Board of County Supervisors - Regular Meeting

It is 02:00 on Tuesday, February 17. Let us begin with a moment of silence. Thank you. All rise if you are able for the pledge of allegiance. All right. We are going to move on to the third item, that is approval of the minutes. Can I get a motion?

So moved, madam chair.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Any discussion? All right. Let's go ahead and take our votes.

Vote unanimous. Supervisor Angry absent from vote.

Alright, thank you so very much. We're now moving on to agenda item number four, accommodations and proclamations. I had a request to pull out 4A. We'll do that first and separately. Can I get a motion for 4A?

Move for approval, madam chair.

Second.

All right. It's been probably moved and seconded. Let's take our vote.

Motion passes four to one. Supervisor angry absent from vote. Supervisor Vega voting nay and Gordy abstaining from vote.

All right. And I just want to let everyone know we are actually going to give that one at our seven meeting to accommodate the secretary's schedule. I'd like to now get a motion for 4B through 4E.

So moved, madam chair.

Second.

So we're probably moving to second it. Any discussion? All right, I'd like to call for the vote. I can't hit you. Okay, got it.

All right, thank you so very much. We are going to move down to the podium with everyone who's associated with the sixtieth anniversary of the Prince William County Department of Fire and Rescue please join me. Wait, where's your crew today? I mean, normally we kind of, whenever fire does something, I was specking an entourage. I'm coming down.

And thank you so much, Labelle, chief Labelle, your great sense of humor. Alright. In 1996, the Prince William County Department of Fire and Rescue was established as the county's first career fire and rescue department, forming the foundation of what would become one of the most capable, innovative, and respected fire and rescue systems in the nation. Throughout its sixty year history, the department's members have worked side by side with volunteers to build a unified, high performing fire and rescue system dedicated to the protection of the community, demonstrating unwavering professionalism, courage, and compassion. The Prince William County Fire and Rescue System now operates as a premier combination all hazards emergency services agency providing advanced life support, emergency medical care, technical rescue, hazardous materials response, swift water rescue, emergency management coordination, and community safety programs to safeguard its residents, visitors, and businesses in Prince William County.

As the department celebrates its sixtieth anniversary, it stands as a trusted and essential part of the county's identity built by generations of firefighters and civilian professionals whose commitment has made Prince William County a safer to place to live, work, and thrive. Therefore, today, the Prince William Board of County supervisors hereby proclaims 2026 as the sixtieth anniversary of the Prince William County Department of Fire and Rescue. Chief Labelle, would you like to offer some remarks?

Thank you, chair, members of the board, mister Shorter. I know I often say I'll try this time to be brief. I simply wanna say that there's no human endeavor that doesn't rest on the shoulders of other people, sometimes of blood, sometimes simply of like mind. I am so very blessed, to have been able to get to know, the past chiefs, and acting chiefs. Unfortunately, Tom Haidoo couldn't be with us today, but Jimmy Forgo is.

I I consider them all friends, and I know that any benefit I have today, exists because they fought for it and they worked for it. This is the best combination fire department in America, period. End of sentence. And I'll I'll arm wrestle anyone who disagrees with me. But I appreciate the recognition, but mostly I appreciate the effort of your predecessors to make sure that this was all possible as well. Thank you very much. Thank

you. Alright.

You wanna take a photo? Alright. Taller people in back. I'm looking at three of you. Alright.

We are on to four c, and that is to proclaim February 2026 as benefit program specialist month. Phyllis Jennings Holt and your team, if y'all can come on down. Prince William County recognizes the importance of providing a level of economic stability by administrating federal and state benefit programs to over a 130 residents, including supplemental nutrition assistance, temporary assistance for needy families, Medicaid assistance, employment service programs, and energy assistance, among many other programs. The benefit program specialists who administer these programs continue to experience unprecedented implementation of rapidly changing complex policies and procedures in all major benefit programs as well as continuing changes in service delivery and technology. Prince William County's two nineteen benefit programs staff provide ethical public service adhering to Prince William County's visions and values to ensure that those qualified for federal and state benefit services receive and continue to receive them.

Today, therefore, the Prince William Board of County Supervisors hereby proclaims February 2026 as benefit program specialist appreciation month. Would you like to offer us some remarks? Thank you. Thank you. Good

afternoon, Madam Chair Jefferson, members of the board, county exec Mr. Shorter, Phyllis Jennings Holt, director of social services. Today, I have with me my deputy director, Holly Handy, assistant directors, Leon Leron Gabramedin and Lucia DeToni, and program managers, Michelle Henson, Diana Cunha, Norman Sanchez, and acting program director, Toboris Miller. On behalf of the department, I am honored to accept this proclamation recognizing the benefit program specialist. We pride ourselves on operational excellence, fiscal responsibility, and customer service with compassion.

We have been able to achieve a zero snap error rate for eleven out of twelve months. Timely processing of applications at 98% of the time, and staff continue to receive recognition from VDSS for the quality assurance and internal policies and practices developed by staff. We not only meet the standards, but we're helping to shape them. I want to extend my sincere gratitude to our benefits program specialists, supervisors, and managers. And to the board, we thank you for your ongoing support and recognition for the work that we do. Thank

you. If

you could join me in the front for a photo. All right, Irish American Heritage Month. I forgot to bring my green. I promise to make up for it next month. Put that aside.

How are you?

I am well. Thank you guys for coming. All right. This is four d to proclaim March 2026 as Irish American Heritage Month. More than 30,000,000 Americans trace their roots to island shores.

From the sixteen hundreds to the early nineteen hundreds, Irish immigrants endured several hardships to build new lives, transformed our largest cities into centers of commerce and industry, and have made great cultural, spiritual, and economic contributions to the diversity of our nation. Irish Americans have played an important part in creating the fabric of our history through their service in government and military, and also through their faith and family values. They continue to play a vital role in shaping our history and culture, enriching all aspects of our lives. The men and women of the ancient order of Hiberians are pillars in our community as representatives of their fellow Irish Americans. Therefore, today, the Prince William Board of County Supervisors hereby proclaims the month of March 2026 is as Irish American Heritage Month.

Would you like to offer us a few remarks?

I would, please. Thank you. Thank you, chair Jefferson, and and the remainder of the, county board. I'm Vince Fitzpatrick, president of Innisfail Inc, the holding corporation for the parade. You've seen me up here.

I don't know how many years. The beards beards get more gray as we go, though. So this is our twenty sixth year of producing the parade. Let me say, we have enjoyed every minute of it from the pipe bands, the Irish dancers, the ancient order of Highburnians, Irish cultural groups, the fire and rescue departments, the sheriff and police departments, the politicians from the state down to the local level jurisdictions, and yours truly, Saint Patrick. We have a we have grand marshal we've had grand marshals from politicians, clergy, police, fire rescue chiefs, local business owners, and representatives from the ancient order of Hibernias from the state level down to the local divisions.

We appreciate the participation of all who have participated in the many residents from local jurisdictions to Prince William County and beyond who have enjoyed our parade. Prince William County Board of Supervisors has supported our efforts each year with a proclamation declaring March as Irish History Month in Prince William County. We appreciate the support of our parade and the Irish community in Prince William County. Thank you very much.

All right, in 4E, if there is anyone for invasive species awareness week. Invasive plants undermine community investments in native landscaping where they outcompete and replace native plants and lead to higher community maintenance costs, increased storm water runoff, and disrupt natural water cycles, which contribute to erosion, flooding, and diminish soil stability as well as air and water quality. The Prince William County strategic goal for the environment includes a key objective to safeguard this, the quality of the county's air, water and other natural resources to ensure they are not compromised for current and future residents. National Invasive Species Awareness Week or NASAW is an international event dedicated to raising awareness about invasive species, the threats they pose, and the actions that can be taken to prevent their spread. National Invasive Species Awareness Week is supported by agencies such as the National Park Service and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and is consistent with the Prince William County strategic plan and the Prince William County zoning sanction 32 Dash 504 Chesapeake Bay Preservation Area Overlay District.

Therefore, today, the Prince William Board of County Supervisors hereby proclaims the week of February 23 to 02/27/2026 as invasive species awareness month. Would anyone like to offer a few remarks?

Thank you Madam Chair, members of the board. My name is Ashley Stutholm, Executive Director with the Prince William Conservation Alliance. And really, this honor is shared with, Diane Nelson, who really spearheaded this effort in recognition. And I'm also here with Nancy Veers, who wears many hats, but is representing the Prince William Wildflower Society today. And I am just honored and grateful for this recognition.

We were standing here several years ago advocate for using, working with native plant species in our landscape, which this board did support. And now we're moving forward with focusing on invasive species that are undermining some of those efforts. At Prince William Conservation Alliance, we of course want to focus on protecting what we have and the tree canopy that currently exists and having that as the utmost priority. But part of that, is also being good stewards to what we have and that includes, in, managing for invasive removals because we know that all of our landscapes are facing immense pressure from fragmentation in how we build and develop, then that therefore creates a lot of pressure and opportunity for these invasive species to come in and out compete our native species. And that diminishes the quality ecosystems that we have here.

And that protects our air quality, our water quality. And just the overall feel of quality of life for all of our residents. So thank you very much.

Can I say one thing? Yeah. Hi. I am wearing several hats. I'm also the president of the Virginia Native Plant Society, so the overall area, plus I'm on the soil and water conservation district board. But I just wanted to say that if you look out in our landscape right now, and you see green, you see green vines going up a tree, or green on the ground, it's generally not native. It would be an invasive plant. And that's how they outcompete our native plants by, you know, they green up faster, they stay green longer, you know, your Japanese honeysuckle, your English ivy, those kinds of things. So if we can put some oomph behind it, some money, some effort, we could make a dent in that. Thank you.

All right, we are now gonna move on to agenda item number five, and that is the consent agenda. Before I begin, does anyone have anything they would like to pull off the consent agenda? I see supervisor Vega.

Thank you, madam chair. Item five c and five I.

Alright. Anyone else? I don't see anything. So I am gonna go ahead and ask for a motion for five a through five a five b five d through five h and five j.

So move then, chair. Second.

It's been properly moved and seconded. Any discussion on those items? Seeing none, I would like us to go ahead and take our vote.

Vote unanimous. Supervisor angry absent from vote.

We are now going to move on to agenda item 5C. Did you have any questions, Supervisor Vega?

I do, madam chair. I saw that Rick came in. So, if you could come forward, please. As Rick makes his way up, I understand that this request involves this the not the city, but Occoquan District, and this is proportions of Old Old Bridge and Gordon Boulevard, but it also involves the Coles District, and that is the Clover Hill Intersection. Rick, this does require a 30% match. Yes?

20%, man.

20%. Okay. And does any of this involve the city of Manassas?

And I'm sorry, failed to introduce myself. Madam Chair, members of the board, Rick Canizalos, your director of transportation. Thank you for the questions, Supervisor Vega. It it does involve the city of Manassas. We are going to talk to the city of Manassas actually this evening to discuss the project with them, and then they will be taking action and and and putting out a resolution with some commitments on the twenty third next week on Monday at their council meeting.

Okay. Is there an urgency in terms of the timing that we have to take action on this today? And the reason why I ask for my colleagues is, as you all know, we're also considering the airport expansion and opening that up for commercial flights. There have been no conversations as of yet with the airport, and the conversations with the city of Manassas are going to take place today. It would be my preference that those conversations happen before we approve this here tonight because I did request, what percentage of this project impacts the city, because we, just had our first interjurisdictional committee meeting, with madam chair last Wednesday, where we're talking about, you know, the contributions that the city make, for all of these projects, and we just wanna make sure that that that everything is being done in a fair manner.

And so what is the urgency, or can we wait until those conversations happen in regards to approving this item?

Supervisor Vega, there is urgency in this item. The grant is due on the twenty fourth. Of this month? Ma'am.

And I apologize. I would like to note supervisor Vega and NVTA or Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, we actually took a vote last week to move ahead with the endorsement, and there was a carve out. It was pending, the meeting, you know, Rick Gonzalez and his team being able to brief the city of Manassas, which, again, will happen tonight. And Mr. Will report out to NVA. NVA.

Well I did not know that. That gives me a little bit of reassurance but doesn't satisfy me fully. I don't want to hold this up but I do want to reiterate making sure that we protect the county's interests and assets while also making sure that those other partners come to the board and that they also contribute whatever it is that you know the percent of this project is going to be in their jurisdiction.

We will work with them with that, ma'am.

Thank you. I won't hold this up because I know Kenny, supervisor Bodhi, that this also impacts your district, but it's my preference that we have all this sorted out before this board is asked to make a decision on on any given item, but I understand the position that we're in. Thank you, Rick.

Thank you, ma'am. And just for a a little further explanation, this is a federal grant. We get a NOFA. We only get ninety days notice from the grant, and and and that's why we have the urgency. So my apologies. We usually

It's okay.

Do not do this with a grant, but

And and and I know that this area, the Cloverleaf improvements, this has been an area that we've been talking about for a very long time, right? And we have new developments, again, with the airport and whatnot, and I think that it's in our best interest to have those conversation sooner rather than later. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

I did pull another item. Do you want me to address that one or?

No, we're going do it separately. So go ahead first five.

I'll make a motion to move five forward.

Second.

Is there any further discussion on this item? Alright, I would like to call for the vote.

Vote unanimous, supervisor angry absent from vote.

Alright, then we're gonna move on to five aye. Supervisor Vega.

Thank you, madam chair. I I guess county executive, do you want me to direct my questions to you or to who's listed on here?

You can start with me.

Okay. So my understanding is this grant will create two limited term positions?

Correct.

Yes. And then can you talk a little bit about the funding mechanism for these two positions?

Two grant funded positions. Let me ask if CJ yep, please.

Madam Chair, members of the board, Doctor. Tahiti Haseen, Director of Office of Community Safety.

So my question is in terms of the funding mechanism for these two limited term positions.

So would you like to know more about the positions themselves?

No, I just want to know about the funding. So it is partially funded or funded by the state, yes. And my question as with any of these positions is if that expires, is it then the position that the county will assume responsibility for funding these positions?

It is not automatic. And so once the the funding expires, I will say that this grant is one and maybe, doctor, you could probably talk to the grant itself, but this is one that the team will continue to apply for. But if the grant ends and the grant funding ends, then we will be in a position where we have to make a decision on whether we wanna roll this over into local funding. I will not make that decision independently. It will come back to the board for their for your consideration.

That's all I needed to know. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Madam Chair, I want to go ahead and move item five forward. Second.

All right. Any further discussion on this?

I question, have Madam Chair.

All right. Supervisor, and please make sure we're using our iPad. Supervisor Stewart?

What are the positions? What specifically are the positions?

Yes,

so one of the positions is a data analyst and the second is a community navigator.

And specifically, what does a community navigator do?

So a community navigator helps support all of our agencies who are supporting residents through any of the response efforts that we currently have.

Thank you. All

right. Any other discussion? All right. Let's take our votes.

Vote unanimous. Supervisor Ingray absent from vote.

Alright, thank you so very much. We're now moving on to agenda item number six, and that is public comment time. Right now I have one person signed up online and one person in person. So Michael Slater, if you can come up again, state your name, your magisterial district, you have three minutes.

Good

afternoon. My name is Michael Slater. I live in Four Seasons. Approximately ten years ago, while living in Florida, our house was broken into. Our house was broken into. My wife and I were out running errands, and we came home to find our neighbors standing in the driveway saying, don't go in your house yet. You can't go in. The sheriff deputies are on their way. When we were finally allowed to go inside, we saw all of our belongings strewn on the floor, dresser drawers ripped open, jewelry boxes scattered about, flat screen TV ripped off the wall. And it was such a surreal feeling.

It gave us a feeling of being violated, invaded, desecrated, defiled, and we felt like out of control, vulnerable victims with no way to defend ourselves. We went to bed that night feeling exposed, unsafe, and wondering what would happen next. It's a terrible feeling, folks. It really is. Well, that was a long time ago, and we haven't felt that way since until we hear of some money hungry land developers planning to put data centers in our backyard and invading the treasured sanctity of our home.

It's the same old feeling all over again. Law enforcement did their job ten years ago. The thieves were caught. Our belongings were recovered. Now the threat today is different, but the effect is the same.

And I ask you, who in this room is there to protect us now? Who? Why does it have to feel this way? Don't make us victims. Don't make us lay awake at night wondering what scheme is being concocted to meet the goals of uncaring perpetrators filling the pockets of aloof coconspirators, why does quality of life have to take a back seat to campaign contributions?

When we first moved here, we were told what a wonderful place this was. Tell me, is it still? This board of supervisors is making national news now with names and pictures. If you don't believe me, go to political.com. And I ask you, why would anybody in their right mind wanna move here now? Why does it have to feel this way? I still got thirty seconds left. I'm gonna stand here and hope that somebody decides they're gonna tell me why it has to feel this way.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. We have we're going to move on to remote public comment time. I'm sorry, had to give it to the sheet over to the Chair Pro Tem, Supervisor Gordy, if you would lead us.

Thank you, madam chair. Do we have anyone online for speech? Alright, madam chair, there's no one online. Thank you.

Alright, thank you so much. Alright, we had one person in chambers and no one online. So we are going to move on to agenda item number. So that's public hearings. I should have said this earlier, but I just want to let everyone know that 7C has been pulled. So we will not have a public hearing today on agenda item 7C, and that is a resolution to authorize commendation, condemnation, I can't talk today, and exercise quick take powers. That will not be a public hearing for that. So I'm gonna go ahead and open the public hearings for seven a and seven b. So do we have anyone? I don't believe we have anyone online for seven a and seven b, correct?

So I'm gonna go ahead and close the public hearings for seven and seven. Can I get a motion to move these items forward?

So moved Madam Chair. Second.

It's been properly moved and seconded. Any discussion on either item? All right, let's go ahead and take our votes.

Vote unanimous. Supervisor angry absent from vote.

Alright. We're gonna move on to agenda item number eight, and that is county executive time. Mister Shorter, the floor is now yours.

Alright. Thank you very much, madam chair, members of the board. Just a few quick updates for me. You may recall that there was one directive issued at our last meeting. Staff was directed to explore and make recommendations around the deployment of parking canopy solar at various parking lots and facilities throughout the county.

That directive was assigned to transportation. There were no directives closed since our last meeting. However, I did send an update earlier today to the board in response to the directive requesting that staff compile a clear and complete breakdown of all county funds, services and resources that support Prince William County schools and other public education programs. While there are still some items that need to be added to finalize that response. We wanted to make sure that we provided the information in advance of this evening's budget presentation.

We anticipate that that will finalize and we will send out a final memo next week. Last week, I sent the board an FY twenty twenty six second quarter revenue and expenditure report, which is in accordance with the requirements of our principles of sound financial management as well as information about the number of private properties that are in the federal legislative boundary of Prince William Forest Park. In terms of, kudos for staff, I wanted to take a moment just to recognize our fire and rescue system who is going to be recognized tomorrow at the governor's fire service award ceremony. The county's fire and rescue, department along with other fire and rescue services were selected for the outstanding fire department response award for their coordinated response to the plane crash on the Potomac River last year. We know that our teams here in Prince William County played a role in the response and just wanted to take this opportunity to thank them always for their their effort and their support, not just this community, but really of the of the region.

So congratulations to chief Labelle and the entire fire and rescue team, and thank you for all that you do. And with that, madam chair, that is all for me.

Alright. Thank you so very much, mister Schorter. We are gonna move on to agenda item number nine, and that is county attorney time. Madam county attorney, the floor is yours.

Thank you, madam chair, members of the board. This afternoon, in closed session, there will be consultation with legal counsel and briefings by staff members pertaining to discussions concerning an economic development item regarding an expansion of an existing business or industry where no previous announcement has been made of the business or industry's interest in expanding their facilities in the county. Along with the related discussion or consideration of the investment of public funds for an economic development matter where competition or bargaining is involved, where if made public initially, the financial interest of the county would adversely affected, along with the discussion or consideration of the disposition of publicly held real property, all where discussion in an open meeting would adversely affect the litigating posture, bargaining position, or negotiating strategy of the public body. And a personnel discussion relating to the performance of the members of the Board of County Supervisors. And these items are appropriate for closed session pursuant to 2.2 dash 3,711 A one, three, five, and six of the Code of Virginia.

Move for approval, madam chair.

Second.

Alright. I'd like for us to take our votes.

Vote unanimous. Supervisor angry absent from vote.

Thank you very much. Mister Shorter, I will let you queue up our agency time.

Very good. Thank you very much, madam chair. So for item 10 a, we are following up on a directive provided to staff to prepare for the board's consideration or resolution to initiate a Fetler Park small area plan to guide the strategic revitalization and redevelopment of this key area in the Potomac District. At this time, I'd like to turn it over to director Tanya Washington to introduce the presentation.

Good afternoon, madam chair, members of the board. Tanya Washington, director of the planning office. We are here today to request that the board initiate a comprehensive plan amendment for the creation of the small area plan in the Potomac District. Keisha Hall who is the assistant planning director for our community planning and revitalization division which is the team that will be leading this effort will walk us through the presentation and then we're happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Director Washington. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the board, County Executive Shorter. As Director Washington stated, my name is Keisha Hall. I'm the assistant director for the planning office, and I lead the community planning and revitalization team. Pleased to appear before you to request the initiation of the long awaited Fetler Park Small Area Plan.

The Fetler Park Small Area Plan was a directive given on February 18. It's directive 25 dash o three, requesting that the planning office initiate and begin crafting the Fetler Park small area plan. The following components include a high level summary of that directive. We were asked to guide strategic revitalization and redevelopment in the area, provide a comprehensive vision, including but not limited to land use, mobility, parks and open space, economic development, infrastructure, and as well as exploring redevelopment opportunities within the study area. Additionally, we are asked to incorporate the Fetler Park market study into our analysis and our future action strategies.

For public consumption, this slide details what a small area plan is, and essentially, area plans are small geographically defined areas where we come up with action strategies and policies guided by the community's feedback and provide a comprehensive analysis of that specific area. The small area plans are unique to their communities as well as the citizens that participate in that process. Depicted here is the proposed study area. The entire study area is encapsulated in the yellow. The red marks where the actual Fetler Park market study outline.

This map demonstrates the land use designations within the proposed study area, and this map depicts the zoning districts within the proposed study area. This chart breaks down the acreage by zoning category, as well as land use designation, and all of these items will be analyzed in the existing conditions process and will inform whether or not these designations are currently appropriate and should continue to stay that way, or if we want to discuss future visioning for the land use in the study area. The scope of the small area plan at a high level will include land use and economic development, place making and site activation, parks and open space, mobility, and public facilities and levels of service. As director Washington stated, I will be the project manager for the Fetler Park snare small area plan, and I'll be supported by my teammates, Jacenia Castaneda and Danica Blunt, who are seated in the audience. In closing, staff requests that the board consider initiating the Fetler Park small area plan, and I am happy to take any questions that you might have.

Thank you.

Supervisor Bailey? I assumed you were in there.

Thank you. You surprised me, Madam Chair. Keisha, thank you for your presentation. Thank you for our planning department that has done such an impeccable job in leading us to this point. And so my my questions are very, short.

I just wanna start by saying this is a process that has taken place since 2022, and now we're at the second phase of this process. And just for the audience and for the camera to know, this is the area on 234 that encapsulates where my office is, where the pop everybody knows where the Popeyes chicken is, and everybody knows where Montclair, the the historic Montclair restaurant is, as well as the historic Giorgio's restaurant, including our Four Seasons community. But I say all that to say this is the start of revitalizing that area. And so could you enlighten us as we go forward in trying to establish a more lift in the Potomac District? What is the vision as we go to the next phase?

Big picture.

Thank you, Supervisor Bailey. We look forward to engaging with the citizens and community members as well as civic groups that are interested in this particular area And through that process, we'll have collaborative discussions in addition to evaluating the existing conditions to come up with a vision and a strategy for the area. So more to come, but we definitely want to start having those conversations so that we can begin kind of dreaming big and going through that ideation process.

Thank you. One of the things, my second question, Madam Chair, I'll be brief, one of the things that we have learned over the years since 2022 or even before is making sure that what the intent is in terms of land use, that it is specific and it pairs with the comprehensive plan. Correct? So I want to ask specifically, are there any have we encompassed everything that we are trying to look at in this study and creating the small area plan? Because I know we did that with the Triangle Small Area Plan, but are there any other opportunities that we could have missed that we can go back and look at?

The area is primarily built out. There are some opportunities for some green development, but most of the redevelopment efforts would be either reinvesting into existing sites or some form of brownfield development. We did add for Lazo as an anchor to the study areas so that we could incorporate some of those health and human services as we were evaluating within the study area. We'll be looking at co location opportunities, how we can, this is a very active part of the county, so ensuring that we're celebrating the parks and open space and looking for any opportunities where there are some historically significant elements within the study area. We'll be examining those as well.

Okay. So my last question, ma'am, I'll be brief with this one. One of the things that we've talked about is the essentiality of incorporating the community in the decisions that are made. Could you give us some kind of timeframe, not to put you on the spot because you have other things you're working on, maybe not, other than the Potomac District, of course you do, but give us some idea in terms of just making sure that we include the community in in the decisions.

Absolutely. So I just wanna quickly plug the PwC Works website, which outlines the milestones and some of the goals that we hope to accomplish over the next two years. We update that if there's any type of activity or as we kind of hit those milestones. We anticipate on boarding our con selecting and on boarding our consultants this summer before the end of this fiscal year, and then kicking off with the community in the fall time frame of 2026. And, we will continuously have either virtual, in person, as well as pop ups and attending different events, either whether they're hosted by the school or various existing HOA programming, or even any civic organizations within the study area or near the study area will participate along with those as well to get the word out and to get feedback from the community.

I do have one other question. Can I have my? Thank you so much. My question is how will

we use the small area plan going forward? The small area plan essentially once adopted by the board amends the comprehensive plan. It will inform future development as well as potentially agency work plans depending on what the action strategies are. So if a new development, whether it's Brownfield or Greenfield comes before the board for an entitlement rezoning SUP, we will look to the small Fetler Park small area plan once adopted as guidance for recommendations whether it pertains to land use, public service, public facilities, rather, mobility. All of those strategies will be within this small area plan and guide recommendations for land use.

Supervisor Bodie.

Thank you, madam chair. First congrats to supervisor Bailey for getting us to this point. It's always exciting to be on the cusp of initiating a small area plan and knowing all the work, whether it's the community, whether it's stakeholders, whether it's you and your team that really gets able to dig deep and creating a real vision for for an important area of the county. I wanted to say that first. A couple of questions to piggyback off of some of the questions president Bailey had.

In terms of stakeholders, will you also be engaging, you know, faith institutions? There's a very prolific church that's just in this part of the the Potomac District as as well as in the other direction, OmniRide. Because there are a couple of park and ride lots here. One is that secret one that not a lot of people realize is there, but there's a lot of connectivity that could happen that right now, frankly, is not happening because there's not a lot of transit in this part, but there could be. So is is and are what kind of stakeholders will be engaging as part of this

Absolutely. We most certainly will engage with our faith based communities. We will engage with the business community. Hospitality specifically is a large node within the study area. Obviously, our health and human services will also engage with internal stakeholders, obviously our citizen groups, and as we mentioned, I guess the last board meeting, definitely will engage with Quantico as well as the neighboring town.

Regarding mobility, there have been some preliminary discussions about bus rapid transit. So mobility will definitely be a high important item. There's also new investment at the edge of the small area plan where Route 1 meets 234. So a lot of great activity and investment already occurring and it's going to be an adventurous process to kind of understand where those projects are in relation to this project and customizing our vision to make sure that we're not impeding those.

Absolutely. I appreciate that. Second question, right now, if I remember correctly, there are only two comp plans designated redevelopment areas in the county, the Sudley Corridor and Route 1. As part of your analysis, is there gonna be consideration of maybe a designate a part of this small area plan or at least a major quarter like the sort of that Southeastern portion of 234 as a redevelopment corridor because we know that once we do that, there's some other strategies and other things that we begin to engage as is Christina Wynn's team to bring more investment there.

Absolutely. As we collectively planning economic development, transportation, as we collectively start to evaluate what areas of the county make sense in terms of redevelopment, we're kind of creating a program, if you will. So we have redevelopment corridors, and that may not necessarily it may or may not necessarily make sense for this particular area. It may be a node, a redevelopment node versus a corridor. And so some of those recommendations already exist in the Fetler Park market study. So we'll be evaluating that and coming up with some action strategies to encourage reinvestment in some of these sites.

Appreciate that. My last question, Madam Chair, goes back to a question I asked last week, I just want to ask it again. You know, when you really get into those action strategies, those appendices that will go at the end of the small area plan once we adopt it, how are you going to sort of right size to make sure they're actually actions right? Is that we be able to move and have actual KPIs and trackable benchmarks as opposed to just being nice appendices at the end of the small area plan that no one really touches later on?

Another great question. So as you know, our division is, one year old, I think. We're we're a new division, team of five and hopefully if the board approves the upcoming budget, the proposed budget, we'll grow. It is our goal to eval shameless plug. It is our goal to take a look at the well, me pause there.

For new, since we're a new team, fresh ideas, fresh perspective. It is important that action strategies moving forward are measurable, are actionable, and, so that we can properly report out on those. Currently, we're evaluate we thought we could kinda ease not easily, but quickly go through all the small area plans and go through those action strategies, and we quickly realized that is more of an undertaking than one would imagine. So we started with triangle. I would say we're probably about 75% done with that and we'll come before you with an update and a report out.

But to the earlier question on implementing, while for some these plans may collect us, for us we use them every day. So whenever a developer comes before you and asks for some rezoning special use permit entitlement, These are the action strategies and policies that we look at and lean to to guide our staff recommendation.

Thank you so much. Absolutely.

I think it is exciting to hear about the potential for bus rapid transit along 234. But we do actually have just pretty good bus service. We have the OmniRide, the Montclair that goes to the Pentagon and to L'Enfant Plaza. I know because I used to take that one. We also have Route 51, which is the Dumfries Triangle to Montclair. I want to talk about the private land or the in holdings in Prince William Forest Park. I see that you have the land for La Beneissen. Did you include other in holdings along 234? It doesn't look like, you know, there is the area, there's the Washington Reed area, which also has a Montclair Tabernacle in that parcel, but are there any other parcels along 234 in holdings that are included?

Could you clarify in holdings?

Of the private lands within the legislative boundaries. Gotcha.

I'm learning

a lot myself too.

My understanding is most of the properties whether developed or not, are within that boundary, the federal boundary. We do have an area to the far south that is vastly undeveloped. I am not sure of the status of whether or not that's within the federal boundary. Not. Dave McGetigan might be able to confirm. But my understanding is most of the land along 234 does reside within that boundary. Did you wanna clarify on that one for me?

Yes. Anything that's in parks and open space around the border of the park is in the legislative boundary.

What I'm asking too is there's other land that I don't see in here. Is there a reason? Like again, Montclair Tabernacle is already spoken for, but should that be worth considering as a part of this? And are there other smaller lands and holdings within the legislative boundaries that should be considered as part of this?

My apologies, I misunderstood the question. On the western side of the study area, this line is drawn by the federal line. There may be some small parcels that we can take a look at, and we can definitely come back before you to amend the proposed study area, but largely this is the line of Prince William Forest Park.

Alright, thank you so very much. Another perhaps controversial question, but I know we have people here from Four Seasons because they're concerned about data, and I know there are other people across Potomac who are concerned about that. Where does that kind of commercial development fit into a small area plan?

It's certainly a part of the discussion when we discuss land use, as well as economic vitality and investment goals, but ultimately what's great about a small area plan is regardless of what the private market decides to do with the land, because that's outside of this process, we can speak to what we want the built environment to look like. How wide the buffers should be, what uses are recommended, what uses are not recommended in that particular area. That's if land use and use type is the primary concern, definitely pay attention to those discussions in addition to everything, of course.

All right. Thank you very much. Supervisor Vega.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for your line of questioning. You went in the direction that I was going to go in. But while some of my colleagues were mentioning community stakeholders and meeting with them, because of the sensitive nature of that portion that the chair was just referencing, I just want to continue to emphasize ensuring that we also bring in our federal partners and everybody that plays a role in ensuring that we hear from them. I understand the workload that your office and the team is under, but, you know, my position has always been that the people that know about this county should be driving the conversations and not consultants. They're merely an arm, I would say to or a shoulder to lean on, if you will, But I want to make sure that the interests of Prince William County are protected in those conversations and that those conversations are mainly driven by you, the experts, the representatives of Prince William County.

And in the Yorkshire area, have our challenges with transportation. I know, Supervisor Bailey, that you're going to be on top of that. But with such a high focus on high density development around the Route 1 And 234 area. I just want us to be mindful of that. If development is going to come, what does the investment in an already lagging infrastructure look like?

Because it's already a challenge. I have relatives that live right off of Route 1, the Potomac Shores area, and I think twice or even three times about going just because that is how long it takes me from Mid County to get to that side of the county. And then just when I think I'm about to get on Route 1, I'm stuck, you know, because traffic is just so bad. So these are things that I really want the team to to have at the forefront of these conversations is we have problems, but how are these small area plan conversations going to improve those those those problems with the investment that we want to attract. Know Tanya has been wanting to say something.

Just wanted to add that with every small area plan, Keisha went back earlier in her presentation, noted a number of the different topics that we will be looking at. A small area plan has a land use focus, but it is not focused solely on land use. It also very much includes transportation, transportation infrastructure, evaluating existing infrastructure, what are opportunities for potential improvements based on a future vision for that area. And so our transportation department, among other agencies, will very much be a part of the team, have already been a part of the team in looking at those issues and you know as you noted supervisor Vega we can't look at potential land use changes in terms of a broader vision without also having that consideration of the transportation and other infrastructure to support it.

Thank you. Just a gentle reminder, if you will, because I feel that when it's set from the dais, I know you all are looking at it holistically, and you got it. But for the folks here in chambers and those watching at home, they oftentimes don't know. And then that's when the questions come in. Just for reassurance purposes. But thank you and look forward to the findings and the recommendations. I did have one last question, Madam Chair, and it has to do with the Office of Department of Economic Development and Tourism. Do we have a specific mix of uses proposed in the small area plan for them or is that something that we're going to find out as we go through the process?

Within the existing market study there

are Yeah, how will the findings of the Department of Economic Development and Tourism specifically dictate the mix of uses proposed in the small area plan?

I definitely wouldn't say it would dictate it. However, it would give us a good starting point to start to kind of initiate some conversations and find out, like, where are the pain points. I think the great thing about having a small area plan that has a market study attached to it is that we have real evidence and data from the market conditions so that when we're, as planners, looking at the area, we don't make a recommendation for a use type that isn't in line with current conditions. So, it's essentially a conversation starter, and it's got some great ideas in there that we can highlight and talk to the community and explore. If scenario A were to happen, how would that work or what do you think might go best here?

So we'll have some kind of really good conversations.

Okay. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Supervisor Bailey.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you both for your questions. I really appreciate it. For those that are interested in the audience, think that just bridges the gap and opens the door for discussion. One of the things, Supervisor Vega, what you were saying about the area being so tight and small, that's the that's the grand opportunity in the Potomac District because our area is very much landlocked.

And so it is important that we do strategically put things that complements the area. That's something as we went forward with the study to make sure that that happens as we segue into the small area plan. The other great thing is in reference to the fact that there has never been a small area plan to dictate how we gravitate or navigate with the land in that area. I am very proud of the fact that the Potomac was always not looked upon in that way, but now we are. I am very proud of that.

To that, I want to say that one of the things, and I just want to name this, as Madam Chair always says, one of the things in the market study are the data centers in my area. So one of the things which is why I can't ask you, Keisha, about the discussions with the community. That's very essential that we do have those discussions and when you pinpointed when those are going to start, because that's important as we go forward. But the question that I want with all of that that I said, the question that I want to ask, not only are we looking at commercial entities, not looking at land and housing, whatever that looks like, we are also building are we not building partnerships with different agencies to assure that the final presentations that come back to the board are cohesive?

Absolutely and actually one partnership that we haven't mentioned, it's in the realm of parks and open space, our federal neighbor, the Prince William Forest Park, and really utilizing that site as a potential tourism opportunity, figuring out if there's any mechanism or or area that we can open up access so one doesn't have to get onto 95 or drive up, the back roads to get to the visitor center. A lot of residents or visitors park along 234 or they park in the the shopping center across the street and walk the fire roads to get into the to that area of of the park. And so anecdotally, we have started to have discussions with our federal partners to just to explore what opportunities are out there to grant more access so everyone can enjoy this amenity.

The other the question I have past, there has not been a lot of community engagement in terms of educating in what we're doing. What's in your toolbox to help our communities be educated on what we're doing?

Well, of course, we always attend the Potomac District Town Halls to make sure that we have a presence in the community. As most of you know, I do live in the community, so I'm active with the HOA. So I get to kind of reach out internally that way. There's information that may not be publicly available that we can kind of use our own creative resources. But in addition to that, we're going to have numerous pop ups.

We're going to work with the business community, the hospitality community. We have a new fire station, so definitely want to start working with the agencies and their sub network to understand, to build those relationships very similar to the existing fire station has those relationships. They have events and pancake breakfasts and things like that. So there's a lot of activity that already goes on within the study area. So we'll have our traditional outreach, our town halls, our charrettes, but this is such an active community.

And one of our highlighted areas is place making. So what better, you know, what what better opportunity than to go to the fire station and piggyback on their pancake breakfast or the, you know, elementary school five k. So we'll be kind of using some of these existing elements. There's many civic groups that meet at the Montclair Library. I could go on and on and on.

So I would say that those are kind of our out of the box ways that we're going to reach out to the community in addition to the traditional methods. Yes, actually, thank you, Director Washington. Of the three consultants, one of the consultants is a community engagement consultant. While we will be leading the conversation, they definitely give us a little bit more muscle and they definitely give us more guidance on best practices, as well as making sure that our communication strategies are equitable and reaching a diverse audience.

Thank you, Bamcher. Thank you, Keisha.

All right. I also want us to think and stop. You know, I know what you mean by the word educate, but I want us to think about listening. Making sure that we're listening and that we hear voices from the communities. Residents make up the county. They choose to invest here. They choose to be here. They choose to live here. And that's my only concern is making sure that we're really listening and hearing community members. So, with that, thank you so very much for this wonderful presentation. I believe that we are going to need to take a vote. Thank Supervisor

you, Madam Chair. I agree with you about the listening part. That's the whole purpose of the market study, and we're going to keep working at it until we get it right. So thank you so much for that input. With that, thank you for my colleagues. I really appreciate your input and your insight on the small area plan. It's something new and improved and strategically focused on. With that, I move for approval of the Fetler Park small area plan.

Second.

It has been properly moved and seconded. Discussion? Supervisor Boddy?

Thank you, Supervisor Bailey, those words. All I will say is in addition to everything my colleagues have said and all of us have touched upon in in different ways. There's an opportunity here because this small area plan that's being initiated right now also has a uniqueness that there's a couple of activities since they're already built in the small area plan. We very rarely get that with these. But as we talk about transportation and transit that my all my colleagues have sort of well said, it is how can we continue to partner with Ami right now, folks to connect folks around what already exists, right, that built environment?

Because it's one thing to say, hey. Yes. There's bus routes that'll take you out to the Beltway, out to employment centers outside the county. But what does it also look like to in order to connect to people from where they live to bring those jobs closer? Because the only the only way we'll be able to build real economic vitality, especially in an area like this that's already sort of built out as was said, is connecting what's already there together better. And that also brings more investment. If folks start to see there's a really robust transportation and transit network that can take you from those areas from Ashland to Montclair down to Route 1 and Route 234 down to the town of Dumfries. Employers take note of that. There's actually a vibrant vibrancy that allow their employees to get around without jumping into their car to get anywhere. So there's there's a real opportunity there.

So I just wanna make sure that as we continue to have those conversations, that really we zero in on the fact that as supervisor Vega said, traffic there right now is not great. And that is not only a quality of life issue, which you not understate, but it's also an economic issue because employers will not locate in a place where their employees can't get around and their patrons can't get around. So just really wanted to lean into that and, of course, we'll be supporting this. Thank you, madam chair.

Supervisor Stewart.

Madam Chair, thank you very much for what you said about making sure we listen to the community, especially people that live there. Let's make sure we are not moving people to different communities without having them call a U Haul truck. Let's make sure that when we listen, we also heed. You know, our species has a great history of listening to nature and then burning it all down. So, let's make sure that we hear the voice of the community, and it's the most important voice, and there should be none louder and none greater. That's all I got. Thank you.

All right. I don't see anyone else. So, let's go ahead and take our vote.

Vote unanimous. Supervisor Ingrahe absent

from vote. Alright, thank you so very much. We are going to agenda item number 11 and that is supervisor's time. We have a few couple nominations and notice, you know, voting on some notices of a 10 to a point. I was gonna do everything in one swoop. I don't know if anyone has anything they want to discuss, like 11 d, if you want to have a separate discussion on that or 11 e. If so, speak now. All right, I just have to check. So all right, I'd like to get a nominee I'm sorry, a motion for 11A through 11E.

So moved. Second.

All right, it's been properly moved and seconded. Any further discussion on any of those items? All right, seeing none, let's go ahead and take our vote.

Vote unanimous, supervisor angry absent from vote.

All right, I am going to go around. I'm gonna start with supervisor Bailey. Yeah, I'm gonna, always mix it up. There you

go. Okay.

Thank you, Madam Chair. On February 17 that says good afternoon. Sorry. Don't have my glasses on. On the fourteenth, I had the honor of, being the guest speaker at the Women and Community Community Action's Mother and Daughter Tee, celebrating the twenty twenty six debutant class of 12 remarkable and beautiful young ladies. It was a wonderful event. High tea in the afternoon. Haven't done that in quite some while. So it's quite a while, with, 12 wonderful teenagers. I also had the opportunity of attending the, U4 Tomorrow two Heart to Heart Gala, and I truly had a great time.

It was just a lot of fun with my colleagues, just having good dinner and good conversations with our spouses. So thank you to You for Tomorrow for always inviting us. On the February 16, I attended the General Assembly with my organizations, the Old Dominion Chapter of the Links Incorporated, and we had an opportunity to effectively advocate for specific initiatives, specifically priorities that really collaborate with the priorities that we have here on the board. And we were grateful for the opportunity to have an exchange with our new governor, Governor Abigail Spanberger. And then on the eighteenth, which is that's tomorrow.

Happy birthday, Kenny. I'm looking forward to the preliminary meeting to discuss the project ahead of the March 4 stakeholders meeting at Piles Creek. On the nineteenth, I'll be participating and enjoying the ever exciting Black History Month program that our county always puts on, and I'm so excited about that. Then on the twenty first, I've been invited to share my remarks with the National Association of Counties for their legislative conference to discuss the county's experience as it relates to our newly erected crisis receiving center. And I want to thank director Elijah Cummings and his group for preparing me for that.

I really appreciate it. I'll be participating in the Dar El Noor Ramadan dinner also on the twenty first. And then on the twenty sixth, my team and I look forward to attending the annual event with, for Black History Month with Senator Warner, downtown at the capital. And then lastly, I look forward to attending the business awards celebrating, the best of our outstanding achievements with our business owners with our chamber. And so I'm I'm just looking forward to that because it's an opportunity for us to celebrate them.

Lastly, I'd like to thank, my wonderful planning commissioner, Mr. Juan McPhail. Juan, I know you're watching, for your impeccable job for the last six years in helping me to put Potomac back on the map and to make sure that the essentialities of that community, 74,000 members of that community, is always at the table to discuss moving forward and what that means to tweak the Potomac District. So Juan, I appreciate you. I appreciate your impeccable skill set that you brought to the table for me, and I will miss you.

But with that, I'd like to give my notice of intent for Mr. Michael Sherman to be the next Potomac District Planning Commissioner going forward. And Andrea, I will have that resume to you tonight. Thank you, Madam Chair.

All right. I'm going to go to Supervisor Vega.

Thank you, madam chair. I'm gonna start off by giving my notice of intent to reappoint Ben Baldwin to the Human Rights Commission. His resume is already on file. Next, just in the spirit of listening to the voices of our constituents, wanna remind everyone that the county executive will be presenting the budget tonight. This opens up the formal process, if you will.

So this is your budget after tonight. It becomes the people's budget, and I encourage everyone to reach out to their corresponding supervisors so that we can have conversations and ensure that the final budget reflects your priorities and that of your families. A little birdie told me that Supervisor Tom Goready celebrated his 20 birthday on Sunday. So happy birthday, Tom. And also, it's a very special time for our colleague because his son was actually also born on the same day that he was. So father and son celebrated their birthday. So I hope you all had a great time. And as Supervisor Bailey stated, Kenny's birthday is tomorrow. We're not going to talk about his young age because I believe you're the baby up here. Yeah.

And lastly, I just want to give a shout out to Prince William Water, county executive, and the rest of the team. As you all may have probably read, you knew that there was a water, advisory, in the Coles District and in parts of the Neabsco District. Folks were very transparent with what the issues were, and our office, along with supervisor was able to act. And so just want to thank folks for playing a vital role in ensuring that we provided clean water to those that needed it and that all questions and concerns were answered in a timely manner. That's all I have, madam chair. Thank you.

Alright. Thank you. I'm gonna go to Mr. Stewart and Mr. Boddy.

Thank you, madam chair. You know, first things first, I want to I want us to remember the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who died today at 84. I think it's important to remember that we all stand on the shoulders of giants, and this individual was an icon in the continuing and ongoing story of American history. And I hope he finds peace with the Lord and that his family has peace and solace and can stay proud in all of the things that this individual was able to accomplish, and I know I will be. So I just wanted to mention that.

Continuing on, I also attended the Youth for Tomorrow dance. I got to or gala. How call it a old am I? How old am I? There was a dance floor. It was very small, but I was supposed I didn't dance. I don't dance. So, but no, it was my first time there. It was an interesting event. And I was happy I went and was able to break bread with great company.

And I want to give a shout out to a young man from Gainesville, Mr. David Gill, who attends high school at Battlefield. He's been selected to the twenty twenty six United States National Taekwondo team, and he's going to compete at the both pan pan American championships in the world Taekwondo championship this year. And so, want everybody in Prince William County to lean in and send this kid some good vibes. Obviously, he's good. And let's lift him up to do the best that he can. Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Supervisor Boddy.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Supervisor Stewart, mentioning the unfortunate and untimely passing of Reverend Jackson. Appreciate you mentioning that. As was just said, he was a legendary figure, not just for the for black folks in The United States, but the civil rights movement as a whole. The rainbow coalition, I'll go through the entire history, but, you know, there are few folks that can fill the shoes of folks like that that really broaden the conversation around how we think about equality and what it means to be an American and who is actually included in all men are created equal, all the things that our constitution or our laws are supposed to protect, uphold, and uplift.

So, I know he and his family, sacrificed a lot over the decades, and he comes from a very interesting and challenging background. But to know that where he started and where he ended up, is just a testament to what's possible in our country, especially for folks that fight for so many others along the way. That said, we'll move on to, some of the events coming up and those who have passed. Back on the eleventh, I mentioned before, we had our Occoquan district appointee dinner. Thank you so much to all my my appointees that were able to come out. I see one in the audience. Latonya Thomas, who's my social services board chair. Thank you appointee. Thank you for coming out. Really great conversations.

We talk about bringing out those barriers and the silos between agencies, what have you. I think it's important to have that with your appointees as well because there's so many great conversations can be had when your appointees get in one room. And, of course, my mistake was having it a week before budget scenes. And, of course, everyone had their budget asks for me as well. But I really appreciate all my appointees.

I too, back on Valentine's Day, went to the YFT Heart to Heart Gala, had a great time, really appreciate everything that YFT and their folks continue to do to uplift, protect, and change the trajectories of children in our community. The story of the young woman that spoke during that event, I don't think there was a single dry eye in the house by the time she was done. But it's just a powerful testament to the ability to train change the trajectory of not only a child, but all those lives that that child then touches as they they move on through their lives. Looking ahead, I've said this last week, but on the twenty fifth of this month, at IKEA, we'll be kicking off our next gen Prince William County. It's shaping up to be really great program looking to really engage your your late teens and 20.

Those folks are folks that aren't often in rooms that we talk about. They're not usually at the table because of various other reasons. I think that since we make decisions that affect them a lot longer than a lot of other folks, they should be definitely part of the conversation. We talk about capturing and retaining that certain, demographic, and we can't really make decisions that will attract and retain them unless they are part of the process. So definitely looking forward to that conversation.

If anyone has any young people who are interested, be there on the twenty fifth at IKEA in the evening. We would definitely like to hear from you. With that, madam chair, I have a directive that I sent to the board earlier. I just wanna preface this by saying there's been coverage of this directive ahead of me giving it, but I just wanted to say that as I say this, it is not my intention or my vision to have a data center put in anywhere in the landing small area plan. This board actually acted last year to remove the data center overlay from this landing area.

So just wanted us to put that out there and put the flag down. So, madam chair, without objection, I'd like to direct the county executive to have county staff engage with Prince William County Schools staff to evaluate and recommend options for the county to with the school board's agreement, obtain ownership of the former plan site for the fourteenth high school in the Occoquan District, including but not limited to purchase, long term ground lease, land swap, or joint use arrangement. The evaluation should include mechanisms to reserve sufficient area for a potential future school site even if on a smaller footprint than the previously planned school should the school board determine in the future that a school is still in needed on that site as necessary. Such evaluation and recommendation should, where applicable, include proposed timelines, potential fiscal impacts, other pertinent information for board consideration. The county attorney's office is directed to review the information and recommendations for any legal issues.

When the evaluation and work is complete, the county executive should report back to the board with the evaluation and recommendations during a board meeting or by memorandum as appropriate.

Madam chair.

Supervisor Vega.

I have a few questions. Supervisor Bodhi, did you speak about your intentions with the chair of the school board?

Not yet.

Okay. And the reason why I ask is because I reached out, you know, and try to have conversations with school board members and the chair. And I would feel much more comfortable supporting this initiative if you actually had those conversations with the chair so that he can then talk to his school board. And this is why. This board has taken a very hard stance as to not get involved in pretty much anything other than giving the school division money.

I think that you're opening a door without perhaps fully thinking about the unintended consequences. I don't think that it's prudent to direct county staff, to take on such an endeavor without ensuring that this is something that the school board is interested in. The second question that I had was, who purchased this property?

The school division did.

The school division did. I think that respectfully, we're overstepping. If we agree to your directive, I think that the prudent thing would be to have the conversation with the chairman of the school board so that then he can talk to his board and to see if this is something that they want to do. It's already incredibly difficult for the school division to acquire land. I don't think it's our position to then come without having discussed it with them to try to market it for something else. And so I will be objecting for those reasons, and happy to hear any additional thoughts or feedback that you have. Again, I would feel much more comfortable if these conversations were already had with the chairman of the school board and his board.

Thank you for that, Supervisor Vega. I guess it just sort of comes to a difference in sort of thought on who should be engaging who first. I hear what you're saying. Well, I haven't talked to the chair of the school board. I have talked to some of the school board members, and there was I wouldn't say there was open, like, hey. Let's do it. But there's, like, hey. Let's have staff talk to staff and see where this goes. I hear you on that, and I'm not against waiting to to have those conversations. I just don't want too much time to go by because there's already speculators that are are are are trying to look to us to do something here. I just wanna make sure that the school division and the school board knew that we at least had an interest, I didn't want to put that out there until we had some kind of board action taken.

Madam Chair, if I may? And that's fair. And and again, if you want to, you know, maybe pull your directive and then go have those conversations because we don't know what the priorities of the school board are, of the school division in regards to this land. And I think that they should have that opportunity to make the call. And if they are interested in going in the direction that you're going and they signal support for your directive, then by all means, let's do it. But I don't feel comfortable supporting this without them having a say on their land that they purchased. I think that our chair would feel incredibly not disrespected, but blindsided if, let's say, the school division did the same and didn't extend the same courtesy to her.

That's fair. I'll withdraw my directive.

Thank you.

All right, thank you so very much. Supervisor Avery, did you catch your breath? Are you ready? I can I can also say I can give you some time, but you you go? No,

no. We'll we'll get this on. Also, everyone, sorry about my, tardiness. We'll discuss that later. So first of all, I just wanna congratulate Dell City Neighborhood Library on forty years. So they're forty years old. So here's a fun fact for you. Dell's Dell City Neighborhood Library first opened on February 1986, the same year I graduated high school. It was the fourth of six original neighborhood libraries to be built in Prince William County, and we only have five neighborhood libraries left. The three flagpoles that you see off the corner of Dale Boulevard and Minnieville were donated by the VFW Post fifteen o three, another fun fact.

Also, Thursday, February 12, I attended the, annual Boxes of Basics Community Leaders Roundtable Luncheon. Great discussion about, how they can, advance in the community, and so looking forward to to their gala coming up here next month as well. Also, on Valentine's Day, we did a a ribbon cutting ceremony for Casa I'm a say this one, Casa Masala, which is in the Mapledale Plaza. Now this is a very, unique restaurant. I you all to stop by.

They, they blended fusion of a few of Pakistani and Mexican cuisine, which is excellent, by the way. So if you get the chance to stop by, order up a meal, say hi, welcome in the neighborhood. They also have a community center there as well. So if you got any events you wanna do, you're welcome to rent out that space as well. As you know, we're gonna be talking about the FY '27 budget here coming up.

So I encourage all the NEAPSCO residents to take a few moments to share your concerns and feedback as we begin these discussions. Your input will be will help me better understand what matters most. And so if you visit neapsconews.org, you'll see a survey there that you you are more than welcome to take that survey. It'll help us better, get a feel for what the, citizens are looking for, constituents are looking for. And I'm also excited to share a few other updates.

So court's district update, as you heard me mention last week, we're gonna have that on Saturday, March 21 at 11AM. That's gonna be at Desanto Community Hall. That's Fire Station 13 off of Hillandale and Dell Boulevard. More information will follow on that, so stay tuned. Our spring dumpster day will be May 30 at 10:00, and that's gonna be once again at the Gemini Way commuter lot, basically where we host our farmers market. So we'll put more information out on that and just check the website, check back for updates. Thank you, Madam Chair.

All right, thank you so very much. I want to start by wishing a happy birthday to my fellow Aquarius that's boardy. I think we've lost a couple of Aquarius because we're a pretty strong Aquarius board. I would also like to do a notice of attend for Tamadri Thomas to the regional jail board. I know I'm a little overdue on that, my apologies.

And I wanted to talk about the State of the County event, which is coming up on Monday, March 3, I'm sorry, March 2. Unfortunately, we had to reschedule that because of the bad weather, but I'm really looking forward to it. The theme this year is gonna be reimagining Prince William County. So we're gonna talk about reimagining community safety, reimagining workforce development and career pathways, and reimagining living and playing in the county. As it was during our inaugural event last year, we're gonna have panel discussions with county staff, really diving into some of the things that are changing around our county.

So I'm very excited for that. Please take a look, it's on the county website. It's gonna be on my website, I'm sorry, on my Facebook as well. And certainly sign up for my newsletter. I put all the information about my events in there. And lastly, I did wanna touch on something that a couple of my colleagues said about the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Our elders are leaving us. They are. And there are certain milestones when people you've grown up seeing or learning about when they leave. But it reminds me that we need to step up.

We, as a board, need to remember why we chose public service. The hours are long. The pay isn't great. But we chose to serve and we have to stay anchored in that in all the decisions that we make. So thank you everyone. We are going to take a short break. Ten minutes.

Madam chair.

Sorry. Supervisor.

Did ever

get an opportunity?

Oh, I missed you, Court. We talked about when we missed you. Oh my God. It's okay. I am so sorry.

I'm way down here.

Also no, I was gonna get to you and then to Vega, but then Vega wanted to go first. So I apologize my fellow Aquarius. You did. I told you a secret. Supervisor Gordy.

Alright. Thank you.

And then ten minutes.

Alright. Alright. So last Thursday, I had the opportunity to meet with the new Western District police captain, captain Neil Miller. Was great to meet him and get to know, you know, what motivates him and encourages him in his day to day job and talk about some of the challenges of of safety in in Western Prince William County. And I would just remind, based upon that conversation, folks, lock your cars.

Yeah. Lock your cars. That still seems to be a major crime in problem in Prince William County is car theft, particularly amongst Hyundai's and Kia's. So just remember, lock your cars. When you're not in them, lock them up.

So also on Friday, I had the opportunity to meet with Cub Scout Pack eleven ninety four from the Noakesville School, and took the all the questions that these fourth graders could throw at me for about an hour and a half to help them earn their citizenship badge, and really appreciate them coming out and spending some time talking about our county and and how we are governed, and and so thank the Cub Scout Pack for doing that. On Saturday, I was joined by by chair Jefferson for the groundbreaking of Adams Gainesville. It was a great afternoon of of ceremony, and and I just also want to recognize our Muslim community in Prince William County, and tomorrow is the start of Ramadan, and want to wish everyone in our Muslim community an easy fast and as they go over go through this next season. On Saturday, also joined my colleagues for the Youth for Tomorrow Heart to Heart Gala to celebrate the work that they do to help troubled teens in our community. And I mean, the story that the stories that told and the testimony that was brought that evening, I mean, you I don't think there was a dry eye in the place of how transformative Youth for Tomorrow is in the lives of our young people.

And so really appreciate the work and glad that Prince William County is their home. Also, over the weekend, I had never I didn't know what the skeleton was, but had a chance to watch Mystique Rowe from Brentsville District High School and compete in the Olympics in Milan. She she didn't medal, but wow. Going downhill headfirst on a sled at at 50 miles per hour. Seventh seventh in the the in the pairs. In the pairs on Saturday. That's it. Yep. And so but wow. What a sport.

And it's it's definitely not for the faint of heart. So congratulations to Mystique on making it to the Olympics and and her continued career in that. And then to our Christian community, tomorrow is also the beginning of Lent and is Ash Wednesday, which where I grew up today is Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday, which I won't talk about that. But But but but I do wanna wish all of our everyone who will be observing Lent much peace as you also fast over these next forty days as we come to Easter. And with that, madam chair, I will turn it back to you. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. And that ten minute break now became five minutes. So all right. We're going to go ahead into closed session. Thank you, everyone. See you shortly. We are back from closed session. I would like to get a motion to certify.

So moved. Second.

Alright. Let's go ahead and take that vote.

Supervisor Ankry, is yours up and running? Thank you. Vote unanimous.

All right, thank you everyone. We are in recess until seven Thank you. All right. We are back from recess. Before we begin, I want to acknowledge sheriff Glenn Hill is joining us.

He's in. Hello, sheriff Hill. Rebecca. Alright. Also to just know that secretary of the commonwealth, Candy Mundane King, will be in for, a what was it? Proclamation? Commendation? Proclamation. So we are going to, when she gets here to accommodate her busy schedule, we may have to interrupt her presentation just to acknowledge her. Anyone who wants to come down for the photo is welcome to. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Shorter, county oh, wait, supervisor Bailey, did you have something?

Yeah, I just want to Madam Chair, I just found something out tonight that I when I was in your office, I did not know that I'd like to share. Okay. Today is the sheriff's forty fourth year with the county. So we just wanna since he's here tonight, give you your flowers. Thank you, madam Chair.

Thank you. Mr. Shorter, you may begin.

All right. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. All right. I am Chris Shorter, your county executive, and pleased to present the FY twenty seven budget proposed budget and financial plan for Prince William County. I'm joined by Dave Sinclair.

Dave, come on up. And and our Chief Financial Officer and Director of Finance, Leslie Weldon. I'm also joined by our Executive Cabinet and here in the chamber and the leadership team, all of the directors and for our agencies and departments in the atrium. They have played an enormous part in getting us to this point in the process, so just wanna really appreciate all that they have done and certainly will do over the, next few weeks and months to get us to hopefully an adopted budget. We believe that this, document is more than just financial a financial document.

It really is a statement of our values and one that we are proud to say that directly invest where our strategic plan and our community says that they want us to. So very proud of where we are and really want to thank each of you in your offices for all of the questions, all of the support, and all of the back and forth that we've done up to this point. Alright. This first slide just really goes over an outline of what we'll be talking about tonight as part of this presentation. We will start in terms of budget overview with really a a discussion about the process, the budget development process itself.

Then we'll talk generally about f y twenty six and the adopted budget and the decisions the board made as part of the adopted budget last year. We'll talk briefly about some of the economic indicators that ultimately undergird some of the assumptions we made about the f y twenty seven budget. We'll talk revenue and and expenditures. We'll do some pie charts and graphs that break out into various categories, how we plan to look at our revenue assuming a flat tax rate. We will spend the most time tonight on the strategic investments and initiatives section of this budget presentation.

This is where we'll talk about all of the programs, services, and investments that we propose as part of this budget. We'll talk debt and and really compare ourselves against some of the other triple a triple triple a communities, and then we will talk about and touch on the proposed tax rates for f y twenty seven. And we will end the presentation with a multiyear overview or the five year the actual five year plan, and they will talk next steps, really how the budget process, the calendar will look for the next few weeks, and how the community could be involved in this process, the various ways that they could be involved. Alright. So budget overview.

So I I like to say, I know I've said it to the board before, this process is a year round process. The budget the adopted budget becomes effective in July, and by August, we are training for the next budget. And so the the bud the OMB team is really working with, at that point, all of our not just the agency directors, but all of the staff who are involved in the budget development process in August, training on the process for the for the next budget. In September, we are holding our first agency meetings generally with OMB in providing budget guidance to our to our agency directors at that time. In October, you may recall that the budget and finance committee heard from our team.

We provided a a general revenue outlook as well as a budget outlook kicking off, if you will, the f y twenty seven season. We also, accepted, budget request from agencies in October. So that's when agencies submitted their first round, if you will, of budget, of budget proposals. In November, I began to meet with, agencies quadrant by quadrant, to hear, the budget, budget proposals directly from our agency leaders. You may recall that you heard from our constitutional officers in November, both the sheriff and our clerk to the Kirk clerk to the court in in November.

And on the finance and budget committee, we heard about proffers. We provided an update on proffers, and we also provided an update on potential federal impacts during the month of November. In December, we also heard from a constitutional officer who was not available in, November, our commonwealth attorney. And then in the budget and finance committee, we talked about capital projects, which you heard about, last week during the CIP presentation. And then in January, you heard preliminary general revenue estimates.

We will come back to that in March with, with the an actual revenue general revenue estimate that I'll use as part of the recap. And, and we also talked about some of the decisions that the board has already made, last month. So this month, you heard from, from us on the CIP, tonight, the proposed budget. And we will hopefully be in a position where we're able to advertise rates, either after tonight or sometime soon. And we will we will have a community meeting as we always do, where the OMB team will talk to this community and hear questions directly on Saturday.

Alright? In terms of the f y twenty seven budget, three key primary three key areas of focus for this budget, and that was sustaining and improving our core government services really for a dynamic and growing community. And we certainly you will see significant investments there. The another core focus area was investing strategically in our workforce to ensure competitiveness and in our overall infrastructure, quality of life, information technology, etcetera. That those strategic investments were really grounded in our strategic plan and in what we heard from you.

And then finally, protecting our affordability for our residents as well as dealing with some of the what we believe could be mitigating some risk associated with local impacts based on federal and state state decisions. In terms of the f y twenty seven priorities, so, in October, when agencies submitted their overall budget request, each of those initiatives were, were connected to our strategic plan. Part of the budget guidance was that, there was a direct connection to all of our, essentially all of our budget, initiatives, a direct connection to our strategic plan. This was critically important as we did the work of of engaging community and engaging your offices to develop the strategic plan. We also focused on making sure that we adhere to the county school revenue share agreement.

And so that was very important and and clearly a large investment in this in this budget. You will see, certainly, you saw last week in the in the CIP, a significant investment in our parks and recreation system. We believe that was important, and we believe we heard that from you all very consistently and certainly from this community, as well as other infrastructure investments, both from an IT perspective as well as some of the quality of life infrastructure. There were also, in terms of priority in this budget, a need for us to deal with capacity within our agencies to get the job done, and we believe that we've met the call there in terms of some of the FTEs and other capacity issues that we know we were dealing with. And then finally, our constitutional officers wanted to make sure that we were responsive to what we heard, what the board heard very directly from our constitutional officers and say that and so they were a priority in this budget as well.

Alright. So the next few slides will review essentially what was done last year, as part of the f y twenty six, '26 budget. You will recall that the board adopted a budget that reduced the overall real estate tax rate from 92¢ to 90.6¢, which was essentially an effective 5.6% increase over the prior year. The board also reduced, for the first time in thirty five years, reduced the personal property tax rate on vehicles by from three seventy to three fifty. Again, a very a very big deal for this community as we had not done that in a very long time.

The board also reduced our food and beverage tax rate from 4% to 3% last year and increased the personal property on computers and peripheral from three seventy to three fifteen. What you see on the right of this of this slide, we heard last month a few board members ask for us to be very explicit in where the data center revenue was showing impact, we wanted to make sure that in a few of these slides, pulled out data centers for that reason. And so, what you see here in terms of tax rate, we also heard of, I think, supervisor Bodhi, you specifically asked, us to lay out how the tax rate had been impacted over the last several years, and this graph does it. So the bars, the blue bars on this chart essentially show what has happened in terms of appreciation to home values from f y twenty through f y twenty six, and so you see constant increase. The lines on this chart show the tax the effective tax rate.

The orange the orange line shows the tax rate with levies. The blue line shows the tax rate without levies. And so you see, starting in f y twenty two, a consistent downward trend in terms of tax rates. The board also invested in our public education system, $991,000,000 invested in Prince William County Public Schools consistent with the revenue share agreement last year or in f y twenty six. There were tech significant technology investments as part of the f y twenty six approved or adopted budget.

You may recall that the board also approved one time funding to support the operations at the CRC while we awaited IMD IMD exclusion waiver from the federal government. There was also significant support for staffing plans as part of last year's budget, so we wanted to make sure we captured that as well. Okay. So quickly go over some of the economic assumptions that are made as part of the f y twenty seven budget. I'll remind the board that a lot of this information, we didn't touch on it too much here because we're gonna, in March, hear from our finance team, and they'll come they'll in the general revenue estimate or general revenue update, as I prepare for the recap, we'll we'll get more into detail in terms of some of the, financial assumptions.

That said, as you can see from this chart, our unemployment rate is slightly lower than the national average. We believe while the labor market is still fragile, that we are going to see a stable stabilization of the unemployment rate in in '26. In terms of inflation, you will see in a subsequent slides that while we are down significantly from our COVID peak, there will still be some inflationary impacts on contracts and services as part of the f y twenty seven budget. And in terms of consumer spending, we are seeing spending highest at the highest income earner level. So those households that make over $251,000 a year, we are seeing the largest the largest consumer spending.

In terms of key assumptions or budget drivers for the f y twenty seven budget, You know, I said it to each of you in your offices. We knew that the f y twenty seven budget would be a budget that dealt with it was almost a perfect storm that dealt with some of the competitive competitiveness in our compensation. And so we were dealing with two CBAs as part of the f y twenty seven budget, as well as three compensation and classification studies for our general government employees, our general service employees, our, our sheriff, and our ADC. So all of that was, certainly a driver as part of the f y twenty seven budget. There are, as previously said on the slide before this one, impacts, inflationary impacts on our contracts and services, and we'll talk about, talk about those in subsequent slides.

And we are dealing with, some service demand, and population growth or capacity issues within our agencies, and so that was certainly a driver as part of this this this budget. And then finally, state and federal government uncertainty, and that is, you will see some investments we are asking the board to make, in this budget to help mitigate, some of that uncertainty. Okay. In terms of revenue overview, so what we're gonna do in the next few slides is talk about what our revenue picture looks like assuming a flat tax rate. So a flat tax rate of 90.6¢.

What we do here is split out into four categories what our real estate tax base looks like. And so we have residential, public service, commercial, and data centers. And you see over time, while these numbers are preliminary estimates, FY twenty seven through FY thirty one, again, we'll talk more about this in, March. What you see here is that our data center tax base is growing in terms of its proportion to our overall real estate tax base. Alright.

So with this slide, this shows our real estate tax revenue estimates, again, based on a flat tax rate. And so here you see that residential real estate still buy in is the great majority in terms of this this pie chart with 64% of our overall revenue coming from real estate tax. On the right of this this slide, what you see is essentially our estimates in terms of real estate drivers. And so appreciation for residential at 3.5, appreciation for commercial at 6.4%, and appreciation for data centers at 23.1%. A big note on this slide is the $13,900,000,000 growth in our land book value.

Happy to come back to this slide if there are questions. In terms of our personal property tax revenue estimate, you see that business tangible associated with data centers is the majority, with 51% of the revenue associated with personal property, and and our vehicles comes in at, at number two with 42%. Also, on this, on this slide, you'll notice that vehicle units, that means the number of vehicles themselves have increased in the county, which you expect, year over year. The value of those vehicles has slightly decreased, which you would also expect, year year over year. In terms of computer computer equipment and peripheral furniture and fixture, heavy equipment, we'll talk about on the next slide.

But an overall increase, very important on this slide, business tangible of 877,000,000, dollars year over year. And so a summary of what we see, again, this is to answer the question that we got a few weeks ago in terms of being very specific about the data center the impact of data centers revenue. We pulled out real estate, computer equipment and peripheral and furniture and fixture, and you see here an estimate of 549,700,000.0 in data center revenue estimated based on current rates. So we assumed $4.15 on computer and peripheral, $3.70 on furniture and fixture. Those three categories in this slide presented again.

You really see here very clearly what happens to real estate in the out years in terms of in terms of the data center revenue forecast. Alright. In terms of general general revenue, again, based on a nine a flat tax rate, Here, you see real estate tax at 58.1 percent of our total pie for general revenue with personal property coming in at 27.7%. That is all the things we just talked about in the previous slides. Alright.

In the overall picture. So this is, those sources of revenue, again, based on a flat tax, flat tax rate at 90.6¢. This is the these are our revenue estimates for f y twenty seven. You also see at the bottom of this slide what we what we are estimating in terms of revenue share, so the school's portion of the revenue, and then where we end up. And then you'll see that in the out sort of played out in the out years as well.

Again, happy to come back to this slide if there are any questions at the end of the presentation. All right. Some of the revenue that we will be watching over the next few weeks, and certainly as we come up to the to the presentation of sort of revenue estimate in a in a few weeks in March. Our real estate property taxes, those assessments, the assessment notices go out in March. The personal property taxes on vehicles, the returns start to come back in in April.

And with food and beverage, the change was made as part of the last year's adopted budget. It became effective on January 1. So we will be monitoring the food and beverage, taxes as they as they come in. And then with sales, the disbursement from the state, the estimates will will happen, next month. So again, we'll be able to report out as part of the revenue estimate, the general revenue update, in March.

Alright.

I'm sorry. We're gonna take a brief break.

Okay.

Secretary of the Commonwealth, Candy Bundon King, has joined us. So for those of you who weren't following earlier, we did a, proclamation for the Secretary of State and out of respect for her time, she just got here from Richmond. We are gonna go ahead and give that to her, and we'll take a short photo. So, Supervisor Bailey, if you wanna join me down at the podium. And after that, if there's anyone who wants to be a part of the picture, come down with us. Thank you.

Okay. Evening, everyone. It gives me great honor to tell you a little bit about a special person in our community. This is for Secretary Candy Mandan King, who has demonstrated exemplary leadership and an unwavering commitment to public service, earning the respect and confidence of the community with a passion for equity and opportunity for all. Through her distinguished career, Secretary Mundun King has advanced the principles of integrity, accountability, and excellence in government, earning the respect of colleagues, stakeholders, and the citizens she serves.

In January 2021, she was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, where she represented the people of the 23rd District, serving Prince William and Stafford Counties with integrity, compassion, and commitment before assuming the office of secretary of the Commonwealth of Virginia on 01/17/2026. Throughout her career and personal life, Candy Mundun King has been sustained by the support of her loving family, including her wonderful husband, Josh King, and their children whose encouragement has strengthened her service to the Commonwealth. Therefore, today, the Prince William Board of County Supervisors hereby recognizes and commends secretary Candy Mundun King for exemplary service, her steadfast dedication to the to public service, and enduring contributions to the citizens of Prince William County and the Commonwealth of Virginia. Secretary King, would you like to have a few words?

Thank you so much, Supervisor Bailey and Chair Jefferson and members of the board, I am deeply honored to be recognized by you. But more than that, I'm deeply, grateful for your friendship, your support, your trust, and your service to Prince William County. Many of you know that I was born and raised in Portsmouth, Virginia, and but what you don't know is that when I moved to DC, it never felt quite right. And then I moved to Maryland, and it still didn't feel quite right. And then I moved to Prince William County, and it felt like home.

And Prince William County has become our home, and we are so grateful for our Prince William County family. And serving the 23rd District has been one of the greatest honors of my life. And I continue to serve Prince William County as her excellency's secretary of the Commonwealth, where we serve nearly 9,000,000 Virginians every day to provide them with the support and service that they deserve. So I'm truly honored, and thank you to my husband for being here with me and all of our Prince William County family, including my sororities of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, and my babies over at Freedom High School. Many of you know I spent nearly a decade volunteering at Freedom High School, and those children have changed my life life.

And they are a part of what makes Prince William County such a special place. So thank you for honoring them for honoring them by honoring me, and thank you for everything that you do. And

anyone who wants to come down to take the photo with us, please make your way down to the podium.

Alright. Madam chair, I'll continue. Alright. Okay. So this is a slide that is common to this community, one that I think we've put in our budgets for the last several several years.

This breaks down by quadrant area what the f y twenty seven budget in terms of expenditure looks like. So you see, certainly difficult to see the agencies, but not so difficult to see the overall, allocated budget and the number of FTEs per quadrant. Alright. It was important, and we just did one slide on this, to distinguish what you heard last week from from us in terms of the CIP and the great presentation Dave did introducing our CIP for the year versus what we are doing tonight in terms of the overall proposed budget. Now so many of the projects that you heard presented last week, ultimately, the impact that that the the debt service associated with those projects will have will impact the operating budget.

So, obviously, the school transfer, the investments we are making in our employees, some of the, again, the debt service and maintenance and operations of our, facilities, all, proposed budget, all operating budget. The presentation that was made last week in terms of land, the design, construction of projects, all of, all of, of that capital. In the, in the table on the right of this slide, what you see essentially is the debt service, and in the case of this year, onetime costs associated with the the CIP. So 40,000,000 in f y twenty 40,200,000.0 in f y twenty seven. That number grows significantly by f y twenty one I'm sorry, f y thirty one.

And so that was one of the points of this slide to show that it is important for us to keep in mind that as we go year over year that the proportion of our debt service for capital projects will start to take up more and more of our overall, operating budget. Alright? Happy to come back to this slide, if there are questions. Okay. So our strategic investments, this is the this is where the rubber meets the road in terms of the sections of this of this budget.

So decisions that the board has already made. We have talked about the CBA, both for police and for fire. There are two FTEs associated with the noise, ordinance that the board has already made a decision on that will be baked into this budget and will come to, in a few slides. In terms of items of board interest, I've talked about the fact that we understood from each of you that parks and recreation projects and the system was very important in this budget. And you will recall that last week, a number of projects were presented, even projects that were one time cost that that are of board interest.

We heard from a number of you about the desire to see some additional capacity built in the planning office and around the enterprise and other ways. And we have also included a coordinated response piece in a number of ways in the budget that we'll talk about. And we talked about federal impacts and the need to make sure that we are mitigating against what might be some uncertainty associated with the state and federal budgets. Okay. So in terms of the FY twenty seven allocation to schools based on the current revenue share agreement at 57.23%, What we would be transferring to schools this year is record setting.

$1,100,000,000 to schools associated with the revenue share agreement. This represent an increase of 12.8% over last year's transfer. This is in addition to the school transfer. What you see in terms of additional transfers are on top of the, the actual transfer to school. So you see this in the budget and have seen it in the budget for the last several years, class size reduction, the debt service associated with Gainesville High School, our school security program.

And to be clear, this is the elementary school community, I guess, what is it? Dave, remind me. The school community school resource the community school resource officers, not the the security officers in the middle and high school level. We could talk about that a bit more, and then the cable grant revenue. In the table on the right of this slide is this shown essentially in graph form.

The increases in our overall transfer year over year is what is displayed here in that graph. So from FY '23 to '24, what the increased amount was above what we provided by way of transfer the prior year, you depicted in this slide. Wanted to make sure that we were clear. Again, happy to come back. In terms of employee compensation, so with the CBAs both for police and fire, what you see here, effectively for police is the increase in starting pay from 62,000 to 74,000 for our, for our police officers.

And what you see reflected out for fire and rescue does not include the 30 FTEs, and this is the final year of the 30 FTE staffing plan associated with the fire and rescue CBA. What you do see in the 3,000,000 are a number of market adjustments for primarily for the first four steps in the fire service from 3% to 4% with some stipend and other specialty pay included to make up that 3,000,000. In terms of the general services classification and compensation study, we're gonna talk a bit more about that in the next slide. But with sheriff in ADC, we included a 8.2 an 8.2% market adjustment based again on the compensation and classification studies for both the sheriff and ADC. We are also proposing a 3% step, merit increase, across across the board with some support for the increase in health, and fringe benefits for our workforce.

We're also seeing this year a decrease in the amount that we are paying to VRS due to some savings on the VRS side for a total of 49 for total investment in f y twenty seven of 49,000,000. In terms of the general government or general services classification, and compensation study, what you see here is essentially what the study told us. It told us that our, band a or group a employees, these are our frontline employees. Our employees with sometimes the lowest the lowest salaries are the furthest from market. And so we have the the longest, the the largest to go in terms of getting them back to market and competitive.

And so what we are propose and with band b, you see our the number of examples here with fleet, code inspectors, paralegal, staff. We are proposing a 6% total increase. What you will see in this slide is that we are, we are recommending that that increase be, provided over two years versus over one year. And so with the a band, our frontline employees would receive a 12% increase, broken out over two years. So 6% in f y twenty seven and six percent in f y twenty eight.

B band, 3% this year, 3% next. And with c, d, e, in medical, our highest paid employees, have the least furthest to go in terms of being, being at market. So we are already very competitive when it comes to the c, d, and e bands of our workforce. This is an important, I thought this was a very important piece of the compensation and classification study, and I think will be received very well by our workforce, being very clear that those in our workforce that are usually hourly and the lowest paid are going to be receiving the biggest benefit from this compensation and classification study for your consideration. Okay.

So with the next, few slides, we're gonna cover quadrant by quadrant, what our, proposals are in terms of budget initiatives. And so the first quadrant up, government operations, performance, and innovation. That quadrant is made up by five agencies. What we are, proposing as part of the f y twenty seven budget is eight additional FTEs and an overall local investment of 4,700,000.0. And by local, I should say general fund investment of in terms of the budget initiatives, this is gonna be consistent throughout the slide deck.

I really appreciate that the team laid out, the budget initiatives in this way. You can actually see on the far right of the slide a description of each, but each, initiative, and, and then what the local cost, what revenue might we might receive, from either outside or other source, and the total cost of the initiative. And then if the initiative is, if there's an FTE associated with the initiative. So very clearly laid out, hopefully, for the public and for the board and others to understand. And so what you see here with do it, the first set of investments with heart with hardware replacements, we are proposing that we take the 4,100,000.0 needed for hardware replacements from do its fund balance.

So this would not hit, the overall budget in the way that some of the other investments would. For managed security operations in Splunk, these are cybersecurity initiatives, and would be asking for the board support there. With ServiceNow, this is a platform, enterprise wide platform to help with IT services and portfolio management across our organization. For facilities and fleet management, we are asking the board's consideration for two FTEs to provide security for the crisis receiving center, our pharmaceuticals program, which we moved into local operation, and the NEOFSCO garage. We're also asking for mandate two mandated compliance trainers associated with OSHA test to support, FFM, in this budget as well.

Also, in our government operations quadrant, we are, asking the board's consideration for county attorney paralegal. This will be supported via revenue from our self insured self insurance and not our general fund, although it is general fund dollars. We are also asking for the board support in investment with PwC Works. You heard earlier this month during work session how very impactful PwC Works has been for us in terms of overall engagement. That the funding associated with PWC Works was one time funding, and we are asking to build it now into the budget so that we can continue that program and continue the the great engagement around within within that platform.

We are asking the board's consideration for an additional FTE to provide volunteer support. This is enterprise wide. We're also asking for support with finance, to help with span of control, issues as we grow capacity within finance. The Dexter program, within finance is a telephone system for our tax administration division and would go a long way with helping with customer service there. And finally, with government operations, you see here additional investments in current technology.

This is primarily what we talked about a few slides ago, and that is just increases to contract costs, and license We're gonna see this throughout the budget, where a number of agencies are asking for additional support to, to help with some of the increased contracting, contract cost. What you also see here from facilities and fleet management are increases to existing leases. Again, built escalations have been built in in some cases, and we need to make sure that we cover those costs. Overall, again, eight FTEs associated with government operations. This is a total cost of 9,500,000.0 with 4,800,000.0 coming in the way of other sources.

Not always revenue, some of it is just coming from other sources and an overall cost of, again, 4,700,000.0 for government operations. For health, well-being, and environmental sustainability, we are, as you know, seven agencies within that within the health and health and well-being quadrant. We are asking for 24 FTEs within this budget for this quadrant in a local cost of 5,300,000.0. And so you see here some of the very important investments in our health and well-being quadrant, with aging support for our seniors without walls program. This is fulfilling the staffing plan, that, that we started last year with the seniors without walls program.

Additional capacity for PWC beds at Birmingham Green is included in this budget and additional support for the Bluebird tour program, which I understand is a very popular program amongst our seniors. We are also in this budget, including additional mandated support, given the increase in youth participating in the program, for the CSA program. As you could see here that there is some support coming from the state. We've talked we've actually talked quite a bit about this, and the fact that they are have that there's a statewide conversation about the CSA program and how the state will support the program, but, this is a mandated program, for us, and this is the county you see the county portion of cost along with the state cost. We have also included funding for DSS for hypothermia services and a case management, case management system.

For public health, we've included an emergency management, tech along with a code enforcement inspector to help with food inspections. And for youth services, we've included, funding for the Right Step Diversion program, which I know some of you have heard about, but I'm happy to kind of answer any questions about that program as we go throughout the budget season, as well as a child nutrition management system that, again, is mandated. And we've taken over responsibility locally for that program. It was a state program. All right.

Also for health and well-being, you see here investments in our community community services staffing. This is all increased capacity, increased support primarily for adults and youth with developmental disabilities. You see here also one FTE associated with state credentialing. This is, I'm sure you all can imagine, the high level of credentialing and licensure needed to maintain this that that staff have to maintain in order to provide support, the way that they do, this FTE will help to make sure that we stay compliant and on top of those, various credentialing requirements. You see also here behavioral health contracts increase, again back to what we talked about just a few slides ago in terms of just year over year increases in contracting costs.

I think this is primarily related to the contract associated with the CRC. Also, health and well-being with environmental sustainability. You see here two FTEs that are consistent with the staffing plan. We presented, I guess it was two budget cycles ago now. This is the last of the staffing plan associated with environmental sustainability, but I imagine that we will re up with another staffing plan.

With parks and recreation, the first initiative under the parks and recreation category, the Occoquan Greenway, we are providing three FTEs to assist with trail maintenance, hitting the local general fund budget. All of the other investments are investments that are being dealt with with being cost recovered or funding coming from revenue generated by the program. One example of that is the science in the park program, very popular program. As soon as I believe Seth puts out notice about the program, the seats are filled. And so the revenue from that program will support the FTEs associated with, with this budget.

You heard last week, from Dave about the storm water management fee and the need for us to meet our MS four permit requirements. So, those requirements include mandated reductions in nitrogen, phosphorus, and other sediments, and we are required to meet those those reductions by 06/30/2028, which is a year ahead of, ahead of schedule. And so the increase in storm water management fee that you see here of 13 on average, $13.45 for a single family home, we believe are mandated, I would say. We need to meet our MS four permit requirements in order to stay compliant with the clean the Clean Water Act. And so the cost, the revenue generated from this increase will all go to that mandate.

In terms of solid waste fee, this this we are recommending an increase in the solid waste fee on average for single family home, $9 increase. This, we are requesting, to assist with these phase four infrastructure work happening at the landfill. While not mandated, this is certainly consistent with our strategic plan for the landfill and development plan needed. We are not recommending this year a tipping fee increase as part of the FY '27 budget. Okay.

So in terms of mitigating risk, there are a number of things happening at the very at the state and the federal level that may impact our local government. You see here listed some of the programs that have already been impacted and we will talk about in the coming slides. But we are asking the board to consider increasing the contingency, to 5,000,000 to help, with the with the uncertainty going into f y twenty seven. In addition to, some of the things that you see listed here, that we have not gotten final word on the waiver, for IMD at our CRC. So we will still be looking to to work with the federal government.

Hopefully, waiver application is dealt with during f y well, before FY twenty seven. But if it is not, we need to be in a position where we can continue to fund the operation of the CRC until that waiver is approved, preferably. Alright. And then what you also see here in terms of contingency, we do not spend funding out of contingency without coming back to the board via resolution to make sure that the board approves that funding going to some alter alternative purpose. So the funding is not sitting.

It is not up to, the CXO to to spin the funding without coming back to the board. Wanted to make sure that point was clear. In terms of mitigating risk, our partners, the very important point here is that our the nonprofits and community based organizations that support many, and much in the way of our vulnerable population here in Prince William County are also dealing with the uncertainty, in the current environment. We are, we are asking that the board consider increasing the community partners program to $1,000,000. This would be be an increase of 425,000.

This funding would go directly to the community, based organizations and nonprofits that are supported by that apply every year now to the community partners program. I'm very proud of what we have done with the community partners program in the short time that I've I've I've been here really excited about what the OMB team has done in terms of making sure that that program is one, that is fair and very transparent. And so I'm very confident that, increasing the amount to 1,000,000 now, will go directly to the smaller, larger, medium sized nonprofits that do great work here in this community. We're also asking the board to consider a $1,000,000 increase in our workers' compensation, insurance workers' compensation, casualty, and property insurance due mostly to increases in the claims for the program. Okay.

Mobility, economic growth, and resiliency. Five agencies, made up, We are asking for the board to, to approve 11 FTEs associated with this budget, at a local cost, general fund cost of 3,100,000.0. I'll say one of the differences with this quadrant is that they are largely supported by building and development fees, and we could talk we'll talk a bit more about the fee the fees that have been socialized with our develop development community. But you will see in this particular quadrant a lot of support for FTE's VFE. With mobility, economic growth and resiliency, we are starting off with the planning office.

Again, four FTEs recommended to support the planning office, three for land use review, one for small area plans. We're also including additional support built into our base budget for advertising postage and increased licensure in for software systems. We're also asking for one time funding to support the zoning ordinance that the vendor who is supporting the zoning ordinance update. For economic development, we're asking for support with the Placer software system. Now I will say economic development is not the only agency that uses this system.

It is a very popular system, but they brought it they brought it forward. And we want to we want to recommend support of the, placer system for economic development and tourism and for the enterprise. For public works, we're asking for two FTEs, essentially a decision that the board has already made to support the noise ordinance enforcement and, funding to support, vacant property cleanup. This is properties these are properties that the county owns. Oftentimes throughout the year, public works is asked to go out, to provide cleanup services and support without a budget to do it.

And so we're asking to add funding so that they can, do this within within a specific line item. We talked about the team came to you during work session to talk about the merger of the or the new Department of Transportation and Capital Construction. What you see here is space funding for space to bring a segment of those employees that will be a part of the new department together. For for transportation, these are positions that would have been requested regardless of the merger and will be supported via revenue and charge back to capital projects and to NVTA 30%, for a land acquisition agent and a grant tech for transportation. Also for mobility, we're looking at FTEs all supported by development fees for development services.

And we are also looking to provide some additional funding for support to make some changes within the office space and increasing some operational funding to support technology within development services. Overall, again, an FTE an FTE increase of 11 positions, and a local, local cost of 3,100,000.0. Now we have talked, quite a bit about OmniRide as part of last week's, budget presentation and certainly individual sessions with you and your staff. We are, we are supporting the $29,900,000, request that came from OmniRod, fully supporting that subsidy, as part of this budget. That represents an increase of $1,000,000 or 3.30.6%.

As you know and was discussed last week, we are now at a point where we are fully utilizing our granaries tax at 100% to support the OmniRide local subsidy, fully using TOT to support OmniRide local subsidy, and now for the first time this year have dipped into NVTA 30% funding. I think each of you know that we use that NVTA 30% funding to match state grants, to match federal grants, very important for our local transportation network. And so we are asking the board, and I'm thankful that there has been an active conversation around other sources of revenue to support transportation locally here in Prince William County. That said, we are using NVTA dollars to support the VRE subsidy, sustaining that subsidy at 5,800,000.0 and, again, fully supporting OmniRides local subsidy. What you see in the table below is essentially what happens based on OmniRides projection over five years to end let me put point to it.

And so while we are at, in f y twenty seven, 1,200,000, that increases to 8,800,000 in f y thirty one. So again, an absolute opportunity for us to to think through what comes next in terms of local support for our transportation system. And finally, safe and secure community made up of nine local agencies, but I will tell you a lot of partnership in this quadrant because we this quadrant is generally the primary liaison to all of our constitutional officers, courts, etcetera. We are asking for 87, new FTEs associated with, this quadrant and a local cost of 17,400,000.0. In terms of the collective bargaining agreement, we talked about this at the start of the presentation.

30 FTEs, this is the final year of the staffing plan associated with the CBA for fire for fire and rescue, at a total cost of 6,900,000.0. We're also asking the board's consideration with 14 additional FTEs to support station twenty twenty seven engine unit. We are including we've included five additional FTEs, non uniform staff to support some of the administrative operations within fire and rescue. We've included a a cadet instructor for the EMT program, with our schools. With fire marshal, this will be cost recovered using development fee revenue.

We're asking for an additional co compliance staff person. And coordinated care, I know I've talked to your office individually about coordinated care and what this means. I believe this is going to this is the the start to a phenomenal partnership between, fire and rescue, public safety communications, and community, services, where we're essentially taking some of our highest users of 911 and making sure that we are going essentially on the offense and reaching out to them to make sure that they're not using 911 because they really need support with medication management or support with transportation to their doctor's appointments or help scheduling doctor's appointments. And so we believe that in addition to saving significant costs, that this will actually be a big opportunity to provide better support to to our residents here in Prince William County who need us most. We're also asking the board's consideration to transfer funding to support a medical director from contract services into a full time FTE with no budget impact.

In terms of police staffing, we are asking the board's consideration for 11 additional FTEs in PD. This is eight sworn, one administrative staff person. We're asking for a deputy within ADC, and ADC will also be using fund balance to support some capital improvements within the facility, elevator modernization and some kitchen replacements and security upgrades, all again, fund balance for ADC. Community navigation, safety navigation specialist for our office of community safety is included, in this, in this budget. We're also including a deputy, for public safety communications, long overdue.

They've come to us a few years in a row now for this position, and I'm happy to include it for the board's consideration. We've also included funding for FTEs to support the veterans docket and adult recovery docket at our courts. Very important programs. I've heard from a number of you. You all have visited the graduations, and so happy to support these programs as they are very effective.

And then with inverse or the Northern Virginia Emergency Response System and UOSSE with COG, through COG, these are both regional emergency management support systems where we work with our neighbors, in the case of UASI, across the DMV, in the case of inverse across Northern Virginia, to deal with crisis, crisis communications, etcetera. In both cases, due to, cutbacks in federal funding to both programs, there are increases, increases to they represent increases to the local budget. In terms of our constitutional officers, we have included the the initiatives that our circuit court clerk included in her budget request to the board in the fall. Our commonwealth attorney, we are including 11 FTEs, that is seven administrative paralegal staff with four attorneys for the Commonwealth Commonwealth attorney, understanding that we that the Commonwealth attorney may be coming back to to the board once the compensation board makes its decisions about local FTEs or, yes, local FTEs that they plan to invest here in Prince William County. So we we may be coming back with the Commonwealth attorney after the budget is adopted with an additional request for appropriation if additional FTEs are awarded by the compensation board.

We're also also asking the board to consider five additional sheriff deputies to increase capacity at our courts. We are also asking the board's consideration to increase the salary supplement for the state, the state employees within our public defenders office. This was originally at 15%, moved up to 25%, and now we are asking the board's consideration to move up to 30, to 30% and increasing the the language interpretation services budget that we've sent to the public defender. We did the one zero six, I believe, in FY '25, and now we're asking to to increase that by by 14,000. So you see for our safe and secure community quadrant, a total of, again, 87 FTEs and local cost at 17,400,000.0.

Okay. I wanted to touch on reserves in our financial policy. Really, this is just two slides in this section really to make sure that I said out loud to the board that when we compare ourselves to other triple a triple triple a communities, we we pair well. We compete well. You see in the orange section that there is a need for us to an opportunity, I should say, for us to establish a rainy day fund that is typical for a jurisdiction our size with triple triple a rating.

This is an example of where we sit just in this particular category. I'll go back and say then all of the other categories, our principles of sound financial management, the way we manage our organization certainly puts us with our peers. But in this one area, with our reserves, we are below our peers. And so what what you see in this slide, the red line shows where our peer jurisdictions are, our peer triple triple a jurisdictions are, and where the median is. And then in the bars, you see where we are year over year.

And so we have some work to do, some opportunity in terms of putting more in reserve, what we would call unassigned, to help support increasing the the percentage of reserve to overall budget. Alright. Okay. So proposed tax rates based on what we have talked about tonight. We are asking the board's consideration for a flat tax rate at 90.6¢.

This would this would represent a $181 increase or 3.5% increase on average, for our homeowners. We are asking the board's consideration to reduce the fire levy, from 7.2¢ to 7¢. This would still represent a my an increase of $3 for, for the, fire levy, and we are asking the board's consideration to reduce the mosquito and forest pest management levy, by $2 or approximately 17.2, percent. What you see in the chart are the rates that we did not that we did not assume would change, understanding that this is the start of the process and that there will be discussion amongst you about, about potential changes in these rates. But we are for personal property vehicle at $3.50, for personal property computer and peripheral at $4.15, and at food and beverage, we are at 333%.

We heard you last year that you wanted to see what this meant in the budget presentation for the average homeowner, and, and this is, this is what it looks like for the average, for the average homeowner. So we are at, on average well, I'll just go here. So in terms of the change from the f y '26 adopted to proposed, for real estate tax, we would be at $1.80.9. For fire levy, we would be increasing $2.57. For mosquito and forest, forest pest levy, we would be decreasing by $2.45, which brings us to $1.81 $0.05.

For the fees associated with solid waste and with storm water, that adds $22, to, to the overall change, and it puts us at $203.50 or 3.6% change over the f y twenty six budget. Alright. And this is what the five year consistent with our principles of sound financial management. This is what the balanced five year plan looks like. And I'll do the same here and say that the FY '27, again, assuming a flat tax rate, you see overall general revenue at 1 point $9.05 5,000,000,000, less the revenue share agreement to schools at 1.118 or 1,119,000,000.000.

And then what that leaves for us in terms of the county's revenue share. And when we bring that forward and we add agency revenue and county resources, it brings us to our overall, county revenue and resources available for expenditures as part of the f y twenty seven budget. We are adding, the expenditures we just went over with the overall debt associated with the CIP that Dave and the team went over last week, and that brings us at, brings us to our overall budget request for f y twenty seven. That leaves us with 545,200.0 on the bottom line. Alright?

And we do that in f y twenty eight and beyond for the five year plan. This is a balanced budget with funding left on the bottom line for the board's consideration. In terms of and this is a reminder, of fund balance. We are consistent with the presentation that was delivered last week, utilizing 41,900,000.0 of NVTA 30% funds to eliminate the need for us to issue debt on two projects. We are using fund balance to support $4,100,000 in technology replacements.

ADC is using 4,000,000 of its fund balance to do facility improvements and capital work within the facility. And then we are using capital reserve dollars, again, back to the presentation last week, to support a infrastructure improvement around technology in our schools to help with communications for our public safety officials. Alright. A summary of what we have gone over this evening. A $49,000,000 investment to retain, recruit the best workforce in the region.

This incorporates FRCBAs in our compensation and classification studies. We have built a budget that provides $20,000,000 in investment for existing and new parks and recreation facilities. We are investing in capacity to grow our services as this community is growing, and addressing the increased expectations around what our government can and will do to support this community. We are addressing, inflationary impacts on our contracts and services, and we are mitigating some, federal and state, risk, with some of the investments that we are proposing as part of this budget. In terms of what this process looks like moving forward, we have budget work sessions and have already decided to include at least, at the very least, the storm water management and solid waste management fees as a budget work session discussion topic, but certainly open to others.

And then on March 10, we will hear the general revenue forecast from our finance team and our director of finance, Leslie Weldon. We have public hearings scheduled on March 17 for the proposed FY '27 budget and then the April 7 required public hearing, for, for our budget. This is how the community, can get involved. We always, really appreciate this slide and certainly appreciate all the work that the OMB team does to quickly answer questions from our community and even from your offices to push information out during the budget season. So we say if you have questions, this is where to submit them.

On Saturday, the OMB team will walk through the budget and CIP, with this community, at 9AM virtual. So please feel free to sign up for those from the community who are listening in. And, we will have those budget hearings, budget work sessions, and, of course, during our budget regular budget meetings, during the budget season, we always expect during public comment time to hear from residents in terms of their reactions to the budget. I believe that is budget calendar. This lays out what the remainder of February, March, and April looks like for us with a proposed budget adoption on the April 1.

I believe that is all. And Madam Chair, available for questions.

Thank you so very much for this presentation. I have a couple people in queue. First supervisor Vega and then Bodhi.

Thank you madam chair. Mr. County executive thank you to you and to the team for putting this budget together. I know that it's not an easy task and one that takes several months, so thank you for that. Just kind of wanna highlight some of the facts that you already stated on the closing portion of the presentation.

We are keeping the tax rate flat. That doesn't mean that people's taxes don't go up. Once again, the increase in the financial burden to the taxpayers of this county continues to be that a financial burden. And while under while while I understand, that the county, has a lot of, priorities, it now becomes the board's budget, and as I stated earlier, the people's budget. This is now a process that is going to entail us going out into the community and listening from the residents.

And we can do this, obviously, via town halls, email, whichever way you prefer. I want to ask Dave a question in regards to and if you know the answers, Chris, please go ahead and But what was the data center revenue in FY20, roughly? What did the industry generate?

I'm afraid I would have to research that.

Okay. I did, and I thought we got this information also from you all. It was 52,200,000.0 Right? And it's in this presentation also. And what is that number for FY twenty seven?

$550,000,000. It's also in the presentation. But these are very critical numbers that I want for all of us to have at the forefront of of of this conversation and as we hear from members of the community. That that is a 953% increase in seven years. That is astronomical.

And so when folks come to us as their representatives asking why taxes continue to go up and why is there a burden on them, it becomes incredibly difficult to provide an answer when we see a 953% increase in data center revenue. Despite the way, you know, people may feel about the industry, we constantly hear, well, where is the revenue? The industry is without a doubt providing the revenue. It's going to be up to this board to figure out how to properly fund a budget that reflects the priorities and the interests of the people of Prince William County. I'm not going to dive into a whole bunch of questions because tonight is your night to present to us the budget.

We now have the budget. We now have to do our homework and go out to the community. And then, for the other dates that you already, shared with us on the presentation, those are going to be crucial dates. Those are important dates because those dates are where we have to have an idea of where we're going to go with this budget, what the tax rate will be, what the revenue share agreement will look appreciate some of my colleagues already reaching out, wanting to have a conversation because that's important. I think that, you know, the mere fact that people are interested in having a conversation is is a good indication of the direction that we're going in. But I did wanna ask in regards to that community meeting, virtual meeting that that the county is gonna put on. I believe you said it was on the twenty first?

Correct.

How are we gonna have access to what the community conveys to you all?

You wanna take that? So certainly, we will be the office of management budget will be sending out the information to to your offices in case you want to include that in your respective newsletters to the community. You will have that tomorrow morning, from the county executive executive or myself. But also, we have a we have a recording of that that we post online as well in case board members or your office staff would like to review that as well. We also, I think, let me investigate this. We may also be able to provide a transcript.

Thank you. And I ask because sometimes, you know, we may not have access to that information, but it's important as we discuss where we're going go with the budget. The more information that we have, perhaps those folks that attend this meeting may not attend one of our town halls. And it's just important to make sure that we have access to all the information, whichever form it's coming in. And so I'll reserve my questions for the next time that we meet. But thank you again, mister Shorter. Thank you, Dave, and thank you team for putting this budget together. That's all I have, madam chair.

Supervisor Boddy.

Thank you, madam chair. And and, again, thank you to Chris, Dave, the rest of the team. As was said, house and I appreciate, Chris, how you had the timeline there because, basically, right after we had after the new budget takes effect, July 1, which is a month later, you guys are already off to the races planning out the next year. So a lot of these conversations can be continue to be, as you said, year long processes, and I'm glad we have instituted the finance and budget committee to be part of that conversation to help, you know, transparency and for folks, frankly, on the board to see all that we have these conversations moving forward. So I wanted to uplift that and thank you all for your efforts on that.

My one question, and I know we're gonna have a work session on the storm water and solid waste management, though, just but just to get the question out there so you guys can start thinking about this is how we decide to allocate between, you know, your your housing types, so your single family versus townhouse versus apartment versus condos, and then versus business and nonresidential property, and also break out the percentages proportionally of how much we get of that entire pie from those. Because there's obviously the rates, but we there's a you know, with how residential development is deploying in this county over time, those proportions of the of of the amount we're getting from that of those different pies changes over time. So I would love to hear to see that trends and also where we stand with f y '27 on that piece.

Okay. So trends by housing type?

Yes. Very good. And residential versus nonresidential.

Very good. I think we could provide And

that's the only question as soon as Vega said. This is the beginning of the process, but I did want to answer a big question we've all been talking about here and there. So I'm gonna be passing something out. It's for just digestion right now, but I would request that we talk about it at our next financial budget committee meeting, which is on May 3, I believe. Yes. I'm gonna just hand this out to folks. March sorry. March 8. March 8. March, a resolution that I've been sort of working on with staff.

I've been talking to to various folks about aspects of this over the last few months. But, basically, what it does is it looks at adopting tax policy. Yeah. That, basically, what it does is it adopts tax policy that, channels certain revenues towards certain specific issues. And what it would do is just two things.

One, it would raise the computer peripherals tax by 30¢, and then it would split that 30¢ between three main issue areas that we've talked about as a board, housing, transportation, and energy and sustainability. Again, just wanted to open the discussion now. We can obviously have a much more in-depth conversation about it during our finance and budget committee meeting on the March 3, but wanted to open that up now because as you said, sir Azovega, now this is our budget. We can decide where we want to start doing this. And I know we've had great discussions in the finance and budget committee on trying to raise revenues for this without burdening further taxpayers, whether they be residential or businesses.

So obviously, we would love to talk to folks one on one about this as we get between now and the finance and budget, but definitely we're looking forward to having a very robust discussion in the finance and budget committee.

All right. Supervisor Vega.

Thank you, supervisor. Assume that the county attorney and county exec have seen this.

They have.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. So I just I'm going to jump in here real quick because I know we've talked about the C and I tax. And would this be in lieu of the C and I tax? Or are you still looking at that as well?

Right now, that be in lieu of.

In lieu of. Okay. So a couple of things I just wanted to point out. One of them, just slide 15, quick question. The decline in the vehicle market value. It looks like the assessment is going down a little bit for vehicles, no? Slide 15?

The the the assessments are going down. Well, I would say mostly because the value of the vehicles are going down. We did have a a conversation about in fact, Dave, you wanna jump in on this?

Yes. So there's a couple things going on there. What you're seeing here is the net existing vehicles. For example, if you own the same vehicle compared to a year ago, it is depreciating in value. Okay. So existing vehicles, they're depreciating in values, but you're also seeing the churn as new vehicles are being replaced with more expensive vehicles. You've probably heard throughout the news, the average cost of a new vehicle is close to $50,000 now.

Now the reason I ask, I'm just wondering, and you know, to have too much speculation, but given that, you know, the vehicle market values slightly declined, we had a rate cut last year. Do you think that the, personal property tax can people accept you know, expect to see something that is roughly in line with last year, a little lower?

I think it'll be completely based on be based on the year, make, model of your vehicle. And so for those who are buying brand new vehicles, they'll, you know, see, you know, see higher rates commensurate with the newer vehicle.

But I'm just wondering for some of those what you use, but we'll, I guess, get into more of that later. Because again, speaking about to the affordability, speaking to the affordability, you know, I always tell people it's not just the rate, it's also assessed value that plays a role in that. Slide 45, you don't necessarily have to go there, but it's talking about the NVTA 30% funds. Certainly I will look at what supervisor Bodhi, what you passed out. Because I have deep concerns about using the NVTA 30% funds for OmniRide.

That for me is gonna be a little sticky point, because they already have grantors in TOT. I understand the need for transportation. And speaking with Supervisor Angry and Doctor. Bob Schneider from OmniRite, I mean, would love to see micro transit around innovation, but I wanna make sure that we're not you know, starting to dig into a third revenue source. So we need the NVTA 30% funds.

Madam chair, if I can then. Just I wanna make sure that I understand. So in terms of the finance and budget committee meeting, we will certainly be prepared to talk about, supervisor Bodhi, what you, have put forward. Are we also bringing the c and I presentation that we were prepared to, or are we not bringing the C and I presentation?

Can y'all ask that when it's not my time? Okay, now Sorry go

about that, Chair.

Let's get to that afterwards. The other thing I wanted to say is slide 47, the coordinated community care, the community outreach pilot. I just think that's a great idea. And we are gonna have a real serious balance this year between not digging too deep, I guess, in taxpayer pockets, but also making sure that we provide quality services. We are in a tough year, we're not getting as much help from Washington or Richmond as we perhaps would like.

And this budget, we're gonna have to make a lot of tough choices. But I think that our residents have made clear that they appreciate social service programs. And certainly we're gonna see an increased need. And whatever we can do to meet the needs of our growing and diverse county, I'm all for that. But I'll let you in this forty something seconds go ahead ask what you were going to say earlier.

I just want to make sure that we bring the right thing to the committee meeting. And so I'm wondering if we're bringing both.

I would say at this, we've talked about C and I enough. I think it's been consistent with the board that we are not ready to go there yet, which is part of the reason why I proposed this. There seems be a consensus around C and P versus C and I.

Thank you, Supervisor Gordy.

Thank you, madam chair. I'll keep this very quick. First of all, thank you. I know this has been the amount of work that you guys put into this is absolutely tremendous. So thank you for all the hard work and coordination. With the schedule that we have, do we have a date that the schools are gonna come and present their budget?

Yes. Okay. They are coming on

the seventh. The seventh as well? Okay. And have you received their budget request at this point?

I don't know that we have, but they have presented their budget. So we their budget,

but They haven't voted.

But oh, they okay. So they still have to vote. Okay. That's right. Alright.

So so we're still a little ways from being able to get that. But based upon their initial budget that they presented, it looks like they're looking for about, based on my calculations, about $1,052,000,100 if it's 50.1 percent of their overall budget. And so, yeah, I look forward to hearing from them on that. And then one other thing I would just ask to kind of start paying attention to, and this kind of gets back to the transit occupancy tax, is the fact that we have a oh, okay. I see it there.

Yep. Thank you. Sure. The event center that has opened up and is is is starting to bring a lot of what I would call event tourism into into the county kinda start paying attention to the impact of those things. I mean, like, one event brought in 50,000 people. Yes. Now not all those were staying in hotels, but this you know, a lot of the vendors were staying in the hotels, and they're here for three to four days at a time. So, you know, I just think it's something worth paying attention to to see if if there's what the opportunities are in terms of the terms of an occupancy tax, with that event center that's gonna be opened up.

So Very good. And I'll say, so the Placer software that economic development and tourism put forward in in this budget, request will do a lot of that work for us. And, and so a lot what we are getting by way of visitors, where they are coming from, a lot of that data, economic development, and tourism, we'll certainly be able to use for advertising, for marketing, etcetera. So I appreciate you mentioning that. And in terms of schools, we worked very closely with the schools this year.

We should not see, what we saw last year in terms of that gap in what we presented by way of revenue and what they presented by way of budget. And so we've been working very closely with them. What what they are presenting is consistent with what I just presented, in terms of the expected revenue, that is absent final revenue numbers that we'll see in March.

Okay. That's all I have for now. Thank you. Look forward to further discussion.

Thank you. Supervisor Angry.

Thank you, madam chair. So first, thank you, Vega, for the numbers. When speaking to the data center revenue, it has been always my goal, again, to bring that revenue in to help lower some of our citizens, you know, residential property taxes. I recognize that vehicle taxing went to the personal property was just a horrible thing a hard thing to do. If the state doesn't get rid of that altogether, it's just gonna be hard to manage trying to help everyone out with that because whoever owns the most expensive car is gonna win over the one who doesn't owns a, you know, less expensive car.

So that's just a tough one to to to manage. I want to talk about omniride, the parity budget, because we have been sitting here addressing the fact that motor fuels tax, that well is dried up, and we need to figure something out. While I am not interested in putting another tax burden on the people, I do, supervisor Boddy, like your proposal, what we're looking at to try to manage that so then maybe we can get away from the MBTA 30% and and pull that off. So I think that's just an important piece to do. One thing I am going to be working and talking with this board a lot about is our safe and secure community.

I think that budget in there is extremely high, and there's some things that I think we can do better. But I want to make one point. We have been working on that East End Navigation Center for forever, and I don't know when that thing is going to be groundbreaking or even up because it seems like we can build a fire station faster than we can get that building done. So I'm curious where we are with that. Not for discussions tonight, but I think as we look and we continue to grow these budgets, there's some things that we need to finish up is what I want to say before we continue down the road of new. So those are my comments for the board, and we'll be having more. But thank you for this presentation. I know you all have done a lot of work on it, I appreciate every bit of it. So thank you. All

right. Supervisor Bailey.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Chris, thank you for your wonderful presentation. Thorough and kind of paints the picture of, or gives us a platform and a direction that we need to go. But I have three questions. One is on page, I think it's 48. Just for clarity, the adult detention center lieutenant colonel, that's the deputy that you were referring

to? Correct.

Okay. Okay.

That'll be a numb number two to the colonel.

Yes. To the colonel. Okay. And then the next page, 49, you mentioned that, you're projecting for the Commonwealth attorneys, FTEs of 11.

Yes.

The additional FTEs that you'll bring back to us are the state funded FTEs. Is that am I understanding you correctly?

Correct. So, I'll say on this, you may recall that what the commonwealth attorney presented was essentially 10, I think it was 10 attorney, positions.

Mhmm.

Six of those positions assumed that the comp board would be allocating funding for six. Mhmm. I did not want to come to the board with the assumption that the comp board would allocate six FTEs. So what we've even we've done is included four

Mhmm.

At the same essentially, the same value that those 10 would have cost us.

Mhmm.

And what I'm saying is that when the comp board makes its decision, we will then come back to the board for authorization to bring in those, additional FTEs. So when I talked to the Commonwealth attorney about this, she understood my logic, and and and we hope that the comp board will do as she is expecting, but we are not sure.

Okay. Yep. That that makes sense because we had robust discussions about that last year. So that just makes sense. And then on that same page, the public defenders, local salary supplement, and those two items for them, I know there was a discussion also prior to this year about that. But is that increase is something that we did not provide for them last year?

Well, last year, we moved it from 15% to 25%.

Okay. Okay.

Actually, that was in '25. So in '24, we moved it from 15% to 25%. You're right. Last year, we didn't make any adjustments to the salary supplement, and now we're recommending we move it up to 30%.

Okay.

Again, to just help with the competitiveness.

Yes. And And retention.

Retaining. Yep.

Yeah. Okay. And so the other question I have on page 51,

where

you mentioned about the rainy day fund.

Yes.

Could you give us some idea, in terms of potentially your projection, not concrete, but projection that what that looks like to bring us up to par to the other, our our surrounding regional If

we put aside

Yes. Additional

funds. Percentage of our overall

Yes.

Fund general fund Yes. Enough in unassigned? Yes. That's a question that maybe we would need to do we need to come back for that? Yeah. Okay.

Okay. That'd be fine. We will

come back just because it requires a calculation.

Okay. That'd be fine. Thank you so much. And then my last question is, again, going back to NVTA 30%, we are increasing the OmniRide local subsidy to $1,000,000 My question is, what is the county's long term plan to keep OmniRide stable without crowding out other mobility priorities? My interest is, how does this will this impact at all the support already sustaining the VRE X Express.

So with VRE, we are maintaining the

The 5.8?

The 5,800,000.

Okay.

And with NVTA and OmniRide, I'm just thankful that the board, it seems you all are about to have a conversation about what this could look like

Okay.

And whether it is through what supervisor Bodhi just put forward or revisiting C and I or some other revenue source. It seems that we are at least having a conversation this year. So we'll we'll await the board's direction in terms of how we move forward, but just wanna appreciate that the team has sort of, made it clear that we've now we've opened a door that had not opened in prior years.

Mhmm.

And so just appreciate that the board hears us in terms of making sure that we don't, you know, we don't not take advantage of the opportunity to do something before the NVTA 30% funds are completely pulled in the way that TOT and grantors' tax are.

Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Supervisor Stewart?

Thank you, Madam Chair. CFO, thank you and the team for putting this budget together. I've got a couple of questions. Number one, as it relates to slide 10, so the unemployment rate that you're looking at typically, so you know, like what we look at in the finance industry, that number doesn't include government layoffs. With Prince William County being so heavily we have a large government workforce here, does that number also include people who are typically government employees?

Well, I'll say, so so unemployment is actually so if you're a federal government employee and you work in DC, you file for unemployment in DC. So you file where you work. And so in terms of the overall does that answer your question?

Some somewhat. Keep yep. So the

the overall rate of unemployment as we see it, us being slightly under the national average, yes, we are seeing impacts in terms of some of the federal layoffs and some of the other how fragile, if you will, the the labor market is right now. But we do believe based on what the information we have up to this point that the market the labor market will stabilize in '26. Now a lot can be said about that, and I think we'll probably have a much deeper conversation and we'll likely be by inviting in somewhat to have more of an economist eye on what what we should expect in the calendar year. But for now, based on the records that we have, the information that we have now, we are we are estimating that we will remain slightly under the national average. Unemployment rates, and that's very, you know, sort of technical or practical way of, of submitting unemployment for unemployment insurance in the location where you are employed has not affected us in a way probably that DC is experiencing.

Okay. Because some other economic indicators that I'm seeing is, you know, housing prices, houses that are up for sale typically year over year, there are more houses for sale, people moving out of the area versus moving in the area. There's a lot of other macroeconomic data that I'm seeing where things like DOGE and the shutdowns have actually affected employment in the region. But, moving on from that, so, you know, I also would love to see, like, for instance, as it relates to slide 34, right? You know, we had some frigid cold weather, including some minus 14 wind chills, and you know, I see like a hypothermia center, like in the East.

You know, we have populations in the West that are are are equally vulnerable, and, you know, we got a nor'easter coming in this weekend. Right? And so I'd I'd I just wanna know if there's something that's planned for constituents in the West.

Yes. So in f y twenty six, we did fund hypothermia services on the Western side of the county. So this is in f y twenty seven, we're doing the East, but we did we did provide, for some, support on the West Side, in the last budget.

Got it. Okay. So with my last minute, number three, right? So, I just really believe in promises made, promises kept, and I want to thank Supervisor Vega for bringing out the numbers of revenue. You know, we almost a 1000% revenue increase in seven years, and which I think is great.

You know, that was the initial promise, that's one half of the promise, but what that was attached to was a promise to homeowners that their rates would actually go down, I think especially under our current economic shadow that we live under currently, I'll just put it that way, a 180 on average ask or really tell of homeowners that of of more property taxes in in the wake of a thousand percent revenue increase, I I I can't get behind it. I mean, look, we'll we're gonna work on it, but, you know, that that that's all I gotta say. My time's up. Thanks.

Supervisor Boddy?

Very quick question. Chris, during the presentation or either you or Dave mentioned advertising tax rates, when is the target date that you would like to advertise the tax rates during the budget cycle this year?

Staff does not need an answer tonight. Okay? I believe we, first advertisement, we would like to target the newspapers in mid March mid March.

Thank you. And I just say that to say, obviously, again, we have conversations we had, but all as what we always say, the tax rate that we advertise is the the ceiling and not the floor. Yeah. But we should start talking that direction because I hear a lot of my colleagues again, under respect to what my colleague just said, we should really start thinking about that because then when that mid March date comes, we should have probably have an idea as a board where we wanna go in terms of that tax rate advertisement. Thank you.

Thank you.

Supervisor Vega.

Thank you, madam chair. And and I certainly have supervisor Bodhi, so I look forward to our, one on one meeting. Just point of clarity, mister Shorter, in regards to the county's budget, how much of it relies on federal and state funding, our budget?

Oh, we we would we would need to do the calculation. You could see the various ways in which the federal government and even state appropriations play in our budget by way of FTEs and appropriations. So we would actually need to go back, and we could that's information that we could provide.

We don't could it be in a form of a pie chart? The school division, has one where they have two pie charts, and one of them specifically shows how much they get from the feds and how much from the state. And I think that that would be, is it already in our binder? Oh, he's asking about a charger. Sorry, I got distracted. But if we could do what the school division does, that would be extremely helpful. I want to know, and I think I don't wanna speak for the others, but I think that it would be important to know how much of our budget relies on federal and state funding.

Very good. Sure. We can come up with a number. We're in a slightly different position than the schools because of the nature of their funding, direct funding from the federal, but we'll we'll, we'll certainly do our do do our best to

Great.

Thank you.

Supervisor Bailey.

Thank you, madam chair. Chris, on, page 25, just clarity on this, the noise ordinance enforcement. Two FTEs is what you said?

Two FTEs.

Okay. One of and then the inline hockey rink insurance. Yeah. Two? Yes. Okay. The inline hockey rink insurance, is that for the new aren't we getting the new ice skating?

That's right. So this is the new inline hockey rink that you all approved Yeah. The last calendar year.

Okay.

This is primarily for the increase in cost associated with insurance, for the for the rink.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. And then on the next page, '26. The 127,000,000 transfer for '27?

Yes.

That's not for this budget. That was

That is the, increase in the transfer from last year's budget. So from the FY '26 budget. So, if we take the one the 991,000,000 that we transferred last year, we are adding 127,400,000.0 to that number to come up with the 1,100,000,000.0 that we're transferring over as part of this year's budget.

Okay. So one of the things that thank you for that clarity. One of the things that as we go into our finance committee meetings that I'm interested in is really digging deeper and exploring, though we have no control over how they operate with their funding, just exploring what this looks like if we decide to break that down, if that makes sense. Yeah. That is?

Okay. So I'm interested, and I'm saying it not just to you, I'm saying it to my colleagues because I would be interested in, in just All of your stuff. Well, well, well, I'm interested. So I just, you know, I but I do from from a policy standpoint, I don't wanna be outside of the policy

Yes. Requirements.

Absolutely. And we're certainly, available to provide whatever information is needed. Yes. I appreciate, essentially what supervisor, Bodhi is, has now opened the door to talk about, and that is creating new sources of revenue that may not fall within the, bound, which will require that we are resetting the revenue share. If there is funding that we decide or that you all decide, this budget year that you don't wanna subject to the revenue share agreement, it will require that we are essentially putting a new agreement in place that excludes those new or additional revenue sources.

Okay. So, you know, it is it is something that we would have to take back, and to, work together to, to make sure that we're implementing properly.

And and I'm not I'm certainly not saying that's where I am, but I think we're at a place now on this board where we need to have in-depth and honest discussion about that, and and kinda clear the air about the direction that we want to go, because I'm 100% in support of supporting our schools.

Of course.

But we just, I think we just need to have, for clarity's sake, we need to have that in-depth discussion. My last question for you is, is number one? The budget shows that the average homeowner's total taxes fees rising. How are we messaging the total household impact, and what relief are phasing strategies are on the table to protect affordability?

Yes. So part of part of why we dissected the budget in the way that we did

on the

slide where we talked about, the fees along with the tax rates was because we wanted to give a clear picture of what the actual impact would be for the average homeowner.

Mhmm.

And so, messaging, I think, will be critically important, whereas in some cases in years past, we did not have that kind of slide in the proposed budget. Mhmm. But we were very clear about what the rates would mean in terms of property tax increase even at a flat rate, what the levy additional levies would represent by way of fire levy and mosquito, and then what the additional fees would represent by way of storm water and solid waste. So that's it. Mhmm.

That is the, essentially, the impact on our taxpayer. Now, ultimately, what the board decides over the next few weeks, in terms of adjustments to the rates that we are proposing, will be up, up to the board.

Madam Chair, can I just give a quick comment? Okay. It'll be real quick. I just wanna, thank you and your staff for how, from over the past three years, the the budget process has become easier to digest, still challenging, but easier to digest. And so I just, you know, just wanna let you know that you're certainly on the right track in making sure that you're bringing us along with where we really are in the growth of this county.

Appreciate that.

Thank you

very much.

Right, thank you. There are no other speakers in queue. Thank you for the presentation. I know we're going to have a lot of spirited and fun, hopefully fun, you know, discussions this budget year. We are going to move on to agenda item number 14, and that is public comment time.

Looks like we got a couple folks. Hopefully, maybe, we'll see. I'll give you this one from earlier. Thank you. All right, we have one person who has signed up for public comment time. So how this works, this is a name, I don't know if you've been here before, but you'll go to the back of the podium. I always tell people make sure you adjust the microphone so that we hear you. You have three minutes. It is gonna be on the timer. Please state your full name and where you generally reside.

This is on the what do you call it? This looks like it is from people who are not necessarily in the county. So if you're not in the county, if you're in the city, in the park, let us know. I have Colin Turner.

Good evening. Before my time starts to, is there any way I could get the attention of the full board? Not sure where Ms. Bailey is, but would appreciate if I could address all members of the board.

So I'm not sure where she is, but she if she's in the back, we do have monitors. So we do hear. So if you can just go ahead and get started.

If you don't mind, I'd request to wait just because it's a public comment that I'd like to address face to face for the board. I showed up to this meeting, sat through about an hour and a half.

And I am not gonna argue with

would like to chat to the fans of the board because there's been lots of up and down throughout.

We are gonna go into recess for five minutes. Thank you. All right. Are we rolling, Andrea? Yes, ma'am. All right. We are back. I would like to note that we have a quorum. We might not have everyone, but we have a quorum. I am going to resume public comment time.

So, Mr. Colin Turner, if you would like to speak, then you may go to the back. If not, then I will consider that you've relinquished your time and we will see if there are any virtual comments.