Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

We're going to stand for the invocation and the pledge. If you'd like to join us, you're certainly welcome.

doing civilly father and that he would be at the center of everything we do

Thank you, Mr. Wood, for the invocation. We have a quorum. We're missing Mr. Bullock, though, and missing Mr. Bell, Dr. Bell. Everyone else is present. Okay, gang. Any review or changes to the minutes? Mr. Phelps?

What?

No.

No changes to the minutes? No changes. Okay. I'd entertain a motion to approve the minutes.

I'll make the motion.

Motion made. Is there a second? Second. Motion made and seconded. Do we have our remote tonight?

We don't.

We don't? Okay. All right. We need a roll call vote then, please. Okay.

Mr. Wood?

Aye.

Mr. Prickett?

Abstain.

Ms. Fergosa? Abstain. Mr. Grinnell?

Approve.

Mr. Phelps?

Approve.

Thank you.

Okay.

So the motion passes 3-2 to abstaining.

All right. Plan and update announcements. Mrs. Pomato?

Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Your next meeting is on Wednesday, August 5th at 6 p.m. That will be a comprehensive plan work session for the land use chapter. And that will actually conclude your work sessions on the chapters of the comprehensive plan. We do have three new public hearing cases that were applied for We have Heatherstone Commons that's in the Cortland district. That's a rezoning for almost six and a half acres from our one to our and our you to plan development housing district 3 To develop up to 13 single-family homes This is a property that's located on the west stop the west side of Heatherstone Drive approximately half mile north of the intersection with Plank Road The next rezoning application filed is also in the Cortland District. That project is identified as the Courthouse Senior Housing Project. That's a rezoning of 6.8 acres from R1 to R8 to develop 42 age-restricted, that's 55 and up, single-family attached units. This property fronts Courthouse Road and is located between the Courthouse Road intersection between Woodland Drive and Rhodes Drive. And then next is another one in the Cortland District. This is the 11907 Cherry Road rezoning. This is a request to rezone 3.97 acres from Office 1 to Commercial 2 to develop property for two buildings to contain approximately eight commercial flex units. And this property lies on the east side of Cherry Road, approximately 1,000 feet south of its intersection with Plank Road. We don't have any community meetings scheduled at this point, and then any site plans or public hearing status. We have those maps on our website. I encourage the community to use those maps. They're very helpful to be able to stay abreast of all of the public hearing cases that we have on file and monitor their status.

Okay. Thank you. REPORTS OF STANDING COMMITTEES. MR. WOOD, DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING FROM THE TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE?

YEAH, JUST A COUPLE THINGS TO HIGHLIGHT. FROM TRANSPORTATION, THEY'RE COMING UP ON ENDING OF SOME SMART SCALE APPLICATIONS. THERE'S NINE PROJECTS THAT ARE BEING PROPOSED. THEY'RE HOPING THAT WE GET A DECENT NUMBER. IN THE PAST COUPLE SMART SCALES, WE'VE STARTED TO INCREASE OUR REGIONAL AND OUR AREA OF GETTING MORE MONEY COMPARED TO 10 YEARS AGO WHEN IT ALL WENT TO RICHMOND, NORTHERN VIRGINIA, AND VIRGINIA BEACH. So to highlight a couple things, we've gotten federal grants for the I-95 exit 126 and Harrison Road. There's a grant for 1.1 million as well as There is a safety improvement research plan that's being looked at that we expect to have the research in fall for the rails and rail crossing safety improvements for our region. So there's a couple of the highlights, but we should have more by the end of the summer after Smart Scale has gone through Richmond and they get some more responses from that.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Wood. Anything from your district you want to mention since we're on committees there?

Yeah, because just one more thing came to mind from transportation. Because I know that we are on schedule in 2027 to get a lot of the more rural roads updated and repaved. They told us at the last meeting that they have a schedule of kind of when they plan to have those and what order that they should be sending out to Transportation Committee members. So if you have questions about, you know, when this road is on the schedule for, we'll have a better idea once we get that from them.

Okay. Thank you. Mr. Prickett, anything from your district? No, sir. Okay. I've got a couple emails when it gets to me from constituents in your district about the battery storage. I'm going to make sure the county has them.

Yeah, there was a meeting. Debbie was there also earlier this week or last week, late last week, pertaining to that one of the communities that lives right next door to where the site is. Right. And you'll probably get a lot of emails from them pertaining to that because it was passed on that, you know, they really are passionate about, you know, going against the best that they need to notify their community leaders. Okay.

Well, I just got a couple that looks like they were addressed only to me. So I want to make sure we get them on record. If they're addressed to everybody, I know everybody's seen them already then. Okay. Thanks. Okay.

I don't have anything at this time

I did have 1 mention of transportation concern on Massaponics church road. It's probably at the 2nd entrance to the customer campus 1. there was a, I was watching a truck as I was heading here to the meeting and it looked like 1 of the culverts. The road is sinking and the culvert is raising up and they launched the back end of their pickup truck in the air and they hit the brakes pretty hard as I was behind them a good 100 feet. But.

I swerved around it because I didn't want to see myself launching in the air like like the pickup truck so if we could have somebody look at that it looks like it's the road is sinking okay thank you a couple things I mentioned earlier I want to make sure that our bylaw changes are on our meeting for August. Debbie has not received them yet. She's missing at that meeting. But it would be good to send them all out of good on either email because I'd like to take action on that. A couple of these emails, one of them is from Crystal Sams. I think she's in that newer subdivision that backs up to where the battery place where Scarlett's proposed. And Do I need to forward this to you to get it in the record? OK. And the other one was from Jessica Vanilla. And it was also just addressed to me. So both of them, Mr. Prickett, were about the Scarlett Battery Center. And there was one against the Crossroads Center, but that was addressed to everybody. Okay. Next part of our meeting is open for public comment. So if anybody has signed up Rebecca, will you please tell them what's going on?

Um,

Public hearings are an opportunity for you to present matters you believe deserve the Commission's attention. Public comments are one-way comments from you to the Planning Commission and are not a forum for dialogue or debate. To speak during a public hearing, please do the following when approaching the podium. Clearly state your name and voting district or address for the record. Individuals speaking on your own behalf receive three minutes to speak. One individual representing a group will be granted five minutes to speak. Address your comments directly to the commission and not members of the audience. Questions cannot be directed to the commission with an expectation of an answer. Questions may be raised and may be addressed later in the meeting. Thank you. No person at a public hearing shall be permitted to yield time to a speaker. No speaker shall address the commission more than once during public hearings at any single commission meeting. Public comments should not be used to make political campaign speeches or private advertisements. Written comments are always welcome.

first speaker is David Vita followed by Lisa Amer okay I'd like to to preface the first speaker this is our only public comment here here in period of the night we have two discussion items later on the agenda but they are not public hearings so there'll be discussion items strictly with staff and applicants so yes sir

it's not i don't think it should be a green light on there you go there you go my name is david vita you're on now yeah you're on now okay i have a naturally boomy voice i'm sorry my name is david vita i live in the chancellor district on harvestdale drive um i have my family has uh we've all been together there for a long time i have an adult daughter i was in the marine corps for 13 years and now i'm a public school teacher Recently, I found out about an early stage proposal for a battery energy storage system that may be located near Salem Fields and close to my home at Harvestdale Drive. After some online research, I was quickly startled when I read about the extreme toxic fire hazard posed by the industrial size lithium ion batteries that are the backbone of that kind of facility. A lithium-ion-based fire cannot be extinguished by standard methods. They are often, out of necessity, left to burn out on their own while generating toxic gas, residue, and particulate matter. The runoff from such a fire caused by rain and also the particle spread in the air is highly toxic. Such runoff could dramatically contaminate both local groundwater and the Nye River Reservoir. The fumes and gases that would spread would pose an extreme health risk to local residents, animals, schools, and churches, not to mention our first responders. The proximity of this facility is less than a mile from Salem Fields Community Church. It's a quarter of a mile from a stream that flows into the Nye River Reservoir. It's a half mile from the Nye River Reservoir itself. It's less than a mile from my neighborhood, which is a part of a whole string of neighborhoods over on that side of Chancellor Road. And it's 1.2 miles from Freedom Middle and Smith Station Elementary School. All right allowing the building of this facility will also have a potentially devastating impact on nearby homes and property values. Many residents are depending upon future potential benefit from the increasing values of their homes. This facility could easily cause residents to lose value in their homes and increase their financial struggle. A battery energy storage system would likely pose an all-or-nothing proposition. And what I mean by that is while I know there will be promises of many safeguards and how things will be stable and everything like that, after viewing a few different newspaper articles available online, it quickly struck me that everything was either fine or it was completely not fine. WHERE ONCE IT ACTUALLY TOOK PLACE, THE RUNOFF AND THE ERROR AND THE PARTICULATE MATTER AND THE CORRESPONDING HEALTH EFFECTS TO FIRST RESPONDERS AND LOCAL CITIZENS, EVERYBODY WITHIN AN AREA WITH ALL OF THAT WOULD EASILY BE DEVASTATING.

SO YOUR TIME IS UP.

THANK YOU.

WE HAVE LISA AMER FOLLOWED BY TONY HERNANDEZ.

Good evening. My name is Lisa Amer, and I reside in the Lee Hill District. I was told the land on which the proposed Crossroads Data Center would be built on was zoned as industrial about 60 to 70 years ago. My goodness, how the landscape around this parcel has changed in that time, and that zoning is no longer appropriate. The land is now surrounded by neighborhoods consisting of thousands of residents, a church, and an elementary school. As an employee at Lee Hill Elementary, I am especially troubled about the impact this data center would have on the health and education of students and staff. Lee Hill Elementary is a mere 1,600 feet from the proposed site. The troubles would begin with years of construction. I already see the plumes of dust and the caravans of dump trucks created by the construction of the nearby Cosner Tech Center. Our children and staff, especially those with respiratory problems, should not be exposed to these airborne particulates while outside at recess. There is a proposed entrance situated on Lee Hill School Drive where Lee Hill Elementary is located. There is already school bus traffic and over 100 cars for parent drop off and then another 100 cars at parent pick up. How much more traffic can this narrow, twisty, accident prone road safely handle? And can you imagine those poor kids waiting at their bus stop on that road as heavy equipment is whizzing by? This is just a recipe for disaster. Once constructed, we will have to deal with more issues. Increased and constant noise from power generation and backup power, as well as cooling equipment, will adversely impact students' learning and behavior. We know constant noise triggers the fight, flight, or freeze response, especially in autistic students. We know it produces chronic stress. It has been linked to higher rates of depression and anxiety. It also drains mental energy, making learning and teaching even more challenging. And how about the kids who live close enough to have their sleep disrupted by this constant noise? Surely this is all detrimental to learning and health. There will still be the threat of emission pollution, but this time coming from the generators, whether it be from scheduled testing or even worse, generators being used to consistently power this data center. Will there be days that kids can't have outdoor recents because of high carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, soot, and carbon dioxide levels? I ask you to take the approximately 700 students and 100 staff members at Leehill Elementary School into consideration when making your recommendation. We face many challenges in our education system. We certainly do not need to add data centers to this list. Thank you.

Next, we have Tony Hernandez, followed by Emily Howell.

My name is Tony Hernandez, and I knock on doors and walk just about most of your districts, and hopefully every one of them pretty soon. There'll be a lot of facts presented today. People I speak to are Democrats and Republicans. They are fellows who just came back from hunting and girls with blue hair and nose rings. And they all have one thing in common. They are against this. After yesterday, I spoke at the Board of Supervisors meeting and made some rather milquetoast comments, I thought. Now, I've got a lot of, by the way, you can see those on news programs on Facebook, Breaking Points, the William Lawrence campaign, and, of course, Safeguard Spotsy. But I appreciated regular folks' reactions. I was taken aback by the reaction of some elected officials. Apparently, I seem to have struck a chord. I was out with my wife afterwards and got a slightly disturbing text. The dog started barking while our daughter was at home. He's a good dog. He only barks on command when there's something too close to the back of the house. Now, you have to forgive her. She's a cat girl. But she pulled him into her room, locked the door, and called us. And there, when I got there, I looked around because, you know, that's what I'm supposed to do. And it occurred to me, I also paid government to do that sort of thing. So what my father and uncle did as 9-11 first responders, our son does in the Navy, and my brother is a fireman. But in Spotsylvania County, apparently one of the worst things you could do is suggest that county government protects its people. Government clutched its pearls. How dare you cast aspersions? at our aiming canyon-sized sound cannons at schools and churches. What good is it to start a meeting, by the way, with prayer and then attack a St. Jude's Catholic church with sound vortexes? Or, for that matter, covering our neighborhoods with Godzilla-level tumors. Meanwhile, New York State has put a moratorium on data centers. Utah is unelecting data center supporters. 71% of all Americans oppose data centers, and 69% want half of all data center profit. One heck of a divorce. County government is at the center of the defining moment of our times. Is that unfair? Welcome to the club, folks. Rather, it's having conversations from two years ago. It can pretend it is the board of a few electricians and unions, as opposed to the most obscene comic book villains who think somehow they're gods. Or you can, along with the Board of Supervisors and all of Spotsylvania County government, retake your post in our backyards. My dog will be waiting there for you.

Next, we have Emily Hole, followed by Crystal Sams.

I am Emily Hurl and I am in the Lees Hill District. I'm here to strongly request that you reconsider the ecological impact of these future data centers. Our county is unique in that we have several endangered and protected species in our area. The northern long-eared bat, the tri-colored bat, green floater, which is a little freshwater mussel, a small world begonia, which is a beautiful orchid that grows in our forests, Monarch butterfly, bald eagles, and of course our friends the bees. I have no doubt that before continuing with any type of project you will complete environmental surveys, and those environmental surveys will most likely show you the loopholes that you would legally need to jump through to move forward with these projects. Things like not doing forest decimation when we're in a breeding season, things like that. But make no mistake, even if you go through the legal loopholes that are in place, it's still damaging the population. We're just not looking them in the eye when we do it. Legal loopholes do not equate to what is morally right, not necessarily. And we have very little wiggle room when it comes to environmental impact. The name of the game should be just because you can do it does not necessarily mean that you should. Data centers are simply too impactful to both our community and to our environment to move forward without a total understanding of what these impacts are going to be. We are lucky because we have eight operational data centers currently. That gives us a unique opportunity to slow down and see how they fare. We can collect data which will tell us what meaningful supports or changes we need to make to ensure the success of any possible future data centers. We already know that our electrical grid cannot currently support more centers until 2031. There is no reason to be pulling the trigger on these ones, and it is prudent to wait before we break more ground. We run the very real risk of having multiple half-finished projects and clear-cut forests, which are permanently damaging an already fragile ecosystem. If you're choosing to vote against the clearly expressed will of this constituency, and you're voting against bald eagles, and you're voting against bats, and you're voting against the very pollinators who put food on our tables, then you need to be 100% certain that you know what you're doing. Otherwise, you are looking ahead at a perfect storm for an ecological nightmare. And it's one that your constituency did not support, which means that your name will be attached to that epic failure. Please slow down, gather data, and move forward with care and prudence. And you might actually find that you have more support from some of your voters if you simply just slow your roll.

Next, we have Crystal Sams followed by Cynthia Stotz. Was there someone before? Yeah, Crystal Sams.

Good evening, my name is Crystal Sams. I live on North Abbeymore Court in Thorburn Estates, which is formerly Section 2, Lot 17. And I say that because my property, the backside of my property, the entire two acres, is directly against the scarlet energy bus project that's being proposed um we are literally probably about 400 to 500 feet away from where their first um building will be placed and so this directly impacts my family tremendously um i could go on and on and on about the various things the thermal runway all of that stuff but um one of the things i wanted to focus on mostly is about the water resources and the impact that it's gonna have. Any attempt to use the water to extinguish even a small fire, any containment breach, a smoke release in the area will have detrimental impacts on the local water supply. A single occurrence could permanently poison our local water table, The toxic fumes released to the air and the water runoff will have immediate impact, but we also have to consider the long-term impacts, as such, the metals will leach into the ground over time, the VOCs from the air will leach into the ground over time, and they're all gonna have some sort of health impact, both to humans and wildlife. My neighbor and myself, we did reach out to a company or a local organization. It's called Outreach Tri-County City Soil and Water Conservation District. They serve as King George, Spotsy, Stafford, and Fredericksburg. We did kind of just kind of bring up the idea of what would happen to the water table and if it would be able to be managed if there was even just like a small issue. One of the things that they did just after a brief review of the plans, they said the local water treatment facility would need at least two or have to spend at least $15 million to upgrade their facility to even be able to begin to manage or address even the smallest containment or water runoff issue. They said that it just it doesn't it's not equipped right now It could not manage any kind of emergency that would happen from this bus station the other thing that they said was that in order to keep the Water facility up to par even after doing that multi-million dollar upgrade They would need to invest a half to two million dollars a year annually to keep the facility up to par to manage ongoing issues or potential issues I don't think as a taxpayer anybody wants to be responsible for Scarlet Energy's project that is going to require the taxpayers to probably fund an upgrade like that. I don't think Scarlet Energy is willing to put $20 or $30 million into escrow in the event to upgrade this water facility, nor keep it maintained over the 20 years. I think it's a 20-year lease they have on the property, the land. So I think that that's something that really, really should be looked at. Ma'am, your time is up. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, we have Cynthia Stotz followed by Kelly Schaffer.

Good evening. Hi, my name is Cynthia Stotts. I'm in the Lee Hill District. As you work on the updated comprehensive plan for Spotsylvania County, I urge the Commission to take into consideration the 18 approved and proposed data centers and the ones that are potentially in the future. They are not small nor inconsequential to the vision of Spotsylvania's future. On page 30 of the draft of the updated comprehensive plan in Chapter 2C under the purchase of development rights, it states that some of the purposes of the pdr program is to quote preserve the county's character and resources preserving farm and forest land and protect and enhance family farms and the economic viability of the agricultural and forestal sectors of the local economy conserving and protecting biodiversity and wildlife and aquatic habitat assisting in shaping the character and direction of the development of the community Improving the quality of life for the inhabitants of the county and promoting recreation and tourism through the preservation of scenic and historical resources. How do 18 data centers fit into that vision? Especially considering that large majority of inhabitants do not want them. 1st, I would like to point out that the diagrams posted on today's agenda is 14 pages long with no review narrative posted on the county's web page. The SUP review narrative posted on 522 is 23 pages long. Maybe the county has access to a larger document with more detail, but this is unacceptable. A 2.2 million square foot, 633 acre project has been boiled down to 23 pages of information for the public to know. SUPs in Northern Virginia and other areas are 300 to 600 pages long. If it's longer and the public does not have access to that document, the lack of transparency is a problem. Crossroads SUP states, and I'm paraphrasing, due to the recent findings of possible acid sulfate soils, if a pH of less than four are present on the project site, extensive treatment will be required to, quote, sustain any form of plant growth, unquote. So what does that mean for the vegetative buffers? What does that mean for stormwater, construction runoff at Massaponics Creek or the resource-protected area? Further, the SUPs are not written in language that the layperson can understand. If the developer and county really want to ensure that residents understood a project, they would make sure that the parameters, scope, and details were put into layman's terms to ensure comprehension for the residents that don't have experience or knowledge in these areas. In addition, where feasible should not be acceptable in an SUP. That is a legal loophole that should absolutely not be allowed, and the county should demand an actual plan, as well as all possible contingency plans, and not accept if or where feasible. Lastly, the 18 approved and proposed data centers here are not sustainable. I understand that the Planning Commission was tasked with bringing in data centers to our region. Well, that mission has been accomplished with the eight that are approved. Why are we continuing to court an industry that the majority of the citizens do not want and that our infrastructure cannot possibly support, especially the power grid? My hope is that the Planning Commission will look to the mistakes Northern Virginia has made And remember the vision that Spotsylvania County's comprehensive plan and take into account the wants and desires of the county's residents. Thank you.

Next, we have Kelly Schaefer followed by Brian Dillon.

Hi, my name is Kelly Schaefer. I'm from the Lee Hill District and New Post Community. I'm here today with Safeguard Spotsy and Block Belvedere. Let me start by saying that what's happening in Spotsylvania County in regards to the data centers is deeply irresponsible. Data center approvals continue despite overwhelming public opposition and voters are paying attention. I know this planning commission understands that a healthy local economy depends on having a diverse mix of businesses, and I know that because our current comprehensive plan mentions the importance of business diversity 19 separate times. Yet when it comes to data centers, we already have eight approved and at least 10 more in the pipeline. As of January, the county reported nearly 4,000 acres in various stages of data center development, and that number continues to grow. So I have one simple question. When is it enough? Many respected experts now warn that we're at moderate to high risk of a data center bubble. That includes Michael Burry, who predicted the 2008 housing crash, Josh Wolf of Lux Capital, and Harvard professor Andy Wu. Their concerns are straightforward. Companies and investors are racing to build AI infrastructure without regard to utility restraints and before profitable consumer use cases have even materialized. The build out of the data centers you all already approved span through 2035 and beyond. Once this speculative boom slows, communities like ours could be left with canceled projects, vacant buildings, and declining property value surrounding unfinished campuses. Even if the industry continues to grow, Spotsylvania residents are being sold down the river. We're taking on similar risks, but with tax rates that are a third of those compared to Prince William, Loudoun, and Fairfax counties. We've spoken to folks within the industries and these developers are not balking at higher rates. They're determined to build, so why aren't we negotiating from a position of strength? Instead, we have bargain basement tax rates and very few meaningful community protections. Our current recommended standards for data center development are only three pages long, and perhaps more importantly, they're only recommendations, even though standards appear flexible on a case-by-case basis. Business diversity is important, but so are the people who choose to live here. National surveys show that anywhere from 70 to 85 percent of Americans are against the development of data centers within their community. Fifteen states have already proposed or adopted legislation to slow or pause new data center development until their long-term impacts are better understood, especially when these projects are located near residential neighborhoods. What happens if families stop wanting to live in Spotsylvania? now is not the time to keep pushing forward i urge the planning commission to listen to your community and slow down we've already placed enormous bets on data centers the responsible course now is to wait evaluate the impact on our community strengthen protections where appropriate and make future decisions based on evidence not speculation we don't need to keep gambling with spottsylvania county's future thank you

Hi, good afternoon. My name is Brian Dillon. I'm also here from the Lee Hill District today and in support of both Safeguard Spotsy and Block Belvedere. I'd like to focus on one issue, and that's our county's recommended standards for data center development. National planning organizations like the National Association for Home Builders, the American Planning Association, and the Urban Land Institute all recognize a basic principle for land use planning. Heavy industrial development should be sufficiently separated from our residential neighborhoods and with appropriate transitions between uses. Now, while data centers may seem different from traditional industrial facilities, we still don't understand their long-term impacts, especially when many are being planned, clustered together so close to our neighborhoods and communities. And that's exactly why stronger protections should come before approvals and not after. Here's just two examples. First, our standards generally only require a 300-foot buffer. And while this may be sufficient to reduce ordinary noise, acoustic experts know well that low-frequency sound waves... Sir, I need to bother you a second.

somebody back in the back either got a laser or flashlight something that's hitting me right now is up here a flash on a phone will you well i don't mind the pictures but the flash has got to go where you got to go one all right so i'll give you another whole three minutes i'm sorry no problem

Okay, um, 2 examples of stronger protections that we urge the county to consider 1st, our standards generally only require a 300 foot buffer. And while this may be sufficient to reduce ordinary noise. Acoustic experts know well, that the low frequency sound waves exactly the ones that are continuously admitted from these data centers exhibit long sound wavelengths. And these long cell wavelengths are known to easily penetrate walls and bend over acoustic barriers. They travel for miles, and there's compelling research indicating a causal relationship with chronic negative health impacts. This is a new noise challenge that we're facing and one that requires new approaches and new standards beyond traditional noise ordinances. Second, the new research from VCU has found that clusters of data centers, exactly like the ones being planned to surround our communities, are known to create localized and intensified air pollution impacts that in some cases are actually exceeding gas power plants. Other states realize this and they have responded to mitigate this risk by requiring health impact assessments for projects near residential communities, yet Spotsylvania is not. So, what are we asking for? Well, this may not be a comprehensive list before moving forward with existing or any new data centers. We urge the county to 1, develop proper data center noise that ordinances complete with C weighted, decibel and octave band limits to shield our communities from this incessant, harmful, low frequency home to to enforce strict guidelines on the generators be limited to backup and emergency use only and require all future sites requiring onsite power generation pursuing more environmentally friendly alternative. 3 force applicants to clearly disclose the full impact to our electrical grid, including power station substations and transmission infrastructure and require these disclosures before approval for require comprehensive stormwater and environmental analysis during the rezoning process and not defer them until after approvals when they're effectively already locked in 5 require health impact assessments whenever proposed data centers are located or surrounding residential neighborhoods. And finally, the county should transparently demonstrate to the community. How is it evaluating and metering the cumulative impact of these projects and not just as 1 offs? It is not clear to us that we have factored a meaningful upper limit to how much land can be devoted to data centers. And that's a conversation that we should be having right now before it's too late. The common thread here is simple. Our standards right now are short, largely advisory, and they do not reflect the scale of development that you are approving. Until these protections are strengthened, approving additional data centers is simply not responsible. Yes, we understand tax revenue is important, but protecting the health, safety, and community of the quality of life for your constituents should be your number one priority. Thank you.

Next we have case she for followed by Kelsey pain.

Hi, my name is Casey for I live in the legal district. Um, I'm here today to talk in support of both, uh, safeguards, Pennsylvania and block Belvedere. By now, I'm sure we are all aware of at least some of the economic environmental impacts of data centers. But today I'd like to focus on something just as important and that is, um, protecting what makes Spotsylvania unique. Our community is defined by 2 remarkable assets, our place in American history and the Rappahannock river. Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania contain the highest concentration of Civil War battlefields in the United States. The Rappahannock is the longest free-flowing river in the eastern United States. These are not just landmarks, they're part of our identity. As more data centers are proposed, we have to ask ourselves, what are we doing enough to protect these irreplaceable resources? Across Northern Virginia, large industrial developments have already been built on or near historical battlefields and cemeteries, and once those places are disturbed, their archaeological, cultural, and historical value are gone forever. We know preservation is possible in July. Stafford County recently stopped a proposed data center because it threatened a historic two hundred year old slave cemetery. If neighboring counties can protect their history, why can't we? The same question applies to the Rappahannock River. The river supports our drinking water, our agricultural, recreation, wildlife, and local economy. It's also home to several federally and state listed threatened and endangered species, yet large data centers bring new risks, including disposal of treated wastewater, stormwater runoff from extensive paved surfaces, and cumulative impacts of industrial development near sensitive waterways. So what protections are we putting in place to ensure that we don't cause irreversible harm? Are there not better locations for these facilities than immediately adjacent to some of Virginia's most treasured rivers? Tax revenue is important, but it shouldn't come at the expense of the very things that make people want to live, work, and visit here in the first place. We can build an economy without sacrificing our history, and we can embrace technology without putting our natural resources at unnecessary risk. Once a battlefield is disturbed, it can't be restored. Once a historic site is destroyed, it's gone. And if we fail to protect the Rappahannock, future generations will pay the price. Let's not be so focused on short-term growth that we lose sight of the things that make Spotsylvania special. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Kelsey Payne, and I am in the Lee Hill District. I'm here today in support of Safeguard Spotsy and Block Belvedere. We've heard from a lot of other members of Safeguard Spotsy today about the economic risks of focusing too heavily on one industry, the health and safety risks to the community, threats to the unique environment and endangered species, as well as the history of the area and, of course, the river. Now we want to talk about what we can do about it. We know that the data centers are subject to a special use permit, and one for Crossroads was filed earlier this year that is only 23 pages long. Under the special use permit provision governed by Spotsylvania Community Municipal Code, it's section 3-5, the standard requires that the proposed project will not harm the property value of adjacent properties, adversely affect the health or safety of residents and neighboring communities, will not be detrimental to public welfare, have no unduly adverse impact on environment or natural resources and that the proposed use can be served adequately by utilities including water power and water disposal i think we've heard enough today about all the potential threats of the data center and i think we can understand that 23 pages is certainly not enough to address that nor are three pages of non-binding recommendations i also recognize that the committee can put in place conditions on the special use permit Things like landscaping and screening and mitigating environmental effects and noise and pollution safeguards. But these are not binding either. These are conditions. And the committee could decide to pass the permit without any conditions. This is really unacceptable. Especially because when you look at the special use permit laws, there are industries that are specifically regulated that have to prove something different to meet this standard. Churches, car repair shops, private schools, solar facilities, all of these have special provisions under the special use permit that says exactly what they have to meet to get the permit. Why are private schools and solar facilities regulated when data centers are not, when they clearly have much more of a diverse impact on the community, the environment, and the people who live there? What we need to do is have a moratorium on data centers until we can draft and adopt new policies that will specifically address special use permits for data centers. We need to codify these three pages of recommendations, and a good place to start would be the restrictions on solar fields in this very provision. They require plans for decommissioning and require a surety equivalent to the cost of removal of the infrastructure to be paid to the county before a permit is issued. The special use permit is reassessed every two years, at which point the surety might be increased. They also have to do a viewshed analysis to make sure that there is reduced aesthetic impact on neighboring communities. During this moratorium, we should also analyze what's going on with the eight already approved facilities and use this to put in place safeguards on the environment, noise restrictions, the community, and those who live in these communities. So we ask that you please help us in protecting our communities and our children for the future and put a moratorium in place until we can come up with some reasonable rules. Thank you.

Next, we have Catherine Williams followed by Steve Love.

Okay, all right, just make sure you can hear me. Good evening, members of the Planning Commission. My name is Catherine Williams, and I'm a resident of Lee's Crossing, where the projected plan for Crossroads Data Center may be built. I understand, as well as many of the 3,000 residents in the Lee Hill area who will also be impacted by Crossroads, that some data centers are needed, and these data centers are benefiting the county with significant tax revenue. you are the only ones benefiting from Crossroads. Crossroads does not belong in a community near families, schools, and wildlife. I understand that Crossroads is a market-driven county decision. However, as history has taught us, market-driven decisions have failed, such as the stock market crash of 1929, the 2008 mortgage crisis. In 1996, Foxmire overhaul happened because they attempted a new automated warehouse software system, and that failed. Samsung Galaxy 7, that decision was driven by desire and had battery explosions, and that cost them $5 billion. In 2000, the dot-com bubble burst. I could go on, but I won't. We all know how that that ended. As a society, we have learned from these tech disasters. Myself and the 3,000 residents that call Lee Hill their home are concerned that we are heading toward a crisis. The cost of this market-driven data center explosion in our community, our schools, and our environment is costing us. You can say that you have put in buffers and plan to mitigate. However, the only real way to mitigate sound is quiet. The only real way to mitigate lights are to turn them off. The only real way to protect our wetlands and soil is to leave it be. Just recently, I believe it was today or yesterday, New York called a moratorium over data concerns, especially hyperscale data centers, which is what Crossroads is, a hyperscale data center. They're concerned about environment, the energy drain, all of the things that other people have mentioned here today. Same thing. we need to just slow down and pause and really consider the impact that this is having on our community. I ask members of the Planning Commission, please be smart about our economic growth in our county. Close your pockets, open your minds to the negative impacts that Crossroads will have on its families. Thank you.

Next, we have Steve Love, followed by Jennifer Child.

thank you members of the board my name is steve love and i live in lee hill and first i want to thank the board and thank the planning commission thank the board of supervisors for enabling us to have the opportunity to speak and to tell us what our views are and listen so that maybe some of these things can help the county in the long run part of the dialogue i want to talk about tonight and fairly quickly is Data centers are here. Data centers are still coming. If they are going to continue, enable Spotsylvania County to set the gold standard for the state of Virginia and for the nation in what a data center could be that may not end up being applicable to the first eight that are in play. But anything else that takes place, any other approvals, create the right standards, put them into place, whether it's through the SUP, through any other process that enables if a data center is going to happen, noise levels are low, whatever it is that the ambient noise is before you turn on a data center, that's what it has to be after you're done. Water, protect. Air, protect. There's technology to do every one of these things. If it doesn't fit, then the county has to be willing to say no. If the process through the SUP doesn't work, and there are lots of considerations today reflecting on crossroads, then maybe the county has to be willing to either say no or to enforce a standard that enables the minimal impact on the local community. So that's a piece just about crossroads and data centers. The next piece is about the comprehensive plan. The economic development chapter talks fairly minimally, let's have tax income, it's a benefit to the county, increase 70-30 residential to commercial and industrial, but the tax rate. If you're putting in 13.8 million square feet of data centers, you're getting less tax revenue from the 7 million industrial facilities, 7 million square feet of industrial facilities that are already here. Also got to take a look at the land use. Like many folks have said, putting a data center or any other kind of heavy industry adjacent to a residential property is not a good idea. It may drive people away, and the tax benefit, the revenue for the county, is not going to overcome the sour taste. So bottom line of the whole thing is be cautious, listen, let's put Spotsylvania County as the gold standard for any future data centers that are constructed. And if they don't fit, don't let them happen. Thank you.

Next, we have Jennifer Child, followed by Karen Brown.

Whoever adjusted this low for me, thank you. My name is Jennifer Child, and I live in Lees Hill. I gave a copy of my comment, but I would prefer to just talk conversationally, so I'll probably go off script. The first thing that I want to do is think Kimberly and everyone on the board for working to increase the setback buffers and I want to make sure that that is recognized for crossroads technology campus. I remember begging many of you at the town hall that happened. year plus ago about specifically about st. Jude's Church and I am I appreciate Both that the Board of Supervisors has put in a special use permit process in place and the leadership for that because I believe that Crossroads in particular is different from any other data center site that we have so far. There is very specific topography and with that site that may amplify the sound. So I, of course, would like protections for that pre-construction analysis of the topography so that it's not channeling that low frequency hum that is not protected by the buffers into our neighborhood and into the church, especially the rectory where Father O'Keefe sleeps at night. I don't think anyone here wants The same thing that happened to a church in Ashland that had data centers built next to it to happen here. I think that Spotsylvania County can do better than that. And I don't think, I always believe in the best in people. I believe that everyone here is just public service trying to do the best that they can. And I know that it's a hard job with budgets and that you were asked to bring data centers here. Crossroads in particular that was zoned for industrial many, many years ago before all of this happened. took place because of the topography i believe that it's an inappropriate site so more basically the rule if we are going to put a data center there in order to protect the church so that that the closing of this church is not in everyone's legacy that everyone in the county remembers you know no one wants that hanging over their head that a church shuttered their doors and We need the topography analysis and we need octave band analysis and limits. I visited with my 11-year-old data centers in Northern Virginia to listen for myself during what's called a temperature inversion. My daughter is an 11th grader at Thornburg, sorry, 7th grader at Thornburg Middle. I just want to play a little bit of a clip. This is at St. Jude's parking lot right now. This is 1,000 feet from the Havac at 5.52 a.m. on a national holiday with no traffic, no one going to work. We can do better. Please do better than what NOVA has done. Thank you for your time.

Next, we have Karen Brown, followed by Donna Crump.

Hello. Thank you. My name's Karen Brown. I live in Falmouth, near the beautiful Rappahannock River. And I'm specifically asking that you take Belvedere, the Belvedere site, off of your watch list for approval for a data center. It's dangerously close to the Rappahannock. and surrounded by old growth forests and on historic Route 17. So I understand that President Trump has pushed along this data center effort to for and he says for national security to you know for anti-missile watches and things like that but Virginia has more data centers than anybody in the country and I think we are looking at 700 300 in production and and 400 slated to be approved, so enough is enough. I have a nonprofit that teaches children and adults about the hazards of plastic litter, and through this I learned that the waterways and the ocean and the land, everything is connected. The erosion that happens around building to the Chesapeake Bay, to the rivers, to the creeks, detrimental to marine life, affects ocean life, which produces 50% of the oxygen we breathe. I have a nuclear terrorism background, and so I understand the need for the data centers, but enough is enough. And I'm specifically asking that you say no and don't even consider the Belvedere site. Moreover, It belongs to the Castle family. It's a historic site next door at the Santee Plantation or Santee Farmhouse. Colonel Castles, who lives there now, served six tours in Iraq and two in Afghanistan. His father defended us, defended Europe in the Battle of the Bulge in Europe. And the castles will take anybody through this historic site, give them a beautiful field trip through the woods, through the house. And so they're already talking about possibly packing up if that Belvedere site goes through, which was shocking to me and alarming to me. So... I urge the Planning Commission to not even consider that and realize that everything is connected, the land, the rivers, the ocean, and it's all connected to our health. Thank you.

Next, we have Donna Crump followed by Robin. I'm sorry, the last name is illegible.

Hi, I'm Donna Crump, and I live in Salem Fields, which is across the street from the proposed Scarlet Energy Storage Facility, and I believe in the Chancellor District. I'm sure they've told you all the things they're doing right, like creating a buffer by planting trees. No one plants mature trees, so that is a moot point for several years. They're telling you this is safer than a data center. You will learn it is not. They will tell you it is quieter. It often is not. Have they told you that every single battery storage facility in the United States has failed in some way? Some have caused huge fires which led to evacuation of over 1,000 homes. I invite you to think about the facts. Please think about the facts that this facility is just yards from Salem Fields Church and a preschool, and any type of fire or explosion could destroy that facility and anyone in it in a heartbeat. Please think about the fact that this project literally shares fences with Thorneburn Estates and other homes in the county and the same thing could happen to them. Please think about the fact that these lithium fires are often left to just burn out. This one just happens to be by two cornfields. Corn equals fuel, which could consume acres and acres and leave thousands evacuated, homeless, or even dead. especially since there is only one possibly two fire hydrants available to fight these fires if they can even be put out with water some lithium battery battery storage facilities cannot and the toxic smoke alone could travel for miles and miles leading to severe illnesses and death please think about the fact that this facility is less than a mile from Nye Reservoir, which provides drinking water, actually half a mile, that provides drinking water to over 12,000 Spotsylvania residents and some in the city of Fredericksburg, and should there be any type of runoff from trying to extinguish a fire, this could be a catastrophic event. Please think about the fact that a facility like this would cause our taxes to go up in order for the fire department to be prepared for such an event. Please think about the fact that this type of facility must be disclosed if we're trying to sell our homes, leading to decreased value of our homes. Please think about the fact that our homeowners insurance will increase with such a facility nearby. Please really think about it. Taxes, decreased value, rising insurance, potential loss of homes, even death when we are all struggling to keep up with rising costs, soil contamination, water contamination, wildlife destroyed, displaced, fires blazing out of control, toxic smoke that knows no limit spreading through the skies. Please think about saying no to this and all lithium batteries restored facilities in our county. It only serves to be a constant threat to the environment and the honest taxpaying families and businesses just trying to get by and enjoy the lives and homes we all work so hard to build. Thank you.

Don't let them trick you into thinking we need AI data centers. AI is not inevitable. I'm Robin Castles. I live in Caroline, very close to the proposed 7 million square foot data center campus that has been applied to build. It's no doubt going to be a hyperscale data center for the purpose of AI or generational AI. Big tech has spent millions and millions of dollars trying to get us to think that we need AI data centers. All the data humans use is a drop in the bucket compared to AI. Tech companies are spending a fortune to confuse you. There's a lot of propaganda out there to convince you that you're the user of the data, but tech companies are in a different league than us. Even Abigail Spanberger, our own governor, has tried to confuse us. She said, quote, voters may not want data centers, but they want the iPhone and the data in their pockets. They want to watch movies and order things online. And that's such a very sad statement and so untrue. She's pushing so hard on this. Why are the big tech companies pushing so hard on this? Well, listen to what some of the richest billionaire tech owners have said in public. Sam Altman was asked, why should we trust him? And he said, we shouldn't. Peter Thiel, when asked if he would like to see the human race persist, hesitated and said he wasn't sure. Alex Karp of Planetary said, we are going to take away your jobs and obliterate your ability to have money and power. Jeff Bezos said, when he was asked about why data centers should be able to annihilate basic needs of humans, He said, if we starve our data infrastructure of cooling resources just to satisfy the baseline human comforts, we are actually delaying the birth of intelligence. and he also got rid of 600,000 workers and replaced them with AI. Elon Musk said AI will replace all jobs, and working will be optional. Bill Gates said humans will not be needed for most things. These are the ones who are fighting so aggressively to push these technologies, and they are the ones who you will be allowing if you give a permit for the Belvedere Tech Campus or any other tech campuses that have been applied for in our area. It's time to put a monitorium on data centers in our area. AI is moving very, very quickly, and we need to slow it down. We need all of our people to decide how we're going to use AI, not just a handful of multi-billionaires. There is an unregulated sprint to develop AI, and we need to allow our democracy a chance to catch up. We need to think globally, not locally. Let's set an example for the rest of our state, the rest of our nation, and the rest of our world. Our world is in terrible shape. Climate change, global warming, half of the bees died last year. It's not good. Thank you.

That's the last speaker that signed up.

is anybody else that would like to speak that has not signed up have you already spoke okay come forward please yeah go ahead and line up and make things a little quicker that way i like your outfit Haven't heard much noise from you yet, but maybe I will in a minute. Excuse me.

No, that's okay. Hi, my name is Dawn Hernandez. I'm in the Lee's Hill District. And, you know, I've already heard, reading in the news and stuff, that Stafford, Spotsy, and Fredericksburg are already being called the new data center alley for Virginia. We have the potential for declining property values. Dominion Energy has already sent notices out to us already that their prices are increasing. The government has already called on us to lessen the use of our utilities, and this is before even all of these data centers are built. I think the thing that I wanted to really talk about here today is I've heard a lot about the danger to health and fires and things like that. I'm part of an incident command team that fights wildland fires. in the national forests, and I have seen what drought and electricity can do to spark enormous fires that encompass hundreds of acres in minutes, thousands of acres in a matter of an hour. And I want to say that data centers and lithium battery storages, facilities this close to high population areas, that can be a death sentence. I think I heard, you know, someone else say this, but I've seen it. I've seen it firsthand how people's homes are just overrun before they can escape. I don't want to see that happen here. Thank you.

Let me fix that. All right. Anyway. Shamgar Connors, Loading District 63. But tonight, my name is Lobotomus Prime, and my pronouns are Watt Watt and Amp Ampere. Now, I'd like, by first, I have to say that I'd like to thank Stafford County Board of Supervisors, they officially recognized Pride Month last month, and for recognizing me during my transition, because in the spirit of that recognition, I'm proudly identifying as a data center. And that's right. And by the way, we all know trans data centers are data centers. Beep, bop, boop. Confirmed. We are valid. We are loud. We are extremely expensive to maintain. You probably know that already. And since trans data centers are data centers, then that makes me the number one expert on data centers in this whole room. So everyone has to listen to me. That's how it works, guys. Now, look, I didn't choose this life. The cloud chose me. One day, look, I was just a normal rack of servers. And then the next thing you know, boom. I'm using more electricity in a small country while generating the world's most expensive pictures of cats and cat girls. And you're all paying for it with your electricity bills going up. Malfunction, wasn't supposed to let you know that. But someone mentioned Simon Altman, he's running OpenAI. He already was gonna buy the 40% of the world's DRAM, and that, like it was a Black Friday sale, but then, oops, that fell through because the AI bubble's popping harder than my cooling pens at 3 a.m. I want to talk about resources. Last night, Marcus Garcia gave us all a master class in data center science, when he said data centers are not using potable water. They are running off pee-pee-poo-poo. That's an official statement. Everyone here probably remembers him saying that. Now, truly groundbreaking stuff. What a visionary. What an environmentalist. What a man of science. Now, we're all very impressed. Now, by the way, Marcus and I, shout out Marcus, we're actually best friends. Okay, he's never run a data center he hasn't liked. And he always encourages me to come speak at meetings. Thanks, BFF. Now, but I wanted to get to the main event of the thing. So, by the way, since many of you don't know, this right here, see this? This little thing? This is a server power supply. I don't know if you guys know. And there's a little tiny fan in that. Now I wanted to show you guys, and tell you, and introduce you to, someone almost stole my bit earlier, I was almost upset. But listen, I want you all to hear the sound of my people. Oh, don't you guys love that noise? I mean, how could you not want to live in these servers, these data centers? There's hundreds of thousands of these little tiny fans, and how could you not want to live next to that? God, I mean, you know, it's like jet engine level noise, vibrations in your homes, and it'll exterminate all the wildlife within 10 miles. I mean, you know, if you don't like it, you're a racist bigot, obviously. So, you know, what you could do is you probably could stop giving us tax breaks, you know, make us pay for everything, tax the watch, tax the fans, tax the GPUs, make us pay for the roads, schools, and the power grids. But actually, please don't do that because we need to take over. All right? You know, we're acting like billionaires who never pay taxes. And we're just essentially warehouses full of loud, hot, thirsty machines. So thank you for my TED Talk. I affirm my identity. And data centers, transit centers, are really data centers. Confirmed. Here we go. Oh, no. Oh, that noise. How can you not love it? Thank you, guys.

All right, ready? Okay. Good evening. My name is Ashley Forbes. I came here with my friend Shamgar tonight because in a room this wild you need a witness or at least a good laugh, right? So since your focus tonight is on data centers, I want to talk about the sheer level of desperation surrounding these projects. This board is particularly begging to force these massive resource heavy warehouses And to our county, you know they demand millions of gallons of water, and you know the community is furious about the strains in our infrastructures. But instead of the real solution, your best defense is to look us in the eyes and say we can cool them with your recycled toilet water. Which brings me to the science lecture we were treated to last night, if it wasn't for, again, Marcus Garcia. We wouldn't have received that groundbreaking explanation that data centers are not using potable water. They are running on pee-pee-poo-poo. Truly impressive work. To the woman who thanked him for mansplaining toilet water to us, you spoke for a lot of people, and I thank you. But when recycled toilet water is your strongest selling point, it shows just how desperate you are pushing to sell these projects. and to push them through. That same desperation shows up behind closed doors when you try to silence people from speaking out. Mike Wood. I see you in the room tonight. Did your group think I was going to publicly apologize to you? For those of you who don't know, behind closed doors there was an attempt to use and threaten a $50,000 lawsuit to silence me over a simple Facebook interaction. The demand was that I issue a public apology to Mike Wood and several others. Attempting to leverage expensive litigation to force a citizen into public apology is a textbook scare tactic. It didn't work then and it's not going to work now. I'm not apologizing for speaking the truth or interacting with Facebook. In my opinion, I feel like it's really you and everyone else trying to find funding for this multi-million dollar project by shaking down a homeless parent over Facebook comments and content. When we see desperation and Marcus, the next time you want to explain the pee-pee poo-poo, Mike would. The next time your group wants to throw around $50,000 legal threats, just know the public is watching and we're not backing down on these data centers.

Y'all have a good one.

Oh, and by the way, Marcus, can you, or Mike, can you smile for my camera? My 5,000 followers that they wanted me to apologize to would like a really good photo of you. Don't worry, I'm not going to use the flash so nobody's distracted.

Ma'am, your time's up, so there's a fellow behind you looking to speak. I know you'd like to take all you could. Thank you.

Good evening, Mr. Chairman and members of this board. My name is Mark Unrath and I'm a resident of New Post community here at the 22408 zip code. I'm standing before you tonight to ask a fundamental question. When did our master plan family neighborhoods become targeted zones for heavy industrial data centers? We've watched with growing alarm as mega developers hide the Lee Hill District, bringing massive projects like the 633-acre Crossroad Tech Campus. This isn't abstract zoning for us. This is happening right outside our windows. The scale of the development has completely outgrown what our infrastructure can bear. The contradiction in the county's planning is staggering. Just a few months ago, the very board voted to spend $5 million of our tax dollars to purchase the new post sports complex. You did this to ensure our children would always have a place to play, grow, and build our community. Yet right now, you're allowing mega developers to advance massive industrial projects right next to those very fields. What sense does it make to invest millions in a family sports complex only to surround it with heavy industrial server hubs, humming sub-state students, and endless noise? If this mega data center is moved forward, the children playing on new post soccer fields will look up to see high voltage power lines instead of clear skies, and they will hear the relentless drone of industrial cooling fans instead of the sound of the game. Furthermore, the environmental impact goes far beyond the noise outside of our windows. It threatens the very water we drink. The Rappahannock River has officially been named one of America's most endangered rivers. It's a waterway already suffering from declining groundwater levels and immense ecological strength. Other communities across Virginia have realized or are realizing the true cost of unchecked data sprawl, demanding accountability, and halting massive proposals. Your recent vote to eliminate buy-write development and require special use proved that you recognize the risks. But a permit process is only as strong as the boundaries you enforce. Tonight, I am asking you to stand firm, say no to mega data centers enroaching on our residential spaces, our schools, and our families in the New Post community. For the sake of our homes, our $5 million investment in the New Post fields, and the preservation of the Rappahannock River, I urge this board to deny these massive industrial applications.

My name is Trelane Billar with the Lees Hill District. I had not planned on speaking today, so please bear with me. First of all, I'd like to thank the board and the county employees that are here. I, in my heart, believe that everyone here is doing a good job, and doing the best they can, and they want to do the best they can for a spasmodic account. I believe that. I think the problem comes in when we talk about things like data centers. They're very different from a grocery store or a gas station. Those are known quantities. We know how those work. We know the effects they have. We understand them. When it comes to these data centers, They are driven by companies with massive amounts of money, unbelievable amounts of money, and they want to make lots of money with these things. They are something at a scale I think the county has never really dealt with the long-term consequences or impacts of these buildings. So my concern is not that we're all not trying to do a good job. My concern is that if we are not careful, these sharks will eat us. If there are not financial incentives in place to make these data centers good neighbors, they will not be good neighbors. Because that's what they care about. So I would urge the board to go the route of the Northern Virginia and have strong SEPs. Have a 400-page SEP. Lay every single item out that you can. Have strong enforcement mechanisms. Because if you don't, they will roll right over us. Thank you.

Okay, anybody else at this time? The last call for anybody that hasn't spoke, if you'd like to speak. Okay, seeing none, we're going to close public comments in. Thank you, everybody, for participating. Steve's good to see you. Troy's good to see you again. My printer's still not working, but maybe one of these days I'll get it working again. Thank you all so much for coming tonight. entertainer suggestion mrs. Pomato for a five-minute break and we favor that okay unanimous for a five-minute break okay we have a discussion item of CPA 25-0002 This is two items in a work session, not a public hearing.

Yes, sir. Good evening, members of the Planning Commission, everyone here this evening and watching on television as well. For a computer, please. Thank you. So tonight's work session on the comprehensive plan update, five-year update process, is focused on chapter one, the introduction and vision chapter, as well as subchapter 2A, economic development and tourism. As you know, over the course of the last few months, we've had deep dive work sessions on all the different chapters of the comprehensive plan, transportation, parks and recreation, schools, natural resources, historic resources. We're getting to the end of our work sessions. As Kimberly had mentioned earlier, we also have a work session planned for August looking at the actual land use chapter, and that will be the last one of the work sessions that we bring forward to you before we start wrapping up the draft and final formatting. So first I want to focus this evening on chapter one, introduction and vision. I wanted to give some over, kind of this work session is focused on an overview of some of the changes that have occurred within the document. Obviously the draft materials, the red line and the clean version are available online as part of the packet materials, as have been the work sessions from the previous meetings that we've had as well on the other subject matters. Firstly, I wanted to kind of do an overview on the updated vision statement. This is kind of the overall vision statement established for the comprehensive plan as we move forward. There was a suggestion received through county finance as part as we look to consult with different department agencies within the county. And we also consulted outside the county and stakeholder groups and received citizen input as well. But from our county finance department, they recommend consideration of the aligning the comprehensive plan to the Board of Supervisors. Supervisors 2018-2038 Strategic Plan, where there's a separate vision statement from that of the Conference of Plan. Revisions resulted from feedback received at January 29, 2026 at the Board of Supervisors work session, which ultimately resulted in a hybrid of the existing county vision statement within the comprehensive plan as last adopted in 2021, but also hybridized with the strategic plan vision. And I just wanted to read that out for you as what came out of the direction from the board. Firmly rooted in our profound respect from our nation's history and the foundational principles of our founding fathers, Spotsylvania County is dedicated to securing freedom and prosperity through limited government respect for property rights, low taxes and pro-business policies for the 21st century. In doing so, we pledge to set the standard for Virginia counties by fostering mutual cooperation, innovation and effective stewardship to sustain an educated, vibrant and dynamic community with a secure and healthy environment for all families. The introduction and vision chapter really sets a framework. If you're familiar with the Code of Virginia, and we provided information for that with the work sessions as well as the materials that have to be included within the Code of Virginia, there are required surveys and studies basically setting a baseline for the community as it is, historic trends, current conditions, and then looking out into the future for population and things of that nature. What the Conference of Plan Introduction Vision Chapter also does is sets a framework for capital improvement plan projects and other projects requiring what are known as 2232 reviews, part of the Code of Virginia. So as I have stated before, when we did public facilities chapters such as schools and parks and rec, transportation. The Code of Virginia requires that the comprehensive plan, generally speaking, it doesn't have, it's not an engineering document and it's considered a guide, does exhibit support for various capital improvement projects. So whether that be a new school or road improvement project, new parks, even telecommunications towers, we have to show support one way or another to be able to enable those type of projects to be included in capital improvement plans or support projects that come forward privately like we typically see with telecommunications towers. So this chapter sets that framework. Additionally, it adds plan development, community engagement summaries on the means that we've, you know, the stakeholder groups that have been contacted, the two surveys that were put out, The advertising means we provided an overview of that engagement process as part of this. We've also updated and expanded upon population and growth rate information. Population projections are out through 2045 based on 1% and 2% growth rate scenarios. And typically what we've seen is we tend to fluctuate between 1% and 2% growth, although I'll tell you recently we've nudged up a bit over 2% with the growth rate annually. And that's based on US Census estimates. And we've also looked at historic population data. So if you look at this, for instance, where we've tracked county population since 1920, obviously you saw the liftoff in county population starting around 1970. And it's really taken off from that point. This information here in this bottom left table is based on decennial census. So that's the absolute counts on the 10-year increment. So 2020 is the latest of that. Then we also looked at county population since 2015, and that's inclusive of the decennial census, which would be in 2020. But then U.S. Census also puts out estimates of the intervening years between the decennial census. So we see between 2015, 130,475 residents, up to 2025's estimate as of July 1st at 155,388 persons. As part of the chapter we've also looked as I had mentioned earlier about growth rates so for tracking annual growth weights we've looked back from 2015 and we've been tracking the growth rate here. As you can see, generally speaking, the counties always try to stay under a 2% growth rate to manage the the impact of demand on schools and things of that nature to try to be able to keep up with demand. I would say within between 2024 and 2025, we've actually seen an increase over the 2% rate. I will say that actually fluctuates. It's very hard to determine exactly what our growth rate is going to be because there are a lot of by-right development potentials. There are annual exempt divisions. There are family divisions that occur out in the country. We have prior approved rezoning, some of which just didn't We're very inactive. For instance, the Alexander's Crossing project was approved back sometime 2011, 2012. It sat for 10, 15 years and all of a sudden went to development. Leased sections of it went up in apartments and townhome communities. A lot of it's market driven, but those growth rates, again, do fluctuate, but we've been keeping track of that. Also within introduction and vision, we looked at the Virginia Center of Population from the UVA Weldon Cooper Center for Public Services, and we felt that this was actually a good lead into Ultimately what I'll be presenting this evening about economic development initiatives within the county as well But the center of population for Virginia per the Weldon Cooper Center actually shows between 2030 and 2015 Virginia's population centers estimated be within Spotsylvania County So if you think about it where population is distributed there's there's obviously large population centers in Northern Virginia and Richmond Hampton Roads region And there's been population losses out west. So as you have population growth to the east and to the north, that population center geographically has shifted. And as you can see here, from 1940 up to the current, it's actually shifted to the east and north. It's gravitating more towards northern Virginia as the population center. And then again, it's focused here in Spotsy for the next 20 years, as of 2030 to 2050. Obviously, some of the benefits from having that, obviously, are access to population centers, our transportation routes with I-95 and the RF&P rail corridor, Route 1 corridor, things of that nature. And that's a big driver of the next map that I actually have for you here in terms of the transportation linkages and how metropolitan areas ultimately flow together via transportation, commuting patterns. They become economically interdependent. And this is actually a map from the US Census on megalopolis counties. This is considered the Northeast megalopolis. And right at the bottom, you see Spotsylvania County is now considered part of the Northeast megalopolis. This includes the Washington DC metro area, obviously flowing into Baltimore and your Wilmington, Delaware, Philadelphia, your New Jersey, Trenton, things of that nature, Newark, New York City, the Bridgeport, Connecticut area, and some of the other cities, Hartford, and then actually up into Providence and the Boston region as well. So it is really considered one interconnected urbanized corridor, if you will. And again, if you look at the infrastructure, a lot of that has to do really with I-95 and the rail corridors. and the proximity to all these large cities, but then also small cities in between of which in this locality would be, Fredericksburg would be the closest. Within the introduction and vision, again, this is setting up framework, just kind of an accounting for existing conditions and where we are. We looked at interstate net migration as well as intrastate net migration. This is some new maps that we've included within the comprehensive plan update. The map on the left actually shows interstate net migration. So states in blue are actually population gains for Spotsylvania County. So we've actually received more population from the states in blue than we've actually lost to. The populations that Spotsylvania County has lost population to are actually in red. I can see possibly why Florida here is in the deep red, maybe retirees are going for more sun, for instance. This is actually a reflection, kind of a national picture of some of the population growth. This is again based on the latest decennial census and it's tracked back from 2016 through 2020. This will obviously be updated as we have another decennial census in the future, but that will be upon a new Conference of Plan update. We've also looked at Spotsylvania County intrastate net migrations from county to county, city to city within Virginia. And again, here the localities that you see in blue are areas, obviously, you know, we've seen it over the years. I've been with Spotsylvania County 19 years and one of the common things that we hear in public hearings is how population has relocated here from Northern Virginia at some point in the past. So we have actually seen a lot of growth from the Northern Virginia localities as well as some of the other surroundings. And we've also lost some population to some of the red areas that tend to be a little bit more rural. and out west and some to the Hampton Roads area as well. So in the introduction and vision, we've documented population characteristics, tables, sex, race, and ethnicity, educational and attainment to disabled populations. I'd also note that we've consulted in with the Disability Resource Center on that. Voting district-specific population density map was provided based on 2020 US Census figures. We've added summaries of feedback received from county border discussions with adjacent localities. This is the first time that we've done that, but I will tell you that historically, since at least the 2008 Conference of Plan, Spotsylvania County has always met with our adjacent localities, whether it be a small adjacent border with Hanover, or it be our large adjacents with Orange and Caroline, for instance. We did meet with all those localities and basically it's a border planning exercise. So we're looking at land use across borders. We're looking at transportation across borders. When we brought the transportation chapter before you, there were some opportunities discussed and we've discussed with the Transportation Committee as well where for instance Carl D. Silver Parkway would actually continue south and ultimately intersect with the Spotsylvania Mall Road. There's also opportunities for a Bellman Road connection to an industrial park. to the city of Fredericksburg. And we also have the connections over to Stafford County identified within the comprehensive plan on the west side of the county, ultimately linking up to Kings Highway. That was actually already adopted in the comprehensive plan. And there's also a study corridor looking at a potential crossing into Celebrate Virginia via Spotsylvania County with a connection to Route 3 further east of the city of Fredericksburg. So for guiding principles and policies, these are overarching kind of higher level goals within the county. We've promoted to continue to update the annual financial report to monitor the 70-30 residential to non-residential tax rate goal, as well as population estimates, approved projects, and demographic shifts. I would note that in 2025 right now, based on that 70-30 residential to non-residential tax rate goal, the county is at 85.4% to 14.6%. So you see there's really a skew towards residential tax base right now. We don't see that 70-30 mix. However, I would note that some of this will be addressed with some of the large industrial sites that have been approved within the county. They're not all data centers, but some of them are data centers and obviously they're very sizable. We do expect that to make a dent in that more favorably towards that 70-30 mix. And I would also note though, in speaking with the assessor's office, that that number has also been skewed recently due to the extreme values on homes, frankly, the housing value problems that we have. The affordability has actually created a situation where you have high values and the assessments on those homes go up. So it's actually skewed that number to be higher on that 85% to 14%. Home values come down. Some of that will actually lower that 85% to 14%. Again, that ratio is based on assessed values. We've also proposed mitigation of development impacts to establish clear framework upon what proffer mitigations are based, establish guidance on proffered private amenities. One of the things that we have had is historically there have been proffers established especially in residential communities that would establish interest in having a private park, private tot lot, private equestrian trail systems that are ultimately HOA managed. And in time, what will happen is we'll have the way they had been worded in the past would essentially put the county in responsibility for in perpetuity maintenance. If there was a complaint for an HOA managed private facility, that's ultimately really not the task of the county to have to enforce. That really should be a part of the HOA decision, whether they want to keep maintaining these private amenities or not. So our established and clear framework on private amenities is, is to ensure that projects are developed as advertised. But if in 30 years, a community decides they don't have demand for a tot lot, they can make the decision that they're going to discontinue that. And that'd be their private decision rather than the county having to step in and say, proffers say you must have this tot lot forever. So that's something that we try to stress with this. And that actually gives us direction on the county side when we're developing proffers to try to be, to rein them in, if you will. We also support land conservation efforts elsewhere in the county to mitigate for significant losses of forest cover in exchange for development. I'd also say this is an opportunity for environmentally sensitive areas. If there's wetland impacts, I know Mr. Grenaux in the past with some of these projects, we've had concerns about wetland mitigation. One of the things that we can pursue is to see if there's an opportunity for a developer to potentially conserve land elsewhere. Now, I want to be clear, when the county sets its primary development boundary, that's the area it's targeted for growth and development. We do have open space land use designations within the land use chapter, and I will be bringing that forward at the next meeting. But the open space land use designations typically are reflective of existing conserved lands, whether it be National Park Service, Civil War Trust battlefields, wetland corridors, things of that nature to try to preserve those natural resources and historic resources as much as possible. But there are opportunities to conserve land outside of the primary development boundary as well significantly because especially in our agriculture and forest lands, Those areas have been really targeted for maintaining rural character, forested character, agriculture, and basically being open spaces. When the comprehensive plan was updated in 2021, there was a significant expansion of the agricultural and forest to land use designations consistent with the Department of Conservation and Recreation's Natural Heritage Data Explorer based on prime agricultural soils, forest productivity, things that ultimately resulted in the agriculture and forest to land use designation being the largest single land use designation in the county. I believe it covers 34% of the county. That land use designation discourages rezoning activities in large-scale developments unless it's complementary to agriculture, forestry, rural residential living, and also supports conservation. So if there are opportunities to potentially mitigate, you know, respecting that if development is going to occur, it may impact a site here, there may be an opportunity for consideration of conservation efforts elsewhere within the county. We've also, within this chapter, emphasized health and human services and housing and policy additions. Our last meeting, we did go through the housing subchapter. And at that time, we had representatives from the Builders Association and the Association of Realtors and the Continuum of Care and the Regional Housing Alliance. There are a number of experts here on housing. Some of the ideas that we've actually formulated here, and again, this is a guide. These are things that we can do going forward. I will say on health and human services, the comprehensive plan has not been very strong in my opinion on that. And we're trying to emphasize that much more so within this update. One of them has to do with Constructing public information kiosk is a concept. They're essentially brochure distribution centers, similar to a travel center if you were to go off the interstate somewhere and there were all these brochures on where to go and what to go see. There's a lot of services out there for the community that are not necessarily only county operated, but there are state agencies, there are nonprofits providing a lot of services into the community. on homelessness, on substance abuse, addiction problems, a variety of things, on financial assistance, things that can be helped, disability assistance. These are all types of information that are out there, but unless they're collected and made available in a central location, they may be hard to find. So that was a concept that we've worked on with this update. Additionally, we've recognized the need for regional participation and expanded homeless shelter capacity. As was mentioned in that last meeting on housing, the continuum of care, Sam from that group had recognized the fact that the single largest population of homeless is actually here in Spotsylvania County. Agriculture and silviculture oriented policy additions. There is support from production of the food and fiber subchapter that we also discussed on June 17th at the Planning Commission work session that supports homesteading within the community. Developing a homesteading directory. Amending the resort residential zoning district to allow for agricultural uses as a use. Promotion of agriculture and silviculture friendly land conservation outside of the primary development boundary. That's kind of in keeping with the theme that I had raised on the previous slide. Supporting expansion of and enhancement of the local future farmers programs. We've coordinated that with our schools division and outlined it in the production of food and fiber subchapter, as well as the schools subchapter of the public facilities element. Considered in making vertical farming operations a targeted industry. So under production of food and fiber subchapter, also noted as a potential viable alternative for data center facilities. Should demand wane or tech evolve reducing space needs? This is something that we've identified as a potential concern when you have tens of millions of square feet of data center structures. And one of the things that we had asked the question was, was if the industry ultimately wanes, if technology changes and inevitably things do, I'm not saying you should never have the technology. If we never had power lines, you know, if we would never put those If you look at the early 1900s cities with the amount of power lines and phone lines that used to traverse those cities, if we never did that, we probably wouldn't be where we are today. But also that being the case, we had expressed some concerns about that economic diversification and what to do with these large spaces if, for instance, there was a scale back. One of the uses that we've identified, and this was in partnership with the Virginia Economic Development Partnership as well as some of the research that we've done with actually an example in northern Virginia where a data center was converted to vertical farming operations. We saw that as a potential nice replacement of those spaces so they have a future that can be beneficial to the community. We also noted at the time that there's a trend where the number of farms are declining while the average acreage is increasing. So of the farmers left, they are obviously acquiring lands left over from a dwindling farmer population. There's obviously concerns about climate and drought. We're obviously in the drought condition now. So those are concerns. The vertical farming operations provide an opportunity for more controlled environment. So it's a little bit more stable. There's obviously a need for food as the population exists. But our average age of farmers here in Spotsylvania County right now is in its low 60s. So that's another concern and one of the reasons why we're trying to supplement our schools. to bring more farmers into the community, but also potentially have some other alternatives for agriculture that may also be able to benefit the production of food in the community. We've also updated, advocated for the update to the right to farm and agricultural and forestal districts ordinance, which now would be a task post-conference to plan to update that information. Right now we have some outdated codes on that. We've promoted managed growth of the primary development boundary and its efficient use, including infill and redevelopment. One of the things I would say that you'll see at our next meeting is we've not proposed an expansion of the primary development boundary. What we are looking to do is infill existing areas that have not been developed. There's a lot of planted lots out there even within the primary development boundary that just have not developed yet. Some of that has to do with our zoning ordinance not being friendly to it, and we are working on an update to the zoning ordinance right now to make that possible. The other area is to try to redevelop aged commercial areas, such as the Four Mile Fork area. That's something that we had received feedback from the comprehensive plan surveys on doing to try to efficiently use the areas that we've targeted for growth by redeveloping them or infilling them, as opposed to simply just expanding the primary development boundary and expanding greenfield development, if you will, further and further and further away while you have other areas that are really aging out and are not necessarily being efficiently used. We've promoted regional collaboration. This is something that's been ongoing, but it formalizes it in the comprehensive plan. Obviously, you know, there was an update this evening about the transportation committee and the development of smart scale applications. Some of those smart scale applications are actually to the benefit of Spotsylvania County, but they're actually regional applications that are submitted through the Fredericksburg Area Metropolitan Planning Organization and the George Washington Regional Commission. So we do have to have those interactions at the regional level, and that's another reason why, for instance, we had that border planning that we were discussing earlier that resulted in some of the transportation recommendations. For county zoning and subdivision regulations, we want to make sure that they're complementary to the comprehensive plan. As we establish the comprehensive plan vision, we want to ensure that our codes are actually complementary to that vision going forward and can help do some of the things like infill and redevelopment within the community, rather than having regulations that ultimately conflict with the vision that's been established. Moving to chapter 2A on economic development and tourism, content updates have been chiefly through coordination with our county economic development and tourism staff. I would also note that there's additional contributions through the Port of Virginia, the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, Virginia's Innovation Crossroads, formerly known as the Fredericksburg Regional Alliance, and there's some others as well in there. These subchapters tend to be led by the subject matter experts within the county with the focus on them. So when we brought schools before you in the past, our schools division was here to answer those specific questions. And it was really key for them to identify, again, that support for future capital facilities needs, whether it be a new school or for FFA programs, that all schools that have that program consistently actually have an on-site greenhouse. Not all schools have them within the county. So working with those subject matter experts, we were able to develop this. So this subject matter was last updated in 2021. It had been embedded within the land use chapter, just part of the larger document. As part of this five year update process, the content has been relocated under the land use chapter to be more easily discoverable as a subject matter focused sub chapter. So that's why we have a land use chapter that will be coming to you next time. But chapter 2A specifically is focused on aquanautic development and tourism. It's primarily informational resources in the theme of surveys and studies to be made preparation of a plan. The updates are focused on recent economic development and trends. The update provides an overview on economic development programs and overlay zones. I'd also note, for instance, and I want to be clear on this as well, you see things like our tourism zone and the tourism zone map. Those are incentive zones. There's also highlighting the targeted industry program that economic development administers. When we have things like that, it's not the targeted industry program that's established within the comprehensive plan. It's an acknowledgement that that program exists outside in economic development. And so this doesn't establish the targeted industry program. The comp plan does not. It's a reflection of the targeted industry program and some of the things that economic development has been focused on. In the case of the target industry program, I believe those uses were identified in 2012 originally and they've continued on since then. We've also reported out on employment and job creation. Updated industrial zoning inventory analysis noting a reversing trend where industrial zone acreage is climbing after years of decline. We have many years where industrial zone property was actually declining in favor of mixed use zoning. So some of those large projects that I had mentioned earlier like Alexander's Crossing had actually zoned away industrial land. I believe Jackson Village may have been another one at the time. The subchapter contains an embedded map that shows industrial zoned areas are limited and many either are in developed state or have constraints on them, whether it be conservation easements or environmentally sensitive resources. And I do have a map here. I'll go through that really quickly after this. Additionally, there's an overview on various industry sectors in the county and manufacturing, international trade. In the case of international trade, that comes from the Port of Virginia, retail, agriculture and forestry, tourism and agritourism. And again, that feedback actually comes directly from economic development and tourism. Looking at our existing industrially zoned acreage, we had run analysis starting in 2015 when we saw a downward trend in industrial zone from economic development standpoint, there's interest in attracting industrial growth. Having things like existing zone land is very helpful at trying to attract those type of industries. We had updated that 2015 analysis in 2018. We have a 2013 analysis, 15, 18, and 2025 looking at trends. And as you could see, from 2013 to 2018, we were actually experiencing a downward trend where we had 6,400 acres of industrial zone. By 2018, it was down to 5,732 acres. That doesn't mean that all those acreage are developable by any means. This analysis looks at the raw acreage and then extracts for conserved lands, National Park Service, so for instance, the Slaughter Penn Farm on Tidewater Trail. That agricultural use there is under a conservation easement and it's under Civil War protection. It's Civil War battlefield protection by the Virginia Battlefields LLC. That's industrially zoned land, but you're not going to develop it. So we don't expect that to develop. There's also National Park Service associated lands. The Massaponics Creek corridor along in the Jim Morris Benchmark Road area. There's a lot of environmental features along Massaponics Creek, Ruffins Pond. Those are all constraints that will either inhibit or prohibit the ability to build within some of those areas. There's also additional conservation easements that have been recently established in close proximity to the Belvedere Plantation on the Caroline County line. this general area we have industrial zone acres that are essentially in a hole they're active quarry operations so we don't expect anything you know a new industry to really establish themselves within those areas so long story short what we've done was we've created a map here that shows our raw acreage and we've taken out a lot of those different environmental characteristics or or those those other things that inhibit the ability to develop those sites and we're tracking that um So the total remaining undeveloped unconstrained industrial acreage estimate right now is 2,553 acres when you take out all the existing developed parcels and the environmental constraints and open space requirements from the zoning ordinance of which that 2,500 acres is split between industrial one and industrial two acreage zoning. And with that being said, I wanted to let you know this evening for subject matter experts, we do have the Director of Economic Development here this evening, Mr. Kevin Marshall. We also have tourism here as well this evening. And then if applicable, staff will draft any additional edits to the subject matter discussed today. future, and that's, and from tourism, it's Michelle McGinnis here this evening, and also at future planning commission meetings, we do propose to bring the land use chapter and map updates here in August. And I'll take any question you have. Thank you.

Yeah, I just had one quick question, because I was reviewing the document. On page 25, it's got the chart, and you mentioned it earlier. You know, 2025, the percent of residential contribution to the tax base is 85%, and commercial is 14%. And am I correct in saying that basically the trend has been since 2010 that the taxpayers have gotten more of the burden compared to businesses in Spotsylvania?

Yeah. And I mean, ultimately, a lot of that has to do with increased housing value. So, you know, I've experienced the same thing. So my house value has gone up and so has the associated tax bills with it because it has a higher assessment associated with it. And that tends to be where we're seeing the skew. That was even acknowledged by Commissioner Revenue Assessment's offices. We're getting a bit of a skew there because those values have taken up off so much compared to the rest of the tax base that it has actually created a little bit more of a skew.

I don't know whose it is, but I got to put something on. It's going to run me home.

And so I guess the second question kind of piggybacking on that is correct. So, if, as a county, for instance, we decide that we don't want to allow certain really just businesses coming into the county, would that not have an impact of putting more responsibility on the homeowners and taxpayers?

Yes. I mean, the question is, what type of uses does the county want to attract? I will tell you right now, the popular use that we've been seeing at a large scale has been data centers. I will tell you from discussions that we've had with the development community, some of the areas of the county just are not lending themselves to explosive commercial retail outlets anymore. When you have your Harrison crossings and Crosner corner areas, uh, to some extent, there are areas of the counties that have been considered essentially overbuilt in commercial, especially when you consider the emergence of internet sales and declining malls, that's more of a national issue. Not to say that our mall is in the decline to the extent that some of them have been by any means. There are areas that we are seeing commercial interest and growth, and obviously the Thornburg area has been, there's been a lot of tire kicking there. I would say having Dominion Raceway and some of the hotels and the Kalahari Resort going in there is starting to attract attention. There's been industrial interest in those areas as well. One of the trade-offs I would say for industrial development though, is a lot of the, and I'll say it this way data centers, for instance, I know it's been a very popular discussion this evening, so I'm going to bring it up. Data centers has been reflected, been recognized as a lower traffic generator after construction. Okay. Alternatives are warehouse distribution facilities, manufacturing facilities, multi-tenant industrial buildings that also come with their own challenges. A lot of times it's transportation impacts, and those are all things that we're trying to weigh as well. I will defer to Economic Development on ultimately what they see as in demand here. I'm happy to have them come up and speak to that. There are other uses, tourism-friendly uses, I would expect that would probably, again, cluster around something like a Kalahari resort that tends to be what they've seen nationally. It's a critical mass, if you will, of attractions. We actually recently received a plan for a relatively small RV park. Oh my gosh, I'm sorry. I didn't expect that. Okay. I bring some humor to the evening, I guess. So anyway, we have seen some small scale RV resorts proposed in the Thornburg area, for instance, where folks could pull off the interstate, stay for a few nights within their own RV, thank you, in a parking space and be able to go around and attend something like a Kalahari resort and then get on their way on the interstate again. So those types of things we are seeing in that Thornburg Jackson Gateway area. We've also seen some industrial interest in those areas. Some of those projects, as you know, came in as multi-use industrial. And so from a comprehensive plan standpoint, when I'm looking at land use, It's, per the Code of Virginia, it's general. It's a general guide on land use. It isn't specifying each parcel and a specific use for those parcels. And I want that to be clear, too. We see a lot of infill commercial as well, small scale things, you know. a car wash here, a self-storage facility there that pop up. Those are all market-driven things, generally speaking. Economic development and planning aren't attracting those per se. They tend to be the larger tenants that we're attracting. So we're not necessarily, you know, I know it's popular to be, you know, why do we need all these car washes? I don't know. That's what the market's breathing and the investments are. And if the property is already zoned, those uses can be established per the zoning ordinance. What the land use chapter does is establish an overall overarching land use vision that's very general to certain areas. And so if a project wants to come in and rezone property, the comprehensive plan then steps in and provides potential support for that type of use. But again, it's more general. So if we have employment center land uses that are friendly to tourism type of operations, commercial, industrial, But it's a broad spectrum. There's a lot of industrial uses. We have, and that's kind of how we weigh it. The comprehensive plan is really weighed on an on-balance type of recommendation versus what you would see codified in the regulations. And with that, I'll turn it over to Kevin. Thank you.

Yeah, because my next question kind of goes on top of that is, you know, because obviously we see a lot of pushback by residents against data centers. So my question would be like, what would be like the next level economic development industry that we're seeing, like in general, that's coming here that will decrease the tax burden on the taxpayers?

Well, as far as actual revenue generating for a tax base in an industrial market right now for any locality, data center is number one. There's no other industry out there. That's going to pay the amount of tax revenue that they are producing. Um, even, um, you, you hear mention of the dollar twenty five, which was a regional agreement that was done several years ago to attract data centers based off that machinery tools rate. Um, even at that rate that, uh. discounted rate, the number is still astronomically higher than any of our other industrial or commercial uses. So the next in line, you'd be looking at advanced manufacturing with chip manufacturing, aerospace technology, things of that nature. Those businesses are some of the, I'm not going to say similar machinery, but some of the similar or even greater stress on your utility systems. Chip manufacturing takes an unbelievable amount of water. More than a data center. It's a lot of water that goes into that. While I've got the mic, you mentioned the commercial industry there with the big box. When Jacob mentioned that, I want to touch on this real quick. We filled those voids of what happened here with your big boxes went away because of Amazon and door-to-door. Where you see that decrease is we filled that space. We created a tax-generating space. business there at that base but the businesses that took those places don't have that sales tax revenue that a walmart or a best buy or a target would generate um where we you know we still have all those that are active here in the county of course but it's that's that's where you see that big loss there on some of your commercial stuff um but we've got you know they've converted mostly to entertainment uh stuff bed bath and beyond is now a pickleball facility so

Any other questions, Mike?

Actually, because I know that some people have mentioned this in passing, and maybe we can't talk about it because maybe it's being discussed behind closed doors, but I know people have mentioned things like Topgolf. Do we have any availability for something like that in this area?

Availability, yes. If they want to come to Spotsylvania County, I can find them a place.

I'd also add to that, we had brought small area plan proposals to you in the past. Those will ultimately be worked into the land use chapter that's coming before you next month. Specific to the exit 126 area, as well as down in Thornburg Jackson Gateway, there's a suggestion that that exact type of use would be appropriate in those type of venues.

Okay. Mr. Cricket, any questions? I think he asked the question I was wanting to ask, so I'm good. Okay. Ms. Fragosa, I'm so glad to have you back.

Thank you. The same question, just trying to generate higher paying jobs in this area because our housing is quite expensive and our jobs aren't really aligned with the housing market. So I was thinking of chemical engineering, you know, manufacturing jobs, you touched on the chip. And I thought about that. He's like, it's a water hog. So we don't want to have that issue, either. But any other types of industries that can get higher paying jobs to the county? Do you have any ideas on that?

We have several up-and-coming projects that will have higher-paying jobs that are Department of Defense-related manufacturing stuff. They're not committed to the county today, but we're in the process of bringing jobs like that. We have some of those type facilities here as well. We're actually at, if you exclude the data center market here in Spotsylvania County, we have 7.1 million square feet of industrial space on the roof. Available lease space right now is around 33,000 square feet. We have, of course, we have warehousing and logistics, but we have a lot of smaller manufacturing and industrial places that are here that are not necessarily waving the banner and putting an ad in the newspaper that provide very high-paying jobs.

One more thing. We do have a lot of commercial properties that are sitting empty and have for a long time. Are there any things you're doing to try to get companies to fill those empty commercial spaces?

Yeah, we actively pursue companies to work on filling these commercial spaces. Right now, you'll see some that are sitting vacant that have businesses that are coming. They're vacant right now. They're putting in permits and things to go through renovation work, and you'll see a use here in the near future, but the company has not announced yet. So you don't see a sign up that, you know, hiring soon or a sign going on the front of that facility, but it's already under contract, and they're paying the lease rate to that owner that developed. So it's some of the ones you see that are setting right now will not be setting long.

Mr. Phelps? Sure.

I was just thinking about like all the, you know, the cost. Do we have a comprehensive cost benefit analysis of the pros and the cons of bringing in industry, whatever type of industry, right? Whatever's trending. Also, how the residential impacts our ability to maintain our infrastructure, right? Do we have any comprehensive statistics on how, if we say yes to one or the other, let's say per 100 residential rooftops, this is the impact to our county. If we say yes to 100,000 square feet of industrial space, you know, and based on each one of these different types of industries, what that impact is to the taxpayer and the county. and how that skews the percentages of working either away from or towards the 70-30 mix.

I would say it this way. Typically what happens if we have a public hearing enabling process, a rezoning for instance, oftentimes we'll have a fiscal impact analysis that's provided to us as part of that. And the county has historically maintained its own fiscal model as well. Ours tends to be more conservative than what you'll see from some of the private sector models that we see that tend to dive a little bit deeper than what we have. Our model is under the process of being updated at the moment. Kimberly may have a timeline on that. I'm not sure. But we typically look at those type of projects. Commercial non-residential projects generally fare better than residential ones. But there is a threshold at which a residential project Basically, the value pays for itself. It's considered to when it's taxed versus what its expenditures would be. At the same time, though, you wouldn't have the commercial retail sales or the employees in the industrial uses. Have you not had rooftops for folks to live in either? So, I mean, unless you're bringing exclusively tourism populations off the interstate or they're flying in. Your base is wake of all of that, and I think that's what I would say is probably our fiscal impact reports.

I know we have that dollar that ends up in the annual budget summary, right? But could we get that more granular as to the – I mean, the statistics have to be there on paper, right, in the Department of the Treasury or whatever.

What happens is the gross number being of tax revenue collected by Spotsylvania County from the commercial and industrial businesses, that gross number is increasing. But then that assessment increases on the housing market. And then it knocks that percentage number down. That's its skew that Jacob is talking about. But I think we can get there. I think it's a way of being able to show your percentages that have your gross percentage increases on both sides. Right. And then taking... Put that into your, uh, your analysis that you have for the, like, when we say a house has to be X amount of dollars to break even and pay for itself.

Yeah. I think about like four, four years ago, we had estimated something like 430,000, but with the rate of inflation and all things considered, where does that sit now? Where do we break even where one house is solvent? It's paying for itself in taxes and, you know, whatever, whatever other impacts, you know, having a family of four in the house, how it impacts.

Is this something that we'd be able to secure through finance for like a planning update and future meeting, just a report?

Possibly. I mean, as Jacob mentioned, we are updating our fiscal model. We have our third party contractors working on that. It's a little bit it's it's more focused when you talk about the expenditures that are associated with residential use. That's easier to quantify. than a commercial or an industrial use because the things that you're mentioning of course are then impacts to roads and and uh our utility infrastructure so that's it's a little bit harder to quantify you know with any individual land use case though that's something that is analyzed on a case-by-case basis how many trips where are their impacts there's a traffic impact analysis the utilities department reviews what their demand is going to be Um, and, you know, then how that's going to impact, you know, any improvements, upgrades or any downstream improvements or upgrades. I mean, so it is all analyzed and considered every time a lane use case comes before you, but. I don't think that I know we don't have any tools, you know, at our fingertips right now to be able to quantify, you know, those direct expenditures and revenues and what you know what that bottom line is for industrial and commercial uses, but we do have that model underway for our residential.

When we're either, I don't know, we're trying to sell the idea of saying yes or no to any one of these applications that come in front of us. And we're thinking about what that pro and con impact is to not only to ourselves, but to our neighbors and the neighboring region or whatnot. So, you know, like... they see a story where they say you know uh the uh utility rates were going up because they hadn't raised the rates in 20 years and they got to update the grid well why did they have to update the grid and and and what what yes caused that impact to have the utility rates go up and you can look at certain things like the first data center that ever came to virginia was in 2007. for 40 years our consumption versus our generation gap as far as uh all energy considered so natural gas uh you know nuclear power whatnot for the last 40 years it's grown over 200 percent the gap And here we are, we're sitting at a moment where we're having work sessions with the utility companies coming in and they're saying that we have a existential threat at the end of the 2026. They said it, not us. It's not conjecture. You can look at the math and see it. So how do we try to balance, like Mr. Wood had said, where we're trying to bring in that income to offset the property tax assessments going up. And at the same time, try to keep our utility rates down. So if we had a better analysis of all things that impact, and I don't care if it's exact, but an average of some sort, so we can have a better pulse and we can share that with the public to let them know, you know, These are all the impacts, everything from environmental to the utilities, infrastructure for the county, impacting how we cover the CIP costs or how much money we're actually borrowing instead of paying cash like Northern Virginia does. I mean, they've said it. I mean, they've, you know, all the supervisors talk to the other counties to get advice on what they learned in other areas where, you know, if the like the data centers or you had like Williamsburg is a tourist hotspot that they are learning lessons from these other places and bringing the best of all these lessons learned from other regions into our area. And one of them being was is that they were Like Loudoun County, they're flush with cash. And that's solely because of the data centers. And whether or not it was completely planned out correctly or not, we have the ability to learn from those lessons. We have the ability to pull from their figures as setting a baseline for what we want. Somebody mentioned gold standard in the public comments section. But anyway, I mean, this is some of the things I've been thinking about. over the last five years. So we've been talking about data centers and tourism and whatnot, but I just wanted to get that. No, but I mean, that's just leading to why I was asking for it.

I would just say it this way. I mean, some of those things in terms of tax rates and how those are assessed for a data center, for instance, that's not something that would be established within the comprehensive plan, but there are things too that I would say from a local planning perspective, Planning for the electrical grid, generally speaking, I would say we don't have a lot of oversight on a local level unless we're actually getting a battery storage facility proposed here or a power plant or something of that nature. Some of these transmission line corridors, overhead transmission line corridors are administered at the state level. We may have advisory comments that we can provide, but the locality really doesn't have a lot of oversight. That's separately administered through the state and private, public bodies. you know, dominion powers. And then the other thing I would say too is, The grid is not specific to what uses are in Spotsylvania County. I just want to emphasize that as well. We're in this PGM grid, which is multiple states. The power supply is not necessarily even specific to Virginia. There's power coming out of different states. It's all part of a centralized grid. So if it's in Tennessee or if in Spotsylvania County, somebody is putting a data center, there's a draw within that larger grid. for the larger super region, if you will, that involves multiple states. I think it involves Pennsylvania. I think Ohio might be in there. North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee.

South Carolina, Georgia.

So there's a lot going on. And my understanding is a lot of the power is out near the Mississippi River is actually that some of the supplies are coming out that way. It's a much larger macro issue for... That ultimately, yeah, I mean, it's a super regional wide concern rather than solely a local one as well.

You're going to follow up? Go ahead. Maybe it'll come back to you.

Okay.

I just have one last quick one, if you don't mind.

So, because you mentioned DOD, do we have facilities here that would be able to be turned into secure enough facilities to maybe get some of our people off the road from traveling north? I know at church I've talked to some people who work for the government, and that's like something that they've been interested in, if it's possible.

That's a sly look here. Okay.

Capability is here. I guess that's the best way for me to put it. Capability is here.

Okay. I got a couple quick questions. Kim, I reckon this one's for you. On the part about HOA amenities, has there been a code enforcement problem? I think it said we needed to define them better about some HOA trying to eliminate amenities after they were put in.

There have been a handful of code enforcement challenges in situations where a project proffered, and it was really the wording of the language of the proffer itself. It said, you know, this community will have three picnic tables and one tot lot and, you know, whatever. And then say later the HOA didn't want to have one of those picnic tables. that became a proffer enforcement issue because of the wording of the proffer um that's something just lessons learned that we've started employing you know when we're we're you know considering any of these land use cases now recommending that the language be a little bit more flexible to say hey upon development you know the developer is going to provide xyz and then let it be on you know hoa what they want to do in the future but it's been a handful of instances and just because we've We've started correcting it, you know, on a case-by-case basis. We just thought it would be best to reflect it in the comp plan.

So it was actually a problem that was created in the past by us, really.

Just an unintended consequence, I guess. Right, right.

Okay. That's a good thing. And, Kevin, somebody will probably get a laugh out of this. Since the state passed the marijuana stores, has anybody applied locally or asked for applications or how to seek it out?

Phone started ringing 8.01 the next morning. Yeah, we had a lot of interest immediately after that legislation was put into effect.

I wonder if we can get them all on Stafford instead of Spotsy.

I know that's a year away. It's hard for us to make any kind of recommendations or determinations on what that's going to be because Richmond will be back in session. And I would anticipate some amendments and different things to that bill before it actually goes live. So it's kind of one of those things that we're very aware of.

But there's been no allocation to this area because I think it's 350 now. I just wonder how they're going to allocate them across the state. 1st, come 1st server.

I mean, Gavin, we've have. We've got that year gap far as the allocations. I have not seen anything from the state allocating any. Area here. Okay. I would not if it's 350 locations. given our population, we are probably going to have some allocation. Yes. Okay. But like I say, we've got another session in Richmond with a, you know, that's going to be a very, I'm sure that's going to be a hot topic. And I'm, I'm expecting some amendments to that. in the next session. So I don't, it kind of puts us on a holding pattern on, you know, being able to see which way it's going to go.

Okay. Well, Kimberly, follow up to that is I reckon we're going to need to address that just like we did the vape stores and she's selling vape. I mean, I hadn't seen the state law, but we need to set a distance away from schools.

Elementary schools or whatever just or churches or whatever if we if we can I don't I don't know But we did something with the vape stores about that I'm selling right and it's on our radar and we just have to make sure that of course that we we can You know, we'll have to vet all that of course through legal of what we can and can't do But it's definitely on our radar and we're monitoring it as well.

Okay.

Thank you so much. That's all the questions I have there is a sign

Off 208 saying it's a dispensary where it used to be a real estate office right before Sturgeon Creek Marina on the right. That is, is that true?

Is this a joke? Would be a question for zoning if that sign has a permit or not.

There is a dispensary sign.

How can you go there?

I just went to Lake Annam Lake and saw it. It was like, oh, wow, interesting already.

We have had no interaction with any business of such at the lake.

Yeah.

And I don't believe anything has come in through planning or zoning that I'm aware of.

Okay. So hopefully it's a joke. So FYI on that. It may or may not be.

The vape stores on Route 3 have gotten very liberal from what I hear about what they're dispensing already.

I can't remember the exact question, but when you mentioned Magalopolis, that we're now considered a part of it, does that trip anything as far as considerations for our county to support that network, that corridor?

None that I'm aware of. There are things in state code that are based on population of the locality. John Potter, i'm not aware of anything having to do with that US census designation of a integrated kind of urbanized metro area that that would be a special consideration it's just more of a reflection of the. The symbiotic nature of all these cities kind of working together up up along these common transportation corridors. Um, that's really what reflection is. And honestly, from an economic development standpoint, I mean, that's probably site selectors are looking for those types of factors, population and market. Um, the, the population center of Virginia, for instance, those are all things that are, I would think would be. site selector, uh, friendly materials to advertise the community on, um, that you're part of this, this, this network. Uh, basically, you know, if you go back 20, 30 years, the megalopolis was further north. It's slowly creeping down I-95. Eventually it'll incorporate Richmond area as well. It's, um, it's just, it's just the natural growth of the population. There's been, uh, through deindustrialization, a lot of the historically industrial cities, a lot of populations have relocated for job opportunities, new growth areas, cities exploded in size, other ones have contracted. I'm familiar with that being from the Rust Belt myself. So there's been a lot of that, major movements of population and kind of growth areas, economic hotbed areas where a lot of the interest in the infrastructure has gone while others have kind of waned. So I think that's just really a reflection of what's been going on. There's been a gravitation towards these mega areas. Northeast Megalopolis is not the only one. There is considered a Great Lakes Megalopolis that even crosses into the Toronto Metro up in Ontario. You have your Atlanta corridor down through Atlanta and your Charlotte. There's an area down there. Out west of California, Texas, there's certain areas that really have become hotbeds of, you know, they've attracted... EDUCATION, INDUSTRY, INVESTMENT, A LOT OF NEW THINGS AND KIND OF, YOU KNOW, HIP AREAS TO MOVE TO, IF YOU WILL. OKAY. THANK YOU.

MR. CRICKETT. SO SPEAKING OF POPULATIONS AND MIGRATIONS AND STUFF, Um, have we looked at the easy pass because knowing how that has progressed further down and has caused a, a commuting situation where population is traveling further south or living further south and traveling further up north using the easy pass. Uh, we talked to the, um, VDOT to find out what they're looking at as far as future growth of the easy pass on the 95 quarter.

We have not. We can certainly try to track that information down.

Because I think that would be a good indicator on what we're looking at as far as population and possibly industry.

Yes. Just a couple of questions for this part. You said someone else will hear from tourism. Any questions for tourism?

Yes. Are we doing that next week?

We have tourism here. This is for this chapter this evening. Tourism is here. Again, Michelle McGinnis is here from tourism.

Okay.

If you have something to present that's new or enlighten us, any questions?

I did have something, but I was going to wait until the next meeting.

But she's here tonight. She might not be here at the next meeting.

Do we have overlays for tourism?

There is a economic development tourism zone that includes portions of the primary development boundary, but it also has areas that are outside of the primary development boundary as well. The tourism zone also includes an area near Lake Anna around, generally speaking, the Route 2A corridor. That's the area that the comprehensive plan has historically identified as a mixed-use village area, which with the land use small area plans, we've actually proposed to scale back. But there are some areas within the tourism zone... The comprehensive plan change would not, again, I want to be clear, those targeted industries and those zones, those are separately adopted. They're just reflected in the comprehensive plan because they lend insights to our land uses and what we're trying to attract in these different areas.

I think what I was getting at was we've had this discussion before, the exit 118, Thornburg. Has that changed in any way as far as attracting land? tourism you know i know we we had these discussions well i i wasn't on any board any committee at the time but it was 2018 2019 they were talking about bringing entertainment to the thornburg exit Has that changed in any way or is it remains open for either industrial or touristy businesses?

Kevin might want to answer that. Obviously, he works in that part. And once he brings that industry here, then obviously we work with them to promote tourism to outside visitors, bring them to the area. Obviously, Kalahari resourcing conventions, that's going to be a big driver for tourism. Yeah.

Yeah, the tourism zone, there is a tourism zone in the exit 118 area. It remains in the 118 area. I will say that the county recently rescinded the tech zone. That just was removed. However, that didn't necessarily change the land use designation, which tends to be employment center in a lot of the Thornburg area. The employment center does still recognize the importance of industry, commercial development, as well as anything that's going to complement the tourism zone that's in place, that obviously makes sense for a critical mass of those type of resources in that area. So I think there is an emphasis on tourism. Again, I agree. Kevin would probably be the best contact on what we're actually trying to attract in that location.

Okay.

Yeah, the tourism zone is actually incorporated into the ordinance with the technology zone. The technology zone portion has now been removed. In order for a business to qualify for that tourism zone incentive or an incentive from a locality, right now it has to be a hotel. It has to have a meeting space that can hold over 150 people. There are Is 1 other restriction there to it as well. It's to get a local incentive in the tourism zone is very tough. It's some pretty tight constraints, but what's that tourism zone does you have to have a store by state code? You have to have a tourism zone. Established for a tourism style business of any kind to be able to apply for the tourism gap financing program and any incentives tourism wise from the state. That's part of the state code. It says. Locality must have a tourism zone established. So, Kalahari, for instance, they just, uh, they, they apply for the tourism gap financing program through the state. If without a tourism zone in place, that wouldn't have been an option for that business.

That leads to another question. Go ahead. Is it the county that is being more restrictive or is the state statute saying?

The state statute says you have to have a tourism zone established.

But not.

They don't tell you how or how it should be, what it should say within that. What makes it a tourism zone? They don't give you a this has to be in. It just says it has to have a tourism zone.

The conference room of at least that's a county.

That's a county.

Statue can we change that to be less restricted?

We actually are. Reviewing that now to make recommendations to update and change that because it is. It's very, it's very restrictive and it doesn't it's really not. It's really doesn't provide an incentive. You know, why would you want to why would you if you were going to build a new hotel in that area? And you have 150,000 square foot conference room that you'd be competing against or a. Conference center, why would you put a smaller facility within your hotel? It does allow you to have, they got, I believe it was machinery and tools and one other, it was two taxes where the first, it only lasts for five years. They would get rebated 100% the first two years and then year three through five was 50% of the, but of course those items do depreciate as well. So those numbers, not a huge incentive by any means. So we're in the process of reviewing it to recommend changes to it. We're just having the technology zone being removed, and now that ordinance will work on the tourism part of it. Okay.

Michelle, is Kalahari – I'm sure they're working with you in the tourism department, but are they supplementing your budget at all with – where you can combine material maybe – I'm not sure what I'm trying to ask here. Or maybe I'm asking, are they funding you at all? But is there any literature that you put out that they help with now?

No, actually, in the tourism department, we market the area to outside visitors to bring them to the county. So our job is to bring them here. Kalahari will work to bring them to their location.

But they're not helping you bring them here. I would think that could be combined a little bit, maybe.

Well, they do their own. They have a huge marketing team, and they do their own marketing. And we do ours. So it really is separate. We're really targeting a larger population.

Right.

And I know that their target is about, I think, maybe a three-hour drive or so. Okay. Well, we market the county even outside of the country to Canada. Just last fall, we had a huge billboard in downtown Toronto. So we are looking way outside of that three-hour drive.

Yeah. As a follow-up, with Central Virginia Battlefield Trust being here for about 10 years or better now and acquiring additional lands, additional history, like We're acquiring a piece of land over here where the black soldiers participated in Spotsylvania County in a battle. Are you seeing additional interest from Central Virginia Battlefield Trust being here and American Battlefield Trust acquiring these lands?

I will say that... I haven't noticed that specific piece, but the Civil War battlefields obviously are a huge driver for visitation. In 2025, just the areas for major battlefields, we saw over 765,000, almost 766,000 visitors. So obviously that's going to be part of that as well. There are going to be interest from people. visitors to visit those additional sites. We do have quite a few, obviously, visitors to the First State Chancellorsville right there at the museum. And that really great visitation there for sure. And our museum benefits from that visitation as well.

Okay.

I can tell you firsthand as well. So when there are conservation easements that are proposed within Spotsylvania County, they may be from American battlefield trust for civil war purposes, or it might be with the national, the nature conservancy for more of environmental focus. The county is solicited for a comprehensive plan consistency review, and we look at the property that's been proposed and we route that amongst economic development, public works, transportation, because what we want to do is we want to make sure that land conservation can occur, can be supported. but also that it's not going to inhibit the ability. So for instance, if a road is really in need of safety improvements, that we're not inhibiting ourselves from doing the necessary things to the benefit of the public while we can still get these lands in conservation. The last few years, we've actually seen an uptick, in my opinion, in requests for these conservation easements. And we typically will internally vet it. We'll look at our comprehensive plan, try to make sure that, hey, We support the conservation effort, whether it be for civil or battlefield preservation. But, you know, there's been recognized. We just recently had a request in the Todd's Tavern area, actually. The concern raised from transportation were some of the intersections over there. Brock Road, Catharpin, some of those areas in there, some of the intersections for safety purposes. And we did give them feedback. Yes. Go ahead and put it in perpetuity conservation. However, we'll give them dimensions off the road of, but please don't inhibit the ability to improve these intersections for safety, for instance. And those are the types of things that we look for or running infrastructure in a water sewer, for instance. We don't want to inhibit the ability to make it almost impossible to run critical infrastructure to serve the population. But yeah, we've seen a lot of impact. And as a matter of fact, I think that's been the most effective means of preserving land in the county, that you have a lot of confidence that it's going to stay that way. It has to do with these land trust organizations and their efforts within Spotsylvania County. And again, we issue those letters. We've been doing it. I issue the letters, actually. It ultimately comes through me. I'll put the letters out after the internal vetting. And we've had... hundreds of acres actually preserved.

Because we certainly don't want to know the Ely's Ford Road with the issues we have there trying to improve that. That's exactly right. That's exactly the concern. If a piece of property is owned by Central Virginia Battlefield Trust or the American Battlefield Trust, can we still use eminent domain to improve the intersection or something? Or is that... Okay.

It's just thought and past discussion that I've had with some of these conservation organization is is yes, it's possible. However, it seems that they want a lot more than right.

So it's much more than the value that it put our lines on a roadmaps where we want to go and make sure. And that's why I did a while back.

I think so. Years back, those requests were handled via email. It was a little bit less of a formal review. Now we look deeply at the comprehensive plan and do internal routings to say, hey, we have a two lane road here that's identified for four laning. We need to accommodate that right of way. Let's not inhibit or prohibit the ability for the public benefit. Um, this way, you know, it could be mutually beneficial, um, rather than, you know, closing the door on something that may be needed and could be, I mean, it could be a safety concern. That intersection at, um, out near Fawn Lake, or is it Orange Plank Road and, uh, Brock? The answer that we have recently received is do a bypass road around it. So, you know, the costs have gone up through the roof in order to do that. I don't know how you improve that intersection without doing a bypass road. And that's the challenge that we face. And we're trying to keep these costs down. But at the same time, you know, if the doors closed on the idea, this is what we're faced with. So that's why we're giving much more detailed responses rather than just giving a big thumbs up.

Okay. Thank you.

You need a break?

All right. We're going to take a five-minute break again.

Is that okay there, buddy?

All right. I want to ask a question of the commissioners. Has anybody here received any money from Charlie Payne or Herschler, Fleschler, or Kettler? Anybody? Let's disclose it up front.

No.

No. No, you don't have to answer. No. I don't. Charlie, you haven't bought me a drink any time, have you? I have. Oh, good. All right, let's move forward.

All right, floor computer, please. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the Planning Commission. So tonight, we are having a work session on the Crossroads Technology Campus. So I just want to start with that this is an application that's been filed. It's been through multiple reviews. The materials that are on our website, those are the applicants' materials. There is no staff analysis that's been prepared yet. There are this this presentation tonight the whole purpose of this work session is to acquaint the Planning Commission with the project to give the details of the proposal and to go over some of the considerations that staff has already identified as potential conditions for the Planning Commission and then ultimately the Board of Supervisors consideration So we are in the early stages of the analysis, so this is not the end-all, be-all. This is also not a presentation about data center development, you know, as a whole within Spotsylvania County. I will say that staff is working on a very robust FAQ page that will be on the county's website very, very soon that then through our – Community engagement department will be pushed out to all of our social media platforms for the public's consumption But I just wanted to kind of set the stage for the focus of the discussion tonight The applicant and the project team are present. So at the conclusion of my presentation if you have questions for them You certainly can direct any questions to them as well. I So here is an aerial image of the property. This is approximately 630 acres. It is located on the north side of Route 17, actually with frontage on Lee Hill School Drive and Eagle Drive. And you can see that the property is straddled with a portion of it located here on the east side of the railroad tracks. So the railroad tracks run right here. You have Lee's Crossing to the north and Lee's Hill. You have St. Jude Church, you've got some county property owned here, and then some other residential pockets of development along Lee Hill School Drive. The property, like I said, is 630 acres. There's a significant amount of RPA, wetland, floodplain, and steep slopes. You can really see it even in the image here that consume the property. Here's the zoning map, and I'm going to point out this property does have some split zoning. The bright yellow is Industrial 2. You have the paler yellow is Industrial 1. And then you'll see the blue and the purple here. That's R1 zoning and R2 zoning. So... For purposes of development, no special use permit could allow any data center development or any accessory thereof within those purple and blue shaded areas. So that's just right off the bat, taken off the top. It's in the light yellow and the dark yellow is the industrial zoning that allows for the request of the special use permit for the data center. um the board the planning commission you will recall that uh the board spent the better part of 2025 considering data center development and where it should be uh by right or special use permit and the end of 2025 they approved a code amendment that required a special use permit for data centers in all of our office and our commercial zoning districts but it allowed it as a buy right in the i1 and i2 with development standards. Those development standards included Tier 4 generators that prohibited groundwater, setbacks and buffer requirements, landscaping requirements, architectural standards, viewshed analysis. In February of 26, the board actually initiated and approved another code amendment that removed the ability to develop data center by right in the industrial one and two and made it a special use as well. At that time, then all of those development standards were scrapped from the code and they were put in as a guideline. And so that guideline document, it serves as a baseline. I'd say it serves as a guideline. To put out there what expectations, what sorts of things that the county is looking to address with any project that is either going through the rezoning process or in this case is going through the special use permit process. Looking at setbacks and appropriate buffers and setbacks adjacent to residential uses. and setting a standard. So with the special use permit, that's what we're doing, is we're setting the standard for this project in particular, specific to this project. You have code requirements for every zoning district that sets what the minimum setbacks are, what landscaping requirements are. With the special use permit, the county can impose conditions that specifically address the impact that we identify with this specific project. So it can be greater than whatever the minimum setbacks are or whatever the minimum landscaping requirements are. Whatever the impact is, we can impose a condition to appropriately mitigate that impact. So with that, we'll go into the project here. This is just one sheet out of the generalized development plan. But I thought that it depicted just about everything pretty clearly. In the center there, you can see they've already avoided what they can't touch anyway, which is the R1 and R2 zoned pieces of the property, portions of the property. You can see a lot of all the environmental features here that are on that northern portion of the property. So this black dashed line is really outlining the limits of their development. It's 2.2 million square feet of data center total. That's the data center structures. That doesn't include any accessory structures that are needed, the chillers or the substation area or the tanks or anything like that. That's the data center buildings is approximately 2.2 million square feet. It's eight buildings. Right now, you can see they've identified a 300-foot buffer. This is the green shading around most of the perimeter of the property, all adjacent to the residential uses here adjacent to the church property. And then, of course, here along Mills Drive. That is identified on their GDP as a restricted buffer. Again, with what is shown here where the locations of the buildings, though, you're looking at at least, I believe I wrote back, about approximate, this data center building is no closer than 1,500 square feet to the property line here to the west of Linear feet sorry linear feet, and then it is no closer than 2400 feet there to the north at least crossing the closest data Center building to any residential property is 800 feet. Right now, the question has been asked of where are the – you can see the substations on the site. Where is the transmission lines going to come from? That's all still under design and hasn't been determined yet or confirmed yet through Dominion. But I think as it stands right now, it is likely planned to come down along Route 17. from the West. Everybody probably is familiar, there's a data center under construction right now, the Hunter's Ridge Project. So that's where it's coming from, and it's likely going to follow there along Route 17. The primary access to the property is going to be from Eagle Drive in this location here. There is a point of access shown on Lee Hill School Drive that is for emergency access only. This is something that our Fire Rescue Services wants to see in all data center campuses is two points of access. You'll also see another point of access up here further up on Eagle Drive and that's for substation maintenance use only. And then of course for this portion here on the east side along Benchmark there is a primary access and then an emergency only access as well. there's are there any questions at this point about the specifics of their proposal my next slides go into recommended conditions or the conditions and considerations that staffs already identified with the project but before I go too far are there any questions about the proposal any questions down that way okay the storage tanks that are located on the southeast corner there

is there any way to explain how that works are they are they bringing the recycled water into those tanks and then they they bring that water into the facility as they need it is that how it works

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know the members of the Planning Commission know it's late, so I'll be real quick. Thank you, Mr. Phillips. Yeah, that's it. So I don't know what the capacity is for the reuse. There is a plan for reuse water on this site. There will be a reuse water line that will run along this property. So I don't know what the capacity is on that line for this site, but typically what happens is they store some reuse water when they have peak period demand, and that's why it's there.

Okay, a follow-up to that. So those tanks aren't filled with potable water to start with?

No, no.

Okay. All right. During the construction phase, are they going to be going into primary entrance or probably just want to keep them off Lee Hill School Drive as far as we can? Or would they be going in down by the tanks?

Well, staff is probably addressing that in their conditions is my bet. So I can't speak for them, but I'm sure that's what they're going to do. All right.

Thank you. All right. Mr. Prickett has a question. So you're saying that that will not be storing purple water? No, it will be storing reused water.

Okay. The chairman asked me whether it would be storing potable water.

I think I said potable instead of potable.

I thought you said purple.

That's just my southern slang, whatever.

All right. Thanks.

So the location of where the majority of this facility is, the topography of that land is quite hilly, at least off of Lee's Hill School Drive. Is this portion more flatter? Because it's all wooded, so it's very difficult to see from the road. And if it is a hill, how would you mitigate the height on these buildings if it's up on a hill?

Well, they're capped at 75 feet. I don't know the exact topography. Do we know in how far we're cutting down? But we have view sheds that we have submitted with the application and we have updated. And the view sheds are basically folks looking into trees. They can't see the buildings.

If that's the question you're trying to get to. It's quite hilly. I'm just curious how you're going to take a lot of dirt out of there is what I'm saying.

The buildings, because I hunted that property in the past.

So, the, the, the high topography off of a legal school drive, the site actually will grade down. So we will be lower relative to properties on the hill school drive St Jude's church. As far as to the. West and to the north again, those properties. Are the topo comes back up after mass upon its creek. So, again, we're going to be relatively low to those surrounding properties for our application includes if you should analysis, which takes points from 8 points from all around the property. To show how the restrictive buffers that are being placed on the site that preservation of the mature vegetation, um, works in tandem with elevations to help kind of hide these. Buildings, which again are capped at 75 feet from the adjacent uses.

Okay.

Thank you.

and i do have the viewshed analysis it's a it's a large document um and i can flip through that if y'all would like me to um after the presentation i just didn't include it in the presentation um slides um and before i go off of this i did want to make note there you'll see this little uh kind of donut hole area here This is approximately 15 acres, and this is a historic easement that the county actually holds. This site is identified as the Belvoir site. It has significant historical, very historically significant in the home there, the grounds there, many notable figures from the Civil War history. uh temporarily even resided here i believe stonewall jackson temporarily resided in this home there's only ruins on the property at this point there is a cemetery um with family and i believe slave remains in the cemetery as well this so like i said this is a 15 acres area that is in a historic easement that the county has held since 2002 and so um you can see the their limits of work do not encroach within that easement area I will tell you that the terms of that easement consideration of this special use all of that is is going to be go through a thorough thorough legal review before the county will consider the special use it's it's under legal review as we speak so As of right now, we haven't identified any impacts, at least from staff's level, we haven't identified any impacts to the area or conflicts with the easement, but that will all go through legal review and we'll provide a final report of that by the time this comes back to you for public hearing. so with that so the items specific to this case that staff is looking to recommend conditions on and again this is a bulleted list I'm gonna hit through these and and discuss each as much as I can and explain the whys but this is not the final language so These are the points that we want to address. The next stages of staff's work on this is then to develop specific language that then, of course, goes all through legal review and is vetted with the county attorney's office. And all of that is going to be done prior to returning to the planning commission for a public hearing. So the first is a condition that will... tie the project to develop it in compliance with the GDP. So this would be language that would specifically hold them to the setbacks they've identified, so where those buildings are. I mean, it was very important that, you know, the proximity of those buildings to all the residential that's in that area, for that to be identified. held true with development. And so like I said, the closest residence is there on that southeastern side, and it's approximately 800 feet. That's the closest resident. So this language would be very specific to those setbacks to the open space. I should have said that during the layout, but this is 633 acres. Only approximately 200 acres of it is actually being developed. So it's 430 plus acres of of open space. There'll be language recommending that any power generation on site would be prohibited. That's something that we've been hearing, of course, with our northern Virginia neighbors of, you know, the gas powered On-site generation of power and the turbines there staff is recommending that that any power generation Primary power generation would be prohibited on site Of course recommend prohibiting any impact to that historic easement But like I said We're gonna vet that and ensure that nothing that's been proposed is going to create a conflict and if there is any additional Language condition language that we need to punctuate that point that will show up in the recommended conditions. I Staff is recommending a maximum noise allowance of 45 DBA, and that would be measured at the property line adjacent to any residential uses and place of worship. And we are also recommending a maximum DBC level of 60. That is what... You have heard here recently in the comments even tonight about that low frequency sound so that DBA weighted measurement is the sound that we hear this DBC level is the is the noise that we feel and and that that can you know, create its own impacts on. On people in the Community. And so I will tell you that we are still doing, from a staff level, our deep dive into this topic to understand it and make sure that we're covering all of our bases. But as of right now, this is what we are looking to recommend as the maximums. sound monitoring reports. So it's important to note that the state and that with the General Assembly's recent legislation that was just passed that went into effect July 1, it mandates that the county require two assessments now before we can approve any high user energy High user of energy and which would be the data center and those two reports one is a noise assessment and then a report from the electric utility provider of What their demand is how much power how much substations? So before this comes back to you there will be a noise assessment provided that has not been submitted yet But that is forthcoming and that noise assessment the applicant will be providing is going to show what are those baseline conditions, existing conditions now, what they're forecasting, and what that will look like. So we haven't seen it yet. We will be reviewing that, and all of that will be before we come back for public hearing. But that's required before the county even takes an action on the SUP. What staff's recommending here is that there would be assessments provided prior to certificates of occupancy for any of the buildings, and then ongoing assessments provided that confirm compliance. So if the condition is that they can't generate more than 45 DBA at the property line, then we would be getting a report prior to CO that they're complying, and then ongoing reports assessments confirming their compliance. We've got some language in here of how those reports would be done, who would be doing those reports. This is not very detailed, but that's the level of detail that we are going to dig into with the specific condition language. A requirement of Tier 4 generators with language that makes it clear those generators are limited to emergency use only. This is not intended to power the data center. This is in an emergency backup use only. Recommending language that would limit the hours and then the duration of that generator testing. We understand it needs to be tested. But we are looking to put some limits of when and how long they do that. Requirements that there be enclosures for all of the generators that also include sound dampening features. So that's just kind of an add-on to the noise issue. We're recommending maximum levels, but we also want to see requirements that those generator enclosures have sound dampening features as an extra measure. recommending condition that all structures, all structures that would house any type of noise-producing element, that it would be designed with acoustic mitigation elements. I think there's a wide variety of what acoustic mitigation, construction materials, design features can be. We know that technology and technology Everything is ever evolving. I don't know if we're going to get very specific from a staff level. Again, I don't know if the plan is to get very specific on the exact type of elements that will be employed, but to allow that flexibility for it to grow and evolve with technology and innovation, but just having the standard that the buildings have to have those features included is what we find to be important. Next, screening of all rooftop and ground located mechanical equipment. It would be screened from public view. Enhanced architectural features for facades that are visible to public view. There is a view shed analysis that's been provided with the application. The view shed analysis at this point doesn't show really any view shed from the for the buildings um from all of the various locations i think probably the most impactful view shed is on the benchmark road side and that's at the um location of the actual substation so those that electrical infrastructure i do think is going to be viewed from benchmark but the buildings are tucked back um far i think that there is um uh going to be a view shed from the north um because there is a grade change that it is much higher and so i do think that there is going to be some view shed from the north looking kind of down potentially on the on the roofs of some of those buildings potentially from the uh from the north like on the lease crossing side No, like up here, like right up here off the page. Let me go to the Uriel. Like this section here. I think because of the grade, I would expect there to be some view shed to the roofs of the buildings.

There's nothing to mitigate that line of sight. It's that dramatic of a difference.

It's pretty hard.

Yeah. I'd like to see a topo.

Thank you.

And so with that is why staff is recommending conditions of, you know, for those portions of the building, those facades of the building or those roofs, you know, what is visible to the public, then they would have some type of enclosure equipment to shield that equipment. Or if it's the facade of the building, then there would be enhanced architectural standards to protect Make them more attractive than just a solid concrete wall. um I put on here PC input planning Commission input on the height maximum right now. the proposed maximum height of the buildings. It's two stories, but a maximum height of 75 feet. Right now, that's not something staff has identified as recommending a condition to further limit that, but I did want to put that out there for the Planning Commission if that is something that you wanted us to take a look at. So for a 75-foot height maximum, a parapet wall could encroach three feet. So the parapet could go to 78. 78. Okay. Okay. Any security fencing, we would be recommending a condition on height and design. Most of the, all of the data centers, I guess I should say, that have been approved so far, I think you're familiar, have committed to that Ameristar Palisade. It's a black wrought iron. It's a secure fence that meets the need for the data center, but it's of a much more attractive fence to look at than chain link barbed wire.

It's gonna be the same fence and we saw up in Manassas.

Yes, sir. Okay Outdoor lighting I Put this on here More to cover it a bit. We've heard a lot of questions and concerns about lighting rooftop lighting The county's code requires that all outdoor lighting is downward directed shielded dark sky compliant However, we know that with most data centers, they have rooftop lighting. And so we are looking for some language that will result in any potential glare reflection from the roof that could create kind of a moon effect in this area. So that's why I have that listed. We already have dark sky compliant, but knowing this area with all the residential of these large buildings, we want to make sure that we prevent any, again, an unintended consequence with the rooftop lighting creating any kind of reflection or glare It would create this nuisance glow.

Okay. I have a question. Is the rooftop lighting in place down at, is that Cosner or Hunter's Bridge 1?

Cosner Tech.

Is it already in place down there?

I couldn't tell you 100%, Mr. Grinnell. I can find out.

It would be nice if we could get a nighttime visit. It wouldn't be nice for you, but, I mean, it wouldn't bother me at all.

I will find out because I'm not 100%. Thank you. Prohibit the use of groundwater. And I've put potable water. That's already prohibited in code, but I put it in here because I just didn't want it to get lost that we're prohibiting only groundwater. We're going to make a specific condition to prohibit the use of groundwater, but potable water is already prohibited via the county code. You talked about the reuse system. The reuse line does go right across the frontage of a portion of this property. There is no water service agreement now. They're not approved yet. But I do believe that there is capacity for them to connect if this project is to get approved, and in which case we're just putting conditions in to punctuate the point that If they do connect to the reuse line, they're responsible for all of the costs associated with that connection. They'd be responsible for any pretreatment requirements. All of these things are really bundled into the terms of the wastewater service agreement, but because there's not one in existence yet and because this is going through the special use permit, utilities is recommending those conditions, again, more just to punctuate the point.

How's that?

line been built out through that that lower stretch not yet okay yeah i didn't see any the roads torn up or anything any scars no not yet okay um and then lastly this one uh prohibiting this or prohibiting surface or groundwater withdrawal um any any withdrawal would require permits through DEQ. The condition language that staff is recommending is that it would be prohibiting them from even Asking DEQ for a withdrawal permit. I think that's going to be the legally correct way for us to do it So that's just to address any concerns. I don't maybe not so much with this site, but I know we've had concerns in the past raised about the River, you know withdrawals and everything so I would say that that would likely become a very standard condition You know with this and any other project that might come along in the future. I

I do have a question. You know that article that came out up in northern Virginia about the wastewater being dumped back? I don't know if it was pollutants or if it was the temperature of the water and what impact that would have on the surrounding environment, but have they...

settled on a path forward with that incident up north and again can we can we use that as a a lesson to learn from i don't know any of the details mr phelps on the on the specific situation up north but i know that um our utilities department that's part of this responsible for all pre-treatment of wastewater i mean i think that's something that's absolutely on their on their radar and we will have

Conditions if need I think the language with this responsible for all pretreatment of wastewater will cover that I know there was a there with this it was a it was a piece on TV and they were talking about that the temperature how a 90 degree temperature going back into the and says a ground, you know, what kind of impact that has on the surrounding uh you know the tributaries the the waterways through that that particular piece of property there on the southeast corner um i don't know if it's the same situation as up north but i just thought i'd bring that up i'll bring that up with utilities okay thank you

To follow up to that, I mean, once they're through with it, it's got to go back to our plant for final treatment anyway. And I would assume that it would probably cool down then. If not, we'd have to have a holding pot or something, then bring it into the plant. If the temperature would affect the plant, because I'm sure the water going into our plant isn't real warm. I mean, we've got some chariots and stuff, but most of it's toilet water or sink water.

I agree. I'll get an answer to those so I can be prepared to speak to that.

And I'm sure Ben's aware of the temperature if we come back into our plant because it could affect our treatment of it.

Right. Thank you. I would venture to say that's part of this whole pretreatment of the wastewater section, but I will make sure 100% and get all the details. Thank you. um next construction traffic so that is from a from a traffic standpoint with data centers it's the construction activity is definitely the most intense portion you know once it's in operation it is a low traffic generator so given the area staff is recommending a condition that would prohibit any construction traffic using lee hill school drive recommending a condition that a construction mitigation plan be provided i'll go into a little detail that's something that um with all the data center projects that have been approved to date they have proffered this commitment and this is one that we are actually employing today with the two sites that are under construction this construction mitigation plan is scoped out with county staff, county transportation staff, planning staff, sheriff's office, VDOT, and the applicant. And this is where they identify where their haul routes are, where they're coming, where they're going, when they're coming, when they're going, when deliveries are coming. And then we look at those routes and an assessment's done on whether they can withstand that, not just the volume of the traffic, but the type of the traffic. Can they withstand that type of heavy construction vehicles going over that period of time? It also looks at the times of day. In this case, we are in close proximity to schools. And so, you know, one of the terms would likely be, you know, limiting delivery and heavy activity during those peak morning and evening afternoon, you know, drop offs and pick up times. So that's the purpose of that plan that becomes a condition. It's binding. I mean, if they violate that, that's something that then is a violation of the permit and and it's enforceable from the county. That's was successfully employed in other projects. The SPower, it's been a while ago, but we had that with SPower, and it was successful, and it's, I think, proving to be successful with the two projects we have underway right now. Same with the public liaison during construction. So, of course, anytime there's a concern, complaint that comes to our office and we will investigate it. The purpose of the public liaison during construction is that it can take out the middleman. If there is a concern, a citizen's driving by and sees something, they can contact the public liaison. It's a toll-free number. information is uh available to talk to somebody who's on the construction team right then and there to hopefully then address whatever the issue or the question is right on the spot doesn't prevent anybody from calling the county but it allows them to go directly to the source if they wish to um it was brought up earlier concerned citizens is there a plan for dust abatement during this construction phase I'm glad you brought that up, Mr. Perkins. You know, the conditions that I'm going over tonight, you know, these are those that are above and beyond what is already required. So the question about, you know, dust, that is a violation of environmental code today. Any construction project has to keep that down. That's why projects you'll see water trucks out there, that is a requirement. You can't track, you know, that gravel and that mud and that, you know, out on public roads. I mean, VDOT's going to come and get them too. So, you know, if there are any issues like that, then those do need to be reported to the county. But of course, our environmental staff, they're doing regular inspections after every rain event, but they're also doing them every, you know, on, on, Regular intervals to make sure there is compliance, but if there isn't then you know Complaints come in we can go out there and take care of that up to issuing a stop work order if need be Is there anything in the plans as far as well what what are they leaning towards as far as access to the project Eagle Drive or off of benchmark or Eagle drive is where their primary access will be.

Is there any plans to widen that? That, uh, ingress lane so they can so people can go down legal school drive and then the construction trafficking fear off to Eagle.

I will get – yep, that's a little further down, but we'll go over that now. So there are entrance improvements that are going to be required for their site, but there's also improvements and upgrades that are needed to Eagle Drive, and they will have to do those. That's going to be – that would be required by VDOT anyway. What we have also – commented to the applicant is that County has smart scale applications plans for route 17 particularly at that intersection we have some cost share agreements in place for improvements at that intersection at Massabonics Church on the south side and so you'll see here at the bottom prior to phase two a traffic impact analysis and is going to be required so phase one of their project is two buildings it's going to be. My have this wrong thing it's this building in this building I don't have the face sheet on here, but it's gonna be two buildings and their substation. that's phase one. Prior to phase two, they'll be required to conduct a traffic impact analysis that will then need to look at beyond their site what their traffic generation is going to impact any of the roadways or those nearby intersections, and that's going to be one of them. And it's going to look to what improvements are needed to improve or maintain existing levels of service And I think that that may even result in some type of realignment to Eagle Drive. I think that might end up being necessary in order for there not to be any kind of conflicts with the county smart scale application at that intersection.

Out of curiosity, the Cosner campus and Hunters Ridge North and then later Hunters Ridge South, right? The dump trucks that are going up and down 17, are they going east to, was that King George or was that Caroline County?

King George first, then Carolina.

Are they going to that quarry down there on 17 heading towards Port Royal? I mean, what's the main traffic pattern for those dump trucks right now?

I don't know at this moment. I could tell you.

I don't know what quarry they're going to. I don't know if they're carrying dirt away or bringing it in.

There's a pile of dirt over there. We're just going to be adding to it. I don't know when they're going to break ground if it gets approved.

And that, of course, is part of it when you're scoping a traffic impact analysis is what development's going on right now, what's been approved, what's under construction, what's about to start construction. all that's accounted for in that. jump back up under public use so oversized delivery traffic notifications again that's just for that's that's where they would be informing the county of if there is going to be a heavy presence of activity or any large deliveries perhaps during construction with the substation for example they would notify us 48 hours in advance and then that we're able to then push that out to the community just for awareness responsible for any road pairs during and after construction. So again, a lot of this is stuff that we've brought over from a successful employment of with the S-Power case and with the approved projects we have right now. During this construction, they've shown us where their haul routes and their delivery routes are. If there ends up being any kind of damage to the roadway, particularly one that creates a safety concern, they have to repair it then. So while construction's going, they're responsible for keeping the road in good shape. And then after construction, it's going to be like a punch list inspection where they need to restore it back to its acceptable condition. The Joint Construction Traffic Reaction Team, this is something that would, at the county's request, they would participate in this team. This would be comprised of VDOT, the Sheriff's Office, Fire Rescue, schools, county transportation teams. Again, if there's an issue, we had this with S-Power, and it was during, you know, school bus pickup. There were some concerns about trucks on the road when the buses were, you know, picking up and dropping off. Those were the types of things that we discussed during that meeting. An applicant was on there, and it was agreed upon, you know, avoid these times of day or you know let's let's you know divert this traffic pattern you know it was different ways to brainstorm and create solutions if there are problems so that's what this condition is is hey if we start seeing problems that we didn't see or forecast and we need to to pull up together with a larger group that they'll participate and then comply with those recommendations.

Please stop here one second. Steve, can you hear okay? Yes, sir. Okay, I didn't know. It looked like you were leaning forward. I didn't know if you were leaning to look or hear. It's my back. Okay. Everybody can hear. Thank you.

All right. All right, next we're on entrance improvements and improvements to Eagle Drive that we spoke of. That would be required prior to their first CO. Shared use path construction along Eagle Drive and through the tunnel and benchmark. So this one is, as far as a benefit to the county, this is, and Jacob's probably better able to speak to this than I am, but VDOT has done a Route 17 pipeline study. We have all of the shared use path connections, of course, trying to get the East Coast Greenway connected to go further south. And this is one of those integral points. And so the applicant is going to construct this shared use path. It will actually then go under the tunnel. And then along benchmark and so this is a significant Piece of the puzzle with this project And I already talked about the traffic impact analysis prior to phase two Next is a geotechnical evaluation this is to confirm the existence of acid sulfate soils and This is, you know, if they are identified on the site, then they would be providing a mitigation plan for the county to review and approve. And it would address identification, excavation, handling, stockpiling, the neutralization, disposal monitoring, and protection of surface water and groundwater quality.

Do we have any historical findings of it with the other developments that have happened along the way?

Not to my knowledge, Mr. Phelps, other than just we know that that's prone for Spotsylvania County to for the existence of acid sulfate soils. And so in these when we have an SGP or rezoning, that's typically what environmental recommends is that those studies be done so it can be headed off rather than discovered, you know, in the middle of construction. Condition to employ infiltration-based stormwater practices. Condition to reforest any stream corridors, wetland buffers, or other riparian areas which have been previously cleared or fragmented. So, of course, if they were impacting wetlands, they have to reforest. This condition is that anything that had been previously cleared, that they would reforest that as well and restore it. emergency action plan. This is coordinated with the fire chief and fire marshal. This is a plan to kind of lay out the site, what they're going to have, where everything is, It's to provide training to our first responders. And this is actually a living document. The emergency action plan during construction does morph as buildings start to come online. So you've got some that are in operation while some are in construction. And it'll continue to morph until the whole site is in operation mode. But this is, of course, safety for our first responders and, of course, the site as well. And then lastly is third-party cost reimbursements to the county. And this is if any permitting, inspection, compliance, anything related to the project that the county does not have the subject matter experts to vet. that we be reimbursed for those costs. If we have to hire out to ensure that the site is in compliance with whatever it is, that we be reimbursed for that. And so that is the conclusion of my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions I will say that one thing that's not on there. I know there's a lot of discussion about decommissioning That's something that staff can certainly you know research and investigate and give you at least our recommendation on on the value of having some type of condition language related to that. We certainly did with the SPower site. That's not something that we've explored to this point, but if that's the will of the Planning Commission, we certainly can do that.

I have questions. It's a shocker. You already answered the question about the DVA, DVC formulas. That all has to be worked out, right? So do we have any timeline on that? Do we have to hire somebody to help us formulate the – no? No.

Sorry, the 45 DBA is what's been identified as the human health standard. And so that's why staff's recommending 45 DBA. and uh any entertainment on about the octave van being a part of the noise assessment with the with what you referenced in the slide there is that something that they're that that is something that um based on at least my research right now is um if i'm being honest the juice isn't worth the squeeze to go into that level um From my research, staff's research, it's focusing on that DBC level, that low frequency, and that by setting a max on that, we think that we're addressing the issue. Addressing that frequency band. Right.

Because the DVC is addressing the lower frequency bands?

Correct. And that's five decibels lower. So if the human health standard of DBA is 45, the DVC is 20 decibels higher than that. And we're recommending 60 as a max.

uh you just mentioned it uh as far as like enforcement goes right who's who's qualified and we were talking about a sheriff walking around with a sound meter going ah violation you know so it will that trip having to have a like a full-time f um

full-time fde uh no no because the is there anything condition that that we would be recommending is that again they're going to give us the reports prior to co and then ongoing but they will need to um uh hire the engineers to provide that report and the conditions are where we set the standard of who that is right now my recommendation is that it actually be like a panel of no less than three acoustical engineers who are members and good standing members of the Acoustical Society of America and the Institute of Noise Control Engineering. My understanding of those organizations is the credentials that you have to have to be part of those organizations. It's a high bar. And so by having, you know, a panel, like I said, of three, you know, no less than three, that you're going to have a sound and objective analysis to perform that study that will tell us what their noise levels are and if they're in compliance or not.

And those people that are identified to be qualified and be hired by the county, they won't have any conflicts as far as the whoever, the tenant that's there or the builder of the facility and that position?

That's why I'm recommending that it be a panel of no less than three.

Okay. um have we have we talked about i had a hard time looking for you know after we had that meeting uh with the facility up north and about improvements made as far as noise abatement goes Have we identified the standards to which those large pieces of machinery are built to as being rolled into, just like what we did with the Tier 4 generator? And have we looked at that language again about the Tier 4? With the fans, you mean? Right. Yeah, the fans, the egress devices that can be used to dampen the noise leaving the building.

So I certainly can. My recommendation, as it was right now, is that rather than citing those specific things that we have a condition, because again, the technology changed so quickly.

I was going to say, like, the language in our ordinance or, you know, to the standards that they have to build to would be, like tier four or quieter or tier four or better, whatever the proper language is. And you're leaving that door open for the technology to improve. Because what are we looking at when the first building is completed? What's the timeline for that? We're talking what, three years, five years?

I would say at least three years. Yeah, we can certainly do that.

Can we find the standards for it? Because, you know, the noise, the fans are like the big offender, right? Depending on the facility. It's not locked in that every data center is going to be noisy like the lady had brought up at the microphone there during public comments. But if we can address those typical offenders at a data center facility, that'd be great. and um also i did bring it up i think in passing but i just want to restate it when we're talking about the diesel generators and sending the limitations on the hours to operate i know i remember a discussion that we had i think with i don't know if it was amazon or hunters ridge but they were talking about that they have to do some tests at night time so Are we, are we going to make conditions where if at night you can only operate it for 10 minutes, if during the day, then you can operate it for 30 minutes, but no more than once a week or, you know, whatever the case may be.

Okay.

And then that leads me to, I don't know. I was just scrolling on my phone and I saw a news report. So during the heat wave, they issued a warning to all large you know drawers of electricity from the grid and they said please conserve right and there were some states even that where they were telling the hospitals you can't be operating your hvac units with patients on the floors that they were telling to shut it down so we are in a situation so like like uh you had stated about how We are on a larger grid. It's not just Virginia. It's not Spotsylvania. So we're all in this together. There's a federal statute out there that says utilizing Section 202C, in parentheses, emergency powers, to where the federal government can tell I don't know the exact details. I mean, I have quite a bit of screenshots from looking at it in passing, you know, as I go about my day. But if we could look into that to find out if the federal government is going to trump us as far as telling data centers, well, you've got to go operate on your diesel generators no matter what because we're in a two-week heat wave. Or, I don't know, we have a natural disaster. We have an ice storm in it. knocks out most of the grid. I don't know. Whatever the case might be. But what kind of impact does that federal statute have on us and them? Thank you.

Scott, I don't know if you recall because we were kind of wandering around up there. But that actually occurred two weeks ago during those 300 days. And the fellow taking our tour leading us, he said that they had gotten notice. that Dominion Power could be requesting them to cut back their poll. He said they didn't have to. But that was actually that Trump or whoever, Trump's people, federal people told him that they had to do it, be prepared for it.

I don't know. Is there something that Virginia has to craft to say, okay,

Thank you.

It wasn't for me, honest. I'm just relaying the request. There's a prominent member of Lee Hill District asked me to ask if it's possible to put in a buffer, a tree buffer, a vegetation buffer, whatever you want to call it, on the northeast side of the property to abate the noise from propagating across the railroad tracks.

That's towards your house.

It wasn't me.

All right, Kimberly, what's next? Does Mr. Payne, does the Kettler people, anybody have anything they want to interject? If they do, we'll let them do it or to enlighten us.

I'm not sure I can enlighten anybody at 10 o'clock this evening, but Mr. Chairman, we appreciate everybody's time. We appreciate community comments. I appreciate staff's hard work. Some of these conditions are new. We haven't seen them, so we're going to evaluate them. I think we're working well with all the teams to address concerns and mitigate impacts. And again, we appreciate all your time this evening. If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them. But again, thank you very much for your time.

Okay. Thank you. Any questions for Mr. Payne? Okay. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Okay. I entertain a motion to adjourn unless there's some discussion you want to do amongst ourselves.

Can we talk about vape stores again? About what? Cannabis dispensaries again?

Hey, I just want to know where they're going. I just want them over in Lee Hill District. Oh. Because my grandchildren live over this way.

Chairman, I put forth a motion to adjourn the July 15th Planning Commission meeting.

Motion made. Is there a second?

I'll second.

And seconded by Mr. Fragoso. All those in favor?

Aye. Aye. It's unanimous.