

Um and Mr. Chairman if I can piggyback on that too. I reached out to uh the cler circuit clerk circuit court clerk while I was ill last week and she seemed to be pleased and also met with the JDR clerk and she wished to extend a hearty thank you to the board for the renovation of her office. Highly encourage you board members if you get an opportunity go over there and look at the wonderful work that was done. She's very happy with the renovation.

Okay, wonderful. Uh, thank you all for your diligence and staying in contact with them and get getting to the re resolution that we want to get to. Uh, any new business? Seeing none, moving right along. Item nine, matters presented by the board. And I'll start with our senior member, Mr. Jesse. I attend the Battish Storage over there in New County. That's where it was very interesting, educational, uh, doesn't take up a whole lot of space and doesn't make a whole lot of noise. So that was pretty good. Uh and also uh coming up is the 68th Obama Or Festival. So that's the seventh day of this month. So if you don't have anything to do, you got good weather, come on out and support the Ower Festival. That's it for me. Thank you, Mr. Jesse, Mr. Cretman. Uh well I also went to the battery storage that was very interesting uh field trip and um I also had a juvenile detention meeting that I attended that was kind of found a few things out there that were fairly interesting. Uh, I have a town hall meeting coming up uh a week from tomorrow in Deltavville and um so I'm looking forward to that to talking to to the people down there in Pintop and um and also if you're going to be at the Oyster Festival on Friday, come on down to the waterfront. I understand there's pretty good bluegrass band going on down there. [laughter]

Hey, good. Um, I also went to the uh battery storage uh with the rest of these guys or some of them and um that's the only thing at this time I have to report. Mr. Bill Harris. Uh yes. Um myself and Mr. Williams said on the service interviews for for a firm

for an engineering firm. And uh one thing that um came out of it cuz you know one of the things we're concerned with is the cafeteria room down here. You know be able to do something with it and I was asking questions about the roof and stuff and anyway and it came around finally one of them said you know it's in a historic area y'all can only do so much modification with the building. I think that was at the point when Reggie told me okay you don't need to ask that question anymore then we can't do no you know. So, so it was kind of um it it was informative not only just doing the interviews, but we also got a little bits of information about how things, you know, in a historic area, you know, we can't just go put big different roof on it, you know. So,

well, actually, that that's not exactly totally uh okay, correct? Because that building is not on the uh national registry. Okay. The one across the street, the white building is, but that building absolutely is not. I was under the impression that the one is on national and the other one's on state. And I believe there are different, right? The state registry, it may be listed, but I think it's got a different set of requirements. If you'd like to, we can look on that because I believe there was when we agreed to that, it was not it was to ensure that we couldn't it wouldn't restrict making any changes

and those questions were asked. Yeah, you made those and we were told that no, there's no restriction particularly on that building. But it probably behooves us to look into that a little bit just to make sure we all hanging from the engineering firm I'm talking about. They took the due diligence and they went out there, inspected the building from the outside and everything and kind of had an idea what they thought the building was, so forth and so on as structure and everything just very preliminary, very preliminary and uh they it's under the state state has um historical stuff. So maybe maybe they quoted wrong, but I think that's something we need to find out. Thanks for the reminder. You're right. Uh Mr. Williams.

Heather, you got your air condition fixed. [laughter] Man, y'all are hitting all the I'm I'm just wondering, did you get You had a lot of beating and banging going on, so I had to have it. Yeah, it it you know, eight, nine weeks. It's fixed. I'm very It It's My room has has Okay. I will make sure that we that we got that done. Yeah. I will get the calls later. very last question. [laughter]

Uh, you know, you know, also, you know, went to the Baptist stores and middle peninsula meeting and and once again, Chip put together when he brought the engineers and all us met at the meeting. It was one of the better ones that I've been to in some time. This thing want no joke. You had six people that came from engineering firms that came to look at the uh at the building. [snorts] And I'm saying you had one group there that came just like Bill was saying they went out on the site. We didn't ask him going on the site and looked at the inside and and everything else, you know, and you know, I told him, you know, I want to see the W factor. I said, let me explain. People might get lost. I said, I'm going to see something ride right by the road and it look good. So, I'm just going to break it down. But this this uh architect of Fern, he he he did the building. He showed you how it looked on the inside and the outside. They was thinking about just like you said, not doing much to the roof at all. So we can't Well, I said case we want to do something to the roof. That's when we came in about the register about state, federal, or whatever. And then it also said we probably can full some grant money. But uh one particular firm stood that and I'm telling you and any other building that I went to that had an architecture there. I ain't going to say I laugh but I wouldn't I I'll be honest. I made the statement I don't even want you. So if I've been in a meeting with any architect in 2025 that didn't come out that meeting would you laugh me? I would tell them I don't want them and I'm so serious about it. Is that because they came out and we didn't ask them? They gave a wonderful presentation which I ain't limited to say everything they done.

No, please don't because we're negotiating price. So, so we don't want them to know who. Yeah, they were that good. They were mediocre. If y'all get finished, you call me up. I'm negotiate that price long. Anyway,

but anyway, that was that was that was good. And um let me see the battery storage middle peninsula meeting. That's getting very interesting to region there, too. And I also, you know, got some calls from uh local people in my district and I know where they from. And some of them I mentioned to you, a guy called and asked about um uh car taxes and I was looking at your number. I said, "Man, good thing you left a voicemail because I wouldn't have called you." But at the voicemail, you said you was concerned. I asked you what district you was in. I said, "Well, okay. You" I said, "That's a plus sign." I said, "Uh, you your you code said California." I said, "Now, you won't pay no taxes out there. you can move to Virginia and you don't have it, but you did. I did direct them in the uh right direction and I also tell them anybody else that's listening, if you got a complaint about something, you don't think you're being treated, we're going to treat you fair, Milis County. So, we'll lead you to the right place and uh uh uh make sure that you get something. I'll call him back say, "Hey, man. Did get any help out or anything?" And an interesting call I got cuz I don't keep a whole lot of stuff myself. No way. A guy called yesterday and uh because he was pumping hole in his place for a year and uh I said, "Man, we didn't know nothing about this. We didn't even know when you bought it. I could have told you when you bought it, you had a bad septic system in it if you had confined in somebody." And I'm not satisfied with the help he got right now. And I talked to Mad all over and Wayne also called on the thing. But uh that got very interesting to me. And uh sometime if stuff don't sound right, maybe it's not right. Uh and so we all working Matt Wayne, we working on it, but I'm looking at for outcome and uh you know, I'm going in it blind. So when I'm blind, I'm looking at everything. I I am

definitely looking at cost because I feel that everything is hidden in the numbers. And I did appreciate the uh the you know the the the the the work that Annarine I'm doing now because I'mma tell you something. I think numbers are so much involved if you don't communicate and when you talking about revenue treasurer and I asked Tracy some of the day I mean you know when he got up on the school so I won't pinpoint nobody but if you tell me you got money in the in in the treasurer for $300,000 and I'm just let you know cuz I want you here. You got money that you got grant money for $300,000 and we appropriated to do something. Now you told me we can't use that fund that you put in your pocket for three years. Now you don't you know I'm just going to let you know where I come from. I don't accept that kind of language. Then that mean Reggie going to look he because I'm not satisfied with your answer. Then we didn't get no report where the money's at. And you have heard me say I would ask the question we got the money where is it at? So, it got to be somewhere and it got to be simplified because once again, we got a uniform uh treasurer here, believe it or not. And we got uh we got the uh administration looks over money movement, but we we got a ace in the hole. And you know, if we think about it, if you all work together and in humble and just like I prayed this afternoon, it won't no joke. Look, I'm telling you, we got to work together. We're not going to satisfy each other all the time. And we got to do what we feel is right in our heart, in our heart. No, maybe our head, but I don't know which one it'll be, but we got to do it one way. And uh I do appreciate what Dave done because I was talking to him in the office. And this what you say when you appreciate what a person done when he told me in so many words,

I'm going to follow this thing through. So what it told me was, you know, sometime we we we do things and you know I do I go and touch Bill on the shoulder and that's it. I don't squeeze him. He said I'm going to follow it through. I knew right then whatever was done to anybody in the past that he said he going to follow it through. Guess what he done he was successful and made it happen. All sometime got to go beyond the mark and don't worry about the bad things because I believe that it's somebody that will give you time. don't force anything on you. It's somebody that'll give you your time. Not your time. It's time. And if we believe that, we'll be fine and get along a whole lot better. So, I don't know if I say it too much or not, Bill, but I just say it anyway.

I I would like just touch on one thing. When we did when we did those interviews, though, I would um Chip England really did a good job keeping us on time, keeping them moving, have six engineering firms come through and keep them on top. He really did well. And there was one question that we asked I believe every every engineering firm we asked them all the same questions and what we name the building down here the cafeterium will have an effect on getting grants. We can name it you know might be a longer name to get two or three different sets of grants and how we do but it's something we should consider when the name how we put it out there.

And also I didn't tell Chip. Chip done a good job. He won't hear tonight. Chip put together I guess him and we had done it together but I don't want nobody that but Chip Chip is critic this time

Chip and Sarah but you know you always count the the hedge you know Chip Chip he done a good job and Sarah done a good job in putting it together cuz what I told you if I make my mind Wayne Jess is gonna be my lawyer then I won't call Hela I won't call you I won't call nobody else but I just want you to listen to what I'm then I'm not going to know anything more because I called Wayne Jesse and I don't give nobody else a chance to do it. Chip didn't do that. He called six. And out of that six, let me tell you something. It was two of them that shine real good. I think Bill, one of them shine a whole lot more than the other one that was.

Well, I can't say that till we get that right. Thank you, board members. Um just and I'll ask Chené if you would uh the week of the 17th, Monday the 17th, would you send out all of us a reminder of the joint meeting school board and uh board of supervisors on 7:19 at 6:00 and that will be in here. Okay? And you'll get a reminder on that. Okay. Uh let's move right along. I'd like to open uh for any public comments.

Oh, really? Damn. Let me write that down. No, I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Um I'm going to close public comment and a motion would be in order to move into close session. Uh yes, sir. So, we are going to be meeting here in this room. I do not know if we will take action or not. We might. I I really can't say. So, I I'm not trying to create a cliffhanger, but I just don't know definitively. Uh if we do, we'll let you know.

There you go. So, with that, board, do you need a motion to convene in close session pursuant to Virginia Code sections 2.2-11 A1 and for A3 and A8? This is so you can have a discussion of personnel matters regarding the county administrator. It's also so you can have a discussion about acquiring real property for a public purpose and about the discussion of disposing of county-owned property where those discussions in an open meeting would adversely affect your bargaining position and so that you may consult with legal counsel regarding specific legal matters, procedures and questions about the acquisition and the disposition of said properties. So moved.

So moved by Bill Harris. Second. Second by Mr. Randy Kittinen. No further discussion. Roll call, please. Mr. Bill Harris. Yes. Mr. Kittinen. Yes. Mr. Jesse? Yes. Mr. Williams? Yes. Mr. Don Harris? Yes. Motion approved. We are. We will