Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Okay, I'm going to call to order this meeting of the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors on Monday, June 8th. Our first order of business tonight 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, one, discussion, consideration, or interviews of prospective candidates for employment, assignment, appointment, promotion, performance, demotion, salaries, disciplining, or resignation of specific officers, appointees, or employees of any public body. One, Board of Zoning Appeals. Is there a motion? So moved.

Second.

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

Mr. Kitts?

Aye.

Mr. King? Aye. Mr. Fijikowski? Aye. Ms. Bix? Aye. Mr. Grafsky? Aye. Ms. Caron? Aye. Chair DeMond? Aye. Seven ayes.

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

Second.

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

Mr. King.

Aye.

Aye.

Mr. Fitchikowski. Aye. Ms. Biggs. Aye. Mr. Grasky. Aye. Ms. Caron. Aye. Mr. Kitts. Aye. Chair DeMont. Aye. Seven ayes.

Okay, and our next step is to certify the closed meeting. 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.

Thank you. Madam clerk, if you'll call the roll, please.

Mr. Pichikowski. Aye. Ms. Biggs. Aye. Mr. Graftsky. Aye. Ms. Caron. Aye. Mr. Kitts. Aye. Mr. King. Aye. Chair DeMoss. Aye. Seven ayes.

Next is a moment of silence and pledge of allegiance led by our County Administrator, 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.

All right, to kick things off tonight, we have a really exciting award presentation. This is from the Virginia Association of Counties, and it's going to be presented by James Hutzler with VACO, and I think we have some members of staff that might also join. Welcome, sir, thanks for coming.

Hello, Madam Chair. Thank you for having me. Madam Chair, members of the Board, good evening. As the Chair said, I'm James Hutzer with the Virginia Association of Counties. It's my distinct privilege to present the VACO Achievement Award for the benefit of those who are not familiar with the Association of Counties or VACO. We've existed since 1934 to uh serve and support your efforts as county officials and we do this in many ways through our advocacy at the state level and at the federal level and through our member engagement communications and other certifications that we run out of the association in 2003 we established our achievement award program to recognize counties that have adopted innovative approaches to providing public services and identifying programs that could serve as models for other counties to emulate i'm proud to present montgomery county this year with an award for their coordinated crisis great title coordinated crisis response montgomery county's hurricane helene boil water advisory management and before we call up staff i'd like to say as someone who lives in the city of richmond i think boiled water advisory crisis management especially around drinking water is incredibly important because of the winter storms of i think last year yeah that was that was a fun time so this is definitely a uh a nice public service model we'd like to share around the Commonwealth. So I would like to call up someone from the county who has a little bit more experience in this and they could talk more about their hands-on workings with this program.

Welcome, Jen.

Thank you. I have with me, Christina bolt with the town of Christiansburg as well. Thank you for having us tonight. Thank you for letting us, uh, have this presentation. Thanks for traveling for this. So as you know, that was a, I don't know if that was sarcastic, the great title or, uh, or what, but we were chuckling about that. Uh, really, we just want it to come tonight to explain to you that we are two of many people that were part of a water task force. And one of the things that we highlighted in our nomination, and I'm thankful that VACO saw how relevant and how important it was because we were very proud of the coordinated effort that we put forth in responding to the water crisis, and I think the fact that we have such good relationships and collaboration with our town partners and really throughout our community is why we were able to respond so well to that. And there are a couple things. It was obviously the towns of Blacksburg and Christiansburg, Montgomery County, Michael Geary and his team with our EMS here at our Fire and EMS Department. We had Virginia Tech. community college, New River Community College. We had the Montgomery County Public Schools. Huge list, the hospitals, the state agencies that showed up to help us. So it was very much a collaborative, widespread effort. And the biggest thing that I wanted to say is that while it's an honor for Montgomery County to get this award, really the recognition belongs to so many organizations and individuals who showed up and helped, especially those who actually got us back online with water, those operators that were in the field, making sure that we were able to do that. And there's one more thing that I want to tout, and I think Christina may have some more insight into this as well, was our GIS folks. So when we found out that we had to deal with this water crisis, we thought that it was going to be a short-lived experience, and we thought we were going to be able to just say, okay, boil your water, okay, do this today, and then a couple days later, you don't have to do it anymore. Well, that didn't happen. It was a 12-day journey. And thanks to Caleb Taylor at the Water Authority, he was very helpful in guiding us through this as well. And once we learned that it was not going to be a short-lived experience. We realized that we had to lift the water notice in a phased approach. And so one of the big things that I think the state and other folks have taken away, yet again, using Montgomery County as a model, is the way our GIS folks created a map so that people could enter their address to see if the boil water notice had been lifted for their area. And so that was one of the things that really stood out to me was just the collaboration and being able to work together.

Yeah, I agree 100%. I think we are very fortunate in our area to have great working relationships and be able to pick up the phone and ask questions and have tough conversations. And I think that that is a big part of what set Montgomery County, Christiansburg, Blacksburg, and all the other partners apart from maybe some other areas. One thing I did want to say was just to tout Jen a little bit. She really helped pull the team together, helped with just organization and facilitation and keeping us on track and the way that her and Michael Geary worked together to pull in the different types of key players that we needed in this conversation. We were meeting a lot. We were meeting every day at some point for, yeah, twice a day. And Jen really helped keep us on schedule and rally the troops. And the way that I think we all were able to work together and always work together is really a sign that our staff at all localities in Montgomery County really are invested in being a partner and a team player. Thank you all for the gift that you've given us with Jen and all the great work that she does to help bring us closer together. Thank you.

Totally forgot to show off the award. I don't know why I'm holding it to my vest. Yeah, I guess in closing, just want to say that in these very interesting times, intergovernmental cooperation and transparent governance is key. And I think this award shows that Montgomery County really highlights that as a priority. So again, congratulations. And I guess I'll see you guys next year when you win another one. Thank you so much.

Thank you, James and Christina and Jen. Thank you both for being here and for your comments. This is really, I think, representative of so much that we do collaboratively, but your work is so incredibly valuable to every citizen that lives in our community. I don't know if any board members had anything that they wanted to add.

Well, shouldn't we applaud? Well, yeah, we'll do that.

Vice chair Pijakowski.

Yeah, I would just say that this is another example of how the New River Valley pulls together, specifically Montgomery County and the towns within, because this was a crisis. I can't imagine going home and my wife tells me, hey, we can't use any water for 12 days. But I live on a well, so... of immune to that but it is it's just another example how this area just pulls together they get it together they make a plan and they they get it done and it's fantastic thank you so that's an excellent segue to the applause great job everybody

All right. So, um, we have another very exciting presentation following that one. Um, this is the County of Montgomery fire and rescue organizations agreed upon procedures report. Um, and I apologize. I don't know your name, sir, but I know you're from Brown Edwards.

Travis Gilmers here with us this evening. And, uh, before he gets started, we refer to this as an audit. It's not technically an audit for, um, in the CPA world. It's agreed upon procedures. An audit would entail a whole lot more, and Travis might talk about that. But welcome, Travis. We appreciate you being here.

Yeah, thank you for having me. It's a tough act to follow, getting such an outstanding award. You send the auditor up here to follow up. I see how it is. But as I said, I'm Travis Gilmer. I'm a director out of Brian Edwards, out of our Roanoke office, and just here to present the results of the agreed upon procedures engagement. It's commonly referred to an AUP. We performed on Montgomery County fire and rescue organizations. And agreed upon procedures engagement is when we perform specific tests that management or stakeholders ask us to perform and report exactly what we found without giving an opinion, which is largely the big difference between that and an audit. The procedures are predefined. and agreed to upfront. We only test those specific areas and we report facts, not conclusions or any type of assurance. The AUP we conducted and the procedures we performed on the fire and rescue organizations were very similar to other AUPs we do for other localities. So very familiar with this type of work. As you're aware, the organizations receive allocations or funding from the county and the AUP was designed to test several different financial areas in order to determine potential areas of improvement of financial stewardship. Some of the areas we tested included the form 990, bank reconciliations, disbursements, reimbursements, a review of check register and cancel checks, receipt tests, credit card transactions, petty cash, and revenue and expense comparison. So pretty much touched everything. And what you'll have is we issued two deliverables. The thicker one, it's about 24 or so pages, is the AUP report. This has all of the detailed findings or exceptions that we noted for each organization. And it's broken down by the financial area that we tested for each organization. And then to make it, this is a lot of information to somewhat take in a lot of findings. So what we did for the county's sort of benefit is we issued a second deliverable, which is this management advisory letter of agreed upon procedures. This letter highlights our general observations as well as our suggestions for improvements for each of the financial areas that we tested for the organizations. The one thing that I'll say is that anytime we do a first year, you know, whether it be an audit, AUP, we're testing the organization based on sometimes procedures that they're not used to. Right? So now that we've established the procedures that they're sort of going to be judged by, we've given them recommendations to improve and strengthen some of their internal controls and some of their processes. It's going to take a little bit of time to implement that. If you think about we're already in June, we're issuing this now. They haven't had a whole lot of time to digest and implement a lot of our suggestions. So we really probably won't see the benefit of our engagement until probably FY27 once they've actually had a substantial amount of time to implement these things. But a lot of the findings and the exceptions that we had in our report are very kind of common things that you would see in volunteer organizations. There was nothing that we saw in our testing would cause us concern or alarm. Are there areas for improvement in terms of implementing policies, shoring up documentation? Absolutely, but there was nothing that we saw gross that would cause this alarm.

I wanted to also thank the Fire and Rescue Chiefs and Treasurers, the volunteers. I know they spend a lot of time pulling information together and working with you and your staff. And so we do appreciate them very much. And they're technically the clients. They're the ones that engaged with Brown-Ebers. And as we stated, when this process began, the county is paying for the audits. But they have already received the... You met with them last week, I think, is that right? Or two weeks ago?

Yeah, about two weeks ago, I think, yeah.

And then at a future Fire and Rescue Commission meeting, Travis or someone from Brown Edwards will come and present this as well. The meeting that was originally scheduled for this week has been rescheduled because several chiefs had scheduling conflicts, so that will be presented at that meeting as well.

Yeah, and also they were really great to work with. I know it's difficult going through this the first time, and gathering all this documentation for us, but they were really great to work with, really receptive. And I'll say the meeting that we had with them, they were really receptive to our feedback. The general consensus that I got is that they wanted to do everything to the best of their ability. Sure, they're volunteers, but they still, I feel, took a lot of pride in their work. And so we had a great meeting, and so definitely look forward to the next one as well.

Great, thank you. Board members, does anybody have any questions? Okay, we really appreciate this information and the work that Brown Edwards has continued to help us with here in Montgomery County. Thank you for being here this evening. Thank you, appreciate it. Thanks. And we have one final very exciting presentation this evening from the Virginia Department of Transportation. We have David Clark to give us some updates on road projects and issues throughout the county. Welcome, sir. Thank you.

Good evening, everybody.

I'll go through a couple of things we've been working on in the last month and start by saying that it's been a pretty good last month of the year. We paid for it this winter with all the snow, but what that did was it kept us from spending our maintenance money because we're funded separately between snow and maintenance. We spent so much time on snow that we didn't dip into our maintenance funds as much as we had in years past, usually really tighten our belts at this time of year, but we've been doing a lot of really good work right up to the end of the fiscal year. And that's been using this opportunity to get a lot of patching done. We've done some in some of the subdivisions. We did a good bit of patching on Piney Woods Road, Meadow Creek, Fairview Church. Did some on... Orwell, Sweeney, Daisy Road, Wake Forest. So on Walton Road, a lot of good patching on Walton Road. Did some pipe replacements on Route 8 and on Camp Carriesbrook Road. Did a big pipe replacement, required us to close the road during the evening at Walton Road and Peppers Ferry. That was in anticipation of the project that's coming up later this year that'll put some turn lanes at that intersection. intersection of Walton and Price's Fork. And then just the normal hauling stone, picking up lots of dead animals and doing some brush cutting, tree trimming, did a lot of that on Piney Woods as well, also on Stanley Road. I told Mr. Grasky, we did get the pothole on Merrimack. It was right there on the edge. We just went and took care of it. Thank you. Yeah, and I meant to send you something back on that. A question came up about signs that we usually or used to put up for for deaf children. We just have a sign called deaf child area. They don't do that so much anymore. I don't know if an exception can be done, but just to let the board supervisors know that we've kind of changed some of that. We can work around some of that by doing a watch for children, which is what the county does. So just keep in mind that in the future, you may see some of them still up, but we don't put any new ones of that. A lot of that came actually from the hearing impaired community who, you know, warned us that you know putting a sign up kind of alerts everyone that there could be somebody who in that area um in a good way that you know they can't hear but also someone that could be vulnerable to other kinds of uh stuff in that area so we just don't put those up much anymore and I think that's all I have. We will start on Taylor Hollow Road later this year. We've got a couple other things that are going to be coming later. I'll let you know about those. We've got some bridge projects coming up that will require detours on Bradshaw Road, and we've got some on Eagle Brook. We're doing a pipe on Eagle Brook off of Smith Creek Road subdivision. Not the Smith Creek Road subdivision, the Eagle Brook subdivision that will require... A permanent lane closure, that'll have to be, since there is no way to detour that, that's gonna be controlled by a signal. Just a couple of those bridge projects that are coming up. And I'll let you know, the Bradshaw Road one's not for another year, but we're starting on the process of it now. And that's an easy detour on Flatwoods. It's not a real long detour. We've used Flatwoods as a detour for stuff on Bradshaw Road before. That's all I have.

Okay. One question to kick things off. Are you planning on staying for both the public hearing and for the new business on the six-year plan tonight? Yes, I will stay for that. Okay, perfect. So I will save my questions about that until later.

I hope you don't have much on the public hearing part because I don't know a lot about that one.

Supervisors, does anybody have any questions? You always have questions. I'll come to you last. Supervisor Kitts.

So standard question, the Radford Army Arsenal flashing sign that the contract was awarded.

I don't have a date on it yet.

They assure me that it's coming. I'll try to pin them down on a date. It's a hope thing. Okay. And then the other one was the traffic portion, but that's the same thing we've talked about before.

Yeah. And it's going to be under construction pretty soon here. Okay. So hopefully that'll take care of it as well.

All right. Thank you.

Supervisor Grafsky.

Hey, thanks for being here tonight and thanks for getting Merrimack, uh, patched up there at the intersection. Um, you mentioned, you know, having been out on wake forest, I, um, I still need to follow up with, um, one of the residents out there, but I did get an email about them saying that. from their perspective, whatever got done made some situation worse. So I've got to follow up with him and gets, I just wanted to give you a heads up and I'll follow up with you.

It was not like a contractor patching kind of thing. That's going to come hopefully either next year or the year after with a owner overlay schedule. Um, it's some of the patching that we do with the motivator and our, and our guys just trying to fix some of the stuff. Yeah.

Okay. I'll, I'll talk to them and get back with you.

Yeah. DEFINITELY A PATCH, NOT A PAVING JOB. IT'S NO MISTAKING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO. SURE THING. THANK YOU.

SUPERVISOR KRAM. THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE. I FEEL LIKE EACH TIME I HAVE TO REPORT POTHOLES NOW. YEAH. THIS IS ACTUALLY A LITTLE DIFFERENT, I GUESS, BUT I ATTENDED WOODLAND HILLS HOMEOWNER ASSOCIATION My predecessor apparently lived in that neighborhood and she attended, so they invited me. I think they were overall happy that some of the potholes are fixed, but for Donnelly's cave, they're really concerned that the overall pavement due to wear and tear of the truck traffic probably needs to be, you know, more like a complete pave and I don't know if you know or...

I know Woodland Hills is on the paving schedule. Okay. Nellie's Cave, though, I think is still just patching that one, yeah. But that'll take the Woodland Hills part. I know the trucks go all the way down to Lester's Gate. So it will do that part off from Nellie's Cave down to Lester's Gate as well.

Okay. Thank you.

Mm-hmm.

Supervisor Biggs. I just wanted to thank you for attending to the Wake Forest Road because the person that keeps calling me doesn't really live there, but goes down there all the time. And they're concerned about that whole situation.

Yeah, we'll keep an eye on that. And we did so on Daisy Road too, which is the one right next to it.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, thank you. Vice Chair Fijikowski.

Well, yeah. Did you get a chance to read that email from our planning director? I think my name was mentioned on it for friendship road.

Yes.

Did, was anybody ever able to go out there?

Yeah, it's going to take some, is that the drainage one? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to, we're working on that. That's, that's, it's going to, that'll take some planning. Let's put it that way. And there's a lot of patching to do on front, but mostly on the Seneca hollow end, but, but on friendship as well.

Okay. So that is on the right away.

I believe so. We're going to have to clear out the, well, I didn't go out there and look at it, but my maintenance manager went out and said, Oh yeah, we got some drainage work to do here.

Yeah. It's, it almost looks like something out of the jungle because it's a little body of water, but it's covered with some kind of green slime. So you can't really tell how deep it is.

And I was curious, I mean on right away, but we might, I think we have an easement for just the drainage part of that.

That brings to mind a question. On a driveway that's right up to the road, is that the drain under the driveway, is that VDOT's responsibility or is that the landowner?

The way we've done it in the past, and we keep changing this, but it depends on what it is. If it's a creek, it is not because VDOT doesn't get into live stream. But if it's a VDOT ditch, generally on a new entrance permit, the property owner buys the pipe and we'll install it and then we will replace it. in most cases.

All right. Well, when it comes to that one, if you keep me informed on that one, as it progresses, uh, the other question I had was, uh, uh, we had the, um, that project at the intersection of route four 60 in Allegheny Springs, um, was approved several years ago. Do you know when that would be?

I think that's being advertised later this year. Is it? Okay. That's coming pretty soon.

Okay. That's all I got. Thank you.

And I have something, which is rare for me, but this again is in Supervisor Grafsky's district. I have a work colleague that I interact with frequently. 1815 Mary Mack Road, which sits on a jurisdictional boundary. There is a large pothole there. And it, over the weekend, almost caused an accident, blew a tire in that pothole. So if you wouldn't mind taking a look at that, it could be the town of Blacksburg's responsibility. I did direct him both to VDOT and to the town of Blacksburg because it's a bound, I mean, that's literally the line. And so I wasn't really sure how to

We'll take a look at and if we determine that it's not ours. We'll we'll go ahead and contact the town Okay to do it great and thank you for doing that other pothole at the other end I appreciate I was close enough to 460 they were uh, yeah 460 business that we

And then one final thing, and I apologize. For whatever reason, this never sticks in my head. If I'm coming down the bypass from Blacksburg to Christiansburg, in the left lane as you're going down to the dip, there are three potholes that have popped out along that left lane as you're going down into the dip. And I managed to hit every single one every time.

I think I actually saw one of those today.

Yeah, yeah. They've popped out probably with shrink and swell, and so there's three of them right in a row. And Supervisor Grafsky?

Yeah, so 1815, I think that's the one that last time you were here I talked about. It's right before Apple, I think it's Apple Lane, the new subdivision that's going up there. On Merrimack, yeah, I know the pothole that you're talking about.

You know the pothole.

I know the pothole. We're on a first-name basis.

It's a pothole that has been repaired, so it could have been repaired, and the repair has come back out as of Saturday. Okay.

If it was repaired in the winter, those two tend to come out. We should be able to get it better now that asphalt plants are running and we've got warm weather.

Thank you. All right, anything else? Any more potholes? All right, great. Thank you, and we'll see you again this evening. Okay, next we have a public hearing. This is for a drainage and construction, excuse me, drainage and construction easements to VDOT and a water line easement to the Public Service Authority for the Route 8 widening project. And I don't know, Marty, did you have something to add before we open the public hearing?

The only thing I would add is that anytime the board's asked to dedicate a property interest, you have to hold a public hearing. unless the interest is associated with some type of development that you're doing, which this isn't the case is the VDOT project. And it's right in front of, um, the Auburn high school, middle school property that the board is the owner of. Okay.

Do any board members have any questions before we open the public hearing? Okay. Um, so I'm going to read the guidelines for the public hearing this. These are also the guidelines for public address. So I'll just read them one time. Um, a public, Sorry, I just got multiple alerts on my computer. A public address sign-up sheet was available outside of the meeting room. Following the names on the sign-up sheet, other speakers will be allowed. Each speaker has four minutes, whether speaking as an individual or representative, and all comments must be directed to the chair and other supervisors from the speaker's lectern at the front of the room. Please begin by stating your name and where in the county you reside, and 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. So for the public hearing related to the easements, we did have a sign up sheet in the hallway. We didn't have anybody sign up in advance to speak. Is there anybody in the room that would like to speak on this topic? Seeing no one come forward, I'm going to close the public hearing. And then that will move us into public address. And we also had a sign-up sheet for public address in the hallway. We didn't have anybody sign up on the sign-up sheet. Is there anybody in the room that would like to come forward to make a comment during public address? Come on up. Welcome.

My name is Crystal Mello. I live at 992 Poplar Hollow Road, Shellsville, Virginia. I meant to send this attachment with the email that I sent y'all today, so if I can pass it around later, y'all are all welcome. And sorry for the confusion. I didn't mean to say I had sent you an email. So I'm sorry if you spent way too much time. I meant to say DEQ had sent y'all an email. Sending emails is not my thing. So I appreciate it. And I had read it over like three or four times. I am confused about that. The site suitability thing. And I was just trying to read yours real quick before I came in and then try to read the one that they sent you. So I guess I'll come back maybe with some more questions about that. But what I would really like is in the past, since the end of April, We've been able to present to the Virginia Council on Environmental Justice with our Ellison-Lafette 22 household study. And we were also able to get in front of Lieutenant Governor Hashmi. Recently, both of our asks were to come and do a site visit and to visit our area, and they both agreed. So I think that the study says a lot, that people are interested in this community. I would love to be able to present that to y'all. I don't know what I need to do, like if I need to ask a board member and then somebody says aye, and then we can put it on the agenda. But I would love to be able to present that to y'all. I appreciate... Todd, you are always speaking about the K economy. You're the one that always does bring that up. I feel like people in this part of town have been living in that K economy much longer than what folks are now just feeling. So this is even more of an issue. But in this presentation, you will learn that we have three air monitors down there and have been monitoring that area for multiple years. and that 67% of the year they're already breathing bad air. That's where this compressor station will be. On North Fork, I think it's 54% of the year they're breathing horrible air, and then at the train tracks on the other side, it's 63% of the year they're breathing bad air. So I know that site thing is about air pollution. I just would like for y'all to be better informed about what's going on down here in Elliston. And thank you for looking into the grant for the railroad. I would like to add cannery on that as penny artists is the one that brought all this to our attention. They do get blocked way more than Cove or Newtown. And she, in that community, is also blocked in by the Roanoke gas tap station and the pipeline. I think that's all. Thank you all so much. Reach out. I would love to do this presentation. Thank you.

Come on up. Welcome.

Thank you. I'm Elizabeth Struthers-Malvern. I live in Blacksburg in District A of the county. I have had the opportunity to read the letter that Crystal referred to from the DEQ to the board and all the assessments that was with it. And the board, excuse me, the DEQ points out to the board that there's a conflict in the content of two communications from the board. One would be that when they fill out this form, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality Land Use Suitability and Value form, that says it's suitable, the site in Elliston is suitable for this one compressor station that MVP wants to build there. But the other thing is they received a resolution from the board which says that basically it's not a suitable site for several different reasons, but one of the main ones was the train blockages that frequently occur to the people living in Cove Hollow Road and would be a block, even an emergency situation with the compressor station. And you have to ask yourself, how suitable is it to have the fire station in the blast zone of a compressor station, when the fire station is supposed to be ground zero of helping people in an emergency, and they're the first thing to blow up. So the DEQ is asking the board, so is it suitable or is it not suitable? But I want to make a comment about how the conflict between these two things in terms of form, not in terms of content, not what they say, but how they were how the decisions were made that led to those being made. I was there when the resolution was made. It was a very active night. There was a lot of citizen comment, impassioned about the difficulties of getting blocked by the train. You know, if someone has a heart attack, someone breaks a leg, you know, and the train is there for three hours, six hours, what do you do? You can't climb over the train. And the board voted to write this resolution saying this was really a problem. It was not suitable because of that. So that was made in a very democratic way at a public meeting with public comment and a public vote. The other decision was made in a bureaucratic way by the county attorney. But when you look at the form, this is what the county attorney had to sign. The undersigned local government representative states, the local governing body has resolved that. The local governing body has resolved that. That's you. You have resolved that the location and operation of the proposed facility or activity is suitable to the area in which it's located. Did you resolve that? I know that my voice as the citizen was taken away when that was signed, but I think your voice as Board of Supervisors was also taken away. I don't know that anyone has said there was a meeting when you discussed that. And the form just looks like a check-off thing. But that's the problem with democracy. If you just check off things and don't consider what is at stake, you'd lose your democracy. So it's very important that you represent us. But it's also very important that you get to represent yourself. And if you don't even get to represent yourself, then we're all in difficulty. I think we would all know better than that now. I certainly hope that you do. Thank you. Thank you.

Would anybody else like to come forward during public address to speak to the board on any topic? Come forward. Welcome.

Hi, my name is Josh Vanna. Um, live in district F and I'd like to, um, echo the comments of crystal Nello and, um, my colleagues and friends, um, in the fight against the mountain Valley pipeline and MVP boost and the Swan compressor station, um, would really like to encourage the board to consider and welcome a presentation. from local folks about a door-to-door study that was done in Elliston Lafayette and indicating that this is not an area that is suitable for a 136,900 horsepower frack gas compressor station that will be blowing all sorts of air pollutants, particulate matter, known carcinogens like formaldehyde and benzene into the air where it will not surely just blow east with the wind directly over poor mountain. I think that the county and the board find themselves in a very interesting and kind of troubling position where Everyone is being told that FERC authority totally has the last say about all of this. But I think in regard to the site suitability form as it regards air pollution, I would find it very, I find it a very flimsy argument that the suitability form does not have any significance. Think it it does sort of appear from the public standpoint to be treated as a bit of box exercise box checking exercise rather pardon me Why would the board need or why would the county have to fill out a site suitability form if it doesn't matter? You know if the federal government Can do whatever it wants in regard to the zoning and siting of such a facility, then why would they need to contact the county at all to ask for this certification? So I think there are a lot of issues around the air pollution that need to be EXAMINED AND UNCOVERED AND THE BOARD HAS I THINK ONE OF THE THE MOST AVAILABLE ROLES TO ADVOCATE FOR LOCAL FOLKS IN THAT REGARD AND YOU KNOW I AM TRYING TO MAKE SENSE OF ONGOING COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY AND IT SEEMS THEY'RE TRYING TO FIGURE OUT the difference between the county's position on how this will likely harm local residents if built And as a safety concern, the difference between that and a box that is checked on a site suitability form saying that all of this is fine. So I would very much encourage the board to receive a presentation from Crystal Mello and the Power Coalition, especially examining their pollution issues. DEQ is treating this as a minor source. We defeated a compressor station for MVP that would have been roughly 30,000 horsepower in Chatham. Um, The Buckingham Compressor Station for Atlantic Coast Pipeline in Buckingham County next to an EJ community in Union Hill would have been 56,000 horsepower. This would be more than twice that size. And to have the ongoing sort of narratives around this is going to be something that more or less is out of sight, out of mind, doesn't impact local residents, I think is an extremely dangerous path to go down as regards public health. So we look forward to hopefully giving you a presentation and talking more about it. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. Is there anybody else that would like to come forward to speak during public comment? Seeing no one else come forward, we're going to close public address, and we will move into work session. This evening on work session, we have two items, Montgomery Matters, part five, the village plans, and a discussion around standalone tow yard land use regulations. Is there a motion to go into work session? Motion. Second.

Is there any discussion?

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

Ms. Biggs? Aye. Mr. Gretzky? Aye. Ms. Caron? Aye. Mr. Kitts? Aye. Mr. King? Aye. Mr. Fijikowski? Aye. Chair DeMott? Aye. Seven ayes.

Great. Welcome, Justin.

Good evening. It's good to be with you. This will be our last work session on Montgomery Matters before we move into public hearings. And I think we saved the best for last. So over the course of the past two years, we were working on the larger Montgomery Matters comprehensive plan, but we were also doing our village engagement efforts. And I wanted to share with you this evening just a few highlights of the engagement process and sort of a CliffsNotes version of each of the village plans and then take any questions that you all might have. So I thought it would be a good place to start with how the village plans fit within the larger comprehensive plan and our land use strategy for the county. So again, the village areas are very important because that is where over the past several decades, the county has invested money in infrastructure improvements. We have public water and sewer. We have transportation improvements that have happened in the village areas. So while the entire county is very important from a land use perspective, we take the extra effort to look at the village level to make sure that the investments that we're doing there are well thought out. And then we're being very sensitive to the existing community there. So the village plans help us to guide development in each of the villages while maintaining their distinct character. It helps the village residents have a voice throughout the process and how their community should develop over the next 20 years. It helps us take those overarching goals that were adopted in parts one through four of the plan, and it helps us to develop village specific policies to support those larger goals. It helps us to determine what growth is appropriate for the village in terms of scale and mixture of amenities. And I also wanted to talk about some of the common themes that we saw when we were doing our village engagement. We heard a lot from citizens that they wanted to look at transportation not just as automotive transportation but in multimodal terms. So this is ensuring that we have good pedestrian connections within the village and that we have access to mass transit as well. Growth management is probably the thing we heard the most throughout the villages and as we talked about in our last work session, the creation of those growth areas is a way for us to take some of that development pressure off the villages and then look at the growth that's happening in the villages in a much more intentional way. And as I mentioned, that clustering of public services in the villages, I almost think of those as spokes for county services. Those are where some of our libraries are located, our schools are in the villages. And again, we have that public water and sewer infrastructure there to support development. In our existing comprehensive plan and going forward, all of our villages will remain urban development areas, as well as the two growth areas will be UDAs. That opens us up to funding opportunities that are not available outside of UDAs. So particularly when we look at transportation improvements, that helps us score much better on those funding applications. So I wanted to run through the timeline over the past two years that we've gone through with village engagement. So we kicked off this process, as you'll remember, back in June of 2024 with some community surveys. We also did social pinpoint mapping activities to get feedback from the community about what parts of the village they visited the most often, what needed improvement, and what they would wanna see going forward. Throughout the first part of 2025, we analyzed that data that we had gathered and we looked at the review of the engagement efforts that we had done over the past several months. And then last summer, we did our first round of village engagement during our village meetings. I think that's the most impactful way that we can get feedback from the citizens, actually going out into the community, holding these meetings and hearing from the citizens what they wanna see in their community. Throughout the end of 2025, we did some additional data analysis, particularly as it related to land use. As you have heard throughout this process, our villages are areas that we have some environmentally sensitive areas. We have floodplain to deal with. We also have in the villages a number of conservation easements, those private preservation strategies that citizens have utilized to protect property from future developments. So all of that factored into our land use decisions as we moved forward. We went back into the villages this spring to share out the findings that we had taken from round one and to further hone those strategies and those approaches that we had identified throughout the first part of the process. And now we're in June where we're doing that final review of the village plans. So because those village meetings were, I think, the most important step in the process, I wanted to talk about how those were organized. I know a number of you were able to join us at the village meetings, but really we walked folks through stations. We had our staff there and we had staff from other departments there to answer those questions in real time and really get that feedback one-on-one from members of the community. We talked about the Montgomery Matters process and how the village plans fit into the larger comprehensive plan update. how the county currently viewed villages and what we saw for them going forward. We did some visioning within the village, talking about why the village matters to people, what qualities they would like to see in the village going forward. And we did an exercise where we talked about other communities that people liked to visit and the resources and amenities that were present there and how we may be able to bring those into our villages. And then, as I mentioned, the area that we probably got the most feedback was growth and land use. So we were talking not only about the types of development that folks wanted to see within the village areas, but where that development should go, what it should look like, how dense it should be, how the architectural character should look, and really dug very deeply into that because again, helping people to visualize what the future can look like is really helpful as we talk about future land use. We had a great opportunity as well to partner with our parks and recreation department as they're going through the parks master plan updates. We had a station at each village meeting to get feedback. The board has invested so much resource into the communities through parks and recreation, opening new parks in our village areas, and we wanted to see how we could continue that momentum forward. And lastly, we asked the citizens how they wanted to stay involved with the process. And I'm happy to say that we had a number of repeat participants from the round one of village engagement into round two. So they were really able to sort of see that through line as we move through the process. So I mentioned that data analysis that we did particularly related to land use. The image there on the left, that is response times for emergency services. As we talked about last time when we were going through the village process, We really wanted to make sure that if we were recommending density in any particular area of the County, that we had the infrastructure to support it. And that meant making sure that we had good emergency response time in those areas. And ultimately that's why we, uh, recommended, uh, taking Bellevue and Plum Creek down to that rural village status. Um, because again, those response times weren't exactly where we wanted them to be at this point in time. We also did an available land analysis. You can see that there on the right. The areas in pink are the areas that are considered developable land. This is after we took out those environmentally sensitive areas, areas that were in floodplain, areas that were in steep slope. So what you can see there, and this is the Shawville-Elliston village map, all of that white area is deemed undevelopable within the village. So we had to be very cautious as we moved forward about where we were recommending development within the village boundaries with these constraints in mind. So each village plan is organized in a way that talks about the village's purpose. We go into some history and character of the village and narrative form. We then have a vision statement for each village and associated goals for the villages, the future land use map, a series of actions, and those actions are categorized for one to five years, five to 10 years, and then 10 to 20 years in the future. Again, to help us prioritize the implementation of the plan as we go forward. And then each village plan also contains an engagement summary talking about all of the feedback that we received throughout the process. And I wanted to talk, before we get into the individual plans, just about land use in general. As I mentioned to you when we talked about the future land use map, one of the things we wanted to accomplish as staff throughout this process was really to simplify our land use approach as we went forward. So in addition to all of those land uses that happen in all the other unincorporated areas of the county, when we got down to the village level, we had even more land use categories, and we broke this down in the existing comprehensive plan by low density, medium density, and high density. We also had traditional neighborhood design, we had mixed use, we had civic, and then open space. And for developers, this became very confusing as they were looking to develop within the village boundaries and our citizens often didn't know what land use category they fell in. So we wanted to make sure that we simplified the process down, we combined these concepts into a much more user-friendly map. It also helped us to review the geographic infrastructure and transportation limitations that we had in the village, because as you can see in this map, the development recommendation went all the way to the village edges. And when we got into the data, we realized that this growth map really wasn't feasible when you looked at the land as it was actually in reality. And we also took that public feedback of where growth should be focused as we went forward. So as we further developed our land use map, we really came down to taking really two different land use categories within the village boundaries. We have what's called our village core, which is where that higher intensity village scale commercial and mixed-use development will take place. It's also where our civic and public uses are going to be focused. Then we have our village transition area, which is a lower intensity, primarily residential in nature, and is also where our parks and trails and some of those pedestrian connections that the citizens were telling us should be centered. And then as you can see there, the remainder of the village is in open space, preserved land, and that's where our agriculture and our single family housing would be within the village boundaries. So again, a much more straightforward approach, a much more user-friendly approach to land use in the villages. And while all the villages are unique, there were some cross-cutting themes and some actions that we saw in all the villages. So we wanted to make sure that we captured those as sort of an approach as we go through all the village development going forward. Some of the key takeaways from these actions is a focus on infill development and revitalization first. This is something that we heard over and over again from our village residents that they wanted to see those underutilized vacant and historic buildings revitalized and used for new purposes before new development comes in. And we know that there are going to be challenges to that approach. Obviously, older structures bring their own unique challenges. There are opportunities for us, however, to assist property owners and identify some incentive programs that are out there, tax abatement, historic tax credits, things of that nature that they may look at to actually make that revitalization happen on the grounds. Again, as I mentioned, pedestrian and multimodal connections were something that we heard from village residents throughout all of our village meetings. Continued improvements to public safety, and again, that goes to that issue of response time that I mentioned earlier. And again, that desire to balance growth and rural character. So I'm gonna go through each village here. I'm not gonna read you verbatim the village mission statement there. But what came out in each of the villages really was these communities identify as very close-knit small communities. And they wanted to see any growth, any development happen, honor that small town identity. But a number of our village residents recognize that growth has to happen. They need those services, they need those amenities to keep people in the community and to encourage people to move into the community to keep it strong. So what we did as we developed the goals with the community is that we made sure that those qualities that they were telling us were reflected in the goal statements as we move forward. So you'll see some repeated themes as we go through the goals for each village. Community and people, that was very important. A balance and protection of the rural and natural environment. Economic opportunity, and again, we're not talking about big retailers here. We're talking about small local shops. You know your neighbor who runs the corner store. Encouraging that sort of economic development happening within the villages. a sense of home and history, again, preserving what makes those individual communities unique and special, and providing good amenities and services. And that's quality schools, community spaces, transportation connections. So that's the Elliston Lafayette goals and vision statement. And when we look at their future land use map, the village core is the area that's denoted in the darker blue. Um, the areas that are on the map that are identified as village core, what we call downtown Ellison, the number of vacant and under-purposed historic buildings there around red 11, four 60, the area surrounding midway estates, the area surrounding the industrial park, and then the Ironto one 28 interchange is opportunities for future development. One of the ways that we determined where these areas should be located was not just the feedback that we received from the citizens but we looked at existing zoning in these areas and a number of these parts of the village are already zoned for general business or community business zoning. So our hope is that going forward that zoning barrier won't be there for future development in those particular areas. And then in our village transition areas, these are centered around existing residential housing clusters or potential development areas that are near employment and public facilities. Moving on to Price's Fork, again, I'm not gonna read the mission statement there, but again, some common themes again in that rural and natural environment, public services, heritage and identity. We had housing options that came up in Price's Fork and talking about local resources such as the community kitchen, and then also community and relationships. And you'll notice that even though the themes are repeated, the order of the themes are gonna be different from village to village, because they prioritize those goals in a different fashion as we went through the different communities. For the Prices Fork future land use map, you'll notice that the village core is focused primarily along Prices Fork Road, and it captures the existing development at the old Prices Fork Elementary School and those surrounding areas. What we heard from folks is that they wanted that commercial to front Prices Fork, and then they wanted that density to gradually decline as you got further away from Prices Fork. So the village transition areas capture those residential clusters that are adjacent to Prices Fork and the new subdivisions that have been constructed in the corridor. And it focuses development in and around those existing neighborhoods. When we got to Reiner, something that we heard as a primary goal was, again, public services. It's no shock to us that the fire station right there on the entrance to the village, people are very proud of their fire station and the emergency response that they receive in Reiner, so that ranked very high on the list of goals there, just to continue to support those services in the village. We heard a lot in Reiner about protection of that natural environment. And then we saw an additional goal here of housing options, making sure that we maintain a diverse housing stock within the village. For Rhiner's future land use map, again, the village core is focused primarily in downtown Rhiner. This is the area of Route 8 near the Rhiner Food Center, roughly bounded by Union Valley Road and down to the school. It captures the existing school area and other public facilities. As I mentioned to you last time, the fire station and Teal Park weren't in the existing village boundary. So you can see here we actually recommended growing the village to capture both of those resources as well as two intersections that we receive a lot of feedback on from the public and that's the intersection at Childress and then the Derry Road intersection. And again by bringing those into the village and into the urban development area it allows us to go for some transportation funding to bring some improvements to those intersections as we move forward. The village transition areas capture those existing residential clusters at Auburn Hills and the Cloverlea development while preserving adjacent farmland throughout the rest of the village boundary. And last but certainly not least, Shawville. Quality of life was the number one goal in Shawville as we went through the process. Again, supporting that small town feel. Again, that feeling of community and relationships and making sure that they have resources to support that small town environment and those community amenities. We heard a lot about Old Town Fields here and what a great community gathering place that is. And we heard a lot from citizens about the investments that have been continued in that area of the village. The Meadowbrook Center was also a resource that people talked about a lot. Folks spent a lot of time there and they want to see that as a continued community asset. So as we look at the future land use map for the Shawville Village, again in the dark blue is your village core. That captures the commercial and civic area there around the library and the Meadowbrook Center, as well as Shawville Middle School and Old Town Fields. And then our village transition areas capture those existing residential clusters and opportunity for future residential development. You'll notice here that the manufactured home community here is captured within our village transition area. We want to make sure that we're looking at housing not just as new development, but as potential redevelopment of existing housing. And we know that manufactured housing is an entry point for a number of folks into the housing market. So we want to make sure that we capture that in our transition area. So that is a very quick summary of all of the villages. I can go into depth and detail with any of the village plans as you have questions. But again, just going over our future schedule here, we will be holding a public hearing with the planning commission next Wednesday and we'll be back with you later this month for a public hearing on part five and the village plans. These are all available for the public on the Montgomery Matters website and we have hard copies in the public libraries as well as here at the government center. There's a drop box at all the libraries. Folks can leave anonymous feedback, and we will make sure to get that integrated before public hearing.

Great. Thank you very much. We've gotten to see a lot of you lately, so it's been a pleasure. All right. What kind of questions do we have for Justin this evening? I am not seeing any questions. All right. Thank you, sir.

You guys are letting me off easy this evening.

You just covered it so well. Thank you. Plus you provided the village plans, the drafts for us well in advance. So thank you for that. Very welcome. Thank you all very much. Thank you. All right. The next item that we have on this work session is related to zoning ordinance regulations for standalone tow yard land. land use regulations. I know that this was brought up by Supervisor King as an issue for the board to discuss, so I don't know if we want to have a staff presentation or Supervisor King open it.

Either one's fine with us. We're prepared to give a little information first.

Okay, yeah, go ahead.

Chris is going to do that.

Okay, great.

So the question that was presented to staff was how do we regulate tow yards standalone? And when we say standalone, it's all by itself independent. It's not associated necessarily with another business or related type of business. And our current zoning in the county does not define a tow yard. Therefore it doesn't create a land use in any district that it's allowed and in zoning The way zoning works is it tells you what you can do not what you can't do so if it's not listed Therefore you can't do it and if we can't fit it into a definition Then the default is it's not allowed so the alternative is you have to change the code ultimately if that's the desire of the board or the community to allow something. So that's where we are today. We do have a business. It is standalone. It has created a conflict. It is a zoning violation and we've been working with them, but there's nowhere for them to go because it's not allowed in the county by definition. So we've had this inherent struggle. The only option that is available that others have been able to use is it has to be part of like an accessory. So if you had a automobile repair shop and you had a tow yard attached to that, we've allowed that as an accessory, just not standalone. And in this specific case, that has not been available, has not worked out for this one business. So we also then went and looked at you know, what does our community do? Meaning, what's in the town of Christiansburg, what's in the town of Blacksburg? Because in a sense, that business works across all of our communities. Along the interstate, they work with state police, they work with local police departments, they work with, you know, anybody, whether that's AAA or anything. In the town of Christiansburg they do define what a tow yard is and they refer to it as a tow service and it is provided they have a definition and then in districts that they would allow it either by conditional use permit which is just like ours it's a permitted use through you know the legislation legislators the council's Action or by right and it is allowed in the town of Christiansburg in several different districts either by right or by conditional use permit And the town of Blacksburg they're similar to us they do not define it explicitly therefore it's not listed in any district they do have some but they are basically attached to like a garage or some type of automobile repair shop and that's what we've compared ourselves to. So ultimately if the board would like to consider evaluating what our zoning says and not waiting for an 18 month rewrite to the big zoning ordinance, which I think would seem appropriate to not wait, then we would just need direction from the board to proceed and take a look at it working through the planning commission and then bring you all back a proposal with the Planning Commission's input.

Thank you. You're welcome. Supervisor King, did you want to kick things off?

Yeah, just I've been looking at this, and I have talked to a couple years ago basically about the same thing, and I have talked to the town of Chrisburg and the town of Blacksburg. They do allow it, but they have to go by certain rules. Whatever they said, they have to go by. And I just feel that it would be best for us and the citizens if we'd have across the board, because some people, I mean, some people are saying, you know, I'd like to open one, but I can't afford to open a garage right now too, or a dealership. Some people would like to open one, but they can't afford the property or a building in the towns. And I think, you know, not speaking for anybody, but you know, I think this board is all about small business and it's a way to get somebody started. I mean, who knows somebody opens up a tow company day, they could have a big garage tomorrow. We had to give people a chance to grow. Thank you.

And I'll just add to that. Um, my professional experience, um, I have a lot of interactions with tow companies, probably way more than I want to, but I do know that the towing companies that I've talked with to have a tow yard, if they're towing, say for an apartment community, they're towing people that are parking without permits in an apartment community, to have a tow yard in the town of Blacksburg, maybe close to that apartment community, or in the town of Christiansburg, can be very expensive, whereas if you cross right over into montgomery county the the cost of the land the basis might change enough to make it a more reasonable endeavor for a small business to either grow or even get started so in general i am supportive of looking at a standalone tow yard within the zoning code as an allowed use with you know proper consideration for um you know environmental impacts and and things of that nature i think you know we can do it responsibly but it i agree with supervisor king that it is a reasonable thing that the county should allow and so does anybody else have any other comments questions concerns supervisor biggs

I agree with Supervisor King. It's an issue of fairness and treating everyone equally. So I support looking into it and getting something done and not waiting until we do the zoning ordinance.

Okay, I'm not, go ahead, Supervisor Caron.

Do we know why we were different to begin with? Is there any particular reason we never allowed

None that we would be able to tell you. The zoning ordinance by and large, like the framework and what it is has been adopted for the last like 30 years and there's been little changes, but it's still basically the same. And then that dates back another several decades. So somewhere.

The evolution of land use.

It just wasn't something that was considered.

I mean, I'm all for fairness. I think it's, you know, why not? You know, why we don't have it.

Okay. So we're in work session. We obviously can't take a vote, but I'm hearing at least from four board members and I'm seeing thumbs. So it looks like I don't know what the next steps are. Do we need a referring resolution to the planning commission or what do we need to do?

Yeah, we need a referring resolution, both to the planning staff and the planning commission to study the issue and come back with a recommendation. Okay. We could put it on the agenda today that Mr. King can bring up under his board report. I mean, it's just a simple resolution referring, so we could do it. Or we could put it on the next agenda. It's up to you.

Do you have a... We need a referring resolution, so we could... I guess kind of cobble something together this evening, or we could have it at our June 22nd meeting, a written referring resolution to send it to the Planning Commission. Fine for June 22nd? Okay. Okay, that works perfectly. Well then, is there anything else anybody has to say about our work session topics? Can I get a motion to come out of work session? Motion.

Second.

Okay, 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, next is our consent agenda. Is there a motion?

Motion. Second.

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

Ms. Caron? Aye. Mr. Kitts? Aye. Mr. King? Aye. Mr. Pichikaski? Aye. Ms. Biggs? Aye. Mr. Grasky? Aye. Chair DeMott? Aye. Seven ayes.

all right and moving into new business our first item of new business this evening is the vdot six year secondary rate improvement plan for fiscal years 26 27 through 20 31 32 and secondary system construction budget for the same or for fiscal year 26 27. We did host a public hearing on the proposed six-year secondary road improvement plan on April 13th, 2026. And do we have any presentations or more information about this this evening?

No, we don't.

Okay. Is there a motion?

Motion. Second.

Okay. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, Madam Clerk, if you'll call the roll, please.

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

Next item of new business is related to the public hearing that we hosted earlier. This is the variable with permanent drainage easement and variable with temporary construction easement to VDOT and a variable with water line easement to the Montgomery County Public Service Authority, all related to the Route 8 widening project. Is there a motion?

Motion. Second.

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

Mr. King?

Aye.

Mr. Fujikowski? Aye. Ms. Biggs? Aye. Mr. Grasky? Aye. Ms. Caron? Aye. Mr. Kitts? Aye. Chair DeMonts? Aye. Seven ayes.

The next item is fiscal year 26-27 budget appropriation. I don't have anything to add unless anyone has a question. That was what I was asking. Is there a motion?

Motion.

Second. Is there any discussion or question? Okay, Madam Clerk, if you'll call the roll, please.

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

Next is a technology reserve appropriation to replace the county's existing website content management system. Is there a motion?

Motion. Second.

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

Ms. Spitz. Aye. Mr. Grasky. Aye. Ms. Caron. Aye. Mr. Kitts. Aye. Mr. King. Aye. Mr. Fitchikowski. Aye. Chair DeMott. Aye. Seven ayes.

And our final item of new business is the Animal Care and Adoption Center donations reserve appropriation related to the cat kennels project. Is there a motion?

So moved.

Second.

Is there any discussion?

Just glad that we have those donations.

Okay, 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. Spix? Aye. Chair DeMont? Aye. Seven ayes.

And now we're into the report section of our agenda where we will start with the county attorney's report.

Oh, no report, Madam Chair.

Okay, and we'll move to the county administrator's report. Okay.

I have three items. The first item is two parts, I guess. It's related to fire and rescue. Our study from the consultant will be presented to the Board of Supervisors at their June 22nd meeting. I just received the final version of that this evening, so I will email that to you this evening after this meeting. And then we're also going to have a work session at that meeting to discuss the personal property tax incentive for volunteers so that we can get that before you, and then if you want to move forward with that, we can schedule a public hearing and get that taken care of before the personal property book is produced. That has to be delivered by the Commissioner of Revenue's office to the Treasurer's office by September 1st. The second item I have, Ms. Bellow referred to this earlier, we did apply for the railroad crossing elimination grant this afternoon. It was offered by the Federal Railroad Administration and we'll keep you posted on that. And then last but not least, we have three county employees who received the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce annual 40 under 40 recognition that recognizes emerging community leaders Carly Andrews, who's our broadband project manager in the economic development department, received that. Joe Keeler, our volunteer coordinator with human services, received that. And Evan Hull, who is our tourism marketing coordinator, received that as well. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Jamie Grafsky also received the award.

Thank you. And congratulations to all of the employees and to Jamie. And now we'll move into board members' reports. And we'll start with you, Supervisor Grafsky.

Gee, thanks. All right, so just a couple of things, and this popped into my head since we got the village plans from the team and... As I read through the Price is Fork Village plan in particular, you know, some of the things that came out of that, the feedback from the community around it, you know, desire for a farmer's market, for community spaces, things like that. And so I thought I'd take this opportunity to highlight that a conditional use or not a special use permit. Thank you. for out there on Price's Fork and an initial phase of the gathering at Price's Fork is open now in the spring and so spring and or opened this spring and so Thursdays through Sundays that's open out there on Price's Fork the garden center limited farmers market so lots of cool things happening out there and then I just wanted to say congratulations to our high school classes of 2026 that graduated last weekend, my son being among that class. So thank you, that's it.

All right, Supervisor Kitts.

So I don't have anything really big on anything else, but the fire and EMS study is a big deal. It's one of my two studies I was allowed to order this year or this term. So I think it's very important that people, once it's published, take a serious look at it. The current version is 364 pages, I think, before anything was adjusted. But I think it brings up some very good points and it talks about how active our groups are within the community. I think that needs to be recognized. People kind of sometimes they take it for granted that the majority of the departments within Montgomery County are volunteer. That being said, there's things we can do to help them and help our community as a whole and get all of us on the same sheet of music because we've got one full job to do and that's take care of everybody. But I think once that study comes out, I think it's very important that that people take the time to at least glance through it because it is a big document. There is a lot of nerdy stuff in it. but I'm still in the process of reading through the whole thing and writing my notes and everything else before we put out the revised version. But I think it's important that people look at that and it's going to come out. It's going to bring up some things that we're not all comfortable with. It's going to talk about money and funding and things like that. But I think it's important that we work fully transparent, especially with the two towns, they know what's going on. And I think everybody else needs to get a good handle on that. So when we go forth, it's not eyeopening. So, but that's all. Thank you.

Supervisor Biggs. I was just gonna compliment Mitchell Houck and the folks that put on the tourism and sports event at the exit issues for the chamber last Thursday morning. They did a really good job and it was really informative. And then I also wanted to make note that This room was packed on Friday night for the sheriff's forum, and it was so good to see this room being used by citizens seeking information on all the different candidates. And Vice Chair Fijikowski was there, and Supervisor Goonan was there, and I was there, but the room was packed. I couldn't believe, they had to bring in some chairs. because it was so packed. So that was a good event. So that's all I had.

Supervisor King.

I don't have no report, but I do want to tell each board member, I appreciate you supporting this tow truck change, because one thing about it, you know, if somebody is getting ready to start on a business, they may have a little spot land where they could put a fence around it. a little dust dome light, and a little storage shed to keep their stuff in. They don't have to have a multi-garage. I think it'll help a lot of people. Thank you.

supervisor karan um i'm just gonna add one thing and i think supervisor biggs she was with me to volunteer montgomery awards ceremony was wonderful although we couldn't attend the luncheon since it was a rotary day so we tiptoed but we were there to to acknowledge all the recipients of awards and IT WAS VERY WELL ORGANIZED AND WE LOVED THE DECORATIONS OF HOT AIR BALLOONS AND YEAH, IT WAS VERY WELL DONE.

VICE CHAIR FIJIKOWSKI?

I'M PART OF, BECAUSE WE ARE MEMBERS OF THE ROANOKE VALLEY TRANSPORTATION PLANNING ORGANIZATION, they are, they have done a truck parking study and they have formed a truck parking task force to look into ways to alleviate some of the truck parking. I'm sure everyone is familiar with driving down the interstate and you see trucks pulled over in all kinds of places. Some not very safe. Um, but anywhere on the highway where a car, if it drifted off could hit it is, is not safe. Um, And my interest was obviously because of my previous employment with state police. I dealt with that on a regular basis. It's a very strong need. According to their study, and I'm not really sure of how big of an area they picked, but they said there's about 220 truck parking spaces short. I think it's... actually longer than that. But the task force is going to be looking into solutions other than, Hey, VDOT build a great big truck parking area. They're going to look for ways that that can be alleviated through, you know, anything off the interstate kind of thing. But it's a, It's going to be a challenge. I'm kind of looking forward to it. I don't know what will come of it. It's been a problem ever since they invented the first tractor trailer, I think. But we had our first meeting last week, and we're supposed to meet on a quarterly basis. So I'll keep you all informed on what's going on. But that's all I got.

And then I have just two things kind of taking from what other supervisors have said. The fire and rescue study just kind of a scheduling note. I know that that will probably be presented to the town of Christiansburg in late July. I think the town of Blacksburg is still working on their coordination and it will be also presented to the fire and rescue commission, am I correct? That's correct, yes. So kind of covering all bases and making sure that all of the involved parties get the information and then we'll see where we go from there. And then I also, I wasn't in the room, I did see you guys though on the video, just briefly. So I did want to just call out that Montgomery County staff enabled that event to be live streamed and just highlight the importance of, you know, I had, I had stuff going on. You know, I had some projects that I was trying to get to around my house, but I was able to put in my AirPods, put my phone in my back pocket and just, and get the information and feel like i was participating even though i had other commitments on friday that i was not able to be here in person and so i just think that it's really really great that montgomery county staff made sure that such a very important community engagement forum was available via live stream and of course it's archived on the county's webpage and i just think that that's a really important call out to our public information office and staff. So thank you for that. And seeing no other business before the board, this meeting is adjourned.