Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Okay, I'm calling to order this meeting of the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, May 26. The first item of business this evening is to go into closed meeting. Be it resolved, the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors of Montgomery County, Virginia, hereby enters into closed meeting for the purpose of discussing the following. Section 2.2-3711, discussion or consideration of the acquisition of real property for a public purpose or the disposition of publicly held real property where discussion in an open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining position or negotiating strategy of the public body. One, corporate park expansion. And five, discussion concerning a prospective business or industry or the expansion of existing business or industry where no previous announcement has been made of the business or industry's interest in locating or expanding its facilities in the community. One, project number 2026-08, and two, project number 2026-10. Is there a motion?

Motion. Second.

Okay, Madam Clerk, if you'll call the roll, please.

Mr. King? Aye. Mr. Fijikowski? Aye. Ms. Spitz? Aye. Mr. Grafsky? Aye. Ms. Caron? Aye. Chair DeMont? Aye. Six ayes.

We are in closed meeting. Is there a motion to go out of closed meeting?

Motion.

Second. Okay. Madam Clerk, if you'll call the roll, please.

Mr. King? Aye. Mr. Fijikowski? Aye. Ms. Biggs? Aye. Mr. Grafsky? Aye. Ms. Caron? Aye. Mr. Kitts? Aye. Chair DeMont? Aye. Seven ayes.

Okay. And our next step is to certify the closed meeting? Aye. Whereas the Board of Supervisors of Montgomery County has convened a closed meeting on this date pursuant to an affirmative recorded vote and in accordance with the provisions of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. And whereas Section 2.2-3711 of the Code of Virginia requires a certification by the Board that such closed meeting was conducted in conformity with Virginia law. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Board of Supervisors of Montgomery County, Virginia, hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge, one, only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements by Virginia law were discussed in the closed meeting to which this certification resolution applies, and two, only such public business matters as were identified in the motion conveying the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered by the board. Is there a motion? So moved.

Second.

Okay. Madam Clerk, if you'll call the roll, please.

Mr. Fischakowski?

Aye.

Ms. Spitz? Aye. Mr. Grafsky? Aye. Ms. Caron? Aye. Mr. Kitts?

Aye.

Mr. King? Aye. Chair DeMott? Aye. Seven ayes.

Okay, and next is a moment of silence and Pledge of Allegiance led by our County Administrator, Ms. Angie Hill.

Please rise as you're able for a moment of silence and then join me as I lead us in the pledge. Let us pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you.

Thank you, Angie. Next on our agenda is public address. We did provide a public address sign-up sheet outside the meeting room in the lobby, and speakers were requested to provide their name, address, and phone number and list the subject matter on the sign-up sheet. Following the names on the sign-up sheet, other speakers will be allowed, and each speaker will have four minutes, whether speaking as an individual or representative. All comments must be directed to the chair and other supervisors from the speaker's lectern at the front of the room and please begin by stating your name and where in the county you reside. Debate between speakers and members of the audience will not be allowed. Speakers may leave any written statements and or comments to the supervisors with the board clerk and speakers will be judged out of order should they engage in personal attacks, use profanity or abusive language or debate with the audience and not address the supervisors. Accepted etiquette is to not applaud or make loud responses. We did not have any signups in advance or on the signup sheet in the hallway, but anybody here is welcome to come forward at this time for a public address. Okay, seeing no one come forward, we're gonna close public address. We do not have an addendum this evening, so the next item on our agenda is to go into work session. We have two items to discuss in work session this evening. Item one is the county's capital improvement plan, and item two is part five of Montgomery Matters that concerns the future land use. Is there a motion? So moved.

Second.

Okay, any discussion? Madam Clerk, if you'll call the roll, please.

Ms. Biggs? Aye. Mr. Graske?

Aye.

Ms. Caron? Aye. Mr. Kitts? Aye. Mr. King? Aye. Mr. Fitzgerald?

Aye. Close enough.

Chair DeMott? Aye. Seven ayes.

All right, great. So we are in work session, and I'll kick it over to you, Angie.

Okay, thank you. Mark Magruder is here, our Director of Management and Budget, and he's going to

provide some information for you.

He's going to give you a draft of our capital improvement program and a copy of the presentation. The copy of the presentation will also be available in our diligence site for where our minutes and records of the agendas are stored. This is the proposal and then we'll come back to you for approval of this. And when we come back we'll have a nice fancy book.

Good evening. So I'd like to talk a little bit about the fiscal year 27 to 31 capital improvement program. Give you a little background on the CIP. The capital improvement program is a multi-year spending plan for the construction of major capital infrastructure. And the CIP really is a living document, meaning that it changes as priorities change and as projects change. And that change can be a change in scope or a change in cost. In order to qualify, projects must have a useful life of five years or more and cost over a specific dollar amount. For Montgomery County, that value is $50,000. I'll talk a little bit about that. That $50,000 amount is a fairly low threshold and that was in place when I came to the county 22 years ago and Angie and I talked a little bit about this and it wasn't too much before that that that $50,000 was in there. So we're guessing somewhere around 25 years we've had this $50,000 threshold but it's a fairly low threshold and in today's world we probably should be looking at something a little bit more. You can certainly capitalize an item that is $50,000 but for a living document that's for the future, we really should be looking at a dollar amount that's significantly higher than that. So we're going to kind of circle back to that in a few months, probably with the next CIP and look at updating that number. Capital projects differ from capital outlay, something that you see in the county's operating budget based on useful life and overall cost. As I said, capital projects have a bigger scope. So Capital outlay items have to have at least a one year useful life, but are really part of the county's routine operations. A formal CIP is linked to the operating budget and serves as a forecast for future operating expenditures. And I always like to say that nothing will squeeze your operating budget like a CIP. And the reason for that is you don't build infrastructure and then not fund the programs and operating costs associated with that infrastructure. So in addition to the construction costs, the county must also pay for operating costs of new capital projects. And those costs include debt service costs, facility maintenance costs, and program costs. And those operating costs can vary depending on the type of facility and or infrastructure being constructed. These costs are included in the county's operating budget. Talk a little bit about the financing of capital projects. There are two primary methods of financing the construction cost for capital improvements. One method of financing is debt financing, which is the sale of bonds. The type of bonds that can be sold are general obligation bonds or revenue bonds. General obligation bonds are backed by the full faith and taxing authority of the jurisdiction and carries the lowest interest rate. However, they require a voter referendum revenue bonds on the other hand are backed by a revenue source, generally a lease payment to a third party. And at the end of the lease, the County receives a property. A second method is direct cash contributions for capital projects. We call that cash to capital, and there are one-time funds that are used directly for construction costs. When you look at the county CIP that's in front of you, you will see that the CIP includes debt proceeds and cash to capital funds. Talk a little bit about the annual transfers that come from the general fund. So 5 cents of the real estate tax rate is earmarked for County and school capital needs two and a half cents for the County and two and a half cents for the schools on the County side, one and a half cents is earmarked for fire and rescue capital equipment. And then one cent is earmarked for future County capital projects of that one penny, a hundred thousands is included for the valley to valley to valley trail project. Again, on the school side, two and a half cents is earmarked for future school capital needs, and those funds may only be used with Board of Supervisor approval. And then, as you know, as we go through the budget process, the penny value of the real estate tax rate changes each year based on the rate and the total real estate value. So the CIP for 27 to 31 factors in an increase of $24,420 per year. Talk about some other annual general fund transfers. We have $1.3 million for County capital maintenance needs. And those are for roof replacements, HVAC replacements and paving. I'll talk a little bit about what those things are. So the County's capital maintenance program. which is funded in the capital budget is a proactive program of preventative maintenance designed to address major repairs and or to replace large scale components that cannot be addressed within the county centralized maintenance budget, which is contained in the county's operating budget. And the purpose of this program is to invest in existing capital assets to maintain the county's building and structures and to extend their useful life. As I said, some of the ongoing projects we have are roof replacements, HVAC system upgrades, carpeting, paving, and other systems maintenance. We have $425,000 that's earmarked for parks and recreation projects. For the upcoming CIP, those funds will be used for the White Thorn boat parking expansion and pool repairs at the Frog Pond. And then we have 210,000 for information technology infrastructure projects, which is to replace servers and other major hardware items as needed. Talk a little bit about projects that were in the 26 CIP that are now complete. General renovation project is complete. The magistrate and court services facility project is complete and Teal Park is complete. Talk about the existing projects that are in the CIP. As you can see, we have falling branch corporate park phase two. That's in the construction phase. The preliminary estimate's 7.3 million. The radio infrastructure project is in the implementation phase. It's $10 million. 201 Radford Street is in the construction phase. It's $2.1 million. Elliston Fire Department's in the design phase. It's at $12.3 million. 305 Roanoke Street is in the design phase. It's $5.5 million. Future Economic Development Land Purchases, it's in the study phase, and the estimate's at $2 million. Government Center Improvements Project is in the design phase. It's $4.1 million. Government Center generator project is in the study phase. It's 5 million Cinnabar green space and storage is in the study phase It's 2.4 million and the last project is the Christiansburg library. It's in the study phase and preliminary estimates 16.1 million And like Angie said you have a copy of the proposed CIP and And then when we get to July, there'll be an appropriation for the first year of the capital fund. That's all I have. I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Okay. Um, I'm going to kick it off with a question. Um, are the annual general general fund transfers kind of flat? Do those stay the same year to year?

Um, or is it based on the penny value changes? Um, the ones for the one, three, the 425 and the 210,000 are the same every single year. Now, last year we increased the, um, the. capital maintenance project from I think it was 750,000 to 1.3 million dollars and that was based on tying it to the total asset value that the county has. That value should be around 1% of the total county assets and that value was 1.3 in last year's budget so we increased that amount but generally speaking those numbers are flat unless we have a need to increase them.

Okay, so the county capital maintenance needs for the roof replacements, HVAC replacements, paving, that is a typical normal part of our budget that is separate from our capital, two and a half cents. That's right.

That's correct. Okay, thank you.

Does anybody, I'm sorry for bumbling around that. Does anybody else have any questions? Supervisor Caron.

I HAVE A QUICK ONE, AND IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE EXACT. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH DOLLAR VALUE FOR THE COMPLETED PROJECTS, HOW MUCH WE SPENDED THOSE FY26 REITEMS?

I DON'T HAVE THAT, BUT I CAN GET IT FOR YOU. YOU WANT THE TOTAL PROJECT COST OR JUST WHAT WAS SPENT IN THE LAST FISCAL YEAR? TOTAL COST. TOTAL COST.

WE'LL GET THAT FOR YOU.

OKAY. DOES ANYBODY ELSE HAVE ANY QUESTIONS? Vice Chair Fitchkowski.

Yeah, along the same lines, the county capital maintenance monies, is that what's paying for the repairs to the courthouse roof?

That's a separate project in this.

Yeah, it's a small project. We actually appropriated money separate for that project to cover that cost. And we did that at a fund balance, I believe.

For the courthouse.

Yeah. Right.

Yeah, I remember talking about, but it's not in the list of,

Yeah, so we have $1.3 million that's an annual amount to cover routine things. When you have something big that happens like that, we appropriated the money separately so that it wasn't taken away from that original $1.3 million.

Yeah, I know it wasn't something that was planned, that for sure.

But I think he's asking why it's not on page five. Is that right?

Yeah, yeah, page five.

Do you want to answer it or I can't?

Go ahead, you can do it.

So basically, if we have a project, the idea behind the CIP is for basically new projects. So if we have a repair that would be a capital maintenance item, we certainly could include it in that 1.3. But in order to not take away from that 1.3, we just appropriated money separately. to put into the capital fund. And since it's not something that we're planning over several years in order to construct, there's no sense in putting it in a planning document when we'll be complete with that project within a year's time.

Does that make sense? We pay for some items out of the capital fund that are not included in the CIP document itself in that planning document because the program is more for capital buildings, construction, that kind of thing, rather than, as Mark said, a repair like the courthouse project.

Yeah, that makes sense that we would use it for planned projects, and that one really wasn't really on the radar until it started falling apart.

And it's not really large enough that we would generally include it in this, even though it does have a large dollar amount because it is more of a maintenance item.

Okay, thank you.

Also, I'd like to add, Mark did... Correctly say that one of our funding sources is currently bond proceeds, but we've almost spent all of our bond proceeds So we're actually funding most of the county CIP almost exclusively from cash to capital at this point Which is a good thing that we're able to do that right now, and we're able to use some of our funds that we set aside for debt service costs as our debt service balance goes down it frees up debt service dollars that we can use to pay for some of these projects. And some of those are things that we've appropriated in the past as well.

Okay. Do we have any other questions?

If you have questions as you look through the document too, in the days ahead, please just feel free to let us know.

Great. Thank you, Mark. Appreciate the update as always. All right. And then, let's see, navigating between screens. Justin's up for the next installment of Montgomery Matters. This is part five.

I feel like this is a mini-series at this point.

Let me interrupt for just one second. Steve, can you take over for just one moment? I need to step out. Sure.

All right, well, good evening, everyone. As Chair DeMott's noted, we are reviewing part five of Montgomery Matters. This section of the comprehensive plan is entitled Places Matter. And this is where we talk about the future land use map and our village plans. It's interesting that we're talking about the future land use map last, and that is probably the most visible and most important piece of the comprehensive plan. But because of its role in development in the county, we wanted to make sure that we were talking about it separately so that we could give it the attention that it needed. So before we dive into the recommendations in part five, I did wanna go over for the public and for those who may not be aware, the purposes of the Future Land Use Map. As you all know, it guides our zoning map amendments, which are also called rezoning cases. It helps us to coordinate future investments like roads, utilities, schools, and parks. It helps us to identify and protect sensitive areas throughout the county, including farmland, historic resources, and open space. It helps us to direct growth to suitable locations, supports economic development and housing, and it helps to evaluate whether private development proposals are in line with that future vision for the county that's been established. So I wanted to start by talking about our existing future land use map. As you can see here, we have several different classifications. One of the intended results of this process was for us to simplify the future land use map, not only for citizens, but for developers. So I wanted to just talk about the existing land use categories that we have as part of our map. The areas there in yellow, you can see we denote those as residential transition areas. Those are adjacent to the two towns and were where we were primarily seeing housing and commercial development. The resource stewardship area is the majority of the map there in the darker green. Those are our conservation areas and areas that we were seeking to protect. Our rural land use designation is the gray there. That is for low scale development and other rural uses. The UDA boundary are very small on the map, but you can see here they're located between the town of Christiansburg and Blacksburg, and then down here on the 177 corridor near the Carilion Hospital. We also had urban expansion areas. These were areas where we recommended more intense density. And then our villages, and within the villages there were a series of other land uses denoted within the village boundaries. So again, it could get very complicated to know what the difference between these different land use categories were. That often was confusing for developers when they came to us because they were written in a way that they were very similar. So again, one of the goals was to simplify the number of designations and clarify their intent. We also then went through a process to identify the limitations and constraints that we faced on the map. Again, this future land use map was adopted 20 years ago. The landscape has changed quite a bit in that time. So we looked at various constraints existing our planned public infrastructure. We looked at our transportation infrastructure and what could realistically be supported. We looked at emergency services and that was response times and capacity. We looked at geographic limitations, including steep slopes and floodplains, and as you all know, when we began the Montgomery Matters process, it was right after Hurricane Helene, so flooding was very much on the mind of all of our citizens when we were doing our engagement. We also wanted to look at our ecological limitations in terms of our impaired waterways, our wetlands, and other sensitive features, and then existing conservation easements in agriculture and forestal districts, which means that that land is basically undevelopable. And then last but certainly not least, we wanted to make sure we included the public's feedback. As you can imagine, we heard a lot about growth from the past two years. So we took our survey responses, our mapping exercises, our open houses and our village meetings and took that into account as we made recommendations going forward. So talking about those constraints, the map there on the left is a mapping that we did with our GIS team to denote all of the areas that were hazard areas here in the county or features that we wanted to identify for protection. So this map denotes our flood areas, it denotes the conservation easements that are held throughout the county, it denotes our AFD districts, and it also denotes prime farmland as defined by USDA. The map on the right there is our public input map that traveled with us all around the county for the past two years where folks would put on the map where they wanted to see development in the county going forward. As you can see, we had quite a concentration of folks who thought development should happen in what we call mid-county in the area between the two towns and then another consensus here along the 177 corridor going into Radford. Now, as we went around to the different villages, it was interesting to see people were putting development in other villages and not their own, which should come as no surprise. But what we did hear consistently from all of the villages was that they felt they were receiving too much growth pressure. So what we wanted to do throughout the process was find a way to have an intermediary between the towns and the villages to capture some of that growth. So we talked about this in parts one through four, our land use vision, this tiered approach to land use. Again, at the top are the towns. We still wanna focus most of our development within the two towns. They have the infrastructure and the services to support that population growth. But again, in that exercise to create an area to capture growth between the towns and the villages, this idea of growth areas came up. And we didn't have to look far. Those existing growth areas in mid-county and down on 177 were already denoted as urban development areas on our existing comprehensive plan. So in looking at the citizen feedback that we got and looking at all the constraints that we found, one way that we are able to capture some of that growth before it goes to the villages is to recommend expansion of the two UDAs that were already existing. The villages, again, they have the public infrastructure to support some growth, but again, we heard from the citizens that they wanted that development pressure alleviated. So also throughout the process, we started with six villages as we went through the public engagement process, and we started looking at the villages individually. We knew from the beginning that not all of the villages were created equally, not all of them were receiving growth in the same way. And really, four villages sort of broke out as the ones that could sustain additional development, had that community identity, And then two of the existing villages really didn't meet that burden. So we created a designation for them known as the rural village. This will still capture some growth, but it won't be as intense as what you're seeing in the other villages. The next tier is our settlement communities. I'll go into more depth in those in a moment. And then our rural development areas. And when we originally had the conversation with you, we were calling this our farmland preservation area. And while the intent of that area is to protect those areas that are denoted as prime farmland, we thought that the name dissuaded any type of residential development. So we went back to the drawing board, again, looking at our existing comprehensive plan, that rural land use designation that was meant to capture less dense growth. And we changed that name so that we could balance both farming and the need for additional housing in our rural areas. And then the last tier is our outdoors and natural preservation areas, and I'll go into more depth in a moment on those. So again, a side-by-side comparison of our existing map versus the proposed map. Again, you can see far fewer colors on the map. We also think that the map more accurately reflects those constraints on the ground, and I'm going to go through those individually with you. So looking around the town of Blacksburg, again, on the left is our existing future land use map that was developed 20 years ago, and on the right is our new map that's being proposed. A variety of things have changed on the ground since we adopted that future land use map 20 years ago. At the time, there was an agreement with the town of Blacksburg that we were able to connect to their public water and sewer system for development. That agreement no longer exists. So if you want to connect to the town of Blacksburg's utilities, you have to come inside the town of Blacksburg. And that sometimes dissuades some developers. They don't want to go into town limits. They don't want their clients to be paying both town and county taxes. So that jurisdictional boundary change often doesn't go through. We also know that north of Blacksburg, there's been some issues with private well and septic limitations, so proposing additional development to the north of Blacksburg is not something that we were comfortable doing. We also know that there's limited transportation infrastructure, the number of rural two-lane roads going in and out of the town of Blacksburg, and then again connecting to town streets and having that disconnect between VDOT-maintained roads and town-maintained roads. And we also have a number of topographic challenges in and around the town of Blacksburg with steep slopes north and east of the town. Looking around the town of Christiansburg, we do have limited water and sewer infrastructure, so we have to rely on connections to the town of Christiansburg system, and that does come in a premium to our residents. That's a 200% rate on utilities to connect to that system. And we know that as we go along, the more connections we make to that system, the less likely there will be for future connections if capacity is not changed. Again, we have limited transportation infrastructure going in and out of the town of Christiansburg, particularly along Radford Road and Peppers Ferry Road. We have a number of safety and capacity considerations to take into account there, which again, dissuades us away from recommending very dense development along those corridors. And we know that available land has continued to decrease around the town of Christiansburg, and a number of people have utilized private conservation easements in agriculture and forestal districts to protect land. So again, talking about those growth areas, as I mentioned, they're already designated as UDAs, or urban expansion on our existing map. The transportation infrastructure does support additional development, and there is available or planned infrastructure to support additional density. There isn't an amount of available land that we don't see in other parts of the county in these two areas, and it does relieve those development pressures from the villages. We also, again, had strong public support in these areas. So the recommendation here is to expand the UDA there in Mid-County, which we're calling the Merrimack Growth Area, to encompass a lot of that land that's adjacent to the town of Blacksburg. It actually crosses over 460 Business and captures Cinnabar Road, where we've had a number of investments in the past several years. And there was an extension of public water and sewer from the town of Christiansburg to service those facilities along Cinnabar. It also captures Mid-County Park and other numbers of county assets in that growth area. With the Bethel corridor, this roughly stretches from the hospital to the city of Radford jurisdictional boundary, focused primarily along Tyler Road Route 177. We do have some conservation easements in this area, but they're not along that main corridor, which make it a prime opportunity for development potential. As I mentioned, we started with six villages, and as we went through the process, we came down to four. I will say that the boundaries of those villages are mostly going to be the same. We did have a slight growth in Reiner. The existing Reiner Fire Department and Ortiel Park were within our village boundary. We thought that those assets needed to be within the village. It also allowed us to capture two additional intersections, so the intersection at Meadow Creek and at Derry Road. Having those within the village boundary and thus an urban development area qualifies us for additional funding opportunities that we wouldn't have otherwise. And many members of the village agreed with us that those expansions should take place. We also had a small portion of Price's Fork that was expanded to bring in some additional assets. But in Shaw'sville and Elliston Lafayette, we made no changes to the village boundary. The emphasis on the villages will be on revitalization, adaptive reuse, and infill. That's what we heard overwhelmingly from the citizens. I'm going to go more in-depth with the village plans at your next work session. Then our rural villages, as I said, those we got very little community input when we went out for our village meetings. There's also not a strong sense of village identity in these two villages, and they lack a number of the amenities that the other villages have. So we recommend creating these villages as rural villages and turning them more into a corridor development model. Over the past several years, we've seen primarily development happening along the Peppers Ferry corridor closer to the town of Christiansburg. So extending the boundaries of the village to more of these corridors matches the development that we're actually seeing happening in those corridors. We also found in these two villages that emergency response times were greater So we did not feel that it was appropriate to recommend additional density in those villages I mean we also wanted to make sure that we were being Cognizant of the topographic and floodplain challenges that we face in those two areas of the county Our settlement communities, these are our historic communities. Primarily, these are residential in nature. We refer to them as rural communities in our existing comprehensive plan. We don't recommend any great level of density in the settlements. We know that these are often crossroads communities, and sometimes they may have a country store or a community center, but they're not really intended to receive that dense development that you see throughout the other recommendations in the land use map. These areas are not intended to be served by public water and sewer, which further limits their ability to handle density. Our rural development areas, again, these align with our prime agricultural lands. They're the areas that are denoted there in the gray on the map. We do intend to allow some low density residential development in these areas, consistent with the existing land use policies in those rural communities that we've identified on the previous plan. There is limited public infrastructure in these areas, so we will be talking about private water and sewer in most of these areas. And we did have strong public support for minimizing development in these parts of the county. Coming to the end of the recommendations here, the outdoor and natural preservation areas will primarily support agriculture and conservation land uses and some recreational opportunities. These are intended to preserve our ecological features, our view sheds and open space throughout the county. And as you can see consistent with the existing future land use map, this resource stewardship or conservation minded land use approach is going to be the majority of the lands in the county. There is no public infrastructure in most of these areas. And again, we had strong public support for protecting these areas from development in the future. And because we are a very unique county, we have the complete northern end of the county that is taken up by the Washington Jefferson National Forest. We have little to no regulatory authority in these areas, but we do want to make sure that those are denoted on the map. This does allow for some appropriately scaled and low intensity recreational uses in those areas. And then my favorite part of part five, we played around a lot with the word matter, as you have seen throughout other parts of the comprehensive plan. And another priority that we had was reducing the amount of text that was in the plan and finding a way to graphically represent some of these larger concepts. So matter and elements in the periodic table was a natural progression for us planning nerds. You can see what we've come up here is a graphic representation of various land use types It helps us to prioritize how to balance those uses in the different land use categories and how intense those uses will be We think this is going to be a good bridge for us between the comprehensive plan in the future land use map and our zoning ordinance update Which will be coming next again. This doesn't denote any zoning within those areas again just talks about general land use types and So you can kind of see how they're organized there. And then we have the different classifications and what uses, what land use types would go into those specific areas. And again, just like with the periodic table, the size of the element means how much and what that balance is going to be. So looking at our two growth areas, again, in Bethel, we see that primarily being more residential, more single-family residential, maybe some townhomes or duplexes. A little bit of cluster living in terms of multi-unit apartments or other types of development. We know because of proximity to the hospital that care-related land uses are probably going to be higher in that area. Also, institutional living. This is our senior living facilities, our assisted living facilities. Again, making sure they're near services that they may be utilizing. But we also want to make sure that we have open space. You can see parkland is included in both of these as well. Whereas with the Merrimack growth area, we're gonna be focused less on single family housing and more toward that multi-unit or cluster living. Again, having that increased density that's compatible with the town of Christiansburg and the town of Blacksburg, we think is a good direction to move there. So moving through the other land use types quickly, again, in our villages, we're gonna be looking primarily at single family living. in the villages, but also making sure that we have a good balance of those services that we heard from the citizens that they would like to see nearby in the village boundaries. Rural land uses, you can start to see some of this, the working land, which is our agricultural land, starting to have a bigger share as we get into the more rural portions of the county. And then when we get into our settlements, it's again, primarily agricultural and open space land with some housing. And then as we go a little bit further out, our rural development areas, again, primarily gonna be countryside and working land, but we do wanna make sure that we do allow some single family housing in those areas. And then in those preservation areas, it's gonna be primarily conservation land, working land, and open land. So again, a fun way to denote those concepts without having pages and pages of text. So I will stop there before I go through next steps and answer any questions that you might have.

Okay. Thank you. That was a lot of information. What questions do we have? I'm going to start on this side this time. I'm seeing Supervisor Kitts.

So if we go back to that map real quick, it shows, especially for my area, like the Bellevue going out that way, I know that area is growing a lot faster than we had originally planned, especially when the families sold off all that land that connects in there and those townhouses are exploding. moving west. So when we say growth, it's nothing that's planned. It's an area that we think could benefit from more resources.

Absolutely. And we know that there are some developments that have already been planned in those corridors. Obviously, this will respect that development that's already been approved. We would be looking at any subsequent development proposals that would be coming through. One of the things, again, in the Bellevue area that we heard pretty resoundingly from the citizens who participated was about emergency response times. They asked for a substation. In that area because they felt like emergency response times were slow when we looked at the map They were some of the the longest response times that we did have throughout the entire county But we also know and we hear regularly from citizens. There's a lot of traffic on 114 We have a lot of safety concerns along 114 and while we're in the process of addressing some of those again the more density we add to the 114 corridor it's going to exacerbate those traffic issues and And so from a staff perspective and working through all the data, we would like to see improvements to 114 before we recommended any great density to go in that corridor.

Yeah, because I know all the way down to, as we start playing Pepper's Ferry, all the way to Vickers, it gets really dicey in there. And there's been multiple accents over the last few weeks, and it completely blocks off any way in and out. You've got to go back around. So that's the only thing that worries me, because I think your team is spot on about the corridor stuff. Because that area really doesn't have the personality or the identity that the other places do. But that corridor evaluation is extremely vital along that way because that area is, especially to the northern side, is really starting to roll. And they're really going to start pushing development there. So, no, I appreciate that and how we got that space in the county right there.

And as we completed a study with VDOT and the Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment last year on the Peppers Ferry corridor, that helped us to identify several intersections that are our priority intersections for improvements. And we actually have, in the pre-application stage with VDOT right now, improvements at the two ends of Vickers Switch. Those were identified as one of our highest priorities because of the crash data that we saw. But other recommendations in that corridor We talked a lot about pedestrian safety in that corridor as well. It's going to likely be one of the hardest for us to solve just because of the length of the corridor. And we have some topography issues along 114 that create problems when building a sidewalk and it makes the expense go up. So again, if we're going to recommend density in that corridor, we want to make sure we have those pedestrian accommodations in place because we know not everyone's going to be in a car navigating through the corridor.

Yeah, that's the, everybody jokes and gives me a hard time because I want to try to get a road that goes up and down to try to connect the county going that way. But topography, especially around Vickers with a mountain drops off right there. It's very difficult, but we know that this area has got to be opened up eventually going north and south. So I appreciate the data and the way y'all drawn this out. So thank you. Thank you.

Mr. Pichikowski.

In the periodic table, you had two things. I might have missed them. But what is a node and what is a link?

So a node is going to be, think of that as like a transfer station or a larger resource. So a node would qualify like the Amtrak station or a bus terminal. Those are going to be more of our nodes. Links are going to be those pedestrian links. They're going to be traffic improvements to help multimodal transit throughout the village areas. And so Particularly in the growth areas and in the villages, we already have identified that we want to bring other transportation methods into the villages to connect them not only within the village but to the other areas of the county. So those links are going to be those road networks, pedestrian networks, multimodal transit, things of that nature. The nodes are primarily going to be where those hubs will kind of be served. Okay, thank you.

Any other questions on this side? All right, questions over here? All of you. Let's go to Supervisor Grafsky.

Thank you. Just one comment and then one question. So the comment is, as I'm reading through this section of it, I'm just really encouraged by how Early in some of the development, we're focusing on these transportation or alternative transportation, pedestrians, connectors, things like that. So thank you. My other question is, so in the growth areas and the policies, we talk about traditional neighborhood design and it goes on to define that. Help me, human-scaled buildings.

So human-scaled buildings sort of lends, the name sort of lends itself. It's, again, thinking about height on buildings, thinking about the relationship of buildings and the setback. So a three-story building feels very different when it's 15 to 20 feet away from the sidewalk as opposed to what's right up on the sidewalk. So again thinking of the human scale and having it feel walkable having it feel comfortable for someone to be a pedestrian in those areas Making sure that we're you know, we're not just giving someone a mile and a half a sidewalk We think about pocket parks. We think about ways that they can have respite along. So that's that human centered design.

Excellent.

Thank you very much supervisor Biggs Um, well first of all You know, I've been on the board a long time, and this is the most thorough plan I've ever seen. But the other thing I wanted to ask you about, you know, when you were talking about the 114 corridor and how you wanted to see that improve before more development, The whole time I've been on the board, it's always like the development goes in, the roads aren't there because VDOT won't do anything. You can't just say like, hey, we want a four-lane prices fork and then look at development. It doesn't work that way. So how, explain to me a little bit like what you're thinking is like, are you suggesting that we as a board limit development until the roads are improved? But how would, you know, how would that all work?

So a couple of different answers that I want to give you on this question. So you are correct. The way that transportation funding has been funded traditionally, we have to create a problem before we can get the funding to fix the problem. But what we can do through land use policy, we already do in our subdivision ordinance and through our zoning ordinance requiring inter parcel connection. Maybe that property next door won't be developed for another 20 or 30 years. but we're encouraging having that link so that those neighborhoods can be connected. We're also encouraging, again, pedestrian accommodations within these new subdivisions that are being built, again, to get people out of their car and give them an alternative. But with the rural village concept on 114 and on Radford Road, it's not that we're saying no development. We're just saying we need to be very cautious with how dense that development is, again, on how much traffic that we're adding to the corridor. But again, I think the board can, through different policy decisions, you can make incremental improvements. Again, we're not going to get a sidewalk along the entire corridor in one fell swoop. But something that we could do in the subdivision ordinance or the zoning ordinance is require any new subdivision to put in that pedestrian accommodation along the road so that we are building it as we go. There are other accommodations in terms of turn lane improvements that can be made, small fixes that can be made to accommodate the development that is coming. But I do think as we go through, if more development continues to occur, we are going to have to look at maybe some larger dollar solutions. One thing that with the smart scale program, with transportation alternatives, a couple of the other funding programs, they want to see that economic development piece. So, again, we have to be cautious. We want to get those points in the scoring, but we don't want to create additional issues to your point.

Yeah, yeah. Well, to me it sounds like a really good way to look at it. I'm just hoping that, you know, we can do it. Yeah, because I really like your thinking on this. And I like the fact that the citizens are seeing a lot of what they want to see as far as growth. I think you've done a really good job. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed.

Thank you very much.

Supervisor Caron?

Mine is just a compliment with my chemical engineering background. I thought you would enjoy that.

This periodic table made me smile.

It's a very valid representation. I'm sure I will remember this chapter way better than any other chapter.

Thank you.

And I have just one question, and it might not be a question for you, Justin. It might be more for staff. Mutual aid. Do we have any type of agreements with the city of Radford for mutual aid for fire and rescue?

We don't have fire mutual aid agreements with anyone. If I misspeak, you'll help, right? But we do have EMS mutual aid agreements. And I've talked to Chief Geary about that because it would, It seems like to me from a lay person in that area that it would make a lot of sense to have mutual aid agreements for those kinds of services, but they don't exist. So that causes people that are on the edges of those areas that could be served quickly by Radford or another jurisdiction to not count as having service for ISO and other reasons.

Thank you. I just wanted to, is that correct, Supervisor King?

I don't know. I don't know if we have a written agreement, but they do come out and help run or fire on that end when we need them.

Yeah, we don't have a written agreement, but that... Yeah.

Right. Okay, thank you. I appreciate the information. Does anybody else have any more questions about this? Okay, seeing none, thank you, sir.

I just want to run through next steps, if you don't mind. Okay, all right, we'll let you. Just to keep you all aware. So we do have a work session planned with you on June the 8th where we'll cover the four village plans. We will be getting those to you this week. I'll get those to Vicki and she'll get those distributed. We want to make sure you have enough time to sit with those documents, read through them because they're obviously in your jurisdiction, in your constituencies. We did get a lot of really great feedback through our village engagement. We had 10 meetings total throughout the villages. And we had greater attendance at our village meetings than we've ever had at any of our other public meetings. So I think that's a really good sign that we've captured what the village residents want to see. So we're looking very forward to sharing those documents with you. After we send those to you and the Planning Commission, those are going to get posted on the Montgomery Matters website. We're also going to be making hard copies available at the public libraries. We'll have a copy here at the Government Center, again, to make sure that they're accessible for everyone so that we can get any additional feedback from the public. We have a Planning Commission public hearing scheduled for June 17th, and then we'll hold a public hearing with you on Part 5 on June 22nd. and foreseeing no problems, we will adopt part five in the future land use map in the village plans with an effective date of July 1st. But we're not done yet. Because we're gluttons for punishment, we're gonna move right into implementation of the comprehensive plan. We have identified throughout the village engagement process additional Intersections, additional road improvements that we'll bring back to you when we revise transportation matters. The other good news there is we've gotten a lot of those projects funded over the past several years. So we can remove those from our project lists and add new ones. Thank you to the generosity of the board and including in the budget money for the community viz project. That will help us do a density analysis throughout the county to find out how much density we can recommend in the growth areas and the villages. And that'll inform our efforts with the zoning ordinance. And then our plan is to do some more detailed planning work in Merrimack and Bethel to sort of vision what that could look like in the future. And again, guide the zoning ordinance discussion in terms of density acreage, things of that nature. So those are our next steps.

Great. Any questions about the schedule from anybody? All right. Thank you all so much. Thank you, Justin. See you next time for village plans. Okay, we have completed both of our work session items. Is there a motion to go out of work session? So moved.

Second.

Any discussion?

Madam Clerk, if you'll call the roll, please.

Mr. Grafsky?

Aye.

Ms. Caron? Aye. Mr. Kitts? Aye. Mr. King?

Aye.

Mr. Fijikowski? Aye. Ms. Biggs? Aye. Chair DeMonts? Aye. Seven ayes.

Okay, moving into new business. Our first item of new business is a resolution authorizing a petition for writ of special election for the Montgomery County Commonwealth Attorney. Marty? Yes. Oh, I'm sorry. Consent. Sorry about that. Next we have consent agenda. Is there a motion on consent? So moved.

Second.

Any discussion? Madam Clerk, if you'll call the roll, please.

Ms. Caron?

Aye.

Mr. Kitts? Aye. Mr. King? Aye. Mr. Fitchikowski? Aye. Ms. Biggs? Aye. Mr. Grafsky? Aye. Chair DeMott? Aye. Seven ayes.

I was just very excited to get to new business. Okay, so back to the resolution authorizing a petition for writ of special election for the Montgomery County Commonwealth's attorney, Lardy.

Yes, as the board knows, the Commonwealth attorneys notified the board that she plans to retire effective September, August, August one. Yeah. And so in light of that, the board has a duty under state law to go ahead and petition the court. to set a special election, that there's enough time to hold that special election for this coming November. Her term expires next December. If it was this December, there would be no election, but since it's next December and there's enough time in between now and, well, in between the time she retires and the special election date, which would be the general election date, that the board then has a duty to do the petition. So this resolution authorizes me to file that on your behalf and ask the court to set a special election to fill that vacancy at the upcoming general election in November.

Okay.

We already have one scheduled as well for the sheriff.

So is there a motion? So moved.

Second.

Is there any discussion or questions about it? Seeing none, Madam Clerk, if you'll call the roll, please. Mr. Kitts? Aye. Mr. King? Aye.

Mr. Fitchikowski? Aye. Ms. Biggs? Aye. Mr. Grafsky? Aye. Ms. Caron? Aye. Chair DeMott? Aye. Seven ayes.

Okay, next is a fiscal year 27 one-time bonus. This is related to a state-approved 2% bonus for locally supported state employees effective June 1st. Angie, did you want to provide some information before we take a motion on that?

Yes, because the state approved this 2% bonus, the county also historically has provided the bonus to non-state employees. There are constitutional officers that have some employees that are partially state-funded, and they work directly beside county-funded employees. Historically, the board has approved bonuses that match the state amount so that some employees would not get the bonus and then others would to create more uniformity.

Okay, so we'll, I'm sure, have some questions, but is there a motion? So moved.

Second.

Okay, question time. Does anybody have any questions?

We always do this.

So I have just one question. Does this cover every single county employee? It does not cover Marty or me, but every other employee.

It does not cover seasonal part-time workers either. That would be lifeguards and those type of positions. But everyone who is hired on June 9th or prior to that who is not on disciplinary probation would receive this.

And it's not you or Marty? That's correct. Okay. Any other questions, comments?

Just one. How many part-time employees does that say that don't get it, that's been with the county for a while?

There are none that have been with the county for a while. Those people would get it. If they've been consistently employed, then they're not counted as seasonal, so they would get that.

They'll get it too? Yes. Okay.

Yes.

Okay, any other questions, concerns? All right, Madam Clerk, if you'll call the roll, please. Mr. King?

Aye.

Mr. Tchaikovsky?

Aye.

Ms. Biggs? Aye. Mr. Grasky? Aye. Ms. Caron? Aye. Mr. Kitts?

Aye.

Chair DeMott?

Aye.

Seven ayes.

Thank you. The next item is to schedule a public hearing, proposed ordinance amending chapter eight, planning and development of the code of the county of Montgomery, Virginia, article three, erosion and stormwater management. Somebody please help me. I can help you.

The Code of Virginia increased these fees. I think it's through DEQ, and they're increased at the state level. The county does not charge more than the state says can be charged, and a large majority of those fees are transferred back to the state. So this just approves the adoption of the rates that have been set by the state.

Schedules the public hearing.

Oh, yes, I'm sorry. Schedules the public hearing to talk about that.

Marty was coming forward. Yes, sorry. Okay. Is there a motion? So moved.

Second.

Okay. Are there any questions or comments about this? What's the date of the public hearing? Is it June 8th?

I believe it's the second meeting in June.

So the 22nd? Yeah. Okay. Great. Any other comments, questions? Seeing none, Madam Clerk, if you'll call the roll, please. Mr. Fitchikowski?

Aye.

Ms. Biggs? Aye. Mr. Grafsky? Aye. Ms. Caron? Aye. Mr. Kitts? Aye. Mr. King? Aye. Chair DeMott?

Aye.

Seven ayes.

Okay, and then the final item of new business is a resolution recognizing June 15th through 21st, 2026 as National Men's Health Week. Is there a motion?

Come on, Anthony.

So moved.

All right. Is there any discussion?

Did we have National Women Health Week before? We're going to look into that.

We have to look into that. We're going to look into that.

Did we ever find out where this request came from?

I don't know where this request came from. Vicki might know.

I think we received a letter from the National Men's Health Week from D.C.,

I would think I would have got a notice.

All men. All right, any other discussion or comments? Madam Clerk, if you'll call the roll, please.

Ms. Biggs? Aye. Mr. Grafsky? Aye. Ms. Caron? Aye. Mr. Kitts? Aye. Mr. King? Aye. Mr. Fijikowski? Aye. Chair DeMonts? Aye. Seven ayes.

Okay, now we're moving into reports. County Attorney's Report.

Madam Chair, I have no report, other than the petition will be filed tomorrow.

Okay, thank you. County Administrator's Report.

I wanted to first say I have a little report, but I love that periodic table, too. That's just awesome. I really like that. It's such a great visualization, and I am a nerd, too, from a different genre or discipline, but I do love that. Thank you. I had the opportunity to meet with our planning, zoning, building staff. departments and the engineering department as well with the home builders association last week chris and scott met with them for the entire meeting i joined for the first portion it's really a good opportunity for us to get to meet with the development community and share information continue to build good relationships and get feedback from the members of the association about things that the county can do to provide the best service possible to that group And then Vice Chair Fischkowski shared some information with staff recently regarding a federal grant funding availability under the Department of Transportation Federal Railroad Administration called the Railroad Crossing Elimination and Crossing Safety Planning Grant. So staff is working to submit that application. It's due June the 8th, and that will provide funding to help. plan for improvements and study improvements to railroad crossings near Cove Hollow and Newtown that have been issues of concern in Steve's district lately. And then the last thing I had, I think some of you already know this, maybe all of you do, but we'll brag for everyone else who's watching. The county received a VACO Achievement Award again this year, and this time it's for the Coordinated Crisis Response with Hurricane Helene Boil Water Advisory Management Initiative. And the award recognizes the county's collaborative response efforts during that boil water advisory. James Hutzler from VACO will be here at the June 8th meeting to present that officially to us. So we'll look forward to that.

Thank you, Angie. And now we'll move into Supervisor's Reports, and we'll start with Supervisor King.

No report.

All right. He's setting a trend. Supervisor Kitts. No report. Supervisor Biggs.

Just three things. On May 12th at the airport meeting, I want you to know that the budget is good and we've already sold enough fuel to surpass what we actually had planned for last year's budget. Hopefully that will continue into next year's budget. And then on May 15th, Vice Chair Fijikowski and I attended the Law Enforcement Memorial Ceremony at the Public Safety Building. It was a short but very solemn and meaningful ceremony. IF YOU EVER GET A CHANCE TO GO BY THERE AND YOU CAN SEE ON THE MONUMENT THE FOLKS' NAMES THAT HAVE GIVEN THEIR LIVES. I WANTED TO REPORT THAT ON MAY 20TH AT OUR JOINT WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT BOARD AND CONSORTIUM BOARD MEETING, AGAIN, WE ARE FACED WITH THIS IS LIKE THE NEW RIVER MOUNT ROGERS. IT'S COMBINED. with the federal funding issue and them not knowing if they're going to get their money, their grant money, and it's always a big issue, and then we have to come back and sweat it out, and we have people and their jobs are depending on helping the clients to... you know, to find jobs. So keep your fingers crossed for that. And the new executive director has said that she would be happy to come any time to talk to you all about what they do for our citizens here. Her name is Jenny Baltz. So if you guys would like that, when we don't have a really heavy agenda, maybe we can get her to come. But she's sweating it out, we're sweating it out, and let's just hope the people that are impacted by these programs, when you hear their stories, they're so good. And it's just a shame that we have to go through this. We've been going through it now for two years. So, and the money is just being cut back. There is a foundation that Marty Holliday has established for us to be able to raise some money to actually give, so. Anyway, that was the report on that, so that's it. Thank you.

Supervisor Grafsky?

I do not have a report this evening.

Supervisor Caron? I have one fun thing to report that I did. I got invited to talk at Christiansburg Middle School for the National Junior Honor Society group by Marty Hale, and it was on civic engagement and local government. So it was 150, I think, Christiansburg Middle School kids listened to me. And a couple of them asked when we meet, at what time we meet. So who knows? You may have some future individuals to come and talk to us about what they need. So it was kind of nice, yeah.

That's great. Vice Chair Fijikowski.

I appreciate, Angie, you bring up that grant for the railroad. We definitely have two places in my district that need to be looked at and nothing has been done and there's been a lot of complaints over the years and I'm hoping that this grant will come through and we'll at least get some money to do some planning. I think one of the areas probably not so hard to figure out a solution, but the other one is going to take some, some serious engineering. So, uh, uh, I appreciate that opportunity and I hope that we can get that money. And, uh, the last thing I'll mention is be sure to contact your delegate and ask them why we don't have a state budget.

Thank you. And then I have just two, well, one of them, Gun and I might call on you for some assistance because I am speaking to a group of rural Virginia middle schoolers, so kind of a statewide group on June 17th about civic engagement and activism. So I might give you a call and compare notes. And then the other item, I just wanted to share another reminder that the Blacksburg Museum and Cultural Foundation is hosting an event at the St. Luke's and Oddfellows Hall on June the 6th. That's a gospel sing, and St. Luke's and Oddfellows Hall is... in the historical African-American neighborhood in Blacksburg. And so if you are interested, it's a fun event. It's kind of drop-in. You don't have to come and stay for the whole time. There'll be a food truck, lots of opportunities to test your pipes and sing along. A lot of good performers will be there as well. So that is on Saturday, January the 6th, starting at noon in downtown Blacksburg. So please do mark your calendars for that. And seeing nothing else, this meeting is adjourned.