Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

to order for june 9th 2026 um if uh supervisor childress if you could do the pledge of allegiance followed by the invocation by supervisor guzman

Let's pray. Lord, Heavenly Father, we just thank you for this beautiful day you've given us to meet to conduct the business that you've put in front of us this evening. Lord, for the county, we pray, Lord, that you'd be with our first responders and our military deployed around the world and just keep a hedge of protection around them. Be with those that are here tonight and online. Lord, we just pray, Lord, you give us clarity on the board. Help us, Lord, to conduct matters civilly, Lord, and with the best interest that you have for us here in our county. We ask that you bless everything we do tonight. In Jesus' name, amen.

Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board. Your first order of business this evening is the approval of the agenda. And we do have some additions and one item to remove from the agenda. If I can have the floor computer, please. The additional items for consideration this evening all added to the consent agenda are as follows. The approval of an amendment to renew the partnership intermediary intermediary agreement between Naval Surface Weapon Warfare Center Dahlgren Division and Spotsylvania County. Item two is the approval for the board chair to sign the revised charter for Bay Consortium Local Workforce Development Area. And item three is the authorization to advertise for a public hearing to consider a request for an easement on a portion of county-owned property from Rappahannock Electric Co-op. And the item number two under your public hearings are 23-0002, Gateway Commerce, Jeffrey G. Davis, Thomas V. O'Keefe Jr., and Elise A. O'Keefe, Four Points, LLC. In the Berkeley Voting District, this has been asked by the applicant to defer that public hearing to a future meeting so in voting on the agenda that will be removed from the agenda to a future meeting and the items on the screen will be added to the consent agenda okay is there a motion to add and delete so moved all right

Motion passes six to zero.

If I can have the floor computer again, please.

Yes, sir.

Mr. Marshall.

do we if do we need to re-vote on that then i see that now yeah

And just to note, with respect to the Gateway Commerce item, there are two parts to that that I understand are both being, of course, taken off the agenda tonight.

If you can just voice vote for this one, they'll have it fixed for the next vote.

All right. So we had a motion on the floor to approve the agenda with the additions and the one deletion. Supervisor Lane? Aye. Mullins? Aye. Chris? Aye. Gerald? Aye. David? Aye. And the chair votes aye. Thank you.

I can have the floor computer again, please. Your next item of business this evening is the presentation of the consent agenda. And your consent agenda is as follows. The approval of the minutes of the May 26th, 2026 Board of Supervisors meeting. Appropriation of the FY27 adopted budget. The approval of the contractor Franklin Mechanical Contractors Inc. for the Smith Station Road Waterline Improvements Project for $1,477,204. Item four is the approval of a proclamation to support Responsible Fatherhood Month. And I'll read that proclamation now. responsible fatherhood month June 2026 proclamation. Whereas everyone deserves a chance to reach one's full potential, and we have a moral and economic duty to support our children and promote positive outcomes for youth through early intervention, quality education, and family support programs. And whereas fathers, whether biological, a father figure, foster, or adoptive, deserve our honor and gratitude, and whereas the celebration of Father's Day is a time to honor fathers and thank them for their love, support, and the vital role they play in helping their children grow and set goals for their future, and whereas good fathering and co-parenting during infancy, childhood, and adolescence contributes to emotional security and has overwhelmingly positive psychological and economic benefits for children, families, communities, and society at large, and Whereas children are less likely to face poverty, infant mortality and abuse and or neglect when there's an involved father in their lives. And whereas all fathers must invest in providing emotional and financial support for their children at every junction of their lives. promoting involved, maturing, and responsible fatherhood, whereas strong families are the foundation of thriving communities, which are essential as we address social changes such as addiction, teen pregnancy, crime, and school dropout. And whereas throughout the Commonwealth, we aim to promote positive fostering, co-parenting, highlight providers of fatherhood resources and services, and increase public awareness of the critical role fathers play in their child's lives. And now, therefore, it be resolved that the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors hereby recognizes June 2026 as Responsible Fatherhood Month in Spotsylvania County. And this will be adopted if approved by the board on this 9th day of June. Item five is the approval of a purchase order to Atlantic Emergency Solutions for SCBA apparatus replacements in the amount of $3,835,484.62. Item six is the approval of purchase order to MOI Inc. for FF&E for Merchant Square second and third floor. in the amount of $820,681.01. Item seven is the authorization to advertise a public hearing for amendments to the county code to repeal chapter 24 business article one technology zones. Item eight is capital projects budget adjustments. Item nine is FY 2026 insurance claim appropriation and budget adjustment for FRAM and the reimbursement amount of $25,228. Item 10 is an FY26 insurance claim appropriation and budget adjustment for the sheriff's office for a reimbursement in the amount of $97,953. Item 11 is the reappointment of David Guzman to the community policy and management team as the Spotsylvania Board of Supervisors representative. That term expires 6-30 of 28. And item 12, 13, and 14 are the items that were added to the bullpen that I read previously. And that is your consent agenda for the evening.

Okay, thank you, Ed, appreciate it. Okay, at this time, I am going to open public comment only on the items that Ed just went through. So if there's anybody who would like to speak on any of these items, please make your way to the podium. Amy, do we have anybody signed up to speak? No, ma'am. Okay. Yeah, that'll come a little later. Yep, mm-hmm. Amy, can you read the rules please? I'm sorry, hold for just a second.

This is the guidelines for public comment on the consent agenda. Public comment is an opportunity for you to address items on the consent agenda only. This is separate from public presentations and from public hearings. Sign up to speak at each public presentation and each public hearing is separate. Public comments on the consent agenda is a one-way comment from you to the Board of Supervisors. This is not a forum for any dialogue or debate. The board asks members of the public to conduct themselves civilly in their interactions with each other and to respect the time of the speaker who has the floor. Interruptions from those who do not have the floor, including any interruptions and noises that interfere with the speaker's ability to address this board and any actual threats or intimidation toward a speaker or a member of the public will not be tolerated and may lead to expulsion from this meeting. To make your public comment, please come to the lectern and clearly state your name and voting district for the record. Individuals speaking on their own behalf receive three minutes to speak. One individual may represent a group and receives five minutes to speak. Please address your comments directly to the board. No person shall be permitted to yield time to a speaker, and your written comments are always welcome. The floor is yours.

And I'm sorry, there's a little button there that is the microphone. It's on the base of, do you see it?

That's right. Yep, awesome, thank you so much.

All right.

The chair and members of this board, my name is Jacqueline Andrews. I am the regional director for Citizens Defending Freedom. And this afternoon, I'm going to address the issue of responsible fatherhood, the proclamation that was just read. First of all, I want to say on behalf of Citizens Defending Freedom and the families of Spotsylvania County, thank you. Management thinker Tom Peters once said, celebrate what you want to see more of. That is exactly what you're doing today. By recognizing June as Responsible Fatherhood Month, you are not simply signing a document, you are telling every father in Spotsylvania County that his presence, his engagement, and his love is seen, valued, and worth celebrating. In a culture that too often sidelines fathers, you are standing up and saying, Not in this county. Local government is closest to the people and when local government speaks, communities listen. Your vote today sends a message from Spotsylvania all the way to Richmond and beyond. We are a community that values strong families and we are not afraid to say so. The need for this proclamation is urgent. Across America, one in four children will go to sleep tonight without a father in the home. The United States has the highest rate of single-parent households in the world, more than three times the global average. Approximately 40 percent of all U.S. births now occur outside marriage. The consequences reach every corner of our society. Children without present fathers are significantly more likely to drop out of school, live in poverty, be incarcerated, and struggle with anxiety and depression. The economic toll runs into the hundreds of billions of dollars annually in public assistance, education remediation, and criminal justice costs. This is not a political issue. It is a human one. And it is one of the most urgent crises facing our communities today. Virginia is not immune. A landmark 2025 study by scholars at the University of Virginia and Hampton University documents what fatherlessness is doing to children right here in our Commonwealth. About one in four Virginia children live in a home without their biological father. Virginia children in father absent homes are only Half as likely to get good grades, nearly three times more likely to have parents contacted by schools for behavioral or learning problems, and twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression compared to children living in intact families with their father present. More than a quarter of Virginia children in single mother homes live below the poverty line, compared to just 6% of those in intact father present homes. And approximately 100,000 Virginia children have a parent, usually a father, currently incarcerated, leaving those children five times more likely to be diagnosed again with depression. But the same study also delivered a powerful and hopeful finding. When fathers are present and engaged, the racial achievement gap in Virginia disappears entirely. More than 85% of both black and white children from intact Virginia families earn mostly As and Bs. Father presence is actually the great equalizer. So what does a county board of supervisors have to do with all of this? Everything. Tom Peters was right. We get more of what we celebrate. And when Spotsylvania County officially celebrates responsible fatherhood, something real happens in this community. You name what matters. Every father in this county hears from his local government that his presence in his children's lives is not taken for granted. It is honored. Second, You set a standard. Schools, churches, businesses, and nonprofits across Pottavania take their cues from community leadership. Your proclamation is an invitation for every institution in this county to rally around strong families. Third, you protect children. Every child who grows up with an engaged, present father is less likely to need government intervention, social services, or the criminal justice system. Celebrating fatherhood today reduces the burden on government tomorrow. And fourth, you lead by example. Other localities around us are watching. What Spotsylvania does today, others will follow. That is the power of a county board taking the lead in our region. I'll close with this. Frederick Douglass said, it is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. Today, Spotsylvania County is choosing to build strong children by celebrating the fathers that show up, calling others to do the same, and declaring that this community will not stand by while families fracture in silence. You are celebrating what you want to see more of, and because you are, Spotsylvania will see more of it. On behalf of Citizens Defending Freedom and the families that we serve across Virginia, thank you. We are very honored to stand with you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else in the audience that would like to speak on the consent agenda items? And this is just the consent agenda items.

Hi, I'm Lori Szymanski from Lee Hill. It was about 1966 and I was waiting in front of my front yard because my dad was coming home. And when he came home from Maryland Naval Shipyard in California, he would drop his lunch bucket and I would run to him and he would pick me up and swing me around because dad was home. And that's when the fun start. That's where I learned to ride my bike. He took me on my first date. He taught me about adventure. We built things together. I don't think you can replace a father. Government can't, no one can't. Fatherhood is so important. That's why I encourage you to say that June is Responsible Fatherhood Month. We need to celebrate fathers. By making June Responsible Fatherhood Month, we shine a light on the vital role fathers play in championing engaged fatherhood in our community. When I was 20, my dad died in my arms, and he died way too soon. But the things that he instilled in me, I will never forget because I had a daddy who loved me and showed me the grace and the love and the discipline that has been with me my whole life. I hope you will celebrate fatherhood in Spotsylvania County. I don't think it would be a bad decision. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else care to?

How's it going? I'm Caleb Milfeld, Livingston District. So I want to talk about why June should be Responsible Fatherhood Month. I'm the man I am today because I have a strong father. For over 30 years, he served our community, planted churches, helped other churches grow, and cared for anyone who needed help. He never judged anyone by their background. He just loved him. His steady presence shaped my life, and I'm blessed that he's still in my life to guide me through my fatherhood. but I've also seen what happens when fathers feel alone. I've lost several friends, good dads to suicide that felt the weight of fatherhood but they didn't feel supported. They thought they had to carry everything by themselves and that silence cost them their lives. That's why this matters. Kids need their dads and dads need support too. They need to know that they matter and that they're not alone and that's okay to ask for help. Responsible Fatherhood Month is about lifting fathers up, reminding them that their presence is powerful, and making sure no dads feel forgotten or overwhelmed. Let's build a community where fathers are valued, supported, and encouraged the same way my father supported our community for decades. Every dad should know you matter, your presence matter, and your life matters, and it doesn't cost the county a dime to lift a hand and reach and help our fathers so we can build our community. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? Okay, seeing none, I'll go ahead and close the public comment on the consent agenda. Does any one of my colleagues want to pull anything?

Yes, Madam Chair, I'd like to pull number four to do a presentation.

All right, anyone else? Yes.

Madam Chair, yeah, I'd like to pull number five for a presentation as well, thanks.

Okay, we will take number four first.

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate those that came to speak. Do we want to pull or are we going to vote on the rest of the agenda first?

Yeah, we can vote on that. Yeah, sorry. All right, so we'll pull those two. And do I have a motion to approve the rest?

Motion to approve.

OK. All right, now we can take number four.

I thought something was out of order. Absolutely, thank you for those that came to speak and those of us that... think fondly of our fathers as role models, and I think it's important as a community that fathers are responsible and they help our community. And with that, I've got a presentation for Ms. Jackie to come up, and I think she wanted to get a picture with the board for that. Want to do that down the front?

Yeah, we can do that. All right, and so we'll go ahead and review number five then. Oh, well, wait a minute. I need a motion to approve number four.

Yeah, I'll make a motion that we approve number four since we presented it to her.

Motion passes six to zero. Great, and then Drew, if you wanna take up the next one.

Chief, I just would like you to explain to the public the condition and the service life and what not's being done with your scuba apparatus.

Of course. Madam Chair, members of the board, thank you for the opportunity to speak regarding this. This is our air packs that are on all of our fire trucks and ambulances throughout the system. Our current air packs are from 2015. So the service life or the life expectancy was 2024. The end of life is 2026. This has been in the CIP for us for the past two years. It has been an undertaking due to the reference standard that regulates these things. We had a delay in that coming out. And for us to be compliant and get as long of life out of this as we could, we needed to wait until the recent standard went in. So with that work, we were able to get this moved forward. But this is for 305 air packs with regulators as well.

Thank you, Chief. I appreciate it.

All right, any discussion, questions? Okay, is there a motion to approve?

Madam Chair, I'd like to make a motion to approve item five, approval of purchase order to Atlantic Emergency Solutions for the scuba apparatus replacements.

Okay, let's vote.

Motion passes six to zero.

Madam Chair, that brings you to public presentations. Amy, is anybody signed up?

Yes, there are several citizens signed up to speak. The first is Madison Morgan, followed by Karen Prass.

Okay, sorry. Hey, good evening, members of the board. My name's Madison Morgan. I'm here representing Tri-County City Soil and Water Conservation District. Just here tonight to invite you guys. We're having, well, you all and, of course, the public. We're having our second annual producer kickoff coming up July 9th. It's going to be at the Fredericksburg National Stadium. It's not a game day, but it's still going to be lots of fun. So we'd love for you guys to come on out, hear about program updates with the Virginia Agricultural Cost Share Program, the Virginia Conservation Assistance Program, and just hear about all the awesome things that the district is doing and get a chance to meet some of your farmers and producers in the area. And that event is open to the public as well. And I do have an invite with some more information on it. If it's all right, if I could hand it up to disperse and all good.

Yep, that would be great. You can just bring it over to Amy.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Karen Prass, followed by Catherine Williams.

In order to ensure that I'm understanding the future plans for land development in Spotsylvania County correctly, I was prepared to review and summarize the legally binding agreements that the county has made thus far in conjunction with the Board of Supervisors, the Commission on Local Government, and the Economic Development Authority. However, I would exceed my time greatly, so I'll just read portions of it and give you the printed copy. In haste of Spotsylvania County's desperate need for economic growth and development, the Board of Supervisors has approved Amazon Data Services to build a minimum of four data centers in Spotsylvania County with the agreement that more can be built in the future. In addition, Spotsylvania and Caroline County have entered into a legally binding economic growth sharing agreement which states that Spotsylvania County will provide potable water, recycled water, and wastewater utilities to Caroline County for the next 40 years for the Amazon-owned Mattamead Tech Campus, which is being built in Caroline County and consists of minimally 11 data centers operating on approximately 104.5 acres. In exchange for Spotsylvania providing all water and wastewater utilities for the purpose of cooling the Caroline County data centers, the county will divide all local tax revenues generated in the Mattamede Tech Campus area with 57.5% going to Caroline County and 42.5% going to Spotsylvania County. Spotsylvania County also entered into a separate legally binding economic development local performance agreement with Amazon which includes the following perks and requirements. Spotsylvania County will provide incentives to Amazon in the form of annual infrastructure grants, investment performance grants, a permitting package, a utility package, and tax incentives, which will provide Amazon a yearly cash grant equal to 60% of the increased tax revenue generated by Amazon's project in that year. In other words, 60 cents of every new tax dollar generated will be expeditiously returned to Amazon within 90 days of receipt of Amazon's personal property payment. Also, the county will provide Amazon with up to $93.3 million or 10% of infrastructure costs through June 30, 2040, whichever is lower of the two. After the infrastructure grants are completed, the county will pay Amazon an investment performance grant of 10% to 20% annually, depending on the size of its total investment in the county through 2051. Along with that, Amazon will receive reduced tax rates. Amazon will receive a special depreciation schedule for data center computer equipment. Spotsylvania agreed to provide a two-for-one local grant matching contribution so that Amazon can qualify for separate state grant programs. Spotsylvania committed to supporting utility infrastructure for Amazon's data center. developments through a utility package which includes infrastructure and water wastewater support including but not limited potable water infrastructure sanitary sewer infrastructure and reuse water permitting package will be provided to amazon which will include fast-tracking permit consideration process, expediting inspections and permit processing for data center construction, hiring additional staff or using third-party consultants to meet project schedules, coordinating with and at the administrative level commenting and support.

May I mute? Time's expired. Okay.

So I will just give you each a copy. I mean, I didn't really see that that was three minutes. And then I also just want to show you that I did print out the... Ma'am, your time's expired.

You can bring whatever you'd like to overhear.

Oh, over to the clerk over here.

Yeah, no, that's okay, that's all right. That's okay. All right, is anyone else signed up?

Catherine Williams, followed by Adiba Amanolaw. Either one here? How about Aviv Goldsmith?

Good evening, supervisors. My name is Aviv Goldsmith. I live on Hickory Ridge Road in the Berkeley District. I'd like to talk tonight about data centers and public information. First, with regard to public information, I think we can do better, actually much better than we're doing now. Let me clear, I'm not criticizing in any way the planning staff who are doing great work with the resources that they have. One example of how we could do better is by not holding two community meetings about data centers on the same night. Now, I know it's their meeting and not the county's meeting, but perhaps the county could approve the scheduling. It's also not good public policy for a meeting, which is supposed to be educational, to consist solely of a bunch of signs and out of scale photos. Again, I know it's not county meetings, but couldn't the county dictate required content? We can also do better with letting the public know about regulatory process and meetings. For example, the Gateway Commerce project that was proposed in the rural area on Hickory Ridge Road, there were almost no road signs posted about it for the December meeting, which was pulled from the agenda. Similarly, for the recent Planning Commission meeting, there was one or no signs posted on Route 1. That shouldn't happen. Staff needs better tools to monitor and enforce this. The county sends out mailers of public hearings to landowners that are within 3,000 feet of proposed rezoning. I received my mailer yesterday for tonight's scheduled meeting. If I hadn't been following this on my own, I might have missed it or it certainly would have been disruptive. I remember 20 years ago, these mailers were sent out two weeks in advance. Now I'm told they're sent out five days in advance. I think we can do better. Secondly, with regard to the data centers themselves, these are huge industrial projects. A few here and there in large industrial parks might be okay, but these data centers are not compatible with mixed-use designations or even light industrial planning areas as set out in the Comp Plan. They produce noise, air emissions, and possibly soil and groundwater contamination. They will have huge electrical transmission lines and substations that will impair the viewsheds, especially in rural areas. Each of these things could have more than 100 diesel generators, 100, more, that have to run every week. That will produce noise, that will produce air pollution, that will make our air and health bad. These should not be located close to residences and close to schools. This should be common sense and I hope that the board can protect Spotsylvania from being overrun by poorly located projects. Thank you for your time and consideration this evening.

There are no other citizens signed up to speak. OK. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else wish to speak? You can just kind of make your way up to the podium and queue up. That would be great.

Good evening. My name is Steve Love. I'm a resident of Lee Hill and have been in Spotsylvania County for 38 years. I'm here to present five concerns regarding the proposed data center projects specifically focused on crossroads which sits right behind the Lee Hill community. And it's got a 10-year build-out plan proposed from 28 to 36. The special use permit states the project will not impair the value of nearby properties, citing a George Mason study. There are additional studies that say property values during construction can be impacted by as much as 5 to 15%. So I think it's necessary for some additional independent research to assess the financial impacts on adjacent property owners. 15% of a loss of property, if you need to move, is a significant impact to residents. Second, I found no evidence showing that data centers will not increase utility costs. I know there are some procedures taken place by the county and then the planning process, but I believe that there is a comprehensive utility study necessary to take a look at all of the nine proposed data centers that are in Spotsylvania County and their electrical, water, cabling, telecommunications requirements, not just what the county provides in the non-potable water, but what are the impacts and what bills are we going to face as residents? The special use permit states the project will not as adversely affect the health or safety of nearby residents. However, the county stipulates a 65 decibel limit for noise. When you end up with four or five data centers operating simultaneously within about a half mile or mile radius, those sounds, they're magnified. And if you add in the sound from I-95, that 65 per station combined with six other sources, you could end up with an all day long 70 plus decibel noise factor. And an NIH study or a study on the NIH website recommends locating data centers away from populated areas. And we have them right in between communities. There is no environmental impact statement identified within the special use permit. I think that's a necessary thing to have. Specifically for crossroads, it identifies a 50% increase of traffic on Lee Hill School Road. The entrance is supposed to be less than a quarter mile from the entrance to Lee Hill Elementary School, and it's located right behind St. Jude's Christian Church, Catholic Church.

Certain times expired.

Yes, sir. I hope the board will consider these points and not approve until some of the resolutions are identified. Thank you.

Thank you. Good evening, Chair and members of the board. My name is Shawn Bellis and I live in the Livingston District. I think, oh, is the microphone on? Sorry. Okay, thank you.

Good evening, Chair and members of the board. My name is Sean Bellis and I live in the Livingston District, just 1,500 feet from Spotsylvania Meats. I am here tonight regarding the proposed Spotsylvania Meats.

I'm sorry, sir. That's a public hearing. Uh-huh. So I'll have you come back up. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. Perfect. This is just like generic public comment time. Yeah.

Okay.

Good evening, my name is Lisa Amer and I live in the Lee Hill District. Maya Angelou said, when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. This is the perfect case of the informational community meeting held by RCK Digital Crossroads and Charles Payne. To say the least, it was a poorly run meeting is an understatement. In fact, it was just an embarrassing mess on their part. Excuse me. Concerned spotsy residents came out in force to question and to learn about the proposed data center. What did we encounter instead? Let me tell you. First of all, you were met with insufficient parking, as evidenced by the cars billowing out onto the neighboring communities. A long line to enter the venue. The venue itself was overcrowded, noisy, and hot. As I understand it, there was no air conditioning going. No organized flow to their science fair style presentation, which was just a bunch of poster boards with pictures that were not explained. No takeaway literature for further consideration at a more leisurely pace. And most disturbing was that none of the developer's reps, nor Mr. Payne, wore any kind of IDs or logos on their shirts so that they could be identified by the public easily. In my book, they wanted to remain anonymous. And I did not know who to direct my comments or questions to, if I could even make contact with them. The message from their first contact with the residents who would be affected by this project was clear. They do not care what the public thinks and essentially shut us down. So tonight I come to you and ask you respectfully to request the developer to hold a real meeting in a venue that can be comfortably accessed by all. where we can discuss issues after listening to a proper presentation, and we can have a question and answer period. The citizens deserve better than what they gave us. So I am going to end my speech where I started it, and once again say, when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening, board members. Can you hear me? Do I need to put this on?

Yeah.

Hello?

Is the light green up there? It's green. Okay, all right, you're good then.

Okay, it's green, I'm good then. Good evening, board members. My name is Joseph Burry. My family and I reside on Colchester Street in Lee's Hill District, Ms. Hayes' district. And I have one comment about data centers. One, I see them as a necessity in many respects. I have one concern that I'd like you to address, and that is with electricity. Because overall, I see that in other places, the demand is gonna exceed supply at some point. When we get into all these generators this gentleman talked about, if it happens, And all that I'd like to ask the board is to consider is charging back the increase in those fees to the data centers. That's all. So that our, the consumer's cost would remain the same. And that's my only comment. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Gloria Tola. I'm here to discuss a problem with Rappahannock Regional Jail. I know y'all are only one county out of four, but somebody has to open their eyes, open their ears, and listen to what's going on and see what's going on behind this building. My son has been tortured, he's been abused, and he's dead. We have begged, begged people to open their eyes. My son's name is Lawrence Del Toro. All I ever hear is protect the blue. They didn't protect him. Nobody is watching him now. And to this day, Rappahannock Regional Jail has not even called me. I got a call from an inmate that my son is dead. That's how I got notified. We have emergency numbers there for a reason. Nobody has reached out. There is investigation going on, and it will come forth what happened. But for months into years, I have begged his lawyer, the Commonwealth attorney of Spotsylvania, everyone. He was going against Spotsylvania cops, so he was in danger zone in their own home. And he knew he was going to die. Every phone call I got is they were going to kill him. And you know what? They did it. So my son will be buried Friday, 39 years old, with no problems, no health problems other than brain injury where he got shot in the head. They knew he was brain-traumatized. He should have never been in a jail to start with, much less Rappahannock Regional Jail, because it's not a jail. It's a torture chamber. And I appreciate y'all listening to what I had to say. But I want one thing. When I leave this building today, I want you all to remember his name was Lawrence Del Tola, the Suck It.

Thank you.

Hi, my name's Ashley. I'm from Stafford. I'm here tonight to stand in absolute solidarity with Will King and the grieving mother in this room. We are here to demand a hard answer to a simple question. What makes one human life more valuable than another in the eyes of this jurisdiction? A little over a week ago in Stafford County, a bus driver tragically caused a crash that took five lives. The Commonwealth's attorney acted instantly. felony warrants and a grand jury indictments for involuntary manslaughter were handed down in a matter of days. The system moved swiftly because those victims were seen as human beings. But when a man dies inside the Rappahannock Regional Jail because a correctional officer smuggled lethal drugs into a secure facility, Where is the same swift justice? Where are the immediate indictments for the staff who failed him? The system is dragging its feet because it used the words criminal to strip away a person's humanity. But a locked door and a jail jumpsuit do not erase a human's life. There are people on every public bus who have records. I had a record when I took a bus to leave the system. The lives lost inside that jail are no less valuable than the lives lost on I-95. This man died. while the jail failed to follow its own emergency protocols. Responding staff couldn't even locate or access the facility's automatic external defibrillator, the shock machine, within the legally mandated three-minute window. I know this administrative neglect firsthand. When I was held at Rappahannock Regional Jail at seven months pregnant, staff denied me the legal required prenatal nutrition and bedding, telling me face to face they did not hear this in training. When a jail absolute failure to train staff and enforce mandatory policies result in a preventable death, the county owes this family accountability. At bare minimal, the jail should be paying for this man's funeral because it was their negligence that kept him from surviving. This mother wasn't the criminal. The jail broke the policy. She is owed the right to lay her baby to rest without begging for resources. She has begged Facebook for days to help lay her child to rest. We are building a village that will no longer allow this jail's walls to hide systematic neglect. We demand equal justice, immediate charges for the facility's failures, and dignity for this grieving family. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Bob Chappell and I am a resident of this county. And I just wanted to share the candid commentary that I and a lot of young people have about the data centers that have been proposed in this county. These data centers demonstrably have a lot of negative impacts on the people who live nearby them. There's a lot of air pollution, there's a lot of water pollution, there's a lot of noise pollution. And as a young person who has recently come to this county, I fell in love with it. I graduated school here last year and I continue to stay here because I love the people and I love the place. But I and a lot of my friends We cannot continue to live here if there are data centers in our backyard. We have, I have friends with heart conditions, I have friends with asthma, I have friends with chronic illnesses, and all of these would be exacerbated by the data centers that would be in their backyards. And I know that short-term, there was a lot of financial benefit from having these in the community, but long-term, this will drive people out, and this will keep young people like me from coming to this gorgeous community. And I think that that's a real shame, because again, I love being here. And I would like to continue to stay here for as long as I can. But this, this is a great barrier for a lot of us. And it's something that we have been discussing amongst ourselves. And I don't know if that's something that you have encountered, because a lot of us aren't familiar with these spaces and don't know how to voice our opinions. So I came here to do that for all of us. Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Olivia Bryant Bailey. I'm from Cannes, Virginia. I'm here in solidarity with the Lawrence Toller family and with NKHRRJ. And I've been watching each of these meetings for the past months where Will has been here and let everyone know. that he felt that our RJ was trying to kill Lawrence Toller. Lawrence Toller died because of a gunshot to the back of his head by Spotsylvania police. And I think that you all are complicit in his death. Everyone here was told over and over that he was going to die, that we felt that they were trying to kill him. Tara Beth Coleman and Ryan Mahaffey said that they would move him to a different jail and they didn't do it. They did that to get us to shut up and now he's dead. And this death won't have to be reported in the regional jail reports because what they do is they beat the hell out of people or they medically neglect the hell out of people until they have to go to the hospital and if they die at the hospital, that's not counted as a jail death. Rappahannock Regional Jail has killed many people in the recent past and maimed others. And Will can tell you stories. There's people that are in wheelchairs now thanks to RRJ. Ryan Mahaffey should be disbarred. If you look at the evidence from Lawrence Toller's conviction, there's no way to think that he actually shot at police. He fully knew that and he put him in RRJ and he allowed him to be medically neglected to death to cover up his false prosecution. Spotsylvania Police Department told his family that they were going to kill him 10 years ago and they would do it no matter how long it took. And you all have allowed that to happen. I can't wait until Virginia gets rid of the corrupt sheriff-run regional jail system. Rappahannock Regional Jail should be shut down immediately. Thank you.

Hello, everyone. My name is Will King. I'm from Stafford. And I facilitate an organization called Uncage RRJ. And my friend Dawn here, she believes that we need to shut it down. And you know what? I understand that sentiment. I really do. But there's a problem. We already know what happens when you shut down a jail. If you shut down a jail, what happens is we still incarcerate the same number of people. We just send them further away, farther away from any means of accountability. Lawrence Dale Toller is dead now because there isn't accountability. Now, you know, maybe the specific person that is being investigated, you know, that specifically handed it off, maybe that person will get, you know, held accountable. I will bet you dimes to dollars that there's more to that story. But are we going to find out about it? I don't know. I don't know. I really, I honestly don't, you know, because the problem is, is that if you, if you tell people too much of the truth, it will just become immediately clear that we do not have a justice system. What we have is a power and control system. People with power wanted Dale told her dead and now he's dead. We have to move heaven and earth in order to uncover what actually went down. But it was just par the course what happened to Dale. You can plot it on a timeline. And he's not the only person that has experienced that sort of wanton, blatant corruption across multiple areas of the justice system. And that is functionally not a good thing. It's not a good thing because it threatens the legitimacy of justice and law itself. And if we are not a nation of laws, then what are we? My friend right now, sir, was thrown into solitary immediately upon entering in Rappahannock Regional on the 3rd. And you know, they came up with their reasons, but it's well known that he's a board member, right? And you can, a board member of one cage. And so, you know, how am I supposed to know whether or not that was retaliation? What would I have to do? I would have to move heaven and earth. And that's it.

Thank you.

Good evening. I think we can all agree that as a community, we should embrace facts and not misinformation. And although the public hearing was postponed, I'm still going to stand here and ask the questions that I think the public has the right to know. So question one. Attorney Charlie Payne represents the applicants for both the but.

Ma'am, can you just state your name for the record, please, in your voting district?

My apologies. Adiba Amanula. I'm from the Lee's Hill community. All right. Attorney Charlie Payne represents the applicants for both the postponed Gateway Commerce Center project and Cutler's Crossroad Technology Campus project. At the same time, I'm sure you guys all know, he serves on the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority Board and has chaired the Fredericksburg Regional Alliance. My question to you guys is, what specific policies does the board have to ensure that all potential conflicts of interest for attorneys in this position are fully disclosed and properly managed? And I'm happy to give you guys some time to answer if you want to answer that. My second question is, public property records show that for the Crossroads Technology Campus, Kettler and RCK Digital Crossroads LLC paid approximately $26.5 million in July of 2024 for a parcel assessed by the county at only about $3 million. That's more than eight times the assessed value. My question to you guys is how is the board ensuring that projects like this actually deliver measurable benefits to Spotsylvania residents rather than mainly generating large profits for the developer? Third question, RCK Digital Crossroads LLC is a Delaware form company that uses a professional registered agent service instead of listing individual owners. My question is, what requirements, if any, does the county currently have for developers to disclose the ultimate beneficial owner? And if any foreign sovereign well-found involvement in data center projects like the Gateway Commerce Center and Crossway Technology Campus is involved with this project that's being built? Lastly, I respectfully urge the board to strengthen transparency rules, conflict disclosures, and independent impact studies for all active and upcoming data center applications. And the questions I ask, these two questions I ask today, the public needs to answer to it before you agree and approve for the data centers to be built behind your backyards. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Good evening, board. Dick Szymanski, Lee Hill District.

Can you press the button there? Oh.

Now, how's that? That's better, yeah. I'll do a little better. They can't hear you at home if they, it's not on. Oh yeah, I wanna get all the audience I can here. Right, right. Good evening, board, chair. I'm Dick Szymanski, I live in the Lee Hill District and I have been, Sharing information that I find from time to time that brings up issues that are data center related across the gamut. Resource utilization is a primary concern of mine, not just the cosmetic factor. And many people have spoken about some specifics here, so I won't go back into the details. I would just like to encourage the board to have the courage to put an absolute moratorium on any approvals of any more data centers moving forward for a reasonable period until more of the details can be identified, explored, and more rational decisions can be made. And I recognize that's gonna take some time, but we do not know what we do not know in many cases. I think you would agree with me. Every new finding is a little bit of a surprise. I grew up in Western New York. If some of you are close to my age, which is 70, you might recall back in the 70s and 80s, the federal government had to create a super fund to clean up seven toxic waste sites. Two of them were within shouting distance of where I grew up. companies that were able to move ahead without a full understanding of what was going on at their businesses and it literally destroyed more than communities to the point where a super fund and a toxic waste cleanup is pretty significant. I'm not saying that data centers are that kind of problem, but I'm saying they present some of those related issues and many others and I'm urging a rational response would be to find out more information and get more clarity as opposed to moving down, kicking a can a little bit more, a little bit more down the road in partially or fully approving things before we really know all the details have the courage to stop and get much more of the details thank you thank you

Yeah, if he pushed, it should be green. There you go. You're fine.

You can hear me? Yep. I'm here with the Dale Toler family. So the beginning of Dale's trial for he was shot at by five officers.

Excuse me. What? Can you state your name and voting district for the record?

Marie Connor. And I live with them. So I'm not from this area. I came just to help advocate them. So anyway, on the day to court, Dale was attacked by several officers and there was a note passed from him to his attorney that stated what happened. And the judge, the present judge says, well, I can't help what goes on in jail. I personally called the jail and spoke to the higher up and he said, huh, we'll just have to investigate that. I don't believe that. Okay, and then he goes, he gets back from jail and gets put straight in the hole because he had long johns on. this is where it all goes downhill for him he was never the same you know they i don't know if you're aware they're crushing their meds and telling them that they have to take them crushed okay dale was on seizure medicine that he was getting intermittently and if you take a medication that needs to be expanded out taken and you crush that and you put it in there what's going to happen bam, you start taking that, taking that, taking that, your body's gonna deteriorate because you're getting that all at one time. What happens when you're not given Keftra like you should and then you get it all at one time? Cardiac arrest. Then you're in cardiac arrest in your cell where nobody has come to your attention and they find you blue. And the saddest thing is I know that y'all are parents. This mother did not hear about her son dying unless her daughter wasn't listening to the police scanner report and the inmate that was in there with him told her, your son is dead. They had to go to the hospital and beg them to give them information. If it wasn't for some of these people back here, because I don't live here and I'd have been up there. She wanted to know her son was dead. She wanted to know to this day her son was dead. She would still think he's just in the hole somewhere. And then to go visit his dead, lifeless body, she had to have a police test report. They treated her like scum. Not everybody in jail is guilty. He was coming up on appeal. He was being moved to another district that day, and he's not here to go to that appeal with all the evidence that we have to prove that he did not point a gun at those cops. We have it all, and it's gonna come out. And we didn't commit suicide if any of us end up dead. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else that would like to speak tonight? Just come on up.

Yep. Be quick. Stormwater management?

Yeah. As long as it doesn't have anything to do with the public hearings, you're fine. You can speak on that. Yeah.

Before we initiate another layer of things we have to do, my name is Dan Spear.

Yeah, it is. If you're talking about number six, then hold on for just a second. We'll get to you.

All right.

Sorry about that. Anyone else in the audience that would like to come up and speak? Okay, seeing none, we'll go ahead and close the public comment time.

Madam Chair, given the time, I suggest that we go ahead and move forward with the presentations and report by others if they're ready to go. Becky, are you ready to present? So we'll go ahead and go with presentations, reports by others, the approval of resolutions to petition the Circuit Court for bond referendum, and then followed by the status of the adoption of the FY27 state budget.

And just for the benefit of the audience, the county administrator mentioned the time because the public hearings that some of you are here for are scheduled for 545 and the board can't take those up until after the scheduled time has occurred. So that's why we're taking up things before that 545 time period.

Good evening, members of the board. Tonight, I am here to discuss the 2026 bond referendum. At our May 26 board meeting, the board approved the following referendum categories and amounts. Public safety, $62 million. Transportation, 67.6 million. Schools, 237.4 million. And environmental and solid waste, 33.7 million. Tonight, staff is requesting the board hold a vote on each bond resolution, authorizing the county to petition the circuit court for a special election on November 3rd of 2026. The special election will let voters decide yes or no to authorize bonds to potentially fund future public safety, transportation, school, and solid waste projects. Briefly, a little background on the referendum. This will be authority to issue bonds. It allows the county to fund large necessary infrastructure projects. These bonds will be repaid over the useful life of the project, spreading the cost over current and future taxpayers as they receive the benefits of the infrastructure. As an example, a fire truck that has a 12-year useful life, we will be paying debt service over 12 years for that fire truck. With the county's AAA bond rating, issuing the GO bonds is the least costly financial option available. And funds for each referendum category can only be used for expenditures within the category. For example, funds authorized for public safety may only be used for public safety projects. And lastly, the voter authorization of the bonds does not guarantee that the full amount of the bonds will be issued. Bonds cannot be sold until the Board of Supervisors holds a public hearing authorizing a resolution for the sale of those bonds. Even before that can happen, before we can issue any bonds for the year, staff, as part of the recommended budget process, will first, for these projects, look to see if there's referendum authority. Second, we will look at the county's fiscal policy debt ratios to make sure it's in line with those ratios. And lastly, and most importantly, again, as part of the recommended budget, we will look to see if there are funds available to pay the annual principal and interest payments. So now we come to the first question or the first item for vote. So this is for public safety. As you can see, the seven projects here totaling $61,993,592. So staff is recommending and looking for the board's approval of the public safety bond referendum resolution as presented in the board's agenda packet.

Thank you for that. Does anyone have any questions? We kind of have for public consumption. We have kind of gone over these a couple of times. and discuss them. So at this time, we need a motion to approve this. Yes, Jake.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So we just heard from the community about The transparency and getting that information out and we, we struggle with that as well. Right? We, we cannot use potable water for data centers in this county. This board has enacted that, but somehow that information still seems to get out there. So. I want to get ahead of the misinformation. I want to make sure that these bonds are put out there to the public. Is the county. possibly doing any type of, we'll do two community meetings where we'll hold them at this end of the county, that end of the county. If you come between six and seven, staff will do an hour presentation. Are we having any of those planned to help get the word out to the community and what does that look like?

Yes, sir. So I will come back with a plan for that, but we will be holding community events. We will also be putting stuff out on our Facebook that includes FAQs, tax impacts. We will be using our real estate records to send out postcards that talk about the bond referendum. We're going to be getting a lot of information out to our citizens. Yes, sir.

Okay. Any other questions? All right, is there a motion? OK. All right. And just for the board, so we're going to go through this one by one on these different categories. So that's why we're taking separate votes.

Motion passes six to zero.

And just an abundance of clarity for the public, if this is the first time you're hearing about this, they are not voting, the board is not voting to issue any debt or any bonds at this point. They are moving them forward to a referendum, which means the public will get to vote on each of these bond issuances come the election in November. So just for additional clarity.

Moving to the transportation resolution, staff is recommending the board's approval of the transportation bond referendum resolution as presented in the board's agenda packet for the total of $67,627,000.

Okay, anybody have any questions regarding this? Okay, David.

So I just had a comment just to bring some eyes onto the chart here. We have $10 million in rural road on there. So for the folks out of Livingston and Berkeley, that's a significant amount of money to get after some of the road issues we have out in the rural parts of the county. And I would recommend a motion to approve.

All right, let's vote. Oh, my take.

Supervisor Gooser made me think. Do we have the possibility in the bond referendum to specifically say that if this is approved, that this $10 million has to be used for this? Because if we have another transportation overrun in another area of the county and and the rural area said, you know what, $10 million for rural roads, we really need that. And then four years down the road, the bond gets approved because Livingston and Berkeley decided, normally the rural areas do not vote for these bond referendums, historically speaking, but say we do, and because of this nice little carrot dangled in front of us of $10 million in rural, We have a cost overrun. Next thing you know, the $10 million is having to be pooled to work on projects X, Y, and Z. Do we have the ability that if this is approved, that that $10 million will be guaranteed for rural roads? Can we take that one line item and put a caveat beside it?

I think that is how you write the referendum question. I would have to take that back to council to see how we can write that question, if that is the desire of the board.

Okay, thank you. I would like to go down that route on the rural road transportation.

Chris?

yeah thank you yes and actually you know what you can do is we're not going in order as they're presented so we could actually do it at the same time so that we make sure that the rule roads are getting something at that time that we're not waiting for them so we can move that up in in the list of what is done and the timing of how they're done too because I know that a lot of those you know compared to some of these other projects are a lot less um prep work that needs to be done so yeah i would definitely want to make sure that that if people are voting for something that we don't pull that away from them that's absolutely wrong to do i think thank you so um are you are you willing to

vote on this tonight are you wanting to i think we are on a time crunch here is the whole thing is we can't really kick this to the next meeting because there's there's limited time so um

Madam Chair, I have faith in staff that they have heard what we are saying. I'm seeing some nods, a few nods across. Chancellor has some rural roads too. Battlefield, you might be able to find one or two. But no, I feel confident that staff has taken our comments this evening and could work on something to find a compromise for us all.

Okay, so is there a motion then?

Motion to approve.

All right.

Motion passes six to zero.

Moving forward to the third referendum question. This is for schools. Staff is recommending board's approval of the school bond referendum resolution as presented in the board's agenda packet for $237,278,605. OK. Are there any questions regarding this? Yes. Yeah. So as I understand, so there was an initial

discussion I think at the school board and some others about CTE and some other things that they had pulled off of this bond referendum and they wanted to reiterate the fact that there was taken off the bond referendum because they have other funding measures to actually meet that need. And so I'm concerned for the public that they sit there and see that it's not on there after it's I guess been discussed after talking to my school board representative. And I think the assurance is that there's other ways of funding some of those priorities for the school system rather than through the bond referendum. So that's one reason why it's not on there, if anybody's paying attention.

Okay, and is there a motion?

Madam Chair, so moved.

All right.

Motion passes six to zero.

This is the last referendum question for environmental and solid waste. Staff is recommending the board's approval of the environmental and solid waste bond referendum resolution as presented in the board's agenda packet for $33,657,353. Thank you. And does anyone have any discussion points on this and or a motion? Motion to approve. OK.

Motion passes six to zero.

So thank you very much. That includes the presentation. Next steps, county attorney will be filing an order with the circuit court by June 16th. So hopefully no later than June 25th, the court will order the election. And then of course, we will have early voting September 18th and election day on November 13th.

Thank you very much for the presentation. I appreciate it. And I guess, Ed, that brings us to our other presentation by others.

And Becky, are you presenting that as well? Yes, sir. So you can just sit there and do it again.

OK.

So thank you, yes, members of the board, I was requested to come before you to just give you a status of the state budget. So as you are aware, the General Assembly failed to pass a budget at its regular session and its subsequent April special session. Lawmakers are currently divided over how to regulate and tax data centers. The state budget must be finalized by June 30th or face its first ever government shutdown. So the plans for adoption, as I have read, is the House will reconvene for a special session on June 18th, followed by the Senate for their session on June 26th, excuse me, June 22nd, to hopefully meet the deadline to pass a full budget. The governor and both chambers have expressed their commitment to reaching a budget deal by the deadline. However, legislators are considering a contingency so-called skinny budget to fund core services if a full compromise fails. But most importantly, the county wants to make sure that we have evaluated the exposure of a shutdown in financial terms. And so we did look at the estimated combined exposure costs for a 30-day shutdown. That equals $22.8 million. That's the equivalent of average monthly state supported revenues for the county state money of $3.9 million, schools $18.9 million. Now the county has intentionally built and maintained financial reserves to ensure that the county can respond effectively to these types of events. So the county has a fiscal stability reserve. Its current amount is 68.2 million. Our policy requires us to hold 11% of the next year's budget for county, the general fund, and the school operating fund revenues. So that reserve ensures that we have adequate cash liquidity to sustain our payroll, our vendor obligations, and other operational needs. So unlike the federal government, we're not looking to furlough any employees. We will be able to make, you know, meet our vendor payments. And this is a temporary shortfall, which, of course, and this is only if the government shuts down. But if they do, it's a temporary shortfall that, of course, the state will release the funds once they are back up and running. The permanent exposure, if you will, to this is since we are using our cash funds, that means less money in the bank to be earning investment returns. So our investment returns will take a bit of a hit depending on how much and how long a shutdown occurs. So that concludes this brief presentation that we just wanted to make you aware that we have evaluated the exposure and we feel that we are in good shape because of our financial reserve policies.

Great, thank you. Does anybody have any questions or comments? So, appreciate the update and this is one of those things that really is very frustrating for everyone involved because we're required to have a balanced budget and we come in on time and then we have the legislature kind of messing around with this and it really puts us all in a, very precarious situation so i hope they can get it together work out whatever differences they have and get it done so thank you very much ed we're still we are so we can either go into closed meeting carl said it would take about a half an hour or we can go with board reports your pleasure madam chair um Why don't we go ahead and go into closed in that way? Because I don't think board reports is going to take 15 minutes. I mean, I could probably fill some air time, but you know.

All right, Madam Chair, members of the board, this is your resolution to adjourn into closed meeting. Whereas the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors desires to adjourn in closed meeting for the consultation of legal counsel employed or retained by the county regarding specific legal matters requiring the provision of legal advice by such counsel, specifically regarding a land use and stormwater management issue, and whereas pursuant to Virginia Code Section 2.2-3711A8, Such discussions may occur in closed meeting. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the spots of any County Board of Supervisors does hereby authorize discussion of the afer stated matters.

So we'll go ahead and vote on that. Look, Drew.

This is your resolution to return to open meeting. Whereas the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors has convened a closed meeting on this date pursuant to an affirmative recorded vote and in accordance with the provisions of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. And whereas section 2.2-3712D of the Code of Virginia Code of Virginia requires a certification by this board that such closed meeting was conducted in conformity with Virginia law. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors hereby returns to open meeting and certifies by roll call vote that to the best of each member's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed meeting.

Supervisor Lane? Aye. Supervisor Mullins? Aye. Supervisor Yakubowski? Aye. Supervisor Childress? Aye. Supervisor Guzman? Aye. And the chair votes aye.

Madam Chair, that brings you to your public hearings. I understand at the request of the board that you're going to hear R25-0010, RO25-0010, 208 Apparel and Design, LLC, Justin Wood and 208 Apparel and Design, LLC. And this is the Livingston Voting District.

That's right. So we'll start there. Yeah.

Thank you.

and you all can start whenever. They will be on. Good evening everyone.

My name is Michael Barrett and I'm on the planning staff and I will be giving the staff presentation for R250010, 208 apparel and design LLC located in the Livingston voting district. The request is to rezone a 2.707 acre portion of a 25.58 acre parcel from resort agricultural to resort commercial to allow for a wholesale trade establishment and office building no larger than 10,000 square feet. The business deals in custom clothing services including screen printing and embroidery. There are several other potential uses to be permitted as well. planning commission held a public hearing on march 4th 2026 with a 4-2-1 vote recommended denial the concerns raised included potential commercial uses and a potential increase in traffic the applicant revised the project to prohibit additional commercial uses and commits to additional traffic mitigation staff recommends approval with properties dated march 31st 2026. The site, outlined in red, is 25.58 acres and is located on the east side of Courthouse Road, approximately .35 miles south of the Courthouse Road and Ryland-Payne Road intersection, and approximately .47 miles north of the intersection of Courthouse Road and Lake Anna Village Drive. The property has an existing single-family detached residential dwelling unit. As previously stated, the property is zone resort agricultural, as are the adjacent parcels on the east side of this section of Courthouse Road. The buy right potential of the property is five additional single family detached dwellings via annual division. The future land use for both this site and the surrounding area is designated as mixed use commercial heavy. The proposed use is consistent with this future land use designation. I would like to note that with the pending comprehensive plan update, the future land use of this section of the 208 corridor will be changing to commercial. But with that change, the use would still be supported. Here you can see the generalized development plan showing the proposed building. The area outlined in the red dashed line is the proposed rezoned area. The site is accessed via Courthouse Road. Transitional screening has been provided along the southern property line. The transitional screening along the north and eastern property lines has been requested to be waived. Staff is supportive of this waiver due to existing vegetation and the fact that the applicant is the owner of the parcel adjacent to those property lines. Now we'll jump into staff analysis. Land use. The proposed zoning and wholesale trade establishment use is consistent with the goals and policies of the land use chapter of the comprehensive plan. Fiscal, the project is in support of the county's aspiration of a 70 to 30 mix of residential to commercial industrial development. The project is expected to be fiscally positive. Transportation, the proposed use is projected to generate 157 trips per day, but if a more intense use exceeds 157 trips per day, then a left turn lane will be constructed to mitigate transportation impacts. Public facilities, due to the commercial nature of the proposal, The project is not expected to have any negative impacts on public facilities. Historic resources. The project does not present any negative impacts on historic resources. Natural resources. The project does not impact any streams or wetlands. In summary, the applicant has committed to the following proffers. The project will be developed as depicted on the generalized development plan. The applicant has proffered to prohibit various commercial uses found in the resort commercial zoning district. The applicant has proffered to construct the building with fenestration, awning, metal panels, and integral concrete masonry units, and that the building facade will be constructed of a natural or earth tone color. The project proffers to commit to screening all rooftop and ground utilities and screening of all mechanical equipment with landscaping, firming, or screen walls. The applicant will dedicate right of way across the entire property's frontage with Route 208. In the case a certificate of occupancy or a use permit is issued for any use that exceeds 175 trips per day, the applicant slash owner will install a left turn lane from Courthouse Road into the property. Lastly, the rezoned portion of the site must be subdivided from the existing property in order to avoid having a split zone parcel. Project strengths and weaknesses. For project strengths, the proposal complements the county's fiscal policy of a mix of 70 to 30 residential to commercial industrial development. The applicant has proffered various architectural requirements, building elements, and screening of mechanical equipment. By dedicating right-of-way, the project supports a future widening of Route 208 to include a future shared use path and the thoroughfare plan. Recommendation. The Planning Commission held a public hearing on March 4th, 2026, and with a 4-2-1 vote recommended denial. The concerns raised included potential commercial uses and a potential increase to traffic. Since then, the applicant revised the project to prohibit additional commercial uses and commits to additional traffic mitigation. Based on the previously identified strengths, staff recommends approval of proffers dated March 31st, 2026. And I would also like to note that staff has received a number of letters in support of the project and those have been added to the project packet. And that concludes the presentation. Are there any questions?

Okay, thank you very much for that. Any questions from the board? If not, the applicant is here, right?

Thank you, Madam Chair and other members of the board. Charlie Payne represent the applicant. Justin Wood is here. I've just got a quick, very brief PowerPoint. Let me just grab a seat right there. Just got a quick PowerPoint and then we'll answer any questions you may have.

Michael, if you could start, great.

As staff had noted, this is in regards to one parcel. The project is proposing a 10,000 square foot commercial building. It is located right off 208 and is located within and operated within the Livingston district. This is a homegrown business, small business here in Spotsylvania County. Justin and his team own and operate 208 Apparel. It offers custom screen printing and embroidery services. Its current facility's at High Point Marina and Light Inn. If approved, the new facility will support the growth of small businesses in the county and also will help support 208 apparel and it will be locating a commercial building here in the county. The project does anticipate or relocate current businesses to support at least three jobs. Currently, the site is cleared, has no wetlands, no RPAs. It is immediately bound by the residence of Justin and his wife to the north and the remainder of Justin and Laurel Wood's property to the east. So they are the neighbors. And the other surrounding parcels are primarily vacant to the south. This is mixed-use commercial under your future land use plan. Staff noted here is the layout. You can see the access off of 208. There's also dedicated right-of-way. I think it's 55 feet from the center line as well. And as staff noted, there will be a left-turn lane built if the uses exceed 157 trips. And you can see the building location as well.

Next, please.

Again, the proffers of staff have noted it prohibits the majority of by-right uses under the RC district, including more intense uses. It does have attractive building elements, including earth tone colors for the facades and screening for the utility equipment. Again, dedicating right away along Route 208. And the project will not generate any more than 157 trips. There must be a subdivision in the parcel prior to site plan submission for the actual use. and I'm happy to answer your questions.

Okay, does anyone have any questions at this time? Chris?

Yes, I'm sorry, this comes from staff also, but one of you guys can answer it. They're just dedicating land for a shared use path. They're not actually building one, are they?

That's correct.

Okay, good, just wanted to make sure. Thank you.

Okay, great, thank you. So at this time, I will go ahead and open the public hearing for this project. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak on this issue? Okay, seeing none, I guess I'll close the public hearing on this. And the applicant has time to rebut nothing, I guess, at this point. So I will, any discussion or we will entertain a motion.

Yeah, Madam Chair, I'd like to, first, I'd like to make a comment. I feel, to Mr. Wood, as a constituent of mine and a small business owner, I truly feel like I've dropped the ball and I've let my constituent down. I don't feel like it would be any need for a project like this for the need to go out and hire a team and all this. I want this county to encourage small businesses to grow. I would hope that our economic development group would have somebody available along with Kimberly's staff that would be able to take those phone calls and help walk these small businesses through that next level of growth. I'm glad speaking with you, you felt comfortable having a team around you just to make sure everything kind of went through. But I want to encourage the small businesses like this to take those risks and take those chances to grow. and especially grow right there next to your home and your parents' home and where you've grown up. So I'm in absolute full support of this. I appreciate the staff and the team that he's put together to help see this over the finish line, but I just hope that we can find a way through our economic development to where if Mr. Wood was looking to grow his business, instead of having to go out and invest great large sum of money into lawyers and a team around him he as a Spotsylvania County resident and a graduate of our local school system would have that ability to pick up the phone call call our economic development and be able to walk through the steps that he would need to do without having to invest a large amount of his own hard-earned time and money but with that said I I'm fully supportive of this project, Madam Chair. I would like to make a motion to approve R25-0010 with the proffers dated March 31st, 2026.

Okay, there's a motion on the floor. Any discussion?

Yeah, just a comment. I absolutely agree with Jake. I mean, you know, for a project like this, a small business, family owned and operated, you know, basically family, three employees. It seems like a lot of overkill to get him to this spot in the process. And I would double down on encouraging staff to let's find a way to help these small businesses because we do a lot for these large businesses that come in that have a lot of money and a lot of things invested and absolutely need to see our small businesses flourish here in the county. So absolutely support that.

Okay, anyone else? All right, we'll go ahead and vote then.

Motion passes 6-0. All right. Thank you so much.

Appreciate you. And now I guess we'll go up to number one now.

Yes, ma'am. That's SUP 25-0007, Spotsylvania Meats, Chester M. Priscilla D. Mumma, Trustee of Camp Solitude, Revocable Living Trust, Spotsylvania Meats, LLC. And this is in the Chancellor Voting District.

Good afternoon. My name is Ginger Deal, and I'll be presenting SUP 25-0007, Spotsylvania Meats. The applicant requests a special use to allow for an abattoir on approximately 25.53 acre parcel with a portion of an adjacent parcel for access only both parcels. Access only both parcels are zoned agricultural three. The proposal will allow for the processing and selling of sheep, goats, cattle, and poultry. The applicant has indicated that the end result is to provide a full service USDA approved and inspected meat processing facility. The applicant expects to process approximately 4,300 livestock annually. There will be an onsite incinerator for disposal of any unused animal remains, as well as a lagoon to capture wastewater from the processing rooms. The Planning Commission recommends approval with conditions, and staff is recommending approval with revised conditions. The site as shown here is outlined in red and is addressed as 12515 and 12519 Orange Plank Road, Route 621. And both are located on the north side of Route 621. The site is located approximately one mile from the Orange County line. The project is located within the Chancellor Voting District. Please note that the driveway which is located on 12519 Orange Plank Road is a shared driveway between the two parcels and only the driveway located on this parcel is a part of this SUP application. The property is currently being used as a farm. The parcel is surrounded by A3 zone properties. Miller Farms is located to the east of the property and single family detached homes are located adjacent to the property. The closest single family home property line to the east is approximately 360 feet from the proposed abattoir and the closest single family property line to the west is approximately 774 feet from the proposed abattoir. As seen on the zoning map here, both subject parcels are outlined in red and the surrounding properties are zoned A3. The buy right development potential for this property is six single family detached residential dwellings via annual division. The map is showing the half mile boundary to Orange County and from the entrance to the site to the Orange County line is approximately one mile. As shown on the future land use map, the subject properties outlined in red and the surrounding properties are designated as agricultural and forestal. Per the comprehensive plan, this land use designation is primarily used for the cultivation of crops and livestock purposes in which the proposed abattoir is compatible. The picture shown here is from the applicant's GDP showing the proposed building location, incinerator location, as well as the proposed lagoon. The proposed incinerator is to be located behind the abattoir and would be smokeless and odorless. The incinerator will be used for the disposal of any unused animal remains. The proposed abattoir will be located approximately 384 feet from Orange Plank Road, and the nearest single-family detached home is approximately 360 feet. The wastewater from the processing rooms will be drained to the proposed lagoon via a gravity fed drain pipe. The wastewater will contain wash water from the processing rooms along with some hair, minimal blood, manure, and cleaning detergent. The lagoon will be constructed behind the abattoir and past the tree line to help with screening purposes. The proposed lagoon will be approximately 20 feet in depth with a diameter of approximately 50 feet. This facility will also be fenced for safety purposes. In the event the lagoon reaches 80% capacity, it would then be pumped using a liquid manure spreader or septic tanker truck and spread on the pasture land. The applicant's home is located on the property as well as an existing barn. The applicant has proposed that the existing well will serve the home site and the proposed abattoir. A new drain field is proposed to service the abattoir solely. The establishment is expected to have one to two employees and up to five employees during peak periods. They are providing 11 parking spaces on a gravel lot for both employees and customers. The images shown here on the left is taken across the street from the subject property. You can see the top of the existing house and the barn. The image top right is if you're traveling east on Orange Plank Road and the bottom right is west on Orange Plank Road. It's taken from the shared driveway. The proposed use is expected to generate 19 vehicle trips per day and not expected to have a major impact on the local traffic or conflict with the existing and anticipated traffic in the area. The entrance will be improved to meet VDOT requirements for a low volume commercial entrance, and the first 25 feet will be paved. At this time, VDOT has not raised any concern over site distance or turn lanes. They will review the plan in more detail at site plan should the SUP be approved. This slide here was provided by the applicant as a sample of the proposed layout of the abattoir. The building will contain holding pens for the animals as well as processing rooms, waiting areas, et cetera. Per the applicant's narrative, the building will be designed for an office for a USDA official to be on the premises. They will be following the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, VDAC's guidebook, which is intended to be for use by meat and poultry establishments in considering decisions about design and construction of their facilities. As mentioned earlier, there'll be an onsite incinerator for waste. The applicant provided a sample of the type of incinerator they'll be using. Planning Commission recommendation. The Planning Commission held a public hearing on April 1st, 2026. They decided to continue the vote due to outstanding concerns regarding the hydrological study and the regulatory authority for the lagoon. The vote was continued to May 20th, 2026. The applicant provided a hydrological study. The applicant and staff were given clear direction on regulatory authority permitting expectations on the lagoon with DEQ. Planning Commission recommended approval with a vote of six to zero. Staff recommendation is approval with the following conditions. The proposed special use satisfies the eight standards of review outlined in the county code. Staff has worked in consult with DEQ to craft the recommended conditions. The following slides will show the full text of the conditions, the recommended conditions. I'll provide a summary. Condition number one speaks that they will develop the property in conformance with the GDP. Condition number two states that the entrance driveway will be improved to meet VDOT standards for a low volume commercial entrance. The final location design will be a site plan should the SUP be approved. Condition number three, the abattoir facility in operation must and will be operated and maintained in conformance with the USDA standards, regardless of its certification status, therewith, within 24 months of operation of the abattoir, the zoning administrator may allow for a reasonable extension of the time upon written notice of the applicant or the owner for good cause shown for given circumstances outside of the control of the applicant or owner. Condition number four speaks to the hours of operation, seven days a week, 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Condition number three states that they will only process sheep, goats, poultry, and cattle. No wildlife will be processed on the property. Condition number six, the lagoon is permitted for the collection of wastewater from the processing rooms and is limited to serving this processing use only. Condition number seven, we have crafted this condition to capture all federal, state, local laws for regulation and requirement in regards to permitting, design, installation, cleaning, maintenance, operation, safety hazard mitigation, decommissioning, closure, enforcement, and compliance. Number eight, the lagoon must be designed by a licensed professional engineer The code reference here is the county code for site plan review, which would be the next step in the process should the SUP be approved. You'll note that professional engineer is in bold print and underlined. This condition is slightly different than what was recommended by the planning commission. The applicants represented suggested the change from civil engineer to professional engineer for accuracy purposes. Staff did confer with the EQ and finds the request appropriate Condition number nine the lagoon as identified on the GDP will and must be designed and constructed operated and maintained in a manner as To meet or exceed any and all applicable lagoon design construction operation and maintenance standards and conditionally establishments by the NRCS Condition number 10, the lagoon's effective volume and loading rates must meet the NRCS's standards criteria for treatment volume, sludge storage, and stormwater storage, and also hydraulic retention times will and must be adequate for the expected wastewater strength. Condition number 11, all lagoon cleaning chemicals must be readily biodegradable detergents, parasitic acid base, or similar oxidant disinfectants that break down to benign products, QAC-based Products are prohibited on the property. Condition number 12, the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of the lagoon as identified on the GDP will and must at all times be consistent with the NRCS's operation and maintenance guidelines and any and all other applicable NRCS's guidelines or standards to lagoons of this kind in support of an abattoir and its facilities. Condition number 13, any nuisance or similar health risk Any nuisance or similar risk to the health, safety, and general welfare of the surrounding community and its citizens within Spotsylvania County will result, which result from the lagoon design, construction, operation, and or maintenance may be deemed or determined a violation of the special use permit to an extent permitted and allowable by law and appropriate enforcement action may be pursued there under including but not limited to Virginia Code section 15.2-900. Condition number 14 states that the lagoon will be fenced. Condition number 15 states if the abattoir ceases to operate for two years, the lagoon will be decommissioned. Condition number 16, the lagoon will and must be constructed such that the bottom elevation of the lagoon is greater than 12 inches from the seasonal water table. Condition number 17, The lagoon will and must be designed and operated to prevent point source discharges of pollutants to state waters and provide adequate waste storage capacity to accommodate periods when the ground is frozen or saturated, periods when land application of nutrients should not occur due to limited or nonexistent crop nutrient uptake, and periods when physical limitation prohibits the land application of waste. You'll notice ground is underlined and in bold print. Again, this is a change. from what was proposed at the Planning Commission. We have omitted the word water, so instead of saying ground water, it just says when the ground is frozen. Condition number 18, the lagoon will and must not be located in a 100-year floodplain for the purposes of determining the 100-year floodplain. Federal Emergency Management Agency flood insurance rate map, a FEMA letter of map amendment, or a FEMA letter of map revision shall be used. Condition number 19, the lagoon will and must be designed and constructed to maintain and must maintain at least one foot of freeboard at all times and up to including a 25-year, 24-hour storm. Condition number 20, the lagoon will and must be constructed, operated, and maintained in accordance with the applicable practice standards adopted by the NRCSs of the US Department of Agriculture. A Virginia licensed professional engineer or employee of the NRCS of the United States of Agricultural with appropriate engineering approval authority shall certify that the siting, design, and construction of the waste storage facility comply with these requirements. Condition number 21 states that the lagoon will be lined either by a synthetic liner 20 mils thick or a compacted soil liner of at least one foot with permeability rating of 0.0014 inches per hour. Condition number 22, there must be no point source discharge of the wastewater from the lagoon to surface waters or groundwater. Condition number 23, all land applied wastewater from the lagoon must not discharge directly into surface waters or through a direct conduit to groundwater to include but not limited to a sinkhole or well. Condition number 24, crop or adequate stand of vegetation will and must be maintained in the field where the wastewater from the lagoon is applied. Condition number 25, the following buffer zones will and must be maintained from the areas where wastewater from the lagoon is applied. 100 feet from surface waters, 100 feet from water supply wells, springs, or sinkholes, 200 feet from occupied dwellings, 50 feet from rock outcroppings, and 10 feet from improved roadways. Condition number 26, the wastewater management activity of the lagoon will and must be conducted in a manner that does not result in any ponding or runoff of the wastewater at any time. All wastewater application will and must be applied to the land at a rate of no greater than a quarter inch a day to any part of the field and no land application will occur to saturated frozen or bare ground. Condition number 27, This condition has been modified to take into account that weather conditions are out of the applicant's control, but this condition sets a standard to make every effort to apply the wastewater in drying weather conditions. And that one is different than what was presented to the Planning Commission, and we did confer with DEQ that it's appropriate. Condition number 28. speaks to the incinerator will be smokeless and odorless and comply with any and all federal, state, local law. Condition number 29 states they will obtain a liquefied petroleum gas operation permit from the fire marshal's office prior to operation. Condition number 30, this one speaks to the existing driveway, and if one of the properties are sold, then an easement would be placed over the shared driveway for the benefit of the abattoir. Condition number 31 speaks to if there's a violation of the SUP, then the applicant owner has 60 days to correct it. The zoning administrator can determine a different date of compliance at his or her discretion. Condition number 32 speaks that if there are any violation and the applicant owner fails to abate and correct the violation, they will be subject to enforcement action, penalties described in the zoning ordinance, including revocation and or legal action allowable under law. Condition number 33, in the event any special use condition stated herein is determined to be invalid, illegal, or unenforceable, the validity, legality, and enforceability of the remaining conditions and applications of the special use permit shall remain in full force and effect and will not in any way be negatively affected or impaired thereby. With that, that concludes my presentation. Staff recommends approval. with the conditions presented. The applicant is present along with Kevin with AWT and we have DEQ staff, Neil here, that can answer any of your questions.

Okay, thank you. Does anyone on the board have any questions for staff? Yes, Jake.

Just real quick on number four, hours of operation. That's just open to the public, correct? If this gets approved, they're allowed to be in there working, slaughtering, packaging, things of that nature. Item four is just as far as open to the public, correct?

It's hours of operation. I mean, the way I would interpret that is the operation of the abattoir, not just what's open to the public, but the actual processing. That, I believe, came straight from the applicant's narrative, so you may want to defer to the applicant to see if that's acceptable.

Just wanted to make sure, coming from the agricultural community, I know how busy our processing facilities are right now, and just wanted to make sure we didn't restrict anybody from processing. working understand the the being open to the public that way it's not a lot of traffic coming in and out all hours of the day but if this came from the applicant then i'll leave that up to them i believe that the reason for the extended hours to was time for dropping animals off to give them time to get the animals to and from okay um so if no one has any questions up here then if the applicants here to come up

Hello, members of the board. My name is Andrew . I'm trying to start Spotsylvania Meats, LLC, with the proposed abattoir to be built to help process county farmers, process their cattle and other livestock locally, rather than most of them being hauled into the valley and everywhere outside of the county, because there's not one currently in the county that processes USDA. I think Ginger pretty much outlined everything that was in the packet, but I can answer any questions if you have them.

OK, great. Drew, did you?

Yes, thanks for taking on this endeavor. I think it's going to be a real benefit to the county and Orange County in the area. More opportunities for farm to table restaurants and whatnot, and us regular folk too. Can you kind of go into a little bit of detail on the USDA inspector? Is that also a vet or a veterinarian? How are the animals? know in some some enterprises that they have a vet who inspects them for health and then the USDA inspector does something as well right all right it's just one employee but they do both they monitor the health of the animal when it comes in before it's processed and then after it's processed they inspect the meat to make sure it's suitable for consumption so that that inspectors one of your employees or he's just is that how it works or are they just there when you need them or

Yeah, I mean, he'll have certain days that he's there. But I'm not paying him. He's not on my payroll. He's on VDACs. So USDA employee.

Awesome. Thank you.

OK, great. Thank you so much. Unless anybody has any other questions up here, I'll go ahead and open the public hearing now. Is anybody signed up to speak?

Yes. OK. Tamara Gostelow?

so we we call people first that's been and then and then you can come up afterwards oh yeah it's okay we'll get you no yeah

Can you hear me now? Yep, that's great. I hope my mask doesn't interfere with your ability to hear me. I have my last immunotherapy appointment for breast cancer tomorrow, so I've been threatened not to wear this in public at this point. So my name is Tamara Gastello. I live in the Livingston District. My family lives within a half a mile of the Spotsylvania Meats proposed facility. In an effort to educate myself on the possible effects of this project on our neighborhood, I contacted the DEQ, a retired career meat inspector, the Virginia Cooperative Extension, the manager of a slaughterhouse in the Shenandoah Valley, I also visited a farm in a neighboring county that processes livestock and spoke with their processing manager. I have not included the names of these individuals as I did not ask permission to use them in the writing of this letter. These are my concerns. During the warmer months especially, the lagoon is very likely to have foul odors associated with it due to the breakdown of blood fats and organic matter. This would render the outdoor spaces of our neighborhood unusable. The gases that are released by the breakdown can also trigger respiratory issues. The DEQ confirmed that no permit was needed, so there will be no periodic inspections of the lagoon. At the April meeting, there was great concern in determining who would provide the oversight of the lagoon. Not sure what has changed now that it's acceptable to have no oversight whatsoever from them. The amount of water needed to process and frequently deep clean the facility with high pressure hoses is dependent on individual habits and could easily be underestimated. Many families in the area have shallow wells that could be adversely affected. What help is there for families whose wells, if they become affected by the activities there, I wanted to visit another facility as well that was like this one that's being proposed just so I could see it for myself. When I asked the DEQ and the Virginia Cooperative Extension if they could help me to find a working slaughterhouse with the same setup, incinerator and a lagoon, they were not able to supply me with the name of a single facility in the state, in the whole state. The two facilities I contacted were located on very large farms and neither one had an incinerator. They did have lagoons. One processed six animals a week, the other 160 animals a week. So very different layouts and no incinerator. I was told that even if the incinerator is well maintained and operated to the letter, some level of air pollution and odor from the burning of the fuel or the burning of animal waste would be unavoidable. The incinerator could be almost continually used during busy periods. The incinerator will not be permitted as well.

Ma'am, your time's expired.

I'm sorry.

Would anybody else like to come up and speak?

Yeah, my name is Wayne Miller. I represent the Foxwood Association down there, or Foxwood Division down there. The people down there, they're concerned very much about their wells drying up, slow recovery, stuff like that. Contaminated soil, plus the traffic on 621, stuff like that, how much is going in there and whatever. And then also, their operations, what time. You know, if you go to work, just like everybody else, and if this thing is burning saws at 9 o'clock at night or something, I'm sure they got to go to sleep somewhat. And just things like that. I don't know anything about a slaughterhouse. And my hat's off to people that want to start their own business. But there's a time and a place and the right place for them and stuff like that. And everybody down there feels like this is not the right place for this. And I don't blame them. You know what I mean? They have bore wells. There's not much well there. And I don't know anything how much water it's going to take and stuff like that. But that's their main concern down there, the operations, the hours, the wells drying up. And if they do, who's going to pay them? Who's going to put a well in for them or something, something of that nature? That's all, contaminated soil. But I'm assuming, looking at all this stuff, it looks pretty good from what I see. But there's also that chance. These people down here, they don't have a lot of money to get a new well or something like that. But that's about all we want to say. But no, I appreciate your time so much. Thank you.

Thank you.

good evening chairman and members of the board my name is sean bellis and i live in the livingston district just 1500 feet from spotsylvania meets i am here tonight regarding the proposed spotsylvania meet facility and the fundamental failure of the planning commission's review of this special use permit i want to be clear about what this project is because the language surrounding it has been romanticized and not clear to the public The applicant uses the word abattoir, but let's call it what it actually is. It's a commercial slaughterhouse with a pond of blood, hair, and animal remains. This application is being treated like a quaint, low-impact backyard farm, but is a commercial industry. In the applicant's own written narrative, they state their explicit goal is to evolve to a heavy-use, full-service, USDA-inspected commercial processing plant. There is currently no business of this nature operating anywhere in Spotsylvania County, and we do not find it to be harmonious with the area. To drop an unprecedented industrial slaughterhouse into a quiet area where there are family homes located within 500 feet of this location is a direct violation of land use harmony. Questions from the initial planning commission meeting are still unresolved. At the second meeting, the commission pushed it through based on a hydrological study that was utilizing FOIA information from outdated well surveys. No physical site testing was actually completed and therefore the study should not be considered accurate. Most alarming of all is the staggering admission from the county staff that explicitly stated on the record they had exhausted all resources trying to determine exactly who has oversight and monitors a commercial slaughterhouse operation of this nature. They openly admitted they do not know who's responsible for policing this and voted to approve the special use permit without ever revisiting that conversation. The applicants plan to store slaughterhouse waste, including animal hair, blood, manure, and industrial chemical detergents in a 20-foot deep open pit and then spray it onto an open field when that capacity is completely unacceptable. It poses an immediate threat of biological contamination to private wells our families rely on and guarantee an impact of runoff on local surface water. Should the board intend to move forward with proposing or approving any type of slaughterhouse, you must protect our homes and require strict, modern infrastructure. Mandate a closed septic system and total waste off-siting. Completely reject the open waste pond and require an appropriate engineered closed septic system. To protect the air quality and healthy living of people just 500 feet away, prohibit the on-site incineration and require off-site disposal of all animal waste. And lastly, limit the amount of production to a predetermined number of animals and typical business hours of 8 to 4 Monday through Friday. I urge the Board of Supervisors to deny the special use permit as written. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Anyone else in the audience like to speak to this? Okay. Yes, come on up.

Hi, my name is Kirsten.

I also live within this district. My property is actually on that map that you showed. And I didn't have the courage to come up earlier, but that gentleman right there just said exactly what I would say. So I just want to second everything that he has said. And I have a family, two small children, and I live right near that facility, that proposed facility. So thank you.

OK, thank you. Anyone else? Come on up. Yep.

My name's Donald Paul. I live right across from Trapper's Den and on the other side of Norton's Prong in the Pearl River. This water use, back when I bought my property in 85, I had a spring on both ends of my property. In the last 25 years, the water table has dropped to where there is no springs. So there is a severe water shortage in that area. There's times that Norton's Prong and the Po River runs over top of Orange Plank Road and storms. I've been down here with a foot of water run across the road. Come here next month or two, it's going to be nothing but a dried up creek bed. No water at all. So there is a water shortage problem in that area. Thank you for your time.

Okay, thank you. All right, the applicant can come up and anybody else before I do that? All right, then I'll close the public hearing and the applicant can come up again.

I guess the water issue according to the hydrological study that was done I mean, I'd have to use 20,000 gallons a day to run wells dry in the neighboring area. The projected use is 1,000 gallons, which is like the usage of four or five households in the area. And then the incinerator, a lot of these other facilities are hauling its landfills and have other people that they're just selling the product to. We're trying to capture the nutrients to help with the pastures and other neighboring farmers that have said they would spread it in their crops to help add organic matter back to the soil. I guess, yeah, other than that, DEQ, Neil's here if you have any questions about that. His, I guess, best management practices for the lagoon will be followed as far as distributing the wastewater, which lagoon is going to be a majority wastewater because you're required for the facility to have a catch basin to collect the blood and manure, hair, all that kind of stuff. So the majority of it will be water, some chemicals, disinfectants. I believe that's all I have.

Okay, thank you. Anybody have questions? Yeah.

Kimberly, I just got a question for staff. This SUP is only affecting the, so it looks like, I do not want to try to pronounce the last name. it seems like the applicant has two 25 acre tracks this is going to be going on the 25 acre track that i guess looking at it from the map that would be next to miller's farm so it would be next to one of the larger farms in the county so the other 25 acre track would still remain a farm or homestead you wouldn't be able to hold animals or do any anything that related with the uh Arbitrary to that parcel. It's only the 125 acre parcel at Butts Miller's Farm.

So the abattoir facility and its operations, the incinerator, the processing, the lagoon, all of that is on that 25-acre piece. The access does traverse over that other property. But yeah, then the application of the wastewater and everything, all of that is on the subject site.

On kind of the eastern side towards the Miller Fund? Yes, sir.

OK. Any other questions? Gerald.

So DEQ is monitoring the lagoon. Is that correct? Who handles the lagoon?

so the lagoon is not monitored per se if there was a complaint or a violation with the sup conditions the county would contact bdacs who would work in coordination with deq to investigate any violation and and go from there

And Mr. Childress, just to clear up some of the confusion, when we had the public hearing with the Planning Commission on April 1, we had spent over a year with DEQ trying to confirm regulatory authority. And we didn't have answers at that point. So we had recommended, I think it was about 22 conditions at that point. But we said we still had concerns because we did not know who then really was the regulatory authority. After that Planning Commission meeting, when the vote was continued, we struck gold. And we found the right point of contact at DEQ. He's in attendance tonight if you have questions. And he reviewed the applicant's materials and said that for permitting, it depended on the scale of the operation. And so he went through all of the applicant's materials. They came back and determined that DEQ would not require a permit for the lagoon if, they stayed to that scale and employed some best management practices. All of those things have been now are in the recommended conditions. So if the Lagoon and the facility operates under those conditions, then DEQ doesn't require a permit. If the facility exceeds those conditions, well, then they're in violation of the special use permit. But they'd also would then have potentially compliance issues with DEQ as well.

Drew?

Thanks, Kimberly. So in the recommended conditions you're just speaking of, is something mentioned as to how many animals or is that one of the numbers?

Well, they had already in the beginning of their narrative said they're not going to process any more than 4,300 animals in a year. That is their limit that they can process. And I believe the lagoon is being sized appropriately for that.

Okay, can I ask the applicant, Mr., let's see, how do I pronounce your name, Mumaw, is that right? Yeah, Mumaw. Mumaw, sorry. So that number, like what do you plan to do, like how long does it take to process a cow or whatever, beef?

I guess at peak, it would be six head a day. OK. So if you did six head seven days a week, that's 42. It's going to be well under that number if it's solely cattle.

And then the other smaller animals, obviously, you can do them quicker and stuff. And then do you have an idea of how often you'd want to, I guess, pump the pond? Or is it just going to be gravity fed? Can you go into detail about how you deal with what's in the pond?

It'll be emptied, not totally, but it'll be emptied twice a year, spring and fall, basically, when there's vegetation on the ground, something to absorb the liquid.

And then not having any experience around that kind of thing, but do you do any mitigating? Is there standard best practices for mitigating any kind of smells or any of that stuff?

I don't remember which condition it was, but there is a condition in there stating that it should basically be applied in the morning, not to apply when the temperature is going down to help eliminate the smells.

And last, I think this is the last question. As far as incinerating the remains, is that something you do all at once, or is it an ongoing process throughout the day, or how does that go?

It should be done at the end of the day. OK.

And would you be mindful of wind conditions and things like that if it's generating a certain amount of smoke and or smell?

Right. Yeah, it wouldn't necessarily be done every day, but as needed. There will be storage inside the facility, the cold storage to hold the remains until they have to be processed.

OK, great. Thank you for your answers.

Supervisor Mullins, I would also add one of the conditions says that the incinerator is smokeless and odorous. So I'm guessing the technology of that incinerator allows for it to be, in fact, smokeless and odorless. Is that correct, sir?

Right. Yeah, several of the models I looked at, they're all advertised as catalytic style or something like that.

Yeah.

OK. Supervisor Mullins also. I just wanted to note the condition, yeah. Well, and I was just going to also add is that we went through, Ginger presented a number of conditions, but there were conditions in there of that if there is an impact that we haven't identified even now that's creating a nuisance, is noxious to the community, that then it has to be remedied. So if we have missed some specific condition, we have a number of what I'll call catch-all conditions that will give the county the authority for those nuisances to be remedied, whatever they may be.

And then I'm anticipating there'd be some sort of inspection process like you would for building inspections throughout the building and completion and all that. Is that right?

Like to inspect the actual equipment. To inspect that the lagoon and everything was constructed as it's supposed to be, yes. If there becomes a nuisance or a compliance issue, then we would report that to VDACS, and then potentially that goes to DEQ, and then they would be inspecting.

David.

Thank you. I absolutely see where this would be a great need for an agricultural area for our county. I was surprised to learn that it was the first time we've had one come through for the county, being as agricultural as we are. And I absolutely understand from the citizens that spoke that are concerned about their surrounding area and things that are probably because it's new and we've not experienced before. I'm not familiar with one either. But I'd be concerned for odors and things like that and just safety. There's a lot of mitigating things in the SUP that conditions are spelled out, obviously. But I was a little concerned about the oversight of the lagoon and the fact that nobody really has oversight of it. I mean, that's something that kind of surprised me. What was the distance, though, from, say, the pond and stuff like that to neighboring households and things. Was it 200 feet from residence?

So the nearest home to the right of the facility, which would be to the east, is 360 feet. That's to the property line. And to the west, it's 774 feet. OK. All right. Thank you.

So I have a couple of questions. There are so many conditions in here. It's not outrageous, because it needs to be, OK? I mean, what you're dealing with is a lot. So I don't think I've ever seen a special use permit with this many conditions to it, right? What's that? oh yeah that was before my time so thankfully but um so i saw in here so how are you disinfecting so you have a holding area right and and you've got livestock in there and how are you getting rid of the animal waste and how are you disinfecting in there Because it says you can't use a quaternary, right? You're not allowed to use a quaternary. So what are you using for a disinfectant, and where is that wastewater going?

I guess the processing rooms and then the holding pens. Holding pens wouldn't be disinfected unless needed. They'd be cleaned, physically removed from the manure and any particles like that. Vinegar is acetic acid that would be used inside the facility to... prevent e coli stuff like that but uh yeah all the water and everything would be washed to the lagoon would drain to there and so it has to be they put in there about needing naturally chemicals that would be naturally broken down so that they're not persisting and they'll be easily absorbed and utilized when spread

And the other thing, and I just feel like I have a lot more homework that I need to do here. Because I see the conditions, and I'm comfortable with those conditions. But I feel like I need to get a look. When I read all this, I thought I was up to speed. And then I started thinking about some things. And now I'm feeling like I just need a little bit of time to look at this. But I don't want to stand in the way of your project. But I just want to have more time to digest what this is and do some more research on my end. Because if... Are we able to, Kimberly, are we, so if there was a problem, would we be notified by the neighbors or is there some sort of, I can't imagine if you're USDA under that umbrella that they're not gonna come out and wanna inspect you every now and then, you know?

Well, yeah, if you're USDA, there will be an inspector on site every day. On site every day.

OK, that was the guy that you were saying isn't paid by you. It's paid by somebody else, right?

Yeah, USDA.

OK. And the V?

VDACS, Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

So they're on site every day. they will be okay and okay all right and then as far as problems with all of these conditions then does that fall on us to go out and inspect and do all that and do and do since this is a new industry here you know what i mean do we have that talent pool to do that

So a couple things. Again, before, and the DEQ staff is present tonight. If you have specific questions, it might be helpful to have them answer those. But at the beginning with the Planning Commission, we did not have that information from DEQ. We had crafted conditions that we thought were catch-all, the ones that I said, if there was any kind of nuisance, any type of impact to the community, that we said, okay, it has to be remedied. But we were unsure, because we said, we don't have the subject matter experts on site. We know what division. It's industrial waste of DEQ. That was the miscommunication. Everybody says agriculture, agriculture. It's actually the industrial waste section of DEQ. So we have cleared that up. And if there are compliance issues, we don't need to be the subject matter expert. The special use permit conditions, think of it as an extra layer of protection. So not only do they need to meet DEQ requirements, but they would need to meet our requirements. So we have a two-prong enforcement. I think it's also important when we're talking about this as a new use in the county, the difference between an abattoir as defined in county code and any other meat processing that is occurring in Spotsylvania County is that this is open to the public. So other farmers, the public can bring their livestock to this facility for processing. If Mr. Mumaw said today, OK, I'm not going to have that portion of my business. I will only be processing my livestock, he would be exempt. He would be a permitted use. So that's an important distinction to keep in mind. And none of these conditions would apply. He could do that lagoon and operate under DEQ.

OK, so that makes a, I get that now. And so because he's doing that, that's where all these conditions come in. OK. Does anybody have questions for DEQ?

Madam Chair, could we just ask if DEQ has something that, listening to what we're saying, if they can clarify anything that we're talking about and come up and offer any help to the situation?

Members of the board, my name is Niels Rodka. I manage DEQ's Office of Land Application Programs in the central office in Richmond. Your planning staff contacted me with regards to this project to ask about permitting requirements. And it falls into a category where we do not have explicit regulatory limits for this type of operation. And when asked about what would... I get... probably two or three of these requests for someone to start a slaughterhouse on their property for the community every year. The difference with the reason why this operation was unique is because he was proposing to construct a lagoon to manage the liquid waste. That did not change anything with respect to mandatory permitting, but it did bring into the account of how would it be managed, what were the most appropriate conditions. Your planning staff came up with what I thought was a very elegant solution, which was to take the requirements that we have for much larger operations, I mean, orders of magnitude larger than this for liquid waste storage, and those conditions come directly from DEQ regulation for those large facilities and put those into the special use permit, which is why it's so long. And so that's there. The backstops that your staff has indicated are there. That's accurate, is that if there were an issue, then it would either be the Virginia Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Stewardship Program or DEQ that could intervene and address any issues. But with facilities like this that are small, that don't require permits, DEQ operates on a complaint basis. And that's why the Virginia General Assembly established the Virginia Department of Agriculture Act Stewardship Program for facilities that don't require permits that there be a formal process and regulatory teeth if there were problems that occurred. So there's a process if there were a problem. But I will tell you that with the other facilities across the state that I've written similar letters for, say as long as you follow these best management practices, I've not gotten a single complaint about those facilities. We've not had to investigate any of those facilities. So it's just not something we get complaints about.

Would you ever be available if the customer said, hey, could you come out and just check out our stuff and see how it looks? Is that something within the purview?

That is something we do. And we actually worked with the Department of Agriculture to establish a program. And it's really designed around farms where there's a farmer who doesn't require a permit. and wants to be proactive and have the government inspect their facility, we will do that, yes. It's part of our compliance assurance, you know, programs.

Okay. somebody mentioned a closed septic system instead of a lagoon then is that can somebody educate me a little bit on that so I can imagine what that is but is that not something that can be done in this system?

So with typically what operations like this will do is have a septic system for their sanitary waste and that's regulated by the health department. uh where a facility uses a underground infiltration system a closed system like that for this falls into this category of industrial waste that is not under the purview of the health department and it falls under epa's underground injection control program it's considered a class 5 well The issue with putting meat type wastes in that type of septic system is it doesn't work well because anytime you have fats in that system, it clogs up. So it's not the ideal system. What most small uh slaughterhouses do what is to install some type of tank to hold that waste in this case the lagoon actually provides treatment uh mr moore indicated that it wouldn't be emptied completely and that's actually part of the design of an anaerobic lagoon where there's there's the biological activity in that lagoon all the time and that helps break down the organic matter that's in it before it's land applied

in that waste like that, you know, could omit an odor or will not, typically, if it's...

So the nature of the odors that would come from material like this is really dependent on the dilution and the particular ratios of wash water to material that's washed into the lagoon. This particular wastewater and something I explained to one of your citizens that called and asked is that this is a much lower strength wastewater than it is on a livestock farm because you've got most, it's mostly water. And the other materials as he indicated are going to other routes. There's, you know, the blood that will be included is what's washed off of surfaces. It's not, that's going to other routes. So it's really a low strength wastewater. And so in some cases, it's so low that it really has more benefit from the water and the irrigation potential than it does really from the nutrients because it is low strength.

OK, thank you. Any other questions? Chris?

Yeah, just one, and this was brought up by a speaker. was about the ability of the lagoon, if it overflows or anything, to affect the well water. Is that a concern? I mean, is that something that we should look at and deal with, or is that something of the size really wouldn't do that? I know there was a study on that, but I would like that, if you could address that too, please.

So those special conditions are, does all of those requirements in there about the design of the lagoon and the operation of the lagoon, the freeboard, that distance between the upper surface and all of that is designed to mitigate and make sure that that doesn't occur. There are two things, two reasons why I would be less concerned about this facility than a larger facility. One, the strength of the wastewater, and we already talked about that, that it's not gonna have anywhere near as much potential as a livestock manure lagoon. And then also just the volume is not there as significantly as a much larger facility. But really, ultimately, the reason why those extra conditions are in there is to make sure that that doesn't happen.

Right, so if, let's just say that the applicant, not this applicant, but a pretend applicant, would not follow those conditions, and we are not checking unless there is a problem, basically. or are there periodical checks of the lagoon to make sure that it is in compliance with what it's supposed to be and if not if you had somebody that wasn't taking care of it and there was spillage there was something that came of that I mean that that that would be a problem obviously so if that is a problem how do we make sure that we don't get to that problem short of just hoping that we don't get to that problem you know there no no no yearly checks you know what I mean there it just seems like we're going on the I'll take care of that which is you know I understand that but it just seems like for the for the rest of the folks living around there you know there's a lot of trust that's built into this and you're hoping that everybody does that but you guys don't get involved until there's a problem you know for example there's there's odors or something you go out and you inspect what's happening how can we get to that to a point where there is a yearly check? I mean, is there something? Does that exist? Or is that something that we would have to create whole cloth?

So from DEQ's standpoint, we operate under the requirements of state law. And so just on a very broad brush, activities that do not require permits are not inspected. And so there are any number of activities that occur in your county every day that have the potential to have a discharge to state waters and cause a problem, and they don't. But we operate under the umbrella of state law where we inspect those activities that do require permits. So I don't have a, a clear answer to your concern about how would this be inspected, just say that there are-that's the framework under which DEQ operates, is that if it's not regulated, it's not inspected.

Right. No, I understand. And I'm not trying to have the heavy hand of government constantly check and that type of thing because I do believe that our citizens are good people and they want it to work and not run a facility in a negative way. I'm just wondering if there's no yearly reporting that needs to go on or anything like that just to give an update that, hey, everything is well within the regulations that we have laid out. Is there any form of something like that that there can be some sort of check before we get to a problem?

I would say that that would be done through a condition of the special use permit if that was the desire of the board to have a regular proactive inspection of the site to confirm that the site's operating in compliance with all of the approved conditions. I think that's something that could be considered.

Well, when you put it that way, it sounds really bad.

And I'm not trying to- The only reason I said that is- No, I know. I can't think of another project where we have employed a proactive inspection condition. And then I just, I do say, Mr. Moonwalk could change the nature of his business today and say, I'm only going to be processing my livestock. I won't be open to the public. And none of these standards would apply. Right.

Yeah. And, you know, here's, I think, because I was thinking along those same lines, too, Chris, is, like, you know, the concern is that this is kind of, I mean, it's stringent in all of these conditions. But it's, like, where's the touch point, right, for, yes, you're doing this, or, yes, this is okay, or whatever. And that's. the one thing that's not in there. And I don't want to be prohibitive to encouraging this type of business, because I think it is needed. And I appreciate your being here to do that. But I'm just wondering if we could do something like that, would that work for you? I realize this is kind of coming out of the blue.

No, and I don't mean to. I don't want it to be so prohibitive, but in thinking about it too, is that it being open to the public, perhaps those are the, because if somebody's running something in a negative way and it's being hidden, It takes a while to figure it out, but if you have the public there all the time, you know, and you'll have the USDA there too, I think that there are checks there. And then, you know, and I'm not discounting the character of the applicant whatsoever at all. I just want to make sure that the public is protected from somebody who wouldn't have good character. and um how do we make sure that that is done without being too heavy-handed and too too much inspection and too you know because that takes time that takes time away from your business or what you have to do and that's also quite annoying um and so i don't want it to be something that we have to that we have to do i think that a lot of these are that if they're violated, there's plenty of checks and balances in there, I think, that if there is any violation, that there is consequences to that, too.

David.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, so I guess, Kimberly, the question might be, too, to also help ease some of the public concerns, not that we have to do it every year perpetually but maybe there's an initial period to say okay this is new and upcoming we haven't seen this before you know maybe it's something we do for i don't know i'll just throw out you know first three years you know and at that point if there's no issues maybe we readdress the fact that you know we can you know give relief to that condition type thing to me i'm just throwing this out as a as an idea that you know if that's something that we could consider to help make sure that the ones that are concerned around there, that those needs are being met.

Hello. My name is Kevin Davidson. And I'm a professional engineer in Virginia. And we'll help out Andrew with the lagoon. So when it comes to the design and the the construction of it and the oversight of that lagoon during that process. That is something that I will be responsible for when this moves forward. And to your point, sir, that's an excellent idea. We can come up once a year for the first three years. We could take care of that if that's a condition that is added and the applicant is agreeable to it. It's something that we do periodically for other agricultural facilities and do a site inspection. And we could look at that and be able to provide a report back that says it's meeting the conditions, or we see these items that need to be addressed on that.

OK. That's great. That's fantastic. Kimberly, if the applicant is amenable to that, could we add that in?

So yeah, in condition 20, it actually is where there would be a certification that the lagoon and everything does comply with the requirements. I think we could probably add language to that, that that would be provided, and that a compliance report would be provided annually.

For the first three years or something like that? And Mr. Mumai, are you amenable to that?

Yes, I'd be willing to do that.

Okay, all right. Drew, you had a question too.

Yeah, I think we've found the solution. I was trying to ask questions about it. We want to listen to the concerns of the neighbors, right? But because of the uniqueness of the scale of this, you've fallen kind of into a seam as far as regulatory oversight, for lack of a more bureaucratic word, which we don't like to have any regulatory oversight over you. But just to help the neighbors out, If Mr. Davidson or your firm or whatever were to look at it and give the stamp of approval, I mean, I'm sure it's going to be a learning process anyway. So that would give us reassurance to know we're listening to the concerns of everyone else as well. And it's good to hear that you'd want to do that.

Yeah, I don't have a problem doing that.

Great. Any other questions? OK, I feel like we kind of have exhausted all of our issues here. And I think having that additional layer does give some protection there. So with that, if there's no more questions, then we can entertain a motion.

Madam Chair?

Yes. If you do want to have that motion drafted and inserted in there, then what I would recommend is that you go ahead, close the public hearing, which I think you already have, continue the matter out to July to allow us to draft the condition. It would then be placed on the agenda, not for another public hearing, but just for a vote with the added condition with respect to the additional inspections provided by his engineer. Yeah, that's it. So would then the motion be to continue the matter to the next meeting to allow staff to draft the condition that the board has requested?

Very good. That's my motion.

And you're good with that? Then we're just going to do some language in that, and then that will come back for a vote then. Okay. Thank you.

Yep.

Yes. I just want to thank the applicant and the community that have brought the concerns, the applicant for trying to work through this. I'd just like to bring up the fact that here we are dealing with small businesses, right? They're at two back-to-back small businesses that are having to jump through hoops to grow their business and to address their neighbor's concerns, right? But then when this board wants to pause on a project to get our feet underneath ourselves, we have these huge corporations that come to us and say, oh, you can't pause this vote. It's a deadline. I have to get this done. This is going to cost us so much money and X, Y, and Z. These major corporations that make millions of dollars in profit, right? And we're doing the same thing for a small business owner, right? So I just wanted to point that out. the differences of how a small business owner is willing to work with their neighbors and their community when it comes to these major giant corporations in this county who pressure us to pull the vote right now. So hats off to this small business owner and a good neighbor who's taken into effect and concerns of all of his other neighbors to make sure they're addressed. but yet these major corporations can bully us around. So I just wanted to point that out. Hats off to these small businesses in this county.

Well, the corporations can try to bully us. Doesn't mean that we can't.

It works on some. It doesn't work on all, but it works on some.

All right. So let's vote.

Motion passes 6-0.

Madam Chair, that brings you to your next public hearing, R19-009, Lafayette Commons, Rappahannock Development Group, LLC. This is in the Battlefield Voting District.

uh hello again everybody my name is michael barrett and i will be giving the staff presentation for r19009 lafayette commons located in the battlefield voting district the request is to rezone five parcels consisting of approximately 24.182 acres from residential one to planned development housing district sub-district 8 for the development of 70 single-family attached units and 61 single-family detached units The Planning Commission held a public hearing on April 1, 2026, and with a six to one vote, recommended approval. Staff recommends approval with proffers dated April 29, 2026. The site, outlined in red, is 24.182 acres and is located on the east side of Lafayette Boulevard, south of Village Drive and north of Wakeview Drive. The property is currently vacant and is located within the primary development boundary. As previously stated, the property is on residential one, as are the adjacent parcels to the north, east, and south. There are commercial two properties fronting on Lafayette Boulevard directly west of the project area. The future land use for the site is mixed use light. Mixed use light is the lowest density mixed use category and envisions a mix of attached and detached residential at a density of four to eight units per acre. The proposed zoning and density are complementary to this future land use designation. Here you can see the generalized development plan showing the proposed development. It is accessed from Lafayette Boulevard by a southbound two-way left turn lane and northbound by a 100 foot right turn lane with 100 foot taper. The project entrance goes through existing commercial two properties that are being utilized solely for access and not being rezoned with this proposal. The proposal is for a mix of attached and detached units at a density of 5.42 units per acre. The attached units are more internal to the site while the detached units are located on the periphery. While the detached lots on the periphery are like the nearby spots with subdivision and unit type, the lot sizes are notably smaller. In green, you may see the transitional screening that has been provided between the detached units and adjacent residential properties. This screening is not required, but has been proffered by the applicant. The units marked in pink represent high visibility units with additional architectural commitments. In the center of the development, you may see the proffered community commons area. Each road within the development will be public, and the horizontal roads named Road A, Road C, which are marked in blue, will have one-sided street parking. Each unit is required by code to have two on-site parking spaces. Highlighted in yellow is additional guest parking near the development entrance. The development exceeded parking requirements by 60 spaces. Here we have the project generation data. The 131 units will generate approximately 354 new residents, totaling 37 elementary school students, 16 middle school students, and 21 high school students, fitting into Spotswood Elementary, Battlefield Middle, and Massaponix High, respectively. Each school's related enrollment data is also listed. Currently, the schools do have capacity. Battlefield Middle and Massaponix High do not when accounting for all approved development. The project will be served by Fire Rescue Station 4. Station 4 is currently 2,480 calls over call capacity and 3,048 over call capacity accounting for all approved development. The development is expected to generate 1,123 trips per day with AM peak of 70 trips and a PM peak of 100 trips. Here are the projects cash proffer contributions to public facilities. Towards schools, the applicant is proffering a lump sum of $250,000 that is to be paid within 12 months of rezoning approval. To parks and recreation, the applicant is providing $368 per detached unit and $395 per attached unit. For public safety, The applicant is providing $490.36 per detached unit and $474 per attached unit. Additionally, a $500,000 lump sum is being contributed in support of county transportation capital improvement projects in the area. This lump sum is to be paid in two parts, half after the final inspection but before certificate of occupancy of the first unit has been approved, and half after the final inspection but before certificate of occupancy of the 15th unit has been approved. Additional proffers towards county schools include that the applicant is proffering to either construct improvements to the electric infrastructure of the county's Career and Technical Center or contribute $50,000 to be used towards county public school capital improvement projects. This determination will be made by the applicant slash owner within six months of the rezoning approval. as well as proffering to mill and pave the drive aisles and parking lot of Spotswood Elementary within six months of rezoning approval. In the event the applicant is unable to complete the milling and paving, the applicant may request an extension to complete the improvements at the direction of the county or pay a $300,000 lump sum towards county schools capital improvement projects. This determination will be made at the sole discretion of the county. The total direct cash contribution of the project comes to $863,189.96, whereas if the entire cash in the amount is provided, the total cash contribution becomes $1,213,189.96. Now we'll jump into staff analysis starting with land use. In support of the comprehensive plan, the following land use findings align with the goals and policies set out in the land use chapter of the comprehensive plan. The proposed zoning of PDHA with a mix of attached and detached units at a density of 5.42 units per acre is supported by the future land use designation of mixed use light that envisions a mix of attached and detached units in a range of four to eight units per acre. The project commits to high visibility units that include a higher intensity of architectural commitments featuring side facade stone water table up to the first floor and a white PVC trim board at the third floor gable break. If the applicant constructs any unit with a porch, the roof will be made of metal. The applicant has provided a 25 foot wide transitional screening landscape buffer between the detached units and adjacent residential properties. This is supported by land use policies given the size of the proposed lots, which are smaller than the lots found in the neighboring Spotswood subdivision. The project contains a community commons area in which a tot lot, playground equipment, and a pavilion will be installed. Fiscal analysis. The project does not support the county-wide goal to achieve a 70 to 30 mix of residential to commercial industrial development as the project is purely residential. On balance, the proposal is consistent with county fiscal policies identified in the comprehensive plan and is expected to produce sufficient revenue to cover associated operating expenditures. transportation analysis the project is accessed via lafayette boulevard through a full access entrance including a northbound 100 foot right turn lane with 100 foot taper and southbound by an existing two-way left turn lane right of way is being dedicated 50 foot from center line along the project's frontage with lafayette boulevard and a five foot sidewalk is being constructed along the project's frontage with lafayette boulevard in support of the thoroughfare plan Study intersections are currently operating at acceptable levels of service. The additional 1,123 trips per day will not degrade the levels of service, though there will be some increases in delay for some movements along Lafayette Boulevard. The applicant is proffering $500,000 in support of county's transportation capital improvement projects. But staff acknowledges that there are currently no planned improvements to Lafayette Boulevard. However, there are a number of regional projects that will benefit this network. On balance, the project is consistent with transportation policies in the thoroughfare plan. Now we'll jump into the public facilities analysis. The project is expected to generate 76 total students, specifically 37 elementary, 17 middle, and 21 high school students. Accounting for all approved development, both Battlefield Middle and Massaponics High will be over building and program capacity. Currently, there are no projects identified in the CIP to address capacity constraints at either school. The applicant has mitigated their impacts by proffering a $250,000 lump sum in constructions and constructed improvements to the county's Career and Technical Center in Spotswood Elementary or Cashin' Lou. In regard to public safety, Fire Rescue Station 4 is over call volume capacity. Station 4 call volume will be reduced once Station 12 comes online as identified in the CIP. The applicant has mitigated their impacts towards public safety by proffering $490.36 per detached unit and $474 per attached unit. The project is expected to generate 354 new county residents and has proffered $368 per detached unit and $395 per attached unit for a total $50,098 cash contribution to parks and recreation capital improvement projects. project has proffered both cash contributions and constructed improvements or cash in lieu to mitigate their impacts on public facilities consistent with projects identified in the county's capital improvement plan historic resources analysis the applicant has completed the phase 1a study the project does not present any negative impacts on historic resources and is therefore consistent with the historic resources chapter of the comprehensive plan And last, we have natural resources. The proposal will impact approximately 2,571 square feet of wetlands. The applicant has proffered to conduct infiltration testing on their proposed stormwater facilities. And if infiltration practices are found to be viable, then those practices will be implemented. On balance, the project is consistent with the natural resources chapter of the comprehensive plan. Recommendation. The Planning Commission held a public hearing on April 1st, 2026, and voted six to one to recommend approval. On balance, the proposal is consistent with the comprehensive plan, particularly with respect to land use and mitigation of project impacts on transportation and public facilities. Based on the identified strengths of the proposal, staff recommends approval with proffers dated April 29th, 2026. And that concludes the presentation. Are there any questions?

Okay, any questions? All right, we'll bring the applicant up then.

Oh, there you go. Thank you, Madam Chair. Other members of the Board of Supervisors, Charlie Painter represents the applicant. The applicant representative is here, and so is our civil engineer, if there are questions that I can't answer. Thank you, Michael, for that presentation. I've got a quick PowerPoint, and then I'll answer any questions you have afterwards, if we can get started. This is a request to rezone several parcels from R1 to PDH8 to develop a mix of residential neighborhood. That mix will include both townhouses, that'll be 70 single-family attached units and 61 single-family detached units. The future land use, as staff noted, is mixed-use light. It is a transition. As many of you probably know, this area, many of the homes here were built between the 50s and the 80s. So this is a legacy area that this project will provide some new investment. It is a good transition between Spotswood Estates and Lafayette Village, as noted. Also noted, and we'll get into a little more detail about this, this project does include a commercial piece, although it's not part of the rezoning. The commercial piece is along Lafayette Boulevard and includes a part of our access to Lafayette Boulevard. And we'll get into a little more detail about that. Next, please. So here's a layout here. And we thought we'd break it up by environmental corridor. This project will also provide affordable residential units for existing residents seeking home ownership. We've got a shared recreational amenity. You see the large amenity in the middle there. It's about 1.6 acres. So you don't see anything like this, I don't think, in any other project in Spotsylvania County. And it will maintain existing commercial corridor along Lafayette Boulevard. Those are the key to this project. The density on this project is about 5.42 units to the acre. The comprehensive plan encourages 4 to 8 units to the acre. And again, we also have a commercial piece as well. Next, please. So this project, as you saw, the 2019, if you will, designation and the zoning number that the county provided, this project started out as 218 townhomes. And it's evolved to 70 townhomes. And it's evolved to 61 single-family detached units. We had a community meeting. We've listened to the community. This project has gone through several reiterations of design. You can see how it transitioned. We've got the singles around. You'll see in the prior slide and the next slide, you'll see that we've got the singles that are around the project and the towns are centered in the project to address transition around our site. Next, please. Here's the amenity that I was talking about, the open amenity. This is over 70,000 square feet, about 1.6 acres. That'll be open play area. It'll also include a top lot, a playground equipment, pavilion, and bus shelter. This has an estimated value of about $750,000. We think folks will want to stay on site, not necessarily utilize county parks and rec facilities on a consistent basis because of this amenity being on site, which means it'll also reduce traffic. And again, it will limit impacts to county parks and services.

Next, please.

Here are the proffers, and I want to go through these real quick. We've proffered a lump sum of $250,000 of schools. That's just cash. And that'll be paid. This is unique. This is something you typically don't see in rezoning applications. This will be paid within 12 months of the rezoning approval, that $250,000. The Parks and Rec and the Public Safety will be paid as each unit is issued a CO from the county. Transportation also will be paid in lump sums. It'll be paid when the first CO is issued. It'll be paid $250,000. And when the 50th CO, Certificate of Occupancy Permit, is issued for a total of $500,000. Next, please. So we've got additional proffers. So in addition to those proffers, which are over $863,000, we're also going to proffer either in-kind improvements at Spotswood Elementary for their CT system. Allegedly, their power system needs improvements of roughly $50,000 in value. And then we'll mill and pave the drive aisles and parking areas of Spotswood Elementary. We understand this is priority projects for the county school system at those schools. And that cost is roughly $300,000. Or we'll pay it in cash. We'd like to get on this right away. As you see, we're looking to do this within six months of the approval. School is out. So if this project is approved and as soon as we can move forward, we'll be able to make those improvements. All in, there's over $1.2 million profit for 131 units, which is roughly $9,259 a unit. I do quite a bit of this, and that's a significant number. I don't think I recall another number per unit in recent memory for a rezoning case.

Next, please.

There are other transportation improvements, including at our entrance and immediate access area, in addition to the $500,000 in cash that's being paid. There will be improvements to Lafayette Boulevard, a 100-foot northbound right turn lane, a 100-foot taper. There will also be a 5-foot wide sidewalk along our frontage. We're also going to restrike that existing two-way southbound left turn lane in front of the proposed entrance. So you have a left turn movement. And we'll be dedicating constructing the public road to include a five-foot sidewalk along both sides of the road over our parcel. So the main spine road into the project will include sidewalks. The green hatched area is the commercial piece. I think that's important to note, because staff did ping us a little bit on the 70-30 mix. Even though it's not part of the rezoning, we feel like that property will be developed with these rooftops being close by. So we're very confident that that commercial mix will be part of this process. So just on transportation, I've got a little video. And hopefully the video gets through pretty quick to show you the traffic movements along Lafayette Boulevard in this location. But our TIA showed 80 new vehicle trips would be in the morning peak hour. And we're going to show you a video of that 8 AM peak hour here in a second. Our TIA also determined there was no negative impacts or additional negative impacts to the level of services along Lafayette Boulevard. Let's not forget there are improvements slated for the immediate area, including at the intersection of Lafayette and Route 1, to add left turn movements at Courthouse Road, Route 1, and Lafayette Boulevard, which will improve traffic flow. And we hope to get more folks on Route 1 and not take Lafayette Boulevard. Because there's not a whole lot of storage currently in that left turn movement. We did field observe the traffic on March 19, a Thursday. It wasn't a holiday. And it looked like there was 25% lower traffic than what's being estimated by our TIA. If you can go, please. So if you could hit the Go button here, Michael. So here, this is 8 AM, March 19. This is during rush hour at a key intersection where the Sheetz is, not too far from the location. We're just a few hundred feet from this location. Traffic's not moving that fast, but you can see that it is moving and not congesting. It's really interesting in this video how the buses utilize the traffic circle to improve their maneuvering along Lafayette Boulevard. And you see the counts, 60 going northbound, 60 going southbound, and then the trips going east and west. And Michael, you can go ahead to the next slide. before Mr. Petrovich shuts me down. Almost there. So this slide, that's OK. Michael's challenging me. I promise you I'll get there. Thank you. So here's a layout of the overall project. We thought we'd break it up by, obviously, the uses. And 47% of this site's open space. So I think the applicant's done a heck of a job designing this project to ensure there were adequate amenities, including the recreational area. um you can see the access road the spine road that comes in we do have an inter-partial connection to our north you can see the area that we're preserving and protecting and avoiding the environmental sensitive areas the green up front is the is the commercial area and you can see how we have put single-family homes all the way around the project to transition with the surrounding single-family homes and we've tucked the towns internal Here's just the comprehensive plan review. We check all the boxes. From a land use perspective, the mix of residential uses, again, the density is 5.42 units to the acre, which comp plan encourages 4 to 8 units to the acre. Housing types, we've got a mix of housing types, but single family detached and attached. Density, I just noted that, 5.42 acres a unit. Affordability, we think these units, these homes will be attractive to first-time home buyers, especially the towns. And in this location, again, a new investment in a legacy residential development area. And from an economic development perspective, from a fiscal perspective, it pays for itself. This $89,899 in net positive tax revenue at full build out does not include the commercial. And of course, it will create some construction jobs as well, like most of these projects do. And I think that's it. And I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Michael.

OK. Does anybody have any questions? When you say it's affordability, what are these going to?

We're thinking the towns are probably, I mean, again, you know, the market's constantly fluctuating. The towns are probably in the 290s, and the singles in the low 3s. Okay, great. That's what we're projecting.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

All right. So at this time, I'll go ahead and open the public hearing. Amy, is there anybody signed up? No, ma'am. OK. If you guys want to just queue up and come up, yep, that's great. Just make sure that the button is pushed for the.

Oh, yeah, I think you can hear me. OK, yeah, I can hear you. That's perfect. Now, I personally live in Spotswood Estates. And when I say that it is going to be hugging the backside of my neighborhood, I mean it.

Excuse me, ma'am. Can I get you to state your name for the record, please?

Kira.

Thank you.

Now, I'm not going to waste any more of your time, because we already started this whole meeting about 20 minutes late anyway. And I understand that your time is precious. And I can also understand that, ladies and gentlemen of the board, I can't help but notice about 70% of you are bored. I don't care if you say that it's affordable. It is not. A single family home being $300,000 is just not obtainable in today's society. We don't have the jobs. We have people who have graduated high school. My little brother graduated high school from Massaponics itself. He can't find a job anywhere, neither can I. And I graduated in Massaponix High School in 2015. The school is not worth it. Students have left. They have abandoned it because it sucks. Apologies for the bluntness, but that's what you're gonna get from me. You want candor, I will give it to you, but it's going to be blunt. A hundred feet for a turn lane is not enough for Lafayette Boulevard. And I can personally attest to sitting at that sheets light to turn left for at least 10 minutes. It is not obtainable. It is not reality. Now, I don't understand why they thought this was going to be a good idea because it's not. And I understand. You guys can see off the beaten path a little here and there, right? When you're walking around and you see that little dirt path that somebody created over the years. I can guarantee you they are going to walk right into our neighborhood through other people's backyards because they do not care about personal property. Nowadays, children born in this generation do not have personal respect for other people. Now, I cannot stand by and just let this happen. I can't. They're going to ruin the neighborhood. We had a shooting at the sheets not long ago. I don't know how else to explain this. It's not feasible. And the entire idea of it, I do apologize, but it borders on the line of the imbecilic. It is not a project that can be done on Lafayette Boulevard. The traffic circle and the townhomes that were put at the end of Lafayette Boulevard have affected us tremendously, even though they said that it wouldn't or that it would be improved. We had a guy jump the freaking thing and go into somebody's house. This is all over the news. It's not new. And personally speaking, it hasn't helped. are people who will live on lafayette boulevard who have their driveways but to nut with the road and they have no other way but to wait until they get out traffic is not helpful and putting in this housing development isn't going to be helpful either having a park in the middle of it cool great wonderful why not just make the whole thing a park and leave it at that let nature take it i don't see the problem with that either way When I say that these houses are literally in my backyard, I mean it literally. Sycamore Drive, as projected right there, it's literally in someone's backyard. And they are not going to care. So that's all I have for you. Do not pass this project.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Laura. I live in Spotswood Estates as well. You have houses that you just put in on Mine Road. You just had houses put in on, yeah, Harrison. You have apartments that you guys just put in heading up towards Massaponix High. You have got houses behind the car dealerships on Route 1. I don't know if you guys realize how many houses you guys have put up in the past five years. I've lived in specimen estates for the past 17. I have watched accident upon accident in my area alone because people do not ride the speed limit, they do not do anything else like that. My roads in our neighborhood have 50 year old plus water pipes And driving my roads, I can put a thing of cream in my pocket and come out with butter going through my neighborhood because it will shake up the car that badly. I don't understand why you guys need another blinking housing unit. There is no schools room. There are no new schools. There are no rooms in the schools that are there. Traffic is a nightmare. You have absolutely no jobs in the area, and I don't care what the flying fig anybody says about getting new jobs put in the area. Sure, it's great for construction, but what are you going to do afterwards? Absolutely nothing, unless you're going to drive two hours one way or two hours another way to get a job. I do not see this being a foreseeable project of any use to anybody, including the people who live in specimen estates or anywhere else on Lafayette Boulevard. Nightmare on Route 1 is already a disaster, and you're getting ready to put a data center behind Red Robin. The traffic that comes off of 95 and the trucks that go through there is enormously astronomically cluster bugged because it is always, and again, blunt to nut, or blunt possibly, but to nut, with accidents down on that light right there. You may not drive that area often, but if you do, actually pay a blinking attention. You will understand what we go through in this area. You guys up here, you have no problems. Down there, it's a nightmare. We don't need any more blinking houses. We have enough. I mean, Harrison, behind Joanne's, Massive Honics, Mine Road. How many more blinking houses do we need? Not enough. to make it worthwhile for a more traffic disaster, fix the roads that we have, fix the school educational system, and work on projects that are more community-based. Build trust in the community. Build trust with your cops. Build trust with you guys. Work with us to work with you. That's the only thing I can say. Ma'am, your time has expired. I'm sorry, sir, but thank you for your time.

Thank you. Does anybody else wish to come up and speak on this project? Yes.

Hello. I'm Shante Woodward. I don't live in Spotswood Estates. But my only complaint is the traffic, the traffic on Emancipation Highway and the traffic on Lafayette. I did work, but I'm retired now. But I still travel both of the highways. So getting off the train, coming down Lafayette, and on emancipation is a nightmare. And I have to agree with her. We really don't need any more houses. If we could build some temples, that would be wonderful. Because we have to go to church now, I'm sorry, in a little small building. So if we could get a church to get some of the community to come in there and stop building so many homes and development, that would be wonderful. Thank you.

Thank you. Does anybody else wish to speak on this project? Okay, seeing none, I'll go ahead and close the public hearing and open up for, well, actually I bring the applicant back up for any rebuttal.

Thank you, Madam Chair and other members of the board. And I appreciate the comments from the community. I know it can be very frustrating at times, especially when new projects are introduced to communities and perception that there's already enough impacts to deal with. I will say that this project, and I like to use this term, punches above its weight in many ways, which I think is something that this board encourages in regards to what is a quality project. And in that regard, one, not only does it meet the very clear terms of the comprehensive plan in regards to density, in regards to use, this is a small infill project investing in a legacy area of the county that had a lot of investment at one time, because Lafayette Boulevard used to be our Route 1 back in the day, right? It used to be a very traveled way, and that's why you had a lot of growth from the 50s and 60s in that area. There's time for new investment in this area, and this project can do that, and do it in a smart way, and do it in a way that mitigates its impacts. Not only its transportation impacts with cash proffers, with improvements along Lafayette, but also for school impacts. And I think if you look at the proffers that are being proposed here, this is very unique, not only in the amount of well over $9,200 per unit, but think about what happens before a shovel's even in the ground, before it's even in the ground. There's $350,000 being spent on schools, whether in-kind or cash, within six months of approval. Within 12 months of approval, there's $250,000 plus the $350,000 for schools within 12 months after approval. That's $600,000 for schools before there's a shovel in the ground. Before the first CO is issued, they have to make the transportation improvements on Lafayette Boulevard, and they will pay $250,000 more. When they get to the 50th unit, there's another $250,000. So there's $1.1 million. that's been in cash that's been paid to the county before it was 50 units built. And then the rest of the profits will be paid as the units are being built out. If you look at the recreation center facility and improvements that are being offered here, I mean, there's nothing like it that I know of from any recent project for sure in the county. I'm sure some larger projects may have large amenity areas, but for a project this size to offer 1.6 acres of recreational space is a plus, and I think it will encourage people to stay on site. But we also have a commercial piece to this. We think it's smart to have the commercial piece tied so close to this where it could be a neighborhood commercial use and folks could walk. We have five foot wide sidewalks on the main spine road to and from that location again we're encouraging uh people to stay on site so i think we're doing this in a really smart way we need new investment in this area and this is a small infill project not something i think will over overburden the community so with that i'm happy to answer any questions you may have and i appreciate your time thank you um chris do you okay anybody else have any questions um

On the density piece, what's the lot sizes for the single family? Do you know?

Well, I might have the answer to that. I should have taken my glasses off. I'm sorry. That's OK. The lot sizes for the single family detached are roughly 4,620 square feet. Is that right?

Yeah. So it's pretty packed in there. I mean, I can see from the plan there it's pretty packed. As always, my concerns are consistent. Probably no surprise to you. The schools, the traffic. Lafayette is a mess. And it's like, how do you fix that, right? There's a lot of challenges with Lafayette Boulevard just because of the structures that are there and that sort of thing. But it is concerning that although there's some relief for Station 4 when Station 12 comes on, that's not going to happen. for a while you know and then the schools the way that they're you know when you look at the capacity of the schools I don't know if you can bring that back up again they're in the negative a lot of them and and so program capacity is what I always look at, because that's what the schools have told us to look at. That's significant. And so that's my concern. So those are my comments with that. With that, Drew, you have a comment?

Yeah, so what's the projected, if it's approved, the next steps before you start building?

I mean, it's a good 18 months to get subdivision plans and permits in place. I mean, the first unit, you're closer to two years from today if it got approved. And then build out probably in a course of a year or something like that.

Three to five years, probably. So by then, we'd have Station 12 online to offer a little bit of relief to the floor.

And I defer to staff on when the improvements are slated to commence for the Smart Scale project at the intersection of 1 Courthouse and Lafayette. Again, I'm someone who travels Lafayette quite a bit. I defer or take going left to go to 1 and rather take Lafayette because their storage on the left turn lane on 1 is way too short. And there's not enough turn movements there. So I think a lot of people do the same thing, thinking it's faster. But I think eventually that will encourage more traffic flow on Route 1. I mean, we're trying to resolve the problem. We're not trying to create more problems. I think you know that. On the school capacity perspective, facilities versus programs, we get that. But the programs fluctuate, too. I think the school system would tell you that school population stays pretty stable. But the programs, they do peak. They do have impacts across the school system. we're trying to directly address the issues that are needed at the schools versus just saying here's cash hey what can we do to fix it right away to help so we are we're trying to get creative in resolving those problems we can't resolve all of them and there's no silver bullet today to fix that but you know incrementally if projects like this come online they can help support the school system and support the county

Thank you, Madam Chair. As I can appreciate the punching above the weight comment, I know we've heard that a lot. As Chairman mentioned, schools are concerned. Massaponics High School, we have approved a lot of projects feeding Massaponics High School right now. It is way over capacity now, both program and school. And we've got a bond referendum coming to hopefully address some of these school issues, which we know that doesn't happen overnight either, even the approval of that and getting a school built. I've not even heard of a year yet that they say maybe 30, 31, even getting a shovel probably in the ground. It comes to the point, to me, it's timing. I'm not going to say it's a bad project with good proffers and things like that, but the timing right now just seems off. just you know yes an infill you know nothing else is going to go there but the timing right now with the way the schools are and the and the needs we have just in transportation and others right now it just seems like we it's time to pump some brakes and just kind of kind of let some things settle so again my concern on this project is really comes back to the schools i mean we we know that uh right across from uh mass bonus high school you know we've got patriot crossing going in approved we got uh My Village, I think it is. That's a huge project going to start this summer. So we know there's a lot of students coming. And so again, I've got a real issue with some of these pure residentials. And I know you talked about the commercial piece. It's not part of this rezoning. Commercial's there. That's great. Hopefully it'll develop and help us with that 70-30 split. But I'm just very concerned about the schools at this point.

The commercial's been there a long time and not developed. So if there's going to be an incentive to develop it, it's going to be 131 units that are immediately to its east. On the school front, I understand where you're coming from, and I appreciate the points. A lot of the projects that have been approved in the county that have been counted, I see the number all the time, that have been counted towards impacts to the school system, they've been rezoned for a really long time, including Nye Village, which only a portion of that is moving forward, not all of it. And one of the hindrances for the development of those projects is the proffers. And they're not feasible for developers to move forward. So they would have to come back to you to get a proffer amendment in order to move those projects forward. Quite honestly, what we have is a housing shortage, an affordable housing shortage, affordable housing shortage in this community not just in Spotsylvania County in an affordable housing shortage projects like this address that issue directly and I think they mitigate their impacts in a way that you know transitions to your point of we've got to make some adjustments we got to make some improvements but you know don't go stagnant don't go stale I mean I that could hurt a community as well and I think a project like this can help do that we can't have back this is like we

dialogue but right but I apologize but but we can't do that right now does anyone Chris go ahead yes thank you first of all thank you for the presentation and and all that's gone into it I'll tell you have lived here 40 years I don't remember a time when there wasn't a traffic concerns anywhere. I remember listening to a constituent who was telling me that Route 1 down in Massaponix used to work beautifully about eight years ago. And I'm wondering, when did it work beautifully eight years ago? That has been bad since I've learned to drive and have driven on all these roads. And yes, Lafayette does have a lot of traffic, especially rush hour traffic. i do believe that um there was a study that was done i forget who it was if it was internal if it was outside that was looking at coming from 208 up to route one and when you try to make that left turn if you can't get that light you go straight so you get on the lafayette and the study that and and i apologize i don't recall where it was done and and perhaps we can dig it up, but what it showed was the number of people that, the percentage of cars that were getting on Lafayette, if you think of Lafayette from there to Blue Gray, as the terminus of this, that it was a very very high percentage i don't want to put a number on it but a very very high percentage of people were using lafayette as an alternative to route one because they couldn't make that turn to get north and so from there they flow north that area is slated to get from four mile fork down to massaponics including the improvements well over 100 million dollars in new improvements that four mile fork is a smart scale improvement that i thought they said is starting in two years smart scale lose takes seven years I think to begin but we fought for that to get that done and that is on the books and it's it's going to add turn lanes you know granted I would have loved for it to happen 20 years ago but you'll take what you can get at this point so there are a lot of improvements coming to those to the roads that are around there I have several questions for you and I would love a time to sit down with the applicant and you and if the board would allow me to table this for the next 30 days turn your next well our tell our next meeting I won't say 30 days the lawyers glaring at me for the next It was a friendly glare, how about that? To talk about that stuff, because I also have questions about that recreation field. Can that be incorporated into the county system for any sort of parks and rec activities, that type of thing? I just would like to take a breather on it and talk about it and bring it back at the next meeting. So if there's no other questions, I don't want to short circuit any discussion that is here.

drew drew had a comment and then when you're done i'll make a motion yes okay

Thanks Madam Chair um so I I share the same concerns with school capacity traffic all those things and that the timing of development but the truth is when it comes to schools we need to redistrict okay that's that's like the 800 pound gorilla in the room we can't make the schools redistrict or look at that and accelerate it but but that's coming okay so some of this program capacity will be addressed through redistricting The timing of things, though, we need to kind of keep that in mind when multiple things are being approved. It's not like tomorrow the impact is going to be felt. Yeah, it's coming, but I think if we should keep that in the forefront too, that approval process for this, Station 12, who knows how the schools are gonna address their program capacity and or overall population capacity in the schools. Excuse me. So I just think that collectively it's a good exercise to look at everything instead of just thinking you have to make some kind of,

snap decision tonight and uh those are my my comments on it okay chris do you want to thank you very much yes um i'd like to make a motion to table this to our next board meeting the only board meeting in july okay motion passes six to zero

all righty thank you guys so much i appreciate it madam chair that brings you to your next uh public hearing which is ca 26-0004 this is approval of amendments to the county code related to the chesapeake bay preservation act it's ordinance 6a-7 and taylor is here for that

ready all right um i'm taylor coxson i'm the environmental planner here in spottylvania county and i'm here to present ca260004 the environmental code's public hearing for amending and reordaining the spottylvania county code chapter 6a chesapeake bay preservation to update chesapeake bay preservationary regulations incorporate state required climate resiliency and adaptation standards adopted in september 2021 and strengthen protection and mature indigenous vegetation and resource protection areas and to align the county's program with current virginia law so the purpose of this whole code amendment was to update the ordinance for consistency with state regulations because the state amended 9vac 25830 which is a chesapeake bay preservation act to add in 9vac 25830 155 which is a climate change resilience and adaptation criteria and nine back 25830-130.2 which is to preserve mature indigenous vegetation and we also wanted to update chapter 6a to align with current virginia chesapeake bay preservation act requirements incorporate climate resiliency and adaptation standards adopted by the state water control board back in september of 2021 strengthen the protection of our rpas our resource protection areas the mature indigenous vegetation in those resource protection areas and water quality clarify permitting resiliency assessment and water quality impact assessment requirements and improve consistency and transparency during environmental review and development. So we had public outreach on May 12th of 2026 for supervisors authorized for the ordinance for advertisement. And in May 26 or the ad ran from May 26, 2026 to June 2nd, 2026 in the Fredericksburg Free Press, which offered on online access and hard copy access at the Office of County Admin for viewing of the draft ordinance. So I'm going to go through section by section and kind of hit the high notes and try to speed up the night. So Section 6A3 for definitions, we added or updated definitions for construction footprint, diameter at breast height for measuring tree diameter, drip lines for doing tree protection, natural resources inventories, and resiliency-related and vegetation-related terminology. The code update updates the term program administrator terminology throughout, clarifies definitions for redevelopment, RPAs, RMAs, wetlands, public roads, and water-dependent facilities, and added emphasis on mature trees, indigenous vegetation, and delineation procedures. Section 6A6 resource management area confirms the jurisdiction-wide RMA designation that's come up at several public hearings as to the designation of what is an RMA and what is not, but it does retain the existing environmental feature categories of floodplains, highly erodible soils, highly permeable soils, non-tidal wetlands, and adjacent buffer areas. Section 6A7 refers to the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Area maps, clarifies that CBPAs include both RPAs and RMAs, require site-specific natural resources inventories unless that requirement's waived, and updates references to the program administrator's authority. Section 6A8 is referring to site-specific boundary adjustments for when there's a project that comes through, and it clarifies perennial flow determination requirements, and therefore it requires scientifically valid perennial flow methods, updates wetland delineation standards to current USACE manuals, which is the Army Corps of Engineers manuals and regional supplements, establishes clear authority for boundary refinements and waivers. and section 6812 this actually kind of had the most overhaul because section 6812 was massive and it's very hard when you're trying to cite a code section and you have a massive code section or you have to point a resident to a code section and the section is huge so this is resource protectionary regulations and it reorganized and modernized the rpa regulations clarified allowable development in rpas which is restricted to water dependent facilities redevelopment road crossings or driveways, or regional stormwater management facilities, added explicit requirements for water quality impact assessments, resiliency assessments, and updated references to the VESMP and County Code Chapter 8, which was updated recently. It breaks the former 680-12, as I mentioned, into new standalone sections for ease of applicant and staff use. And I also have Masha Frolov here tonight, who's the Bay Act specialist for our department, to help me present.

the button can you all hear me well enough perfect thank you so much so as Taylor said a section 6a-12 was broken down even further we'll start with 6a-12.1 which is just your general RPA buffer requirements it creates a standalone RPA buffer requirements section that outlines the minimum at how an RPA buffer performance and establishment it retains the 100 foot buffer requirement It requires preservation, re-establishment of vegetative buffers when used such as agriculture or silviculture seas, encourages use of native species and buffer establishment and mitigation, and it clarifies buffer performance expectations for sediment and nutrient reduction. That's just your standard RPA buffer. essentially your breakdown of it moving on to section 6a-12.2 that's your permitted modification of the resource protection area buffered so how we can modify the buffer moving forward with in greater detail. It adds that detail standard for things such as sight lines, access path, tree removal, shoreline stabilization, living shoreline, and nature-based adaptation measures. So for example, an access path has a definition that it may not exceed four feet in width and must be surfaced to control erosion. This emphasizes things like preservation of mature trees, use of native vegetation landscaping, living shoreline approaches, and nature-based resiliency strategies. Another example is that trees cannot be removed where reasonable sight lines, vistas, or access paths can be created by a pruning of trees alone. It adds extensive standalone regulating fill placement work along slopes, stormwater impacts, floodplain coordination, and vegetative stabilization. And in addition to, this also requires VMRC, which is the Virginia Marine Resource Commission, coordination for shoreline projects in tidal areas. Moving on to the next section, 6A-12.3. This is your permitted encroachment into the RPA buffer. So we've had modifications, and this is encroachment if you have to work within the RPA beyond your set standards. This reorganizes encroachment provisions into standalone sections, so now it exists on its own that we can reference. This clarifies administrative encroachment standard for pre-1989 lots, 1989 to 2002 lots, and agricultural activities. It updates agriculture BMP references to the current DCR, Department of Conservation and Recreation Authority. It also retains mitigation and minimum encroachment standards. The next section, 6A-12.4, this is your water quality impact assessment and RPA restoration plan. So we looked at the buffers, we looked at the modifications, we looked at the encroachments. Now how do we further assess the RPA through your water quality impact assessments. So this section creates the WQIA section, first of all. It lowers the threshold for major review emphasis from 5,000 square feet to 2,500 square feet disturbance within the buffer, and this aligns with the chapter eight. the Spotsylvania County Code. It clarifies both minor and major WQIA requirements. It also clarifies restoration plan standards, vegetation replacement standards as well. It requires more detailed impact analysis, mitigation descriptions, and vegetative inventories. It emphasizes native species and quantifiable mitigation. Moving on to section 6A-12.5, this now moves into violations and enforcement. So now we're working within the RPA what happens when there are any violations and the enforcement that has to come with it. So this standalone section creates that enforcement section. It authorizes restoration plans, surety requirements, court order remediations, and it details bonding requirements for vegetation survival and restoration compliance. Next section is 6A-13. So this is the following separate section. This is your general performance criteria. There really are no major changes beyond clarifying the role of the program administrator and updating code references to Chapter 8 and Chapter 23 of the state code, Title 54.1. The current section outlines vegetation preservation requirements. It protects mature trees, tree protection during construction, septic pump out requirements, and requires review for projects that disturb over 25,000 square feet. There's not really much change to this section. Section 6A15, we're talking about the exemptions and exceptions. It adds an exemption language for approved living shoreline projects, and this really does align with the Chesapeake Bay ordinance standards at the state level. It requires resiliency assessments before certain exceptions may be granted, and it prohibits relief requests that conflict with adaptation slash fill standards. This ties then into section 6A-15.1, so it breaks it down even further, and this is the resiliency assessments. This is an entirely new section implementing the 2021 state resiliency requirements. It requires resiliency assessments addressing sea level rise, storm surge, and flooding. It requires the use of NOAA, VIMS, ADAPT-VA, SLOSH models, and FEMA slash VFRIS data models. It requires a 30-year impact analysis composed of a narrative and an adaptation measure evaluation. And it allows approval conditions requiring adaptation measures, establishing standards for nature-based adaptation projects. So the resiliency section now states, hey, if I want to do this project, how is this going to survive long term? We need to provide proof of that. So there's these different models that are available to the applicants that they will then incorporate into their WQIAs. And this resiliency assessment will then also be reviewed by us to make sure that we are looking at flooding and storm surge and potential sea level rise where it is applicable down the line. Next is section 6A-16.1, and that is the installation, bonding, and maintenance requirements. This establishes new installation, bonding, inspection, and maintenance requirements for landscaping, BMPs, and stormwater facilities. It allows sureties prior to certificate of occupancy, issuance, and authorizes forfeiture when required improvements are not completed or maintained. So this, again, just goes back to your standard. We're bonding. We're doing inspections and checking to see what are all the maintenance requirements for the project during and post-completion as well.

So the key changes and benefits overall of the update ensures Spotsylvania aligns with the updated CBPA Act regulations and the 2021 resiliency requirements, which were a state level requirement that took a really long time for them to generate a draft ordinance to get to us. That's why there's such a large gap in time. It incorporates climate resiliency and adaptation standards for sea level rise, flooding, and storm surge. And I did want to clarify that for residential applicants, we would be doing the resiliency assessment on the back end as staff to help them out. And then for commercial applicants, we're going to let them do it with their commercial WQIAs and the full package we get with commercial applicants. I just wanted to make sure that residents had the assistance they need to understand a lot of this because it is highly technical and it just is a lot to dump on somebody. The update strengthens the protection of the RPA and mature indigenous vegetation and water quality, and it modernizes WQIA permitting and environmental review procedures. And its consolidated impact is it creates a clearer, more consistent Chesapeake Bay Act preservation regulation for the county. It improves transparency because it's easier for people to find the sections they need when they have questions. And it expands the use of nature-based solutions and living shoreline approaches. but it also provides for some flexibility for people who don't live in tidal areas or where living shorelines aren't feasible so we have ability for people to do different types of projects they want to do and it enhances the long-term environmental resilience and watershed protection for the county staff recommends that the board adopt ordinance number 68-7 after public hearing and we're here to answer your questions thank you very much for that presentation drew you had a question

Yeah, thank you for that presentation. So how much of these are you bringing to us or how much of this is your input, like from a local level?

Are you talking about how much of it is state required or how much of it is? locally being added or enhanced or nothing we only bare minimum we have enough fun i guess i would say enforcing state requirements i don't really want to come up with new requirements actually the implementation of the bay act at the local level is very difficult because a lot of people don't understand and they don't I mean I grew up in King George and we're in the Bay Act and I didn't know about it until I started working for the county so when people are like I have no idea what any of this means can you please explain it it's hard so we didn't want to make it harder than it absolutely had to be at the state level and that's why I wanted to policy wise implement helping residential applicants because I've handed people a checklist for a WQIA and they've looked at me like I have nine heads

Well to those points, the questions I had are what area in SPOTC is considered in the RPA?

So any area bordering a perennial stream and the wetlands adjacent to that perennial stream technically has an RPA. So we have RPAs all around the Rappahannock, the Poe, the Nye River Reservoir has an RPA and a 250-foot reservoir buffer. Fawn Lake has an RPA all around it. All of Lake Anna's shoreline. We have more shoreline at Lake Anna than a lot of coastal localities just because of the nature of Lake Anna. And that's probably one of the most, we get most of our applications from Lake Anna, some is from Fallen Lake. We've started to get more now with New Post being there, dock applications and things for people to use the river. But there, it's a significant amount of area. I think it's like 36,000 acres of the county. And that's just based on our general mapping.

And how about in our development boundary inside?

I wouldn't know off the top of my head, but I can look it up for you. so if it's not an active stream if it's just if it's an intermittent stream where it doesn't flow all year round those typically do not have resource protection areas associated with them but they do get kind of lumped in with the rma and then it becomes a jurisdictional snafu because we're a jurisdiction-wide rma which i kind of call if everything is special then nothing is because it's hard to regulate everything i've talked to deq about pulling the jurisdiction-wide status but they don't generally like that for programs because it becomes almost an unfair enforcement type of thing where if you're in the rma then you have to follow extra rules that this guy whose property over here is not in the rma has to follow so it's just how our program was initially set up

And then last question for you. The access paths on section 6A12, TAC 2, or DOT 2, whatever, must be surfaced. Yes. So if someone is laying a... a pipe for just a pump station and they had to clear out vegetation and then, so that's been cleared out and now someone wants to just use that cleared out space as a exercise trail or something. It has to be. Because this is coming up on, I was wondering where this came from. I saw it in a couple of plans.

It depends on if it's a access road associated with a public utility, or utilities is going to use it to maintain their infrastructure because public utilities are exempt from the Bay Act. Or am I at the lake and I want an access path down to the water just because I like being near the water? In general, those areas should be surfaced to avoid erosion. So it depends on the jurisdictional authority of what the project is.

So my concern is bureaucracy versus common sense functionality.

Like if you're at Montseron, there's all kinds of trails and paths that go everywhere.

And they all lead down to the lake. They're not surfaced.

So we review trails based on their anticipated traffic. So if you can come in and say, I don't think I'm going to have tons of people. I'm not taking equipment on it. We would work with them. It's going to be, we really want to prevent erosion. Actually, I have more applicants that want to do, I want to do a paver walkway, or I want to do a crushed gravel path. We have had rezoning applications that have come in to do trails and RPAs that want to do a compacted surface path, and we've evaluated those based on the type of use and what's anticipated.

So you're flexible then by just looking at the intended use?

It's to inhibit erosion. So if I can verify that you're going to be inhibiting erosion with the traffic. We've also had people want to do wider paths or request an ADA accommodation. So we review those based on that.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, thank you for the presentation. One of the questions I had, again, it's always good to be compliant, obviously, with the state. Wondering how much from the state is pushed down that becomes unfunded mandate, so to speak, to have to implement by citizens and developers. And then the second part of the question is, with all these changes that have come down, does it add more workload on you all from county staff to now have to have more work?

they're actually the biggest unfunded mandate in the bay act code is the septic pump out where our our department has to manage the pump out like you turn in your pump out receipt make sure you're managing your drain field correctly health department has all the records of the drain fields but health department doesn't have the ability to do this it got put into our code so we have to send out postcards to make sure and manage this whole back-end program This code amendment particularly, because we already require water quality impact assessments, this just kind of adds an addendum onto that. I don't think it'll impact our staff overly and be overly, but it does add more tasks, it adds more review time to us, it adds something that for residential we'll probably have to help applicants with and help the development community figure out what's required and we're working on the policies on the back end to kind of support that. But we do get a lot of push down from the state and having to, particularly Bay Act over Chapter 8, which is VESMA. Bay Act has a lot of unfunded mandates and a lot of things in it that state agencies are supposed to track. And then when you reach out to those state agencies, they're like, well, no, this state agency tracks it. And then you reach out to them, and they're like, well, no, that one tracks it. So you kind of end up with this. Because I have to do an annual report every year, right, that says how many RPAs were reestablished, how many RPAs were logged because silviculture is exempt. I reach out to forestry. Well, forestry is like DEQ tracks that. I reach out to DQL, forestry tracks that. So there's a lot of it in there. We try to absorb it from going to the residents and the people who do projects here as much as possible because it is, I've had to work with a lot of people in the county and they're like, I just wanna do this boathouse or I just wanna do this path. And I'm like, I don't wanna stop you from doing your project that you wanna do. We just want you to do it in a way that's more environmentally friendly. And most people are willing like, hey, I wanna do my project. I'll put in some plantings. I want my property to be nice anyway. It's just a lot of translating.

I appreciate your common sense approach.

Jake.

Taylor, thank you for the presentation. I will say this is just another example of the state passing down rules and regulations that is going to cost your department time and energy and effort on behalf of the taxpayers of Spotsylvania. You have... chase down so many issues in the Fawn Lake area, the Lake Anna area for for my Livingston constituents and just staying on top of the ever evolving rules and regulations behind all of this. So I want to say thank you for that. What is really frustrating for us in the Livingston District and part of Berkeley is one side of Lake Anna is under this and then you go throw a rock to the other side of the lake and they are not regulated by any of this and they can, dump wastewater treatment water into the lake.

And on our side, we are regulated by so it's very frustrating for for us out in Livingston and around that particular has a lot of issues with that because I've stood on the side of Lake Anna and been explaining all of the Bay Act requirements to people. And then we look over and there's just like an excavator going to town in Louisa. And they're like, well, why? And I have to explain, even though we're it's the same lake and it all drains to the same place. when the Bay Act was being created, this is how it was established. It creates a lot of problems for LACA and LAC. We're trying to do things at Lake Anna to improve water quality, and we deal with that all the time.

Your efforts are noticed and I appreciate it and your department and I just want to say thank you. Although I reluctantly do not want to vote for this because I feel like it's just more rules and regulation passed down by the state and they have no idea what you deal with on a day-to-day basis they put arbitrary rules out there and arbitrary lines on a map and you you are the uh boots on the ground that are making it happen for our citizens so unfortunately i don't want to vote for this but i feel like it's something that we need to to ensure that your department is on the up and up so to speak with the state and we don't get ourselves in trouble so just want to say thank you for everything you do

You're welcome.

Yes, thank you. Thank you very much for the presentation. And I just echo both of your efforts. Really appreciate it. And so if there's no more discussion, I'll go ahead and open the public hearing. Is anyone interested in speaking on this topic? Going once, going twice. OK, I'll close the public hearing, and we'll entertain a motion then.

Madam Chair, reluctantly make a motion to approve.

And this is to adopt ordinance number 6A-7. As Carl said.

OK. So we have a motion on the floor. Drew?

Yeah, I just want to state also I don't want to vote for this. Not because it's not good stuff, but to echo what Jake's saying. But I don't want to make your life difficult either. I just want the public to know how I feel.

All right. Let's go ahead and vote.

Motion passes six to zero.

Thank you again. Really appreciate your presentation. Sorry about the late evening.

That brings you to your final public hearing this evening, which is CA 26-0006. That's the approval of amendments to the unified fee schedule related to state regulated changes regarding stormwater management fees under the VSMP.

so more fun is what we're going to have here and i'm sorry i know that there was somebody in the audience that wanted to speak to this and i think we just went too late so um okay awesome seven

Good evening. I will try to make it a little briefer than 72. So tonight I'm here to discuss the proposed update to the unified fee schedule related to stormwater permit fees. This amendment is needed to align with the county's fee schedule with changes recently adopted by DEQ that take effect July 1st. I'll provide a brief overview of these changes, their impact and action requested of the board this evening. requesting approval of the amendments to the unified fee schedule related to virginia's erosion and stormwater management program the purpose of this amendment is to align county stormwater fees with recently adopted state regulations that become effective july 1st 2026. these fees are established through state regulation are required for administration of the of the construction stormwater permitting program note that this is not an overhaul of the fee schedule it is focused solely on the state mandated stormwater fees because the fees are included within the county's unified fee schedule board approval is needed before implementation For public outreach, the proposed fee amendments were advertised following board authorization on May 12th, 2026. Notices were published in the Fredericksburg Free Press and copies of the proposed fee schedule were available online through the Office of County Administration and with the Department of Environmental Codes. In addition, we conducted direct outreach to local developers, builders, engineers, contractors through email notifications. So why are the fees changing? This fee increase is not county initiated. The General Assembly directed DEQ to revise statewide stormwater fees to better recover the cost associated with permit administration, compliance, and enforcement. As part of those amendments, DAQ increased permit fees statewide, increased the state remittance percentage from 28% to 30%, and established future annual CPI adjustments. These regulations become effective July 1st. Because Botsylvania administers the erosion and stormwater program for the state, under the state authority, we must collect and remit these fees in accordance with those regulations. The table on this slide shows examples of the statewide permit fee increases. Depending on the project size, new permit fees are increasing by approximately 50% to 55%. Permit modification fees increased by approximately 60%. And annual maintenance fees increased by approximately 60% to 63%. Future CPI adjustments will be calculated by DQ annually, so you probably will expect me every year around this time. The county is not establishing new fee amounts. Rather, we are updating the fee schedule to reflect the fee structure adopted by the Commonwealth. So I want to reiterate, only the fees for the state stormwater fees are changing. The fees are paid by permit applicants and developers conducting land disturbing activities. Without updating the fee schedule, the county would continue collecting outdated fee amounts while still being required to administer the program and remit the state required fees. Over time, this would result in state fees being subsidized by the county. Updating the fee schedule allows the program to remain fiscally sustainable and consistent with state requirements. Staff recommends approval of the proposed amendments to the unified fee schedule regarding the state stormwater management fees. This action aligns with county fees for Virginia regulations, avoids county subsidizing state mandated permit fees, and allows implementation of the updated fee schedule on July 1 of this year. I'm happy to answer any questions at this time.

Fantastic. Thank you so much, Drew.

could you clarify again who who's who pays these fees um it would be anybody applying for the permit so if they're applying for a permit these are typically anything over an acre that needs a construction general permit and these are what the stormwater fees are for so if i own land and i want to disturb the land to build something on it i have to pay this if you get over for these fees in particular increase and if you get over an acre yes

What if you live in a subdivision and you have five acres and you're going to do something on your land?

If you live in a subdivision, it depends on how much you're disturbing with what you're doing.

Define disturbing.

So it's grading, excavating, if you decide you're going to build an additional home or something.

So I better build things before July 1st, right? Is what you're saying. OK. Cheaper. Right?

At least apply before July 1st. OK.

Yeah, this is theft from Richmond, in my opinion. This is terrible. It's absolutely terrible.

Yeah. So I just wanted to be clear, clear to the public. We are only increasing this fee on the state side. Any, any, um, permitting fee or any type that the county collects that is not increasing. This is strictly just a pass through to the state that we're going to be collecting as like the middleman.

So it is a state mandated fee. However, There is a local and state portion to this fee. So a portion of this does stay with the county for administration of the stormwater permitting system on our side.

OK. So are we increasing the local?

Yes, it's a single fee that's increased. However, there is a portion that stays with the county and there's a portion that goes to the state. But it's still state mandated, the entire fee.

So the state is mandating that we increase this fee. And if we do not increase this fee to those who apply, then the county general fund would be responsible for picking up that tab if we do not increase these fees. or at least a compliance fund or some fund, some taxpayer fund would have to pick up the leftovers if we do not increase this fee. So the best bet for those developers, the individuals who want to destroy their neighborhood and become a pain to their neighbors, the best remedy for them would to call their state delegate, their state senator, and say, hey, the state is implementing these fees. They are now being passed down through my locality. would be the best remedy for them to try to get these fees lowered back down would be through the state or us that would be their best remedy to go to the state however the state did approve and recommend that do you increase their fees yep got you that point is I just want to say is we are being forced to do this by the state and here's another one when it comes to state environmental rules and regulations that, unfortunately, if we do not vote yes now, you will be coming back to us in six months from now saying, hey, we owe the state this much money in rules and regulation fees.

Yep. Probably would need a budget adjustment. Gotcha.

David?

Yeah, thank you for the presentation. Yeah, it is robbery. It really is. I feel bad. I mean, it's one thing if it's like a 10% or 15% increase, but that's not even cost of living. We're talking 55%, 60%. I mean, that's just robbing pockets. And again, when you go talk about affordable housing and you've got developers that are disturbing a lot of land, they're paying a lot of money. And they're going to pass that on. So the housing's not going to get any cheaper. because we're going to have more fees mandated from Richmond. So yeah, another one of these where I hate to vote for it, but we've got to be compliant. And we can't afford to jeopardize not being compliant and going in debt in the county for it either. So yeah, thanks for all the work you do, though.

You're welcome.

Drew. Looking at the examples there, so if your permit type is for the, is it for the amount of area you're gonna disturb or the amount of land you owe?

The amount of area you're going to disturb.

OK. OK, so I can dial down my temperature a little bit. Probably not going to do five acres of disturbance, right? I'll probably just do the pad for my shop or something.

Your new garage, yes.

Yeah. So that would be the less than an acre fee that I'd be paying for something like that. Is that right?

supposedly um it also depends on that size so i mean if you get under 2500 square feet we're not even looking for any type of permit whatsoever okay so it just it all depends on what you're disturbing in but yes if you're if you're under less than an acre it's the the forfeit so in principle i'm still not happy with it but now i'm a little a little more inclined to comply a little bit thank you So you can own 100 acres and only disturb less than an acre.

Chris.

Yeah, thank you so much for the summer of affordability, or the administration of affordability. But I do want to see if we can add a reluctant yes to our thing, please. Thank you.

I think we'd all vote for the reluctant yes for sure so with that I'll go ahead and open the public hearing anyone want to speak on this subject tonight okay seeing none I'll go ahead and close the public hearing and entertain a motion to reluctantly vote yes

motion to reluctantly vote yes but could we also add could we could we add this as like a little asterisk to our our state legislative agenda as a prime example to where when we talk about unfunded mandates we just came up with two that we could list that literally took place this year so when we go to the state this coming year for legislative priorities these are prime examples of how the powers that be in Richmond are passing down the cost onto the localities. But motion to approve.

And just to add on to the motion, this would be to approve ordinance number 2026-01. As Carl said.

Motion passes 5 to 1, with Supervisor Mullins voting no.

Thank you.

It's a symbolic no vote for sure.

Laura, do you want to go with the board reports first? Oh, yeah.

Yeah, let's do that. Yep, yep. Jake?

Madam Chair, I'll be very brief. I got a couple of things. The federal BEAD grant language came out recently within the past week or two of how the federal government is changing the language in the BEAD grant not so much direct fiber directly to the home they actually put language in there to where they can do the satellite direct satellite links and the cellular connection this county has already been through that once already I want to ensure that our vendors are still going the path of fiber to the home so I just wanted to check that our bead recipients are not changing any of their proposals or programs or anything like that so if I get an update on that and then Any possibly update on a timeline, Ed, from the other Ed? Just to put it out there, this board is going to have to, I, this member, would like to revisit the retiree health care plan at some point in the near future. I'm still being contacted by retirees in my area and current employees who are looking to retire within the next five to 10 years. going to ben or this board madam chair and i would like to get a convenience center update solid waste update i had a phone call earlier this week from the treasurer asking questions about the hang tag how we're going to be collecting it we've had some instances where even the sticker now is showing up on vehicles that aren't even registered in the county so how is a hang i'm curious of how the hang tag what's gonna stop me from giving my cousin and Louisa my hangtag so we got a lot of questions around the convenience centers and things of that nature so I want to make sure within the next meeting or two we can get an update on that and work through those situations that's gonna be all I have for right now madam chair thank you all right Chris

Yes, hi. I am going to take just a minute during the board report because I do think that it's important to talk about this. We had our community meeting for the data center on Thursday that I went to that was in – I went to the rambunctious one that wasn't very well run, and I will say that that was – uh very irritating um especially for our citizens because they're there to ask questions they're there to find out they're there because they don't know what is happening we're privy to a lot of this we work a lot of this behind the scenes for a long time we know the acronyms we know what's happening we meet with developers and whoever else and our citizens are not, I mean that's why we're here, we're their representatives. And so I don't expect them to know and to get down in the weeds, but when it comes time for them to have their questions thoughtfully answered and to have some semblance of respect for them spending their time to come out and learn about an issue going to affect them or they just want to know doesn't matter if it affects them or not I think that they they absolutely deserve that and that was that was just a bad presentation that night But I also have to say, too, that there is this simmering frustration that is out there, which I understand in many ways, that I don't think is healthy, and I don't think it adds to the public discourse at all. I know social media is what it is. I personally think it's probably going to be the downfall of Western civilization, but that might be a little hyperbole there. I'm probably not wrong. And the reason is that people feel that they can vent at that point for their frustrations. And again, if you want to do that, that is fine. I understand people that get frustrated and angry, and I posted this on my site just to show an example. Not that I'm any better than anybody else, but you do have to have restraint and you do have to make sure that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you do disagree. And so I had somebody, not even on my post, I mean, I get attacked on other people's posts, which is fine. I've been doing this long enough and I know that it happens and it's fine. I'm not encouraging it, by the way, but I understand it. And a person basically wished harm and was not very nice with the emojis, let me just put it that way. and um and so i decided to engage with this person just to find out you know is this one of those people and we all know them where they just complain because they enjoy hearing themselves complain and they don't want to find a solution and uh in fact this this gentleman eventually apologized for his for his uh outburst at me and i told him even though he's not in my district i told him you know be more than happy to come to his house and see his issue and see if there's any anything that we can do to help because that's why we are here we're your representatives to your local government to make sure that you know your your life is um if there's if there's negative impacts that we do what we can to uh to you know mitigate those or or turn those around so on Saturday I went over there and met his family and also got to meet and got to help him with a little bit of chores he had around the house at first and then spent over an hour going over the issues that he had at his at his residence really nice guy I really understand his frustrations because it seemed like he didn't know where to turn to get some answers and so I And like I said, he apologized. To his credit, he did. And this is not about him or what he said. And that's why I don't want to be specific about where to find it or who he was. Because I think there's a chance that we might be able to, at the very least, look into what his issues are and maybe help him. And that would be fantastic if we can. and i just want people out there to know that that that is what we do up here and that is what i do up here um is to make sure that if you have a problem if you have an issue you know i'm your representative even if i'm not in your district and in fact i open that up and i start getting calls from all your guys districts too so um which i'm i'm i'm more than happy to help i really am um so i'll bring you up to speed on how those are going too but um but the point is is that you know the frustration the anger it needs to come down a notch we need to understand that what is going on in our community and we even saw a brief bit of that tonight the frustration is and the anger is understandable but please learn how to express that understand that You know, we're available via, you know, multiple ways to get in touch, to find out, to learn, to express where you're coming from. But I really want folks to know that this needs to be ratcheted down, that we really need to treat each other with respect. Just because we're elected officials doesn't mean we're punching bags. You know, I've taken my share of name-calling and other – stupidity that goes on out there and you know some of it is is clever most of it is just dumb but um you know the uh the the next level of this is what i want to try to avoid and i'm going to do my part to make sure that that happens and i want our citizens out there to know that all of us are reachable you can call email get in touch and if you can't call me I'll get in touch with them and we'll try to find a solution to whatever the problem is that you have but please let's remember to treat each other with some dignity and respect and remember we all live here we're all trying to make our county the best that it can be and we're all trying to do our part in doing that so thank you

No report, but I do want to thank everybody for coming out tonight. There were some lively discussions. And as Chris said, we all live here. And the same things that hit you guys are the same things that hit us, whether it's transportation. We're on the roadways. These permit fees, the convenience centers, they all hit every single one of us. We all are citizens of Spotsylvania County, and we're here to help you guys. That's why we ran for office. That's why we're here. So I guess Chris will be taking my calls, and he'll let me know if any of my constituents have questions. But I'm always available. If you have any questions, feel free to call. And thank you guys for coming out.

David.

Thank you. Appreciate everybody that stayed around and been online. We're going to watch this later. Absolutely same thing. People know how to get a hold of me.

They call Chris.

What's that? OK. Yeah. All right, I guess there was a public comment period that maybe you weren't early enough early for, maybe that's what happened. Oh, okay, well. All right, well, I will say, one, I appreciate all the calls I do get. And the gentleman has called me several times about some ordinance issues about barking dogs and things like that. And I know we've had discussion on the board and with the Sheriff's Department and with animal control and such, too. And that's one of those areas where, again, I know I've talked with

so generally it's during public comment that we do that and that's at the beginning of the meeting what we can't we're almost finished and we can break and then you can we can have a conversation if you'd like

Selfish.

Sir, I've experienced something very similar to that when a neighbor across the street from me had, well, this guy had six German Shepherds. And they were in very small kennels, you know, runs on concrete. And every time the deer ran through, they'd bark all night long. And I was in the same situation. And I couldn't get any relief. But I found out that there's a noise ordinance

Right. Livingston and Berkeley are excluded. From the Cortland?

Yes.

Okay.

Because that's the only way I got relief. And I documented it. Okay.

And we can certainly do that. We can look at it and find out. We need to get input from the Sheriff's Department on how we can manage that. Okay. Yeah. I can't even imagine how frustrating that is. Yep.

Yeah. Yep, and we shared it with the Sheriff's Department. I know they came out and talked with you all.

Hmm.

Yeah, and one of the things that we're talking about is how to amend the ordinance for these neighborhoods that are no longer necessarily out in the rural, but they're actually more urban neighborhoods, and figure out, because we've done that in the past. There's different pockets of neighborhoods and subdivisions that we just need to define. And so we're having that discussion, but it takes some time. Why don't you have that wall in Greenville, the 16th, that allow them to do that?

And the other paper has said this has been going on for about three years now. So this has been a very ongoing and it's ridiculous because there's no change. You would think by now there would be a change, but it's been three years according to other people. and there needs to be a change because other people around us aren't going to see either of us.

It's very frustrating to deal with in that way.

Yeah, and I've addressed with staff, I know Ed and others have been on the email, to let's look at the ordinance and figure out how we can carve out the pieces that are now more urban areas, even though they're in the rural parts of the district that do not, you know, the ordinance doesn't cover, but we can make some allowances for those areas that are now become more urban, that are more residential. Right. No, very familiar. I drive it twice a day, probably. Yeah, I drive your road twice a day, easily.

So, David, would you like to maybe have that be brought up at another meeting then? And yeah, and that we can look at that ordinance. Can we have staff take a look at that ordinance so that we can have a discussion up here about it? And then we can see what we can do about change in that so that we can have some, no pun intended, teeth in the ordinance for you.

That ordinance did for me, sir, is, and if we can get it kind of associated with density or subdivisions or whatever, instead of it being boundary driven. Yeah. What it allowed me to do, we logged the amount of barking. I actually recorded it. It's so many minutes per hour, and you've probably done all that. But then the sheriffs can come out and cite the person. No, I'm just saying, if we can get it amended to cover you. And then we took him to court, and the judge said, he fined him, and he said, if you violate this again, I'm going to take your dogs away from you. So, you know.

Right, we got. yeah so yeah so so what we'll do is we'll bring that back around um next meeting and it's it's july 14th is the next meeting and then um we start at four o'clock again and and um public comment the the second the second um public comment is when you get up and i'll make sure to say if i see you in the audience so be like I understand. It can be really confusing on how it works. So we'll make sure that we get this on the docket. And I'll make sure that I tell everybody in the audience again, this is the time to come up and speak about anything you want to come up and speak about. And so we can definitely do that. OK. All right. Sorry, David, go.

All right, yeah. Have a good night. As Jake mentioned earlier about the convenience centers, I think I'm continuing to get calls and texts and emails and complaints. And Ben, I know you and I got some quality time tomorrow. Looking forward to it. We'll talk about time on that. But I think you and Ed, we need to address some of this. I mean, it's pretty hot and heavy out in our parts of the county, the issue of trailers and stuff. People that were turned away, trailers were turned away that shouldn't have been turned away. And were told they could go park out in the neighbor's yard and then bring their stuff in on their truck. And it's like, that didn't seem right. So I just think it's a continuing effort. There were some reports of I know of Livingston being full of the convenience site this weekend. I don't know if that's a result because we were closed today, and everybody went on Saturday. It was just a busy Saturday. So there's a lot of more complaints coming in, and I think it's something we still need to address some more. And then another thing, we talked about the data centers. Kimberly's gone, and I'll ask her to bring that. I'd like to see maybe on the next meeting Madam Chair, if we could have the next meeting, a discussion on data centers on capacity. We have talk in our CIP about solar farms and stuff like that. But maybe it's about time we start having a conversation. How much is enough? How much data center is enough, square footage wise? And I know Kimberly's done some work to show the nine data centers that are currently approved that are just under 20 million square feet of data center. Everything built out that's in the pipeline, 11 more, takes us up to 51 million square feet of data center. And then I'd also ask that maybe we have that discussion with finance as well, and what does that mean in revenue? And that gets back to our $1.25 discussion. So I'd like to propose we get that put on for discussion next meeting. And just to that effect, somebody shared this with me, which I thought was pretty good. It's from the Spotsylvania Comprehensive Plan. It's our vision statement. And it reads, Spotsylvania families will enjoy a community that remembers and respects its place in our nation's history and builds on the principles of our founding fathers to provide freedom and prosperity through limited government, respect of personal property rights, low taxes, and pro-business policies for the 21st century. You know, as I read that and thought about it, you know, there's a lot in there that I absolutely, you know, that's why we want to maintain a rural character and the things that we want to be able to live and enjoy life out here in Spotsylvania, but not at the cost maybe of just being all pro-business. So I think there's a point where we have to have that discussion about balance, and I think that's what becomes real important. How do we balance that for the things that, you know, industries that are coming in, and how much is enough? And I think that'll be a good discussion. And then last thing I wanted to bring up was we had talked once previously about maybe reactivating the Citizens Budget Review Board. And Madam Chair, I'll leave that to you to think about and how we do that, but how we can get some more citizen involvement in our budget process in some of the things that come up that we need some citizen input from that we can help maybe feed some of that discussion. And other than that, again, appreciate everybody that came out and is still listening.

All right, thank you. Drew.

Okay, not a lot to say here except for nothing really of note to speak of today being anything of note, but June 6th, D-Day remembrance, and now there are like literally a handful of those guys still alive, and next year will be even less. June 14th is Flag Day, but most importantly, June 21st, for like half the day at least, it'll be Father's Day. So I hope you... Take care of your father, give him a call. And that's all I have, Madam Chair.

Okay, thank you. so a couple things just so citizens know if there's something that the board wants to be brought up you know I'm I'm not the queen up here anybody on the board can bring it up so you know it's not up to me to to set the agenda or forward a forward of initiative because we all equally sit up here on the board My job here is just basically running the meeting and that's it. So I'm happy if you want to look at other things, we can certainly do that. I was also in attendance at the Crossroads Technology information meeting and share a lot of what Chris had mentioned. The meeting was not Not good. Not a good venue. Normally, you know, I've had town halls at the Costner Park, and it's been fine because I've had very little activity there. This was a line out the door. The air conditioning was working, but with the amount of people that were in that room, it couldn't keep up, and then the doors were open. there wasn't there was nothing wrong with the air conditioning it was just overcrowded in fact I'm sure if the fire marshal would have been around he probably would have been like you're shutting down so I have asked Ed from now on even though and I want to make sure that the community understands these community meetings are not our meetings they're not the county's meetings they're not the supervisors meetings They're the developer's meetings. And so the developer is there to show their project, to make sure that they answer questions, to take in any feedback that they get so that they can go and modify their project to better suit citizens if that's what they so desire to do. It's not our meeting. And I was there along with Drew and Chris were there as well. And it was not It did not foster a learning experience at all. I didn't even really get to see the plaques that they, the boards that they had out because it was so packed. So while it wasn't my meeting, I do wanna apologize to my constituents who thought that it would be more of a presentation style meeting, thought that, there would be a question and answer period and that didn't happen and so from now on we're going to make sure that these meetings are held because we do let them use our the county's facilities make sure that they're held in a venue that's large enough for the for the attendees and also well ventilated that sort of thing so we're definitely going to do that from now on but i do appreciate everybody coming out i appreciate the many many phone calls i got before the meeting um and after the meeting and um i i am open to suggestions i'm open to to um having a conversation so you can always give me a call i'm happy to take that call from you so hopefully there won't be ever be a repeat of what occurred on Thursday because it wasn't it wasn't the way it should have been want to just report to the board that I had a library board meeting on Monday and you know kind of disappointing in a way and I don't want to throw Stafford under the bus but I mean it is what it is really they did not fund the library to even level funding they went under they undercut them even more than that you know when that happened on our board years ago and we had a deficit they our library hours were cut and um i mean call me gracious i don't know i'll call me i don't know what you want to call me but i i wasn't really in the same mindset of doing that to them because i think ultimately what happens is when that happens people even they still need the services that the library offers so they'll most likely go to another location right so if stafford if we lock down stafford's hours they would go to fredericksburg or they would go to one of ours which would increase issues there right so what is going to happen is some of the services that we all share will now be kind of minimized at the Stafford locations only so so there is some movement of funding that has to happen for the library system spottsylvania will not be on any chopping block of any of that so that's good news we did discuss the rfid funding for the new system for the library everybody did contribute to that so that is really good except westmoreland was having their meeting yesterday so we still don't know where their budget is but The other localities did contribute to the RFID, which will show some efficiencies for the future, which I think is going to be very positive. So I'll keep you guys posted on exactly what's going to happen at the library, but there should not be any degrading of services in Spotsylvania. And I know that Stafford has a lot of financial problems desires and needs and all that. And so I don't fault them for having to do what they had to do. But anyway, that's that. And have a Healthy Generations meeting coming up in between this meeting and our next meeting, and I'll report back on that. But thank you for everybody coming out tonight. I'm sorry that it turned out to be a late night. But when we only have one meeting a month, that's kind of what happens is things just stack up. I appreciate everybody. And call if you need anything. I'm here to serve. Thank you.

Madam Chair, that takes you to new business. Your next Board of Supervisors meeting is July 14th at 4 PM.

All right. Now, remember, it's 4 PM again. So we'll get an early start. And is there a motion to adjourn? Oh, Carl and and Ed. It was after board reports that I just skipped right over because normally you don't. I knew it. And you're good too, right? Yep.

Okay, madam chair motion to adjourn.

All right. All those in favor.

Hi. Happy birthday, America.