Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening. It's 6 o'clock and determined we have a quorum with one member absent. And I will call the July 6, 2026 Wythe County Planning Commission meeting to order. And we will have the Pledge of Allegiance at this time.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Glad to have our visitors with us tonight. And our first item of business will be our public hearing. Stephen and Teresa Gross Close Variants. And I'll entertain a report from staff at this time.

Okay, Stephen and Teresa Gross Close are proposing to combine their three parcels totaling 35.893 acres located along State Route 643 Old School Road in the Speedwell Magisterial District and subdivide approximately 30.593 acres off and sell it to the adjoining owners. Because Mr. and Mrs. Gross Close's remaining 5.3 acres does not have 100-foot state road frontage and the proposed division of this property would leave a non-conforming lot They are requesting a variance to section 5.3.18 of the ordinance in order to proceed with this proposed division. Okay. Okay.

You cut those off on our end.

Yeah, I'm trying to. This one out here is not working. Is it back on? Okay.

working out there. Yeah, we're good. So the revised parcel B will Does not have any state road frontage. It just has road frontage off that private Wolf Bend Lane.

Correct. This is what it'll look like when we're finished. These three, correct, Bradley? Yes. That'll be combined.

And you said they're being sold, so they just want to keep their house in Five Acres. Is that where it is?

Their house and this surrounding piece right here. This house is actually his daughter's. Is that correct? And then the father wants to retain this, and he owns this. He's wanting to... all this will be one parcel and sold to the adjoining owner which this is the actual owner right here right and the adjoining will be who's buying it bradley i can't remember oh they will access it from the other other property this will be this right here has got old school road This will be fine. It's this remaining piece here that will be off Wolfden Lane.

Right.

Which, that's what it's got now.

Yeah, the old landlocked, never had it, never will.

Right. It's not landlocked since he owns it, owns the whole thing.

Well, let me pull it up on the map so it'll make more sense.

It will be landlocked, Susie.

Well, it is landlocked.

A and B. It is landlocked right now, but he's vacating and rearranging.

OK.

Zoom in. 5792.

Zoom in again.

So see, it's already landlocked. There's not just Wolfden Lane is all it's got. So they're going to split it here, add this piece to these two pieces, which this one don't have. I mean, it's...

They don't have nothing.

Right. And then this will all have old school road. This will still stay where it's at. And it doesn't have any road frontage anyway. Does that make more sense?

Mm-hmm.

Any more questions for the staff?

And... And or Bradley.

Well, that's what I said, public comment.

I haven't heard any public comment, so that's a pretty easy decision here.

Mr. Tate wants to say anything. He's welcome to.

Yes, well, I did confirm that. And that is not, it's not a state maintained road or anything. It's just a 20 foot right away. want to point that out to you because they will be going through the tax match 72-4a you know two two properties using that right way to benefit their parts which they're already doing and i believe they had the right to do as well

Now, what's the plan of commission? No discussion?

You closed the public hearing.

I've closed the public hearing.

Move to approve it, sir. Second.

Is this being moved or properly seconded?

Who's seconded?

We'll have a roll call vote from this way.

Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. It has been approved for the variance of Stephen and Teresa Groskloos. And... Simple enough. They're free to do what they want to do with it.

Thank you, Bradley.

Thanks, Brad. Is our citizens' time. Mr. Caley, would you like to address the board?

I would. It's about your work session on the latest ordinance. So speak now? Yes. OK. I'm sorry I missed your last meeting. I appreciate the YouTube video and comments and thoughtful discussion. I got three dangling points. between industrial and commercial, you all made the recommendation, I understand, to put data centers by special use in industrial zones. I was asking that it be taken out of commercial. So that was just a dangling fault.

The direction is to include them as special use in both.

Well, I stand by you. If you have further consideration, I think it would behoove you to make commercial, because you've got lots more land in commercial in places that people are going to be exposed to and upset about. Data centers and all those other things are allowed, special use permit. It does get you public hearing, and I appreciate that. I think the public would appreciate that. But one more step to protection would be not allowed at all. So the second point would be... Back on an argument you all debated at length, the subject of the staff arm wrestling contest. I'm not an attorney and I don't see one in the room, but the case for splitting industrial into public and private might hinge on precedence. Board of Supervisors that is approached with a proposal for a data center in Progress Park. If this ordinance goes through, if it goes through, it is now going to have a public hearing and a special use permit, correct? And a future board, a future planning commission might say no, we don't want it. Think then about the sitting in the room and he's going to point over to lot 35 and say well you already have one in progress park so that's why i think a progress park industrial zone public is different than a industrial zone private out in foster falls or rural retreat or speedwell or something in the same district. And then the third question is kind of similar about land use attorneys or something. I'm just curious, I mean, I may be doing this with a draft map, but what are you gonna do with a rock property? Eastern Barry Gramps Forge to a past drive exit. It would be zoned today as agriculture. But there is a proposal to develop it as a data center. So I don't know how you address that, because that could come up other places in the county, too. The day it's drafted as agriculture, it's probably grandfathered. I get it. But what do you do with that on the map? Looking forward to the discussion.

Thank you, Mr. Kegley. Anyone else that would like to address the board? All right. If no one else wants to speak, we'll close citizens' time, and we'll go to the next item, the minutes of our prior meeting, or prior meetings, continuation of meetings. i read it through them i didn't see anything but anybody else catch anything it was mr chairman it's been properly moved and seconded to approve the prior minutes of the last meeting and uh everybody in favor say aye aye aye aye And our next item of business will be our subdivision ordinance report. Mrs. Shelton.

First one I have is Cripple Creek Ag Solution recently conveyed 0.248 acres to their joint owner, Loretta Ann Vaughn. Simultaneously, Ms. Vaughn conveyed 0.190 acre from tax map 8381A to 8381. Through a lot line revision, Ms. Vaughn combined her property of 77.966 acres with the 0.248 and the 0.190 acres. and the 6.564 making the new parcel 84.968 acres. This subdivision leaves a 10.636 acre residual that will be used as agricultural. Revised parcel A will be used as residential, and new parcel B will be used as agricultural. All parcels will be served by private water and private sewer, and this plot was recorded June 1st.

Yeah, that revised 10.6-acre lot is where the Noble iron ore furnace is located on. Yeah, that was a former mine property, the Virginia Iron Ore Coal and Coat Company. Any questions for staff on this one?

Sure.

That will continue on.

Irvin and Sandra Brockman, through a lot line revision, combined their three properties of 4.158 acres, 3 acres, and .60 acres, making the parcel 7.758 acres. Simultaneously, Mr. and Mrs. Brockman, through an adjoining owner division, divided off 5.75 acres to sell to James and Melissa Story. This subdivision leaves a 1.73-acre residual that will be used as residential agricultural, and the new parcel of 5.75 acres will be used as residential agricultural. Both parcels are being served by private water and private sewer, and this plot was recorded June 4th. And I forgot to put in my report that this was the one that we'd done the variance on.

Yeah, I recognized it. Any questions for staff? If not we'll continue on.

Okay. Patsy Watson recently conveyed 1.110 acres to her adjoining owner, Scout Reynolds and Jackson McManus, making the residual parcel 99.734 acres. Simultaneously, Ms. Reynolds and Mr. McManus, through a lot line revision, combined their property of 1.110 acres with their property of 2.874 acres making the new parcel 3.984 acres this subdivision leaves a 99.734 acre residual that will be used as agricultural and the new parcel of 3.984 will be used as residential both parcels are being served by private water and private sewer and this plot was recorded june 16th

Any questions for staff? If no questions on that one, that will end the subdivision ordinance report.

and our next item of business will be our coming events in the calendar for the record mr chairman august is one of my favorite months no holidays

And what dates the yard sale, 21 yard sale, 20?

It's the last.

It's either the third or the fourth weekend, and I don't have that one in my head.

It'll be the 24th, 25th, and 26th then. Everybody be careful on 21. Yep. If no other questions on the upcoming calendar, our next item of business will be a county engineer report. Mr. Kintzer.

Right now, we just got started today working on the Apex or Apache Energy Arena again.

I'll be around with the jar to put your dollar in. I'll be around with the jar to put your dollar in. You say the A word, you're in.

I've been beating my head against this wall since I've been here. Anyway, the ponds are not in the final stormwater configuration. So the land and skies have been working. They poured in some pipe. They patched some holes and took out the dewatering devices. They started putting in emergency spillways. And they've also put some material down to do the four bays and the five or six hills. So that's mainly what we've been working on. We did approve the plans for the data center. They go back to DDQ now. They got to get the letter of beverage and the and remember there's another acronym they gotta get before they'll be turned loose

So was there any storm damage at Brewer Creek Lake this past weekend? I heard there was a pretty bad windstorm on Saturday.

We had one tree partially fall in one of the camping areas. It didn't fall completely. It was more of a this, not a this. So they brought in a... I think they went to Jarvis and had him come over and take that one down so there weren't hazards to our campers. We were full on camping this weekend. So there were either 10 or 2 that blew off from their moorings from some of the vendors. Some of our... Folks who were there sheltered in an ambulance there in the just below shelter two. Overall, that came out about as good as it could for a pop-up storm that just has a real sudden intensity like that. No serious injuries that I'm aware of. So we're grateful for that.

I guess they got the pH level fixed in the pool. I heard the pool's back open. I remember last meeting you said it was.

Yeah, we've been open all June. There's an issue with the chlorine feeder, so they're having to manually monitor the chlorine, but we haven't had any issues.

Anything else, Mr. Kintzer? And our next item will be our ex officio report, Mr. Burnett.

so we had a joint meeting with the town of withville i believe the town of rule retreat unfortunately i missed that one because work being done is important and um and that's for everything that it was the first one in over five years that i was aware of and everything went good from what i heard we're hoping to have more of those joint meetings The very next day, we finalized our budget based off of the numbers we had from the state, which we didn't. As far as I know, we didn't change it much from what we had previous versions a week or so before because, again, work being done is important. I ended up missing that one, too, which I do not like missing my meetings. It's not something I like to do. and then there's really not a whole lot other than that because once budget winds down we start winding down on other things as well unless y'all had any questions any use on the cannery july 17th they're waiting on it it's installed they're waiting on inspection which that's a state has to come in and expect that so That'll be good. They don't get in a hurry for nothing.

Now my wife won't have to go to Mechanicsburg in Blaine County.

It was a new boiler they put in? Yes. How long has the old one been in there? 40 years? Or at least 40, 50. I figured.

There are some things you just look at and you see the age. You can only fix so much.

What you got, yeah.

he's mentioned the budget I know on channel seven news I've heard Montgomery County Public Schools said they've overrun and Roanoke City Public Schools is overrun Franklin County's overrun how are we on our situation funding so the there's lots of numbers that go into it but we lost some students so our state funding went down

overall we ended up funding our school additional 750,000 from last year's funding but 2.7 million dollars was added to it to keep their funding the same so that came out of our portion whereas that used to come from the state the year before if I ain't mistaken

That was the gist of it. There are some carryover funds from the schools for this year, so they didn't overspend.

Yes, our schools didn't overspend. They did a fantastic job. Dr. Poole did a fantastic job. We are very pleased, and we have a decent working relationship with the school board.

Any other questions for Mr. Burnett? If nothing else for Mr. Burnett, our next item will be our Deputy County Administrator reporting. Mr. Hankins.

I don't have an awful lot for you, Mr. Chairman. You asked about the festival earlier. For the first time back in 14 years, I think the festival came off very well. We had a lot of people out for live music. We didn't know what to expect for our fun run. Our... Parks and Rec Director Alicia Sides I think had 60 numbers and they had to make additional numbers for the fun run. We're still trying to formulate a reasonable estimate on how many people were there for the fireworks. I'm gonna say somewhere between five and 10,000, but we're still trying to get a good count. We do have some drone footage, both that we took on staff and that we had a contractor there shooting professional footage, and you might have seen on social media the county posted from Mountain Cap Media some footage of the fireworks reflecting in the lake. I thought it was a really nice job on their part to get that the way that they did. If you haven't, look it up, it's a pretty cool view it's about a 30 second clip we wanted some marketing materials for next year and so we'll have a meeting later this week to debrief you know get some good ideas on what happened what could have gone better we do have a budget the board has set aside funding for the festival next year so we've got to decide do we do one day do we do multiple days. So we would welcome your input on that. You know, if you've got that. I know Ms. Lyle was there. Thank you for the food, by the way. It was delicious. When you're working on a festival and setting things up, it's nice to have people who offer you food who actually like you and want to make sure you're taken care of.

It was a wonderful event and I commend everyone who had a part in it and everyone who was there working that day because I know it was extremely hot, but I thought it was wonderful.

We had to do a few logistical changes. Sometimes you don't have everybody that you're expecting or you have to cover something that you weren't expecting. I told Mr. Burnett earlier, we had the fireworks for about an hour later than they were expected to be and there were four things that contributed to that. Some of the neighbors were shooting fireworks. A deputy had to be sent and asked them not to shoot fireworks in case anything hot fell down onto our fireworks there were people who parked in the in the blast zone who had to be asked to move because they were too close to the fireworks the fire marshal's office had to inspect and so either because of late setup from the contractor or because the fire marshal got there late, I don't know which one it was, but there was a delay caused by the fire inspection and then As frequently happens with product shipped from overseas, there was some frustrating packaging on some of the fireworks, so that took a little bit longer for them to get into some of the packaging than they had anticipated. But the folks who stayed had a really great time. I heard a lot of laughter, a lot of cheers, a lot of folks who really enjoyed it, who were glad to have the festival back. There were a lot of folks from out of the county who were there for the event. The vendors that I talked to all seemed pretty happy. A lot of folks were happy with the band and the variety of the musical selection. Most of the online criticism that we saw was related to the timing of the fireworks or people who just drove in for the fireworks and were unhappy they were able to get a front row seat or be able to get in there easily. When you've only got one way in and one way out, it's gonna be challenging from a traffic standpoint. Lisa saw me, didn't run over me. I was out at the main road directing traffic with some of our CERT volunteers and our emergency services director. Traffic moved fairly quickly, and sometimes you get people that forget to turn on their headlights or that don't follow directions very well or just aren't paying attention. So we had a little frustration with that, but all told, It wasn't any worse than a lot of Friday night football games or other large events. It was relatively easy. Yeah, we spent a lot of time there, but in the end, with the payoff in the community, seeing what the county is willing to do and coming together and being part of that, I'm pretty happy with it. with it overall but we would appreciate any input that you've got like say i've got a list already of things that we we might consider changing for next year um so we'll we'll start immediately planning for next year uh yeah there's there could possibly be a larger musical act or something like that we might might want to pursue you know to even make it a larger event. We have some some ideas on ways that we can improve the parking situation. There's just a lot of things to consider. So if you got anything, I'd appreciate you sharing that. If we can take it up and do it, we'll we'll do it if not, we'll let you know why.

I didn't think traffic was bad. I mean, I was as far at the end of the line as you could get. And I think we waited 35, 40 minutes, which wasn't bad at all.

That's good to hear.

Yeah, I didn't think it was bad.

Of course, you got that the other way out the backside of the lake, it goes back out on Cedar Springs Road.

Yeah, but we can't send those people back that way. It does run by the camping, so that's a concern too. It'd be a lot of dust.

Not by the cabin. I mean, out on the state-maintained road back over to 749.

We were sending people that way. So we had... The traffic came out probably... 60% turned right to go back toward the rural retreat side about 40% turn left to go back toward the Smith County or the Spiegel side so all told not not terribly difficult to manage it just takes time the only thing I can think to suggest would be right there where the the music and stage was if there was a way to get some shade

there, it would have been difficult to sit out and listen to music.

There's a very strong possibility that we'll rent a stage and have it on the lower side down closer to the volleyball pits so that folks can use that sort of natural amphitheater. Yeah, we didn't really have time to get that set up this time. So if we do that, I feel like there will be more shade for the attendees than there is for the performers. We can always do something over the stage to provide shelter for the performers, but it's a little harder to do that for the crowd. So the further we can get them up the hill and closer to the shade, I think the better off we'll be. Hopefully next year it's not 98 degrees when things start out. even then, you know, once we started to get some shade in areas of the other lake, you know, people were able to find shelter and cool down.

So is the thought to continue doing the third as so that but doesn't interfere with whatever Wiffle's doing or to combine the events?

My preference would be to continue to do it on the 3rd. Wiffle does a really nice event on the 4th. The rural retreat event is different and distinct and separate, and I'd like for us to do something leading up to the 4th. There's plenty of other events to compete with, but if we can do something distinctive there, I think we'll be in a good space.

How was your attendance on Saturday compared to what it was in downtown Whitfield?

I'm not sure what downtown Whitfield has published as far as their… I didn't come to either one. We intended for Saturday to be a much lighter day at the lake. We still did the fun run. We did some concerts. You still had the vendors there. The pool was open. So we had intended, though, not to compete with Whitfield. we expect a lot of people are just going to naturally gravitate you know toward that even because they they want to stroll around downtown with a drink or there's just more you know family events for them to do or something that appeals to their particular interests so why compete we got money from the state to market our grant and the downtown with full event so we were able to to share that resource yeah i'd like to do that again because i think it worked pretty well i think we got pretty good response as long as you do something different they can go to either one you know So, you know, three three days was a strain. So we have had some changes in our parks and recreation staff. We had a we had a resignation and then another staff member that left. So a lot of this was on our director to help put together. She's very experienced and very good at this. I like the depth of the planning that that she did for this event. I think it really showed what her her skills are. Next year, we'll have more staff. We should have a little bit more experience in how to put this on, and so we'll probably involve some other volunteer groups and agencies in things like parking. It would help to have more people directing people where to park. We did have some conflicts, again, because some people had to move late, and it was a fair number of cars. they had to be careful coming into the the lake areas because there were a lot of people that had their blankets out or that were out with their families beside the vehicles and so if it looked like there was a parking spot there and you tried to whip in well you might have been running over somebody so fortunately we didn't have any of that but you know there were some people that were concerned because that was a hazard i mean as long as the vendors made some money they would they would come back that's the part that matters Well, I would probably prefer going forward that we had more of a midway style, have our vendors in a more concentrated area. This time they were pretty spread out, again, just because we didn't know exactly how the parking or the band attendance would be. I think we can sort of use what we learned this year and set up accordingly next year so that vendors are a little more close together. If you... if you're waiting in line for a hot dog and it takes you an hour to get your hot dog you probably either ought to be looking at other vendors or you know there were a lot of things that looked at other vendors and realized that it was going to be a long walk to them and they just stayed in line where they were so you know some of those things you just you know it's hard to anticipate but you know i think We've got some good experience from this, so we'll apply it to next year and we'll plan accordingly for the next few months and start making some announcements.

Other than the vendors, everything else was free, right? Pretty much?

The pool was still... You had to pay to get into the pool. I think everything else was free. We did a lot of crafts.

You can't go wrong with free. I mean...

We had people who wanted to volunteer to do things. If you've seen Joe DeBoard come to our board meetings, he's the older gentleman on the rollator. He wanted to tell stories, spooky stories around the campfire. So there are opportunities for folks who want to participate in things with us, and I think it's good to involve more members of the community.

Yeah.

Other than the July 4th event, we've had a pretty busy month. As Mr. Burnett said, we did have the Joint Governing Bodies meeting. One of the things that we were able to do by having our board meeting in the day on June 30th is we were able to do some touring on some of our county facilities. Sorry, I'm also emergency director today, so. I may have to go here in a minute. We were able to go out onto the Connector Road, the new road by Pepsi, going back into Progress Park, see what sort of progress they've made on that. They informed us during the Joint Governing Bodies meeting that they anticipate that they'll finish summer or early fall of next year with that road. If you've been out to Lee Trinkle Drive, you've probably seen the New Connector Road is coming from the west side. Gatorade is connecting to Lee Trinkle from their side. So there will be an intersection there where Gatorade will be able to get some of their trucks in and out of there easier. So it'll meet one of its intended purposes very early. So they do have base asphalt down for about, I'm going to say roughly half. They're not too Lover's Lane, but they're not far from it. with that road. So we saw a lot of equipment working, but we also got very heavy rain that day. If you saw the land spout, water spout pictures around Whiffle from that day, we were probably out in it. It was coming down hard on us. So we got to see the connector road, even though the rain was coming down heavy. And then we tour through and viewed some of the other industrial sites close by. So it's a good opportunity for some members of the board to be able to get out and look at those. The joint governing bodies meeting, there were some updates on some transportation projects from VDOT. They're looking at some additional climbing lanes. They're looking, if you go toward Bland, Mr. Minkiff will probably be glad to hear that they're looking at an additional climbing lane heading toward the tunnel going up. I think they said starting marker 43. Once you come out of that long straight stretch and start up the hill, the extra climbing lane there would be useful. It might not be done before you are ready to retire, but they at least are getting ready to start it. Hopefully that will help also with some of the Saturday traffic backups that happened from the tunnel.

That's what happens. Those trucks get to going like that up through there on on summertime and the people going back home up Ohio and Michigan and Indiana from the beach.

Everybody leaves Myrtle Beach at 7.30 or 8 in the morning, and then they get to Withwell in the early afternoon.

And the trucks now had three lanes. At least the cars could get around the trucks. It may help some. It will, but... You would hope. It's not going to help the ones that do 15 miles an hour in the tunnel.

Or stopped.

The new climbing lane at mile marker 30 does seem to be making a difference in clearing out some of the traffic hazards. There were 81 and 77 split. There are still a lot of people getting used to that, though. Most truck climbing lanes... You're used to having an extra lane on the right. In this one, you have an extra lane on the left. So people are having to go left to get around the truck traffic. And some of the truck traffic is even going left and defeating the intended purpose of the climbing lane. But they also talked about the Monroe Street and Lee Highway project. You've probably seen where that's underway, where the Italian Garden used to be. There were a lot of people who thought that was supposed to be a roundabout. It's realigning that intersection, so it's going to be an aligned four-way intersection, not a roundabout.

if you were nervous about roundabouts being in town um just wait i'm sure there will be opportunity yet this is not going to be right there just like years ago when they opened that one up down at daleville exit 150. this is the first roundabout in southwest virginia i sent the reporter a email saying uh there's been one at withfield community college since the mid-60s research um

It seemed like there was another transportation project. Oh, they, if you've not noticed, they have opened mile marker 41, the new northbound entrance onto 77. The northbound side is open. They're still working on the southbound side coming off of 77. But they're making progress.

Yeah, the first morning they had that open and I was there at 4.30 in the morning and it was dark and it was kind of hard to see so I had to pay attention to what I was doing.

I'm sure you thought, yeah, where did my entrance go? laughter

What about the internet in the southeast part of the county?

Still working. One of the holdups was for Red Hollow Road. So while the truck climbing lane was being constructed, Citizens wasn't able to work in that area. VDOT said no. Then VDOT told citizens they could go to work. They got ready to and then VDOT said, no, hold up. We've got another delay for you. So I've asked VDOT to resolve that and they have. So they've given citizens the go ahead to go back and work in that area. Red Hollow was one of those long stretches that needed to be reached before they got to the end of this project. So I believe they did get a very short extension. I think they've got to be done now by the end of August with their primary construction for it to qualify for repayment through their grant. So we're relying on them to make every effort. They were still working on Miller's Creek. still working on Peppers Ferry. There was some of the some of the streets or some of the roads that need to be infilled. So they've been working on those and they've laid on. I think it's an additional two or three crews. I think they're up to five crews working now to try to get that done in time. So the good news is if folks are not reached as part of this project, they did get an additional funding round through bead federal dollars that were approved for reaching the customers that were hardest to reach. So If somebody doesn't get served in this round, there will still be an opportunity for them. And I think Citizens is working really hard to try to bring new customers on. You saw them in our public input session at Fort Chisel. The fact that the CEO of the company came out and was there trying to help sell residents on getting the service, that I think was a really good effort on their part. As far as other utilities go, the 52 sewer project is up and operating now. So for the first time ever, the EMS station there at Fort Chisel doesn't have to rely on a septic tank. I'm sure Ms. Branscombe can tell us. That was an unpleasant situation. It never seemed to work very well, and now we don't have to rely on it at all. So... It's nice to see that they're in place taking care of those crews. That does free up some ability to develop in that area as well. We are working on some other utility projects. Some of you have probably been contacted about the Siloam Shadow Lane project. Shadow Lane has developed More and more houses have been added onto a two inch line. The two inch line has itself been extended out. Same size pipe, a whole lot more people wanting it means you got a whole lot less reliable water pressure in that area. So we're trying to get a new pump station in place there to add volume and then increase the pipe size as well. There are a lot of those projects that need done. We've got some big projects that are coming up over the next few months that'll be out to bid, trying to get folks water and wastewater services where we can reach them.

I know the water's going to become a, if this drought lasts much longer, some people's water source is going to be private, it's going to be drying up.

Yeah, I think we do have concern about the wells. The folks that rely on municipal water from us or from the town of Whitfield are in pretty good shape because of the water from the New River. We still have many, many millions more gallons of water flowing by that water treatment plant than we need in a day. So I believe that... Current licensure is for six, and we're expanding to eight million gallons a day that we can take out of the river. And at its lowest, you probably have seen maybe 270, 280 million gallons a day flowing by the Idaho gauge. So we've got plenty of water. But, you know, I do feel for the farmers, if you've... Those of you who are in the business know some of the fields that you're seeing being cut this week for the first time this year are yielding maybe 30 to 40% of what they would normally yield, and the first cut would have been two months ago, not in July. So I'm afraid for what that means for our cattle business this fall. Some of our livestock is... Yeah, we're struggling. So folks that don't have hay put back, yeah, that's going to be a concern. They're probably going to be forced to sell a lot of head of cattle they wouldn't otherwise sell.

I mean, when you don't have water, you don't have a choice.

When you don't have hay or grass. Yeah. And we're already at a 70-year low on cattle.

Yeah, just like the stream that runs by my house, Lake Spring Branch, it runs into Cripple Creek on Pope Road, down next to Eagle Furnace. It's already dried up, plumbed back about a third of a mile back up from the creek. No water. Any other questions for Mr. Hankins? I've got one question for you. I've come from Roanoke, or farther north from Roanoke, five times in the last three weeks. And the cars coming off 77 on to 81, and where they extended the exit up to exit 80, I call it running the gauntlet. I want to feed out and put some signs up to watch for emerging traffic, more additional signage. I about got run over twice.

We can ask. That's not managed by local VDOT, though. That's managed by the interstate side. So one of the things that I think would be helpful, they put down those – What's the plastic called? The thermoplast signs designating the route numbers a few years ago. Those are pretty well worn off. That happens with pushing snow and just being driven over. But if they could do something to help remark the routes, particularly as they're doing some of these repaving projects, that would help some. For the folks that aren't familiar with that road, don't make their merge in time, either coming left or going right. Yeah, it does create .

They're coming off there at 70, 75 miles an hour. I'm trying to get over on the far right lane to get off at X and 80.

The surprise is that we really don't have that many accidents there. I'm glad we don't. But we certainly have the potential. It's going to happen. Well, it does happen. We just don't get a lot of them. Just keep your head on a swivel when you're going through here.

Any other questions for Mr. Hankins? If none, we'll go to Commissioner Concerns. Any of the commissioners got questions or anything? Y'all are a quiet bunch. I'm being

Yes.

Okay. No commissioner concerns. We'll go to the next item of business, our land use ordinance review.

Well, let me give you some good news and some bad news. Depends on your perspective. Because of the projects that we've had going on and the short turnaround between the 22nd and when your agenda went out, I've not got a lot done based on the direction that you provided. So with your permission, Lisa and I would like some time to sit down and go through, make sure that we get it closer to right rather than rushing it. If you desire to do so, we can hold a work session later in July. The Board of Supervisors has signaled that if you want to do that, that they are willing to come and treat that more as a joint session. Or if you want to give us more time, we can work into August and do it at your next regular meeting.

We're not on any kind of time frame for this.

No, but we've had no official times.

I mean, Jesse, I'm asking you.

I would like to know when we're going to get this thing on board. Bottom line. I mean, we've been on it a year. So...

And the citizens are wanting to know when this is going to come up.

We need to make sure we do this right.

Well, I mean, we're going to make mistakes. We're going to make some mistakes and we're going to learn from them.

And I got a question on that. Because I've been doing some studies on that. And the framework set up on this is permissive or prohibitive. And the terminology is a little bit backwards what it means. Permissive is you give what they can do and all the other... task or allowances or restricted. The prohibitive is you dictate what can't be done and everything else is by rights. Is that something allowed by state that you can do that? Because that would streamline this thing completely, but anything that we don't restrict is by rights. And we don't have to have two different columns on this thing. Is that something up there? Now, what I've read is zoning largely is permissible. It seemed like this was kind of a combination of the two, kind of squeezed together. You've got two different calls. Am I understanding that correctly?

I'd say that's a good read on it.

Like I said, I just thought the prohibitive, not a lot of them do, but I just wondered if that could be a standalone thing. For prohibitive, it says you can't do this without either coming before the zoning, getting a special use, or a change in the zoning itself. But everything else is by rights. so you don't have these little uh like we you know when we got these lists this long and what they're allowed to do we get away with that get get rid of that and go to strictly what we don't and what we're trying to keep from and the rest is by rocks that would streamline this thing completely to me i could be wrong because i'm no attorney either and i'm not sure if all this is legal legalities of it i'm not sure if that's legal like i said that just seemed like me what we're talking about to streamline it make it easier to understand easier to do because now i've talked to several people the biggest thing is i'm worried about us missing something that we didn't need to miss that takes a right away somebody's property that bothers me more than anything because we've got the subdivision ordinances they cover pretty much everything that they've got building code that take care of any kind of building we've got rules and regulations about everything I just don't want to be, I want to make sure we do this right before we're not hindering the people's private property rights. And with the same stipulation, keeping control of solar panels, data centers, whatever we want to control, which it might be where we have to put a blanket thing over all of this. But you could do a blanket bucket. I'm just asking. I know this is kind of late in the game to bring something up like this, but it just kind of hit me last week or the last meeting. And I started doing some studying on this thing. I just wanted to bring that up.

My Emory & Henry Law degree isn't serving me very well. Generally, yes. You can take either track that you want to take. If you want to approach it more from the prohibitive side, I think you're looking at essentially restarting the process. I think that would take a pretty significant rewrite. But it is your starting document. So if the planning commissioners tell me that that's the tack you want to take,

i can tell the board of supervisors that's that's the direction you want to go and that we're going to look at new language i i would love to have a model if you've got a good model out there if you well it's the majority of the uh you know municipalities and all that they use the permissive but like i said most of them stipulate what you can't do what you can do and then the rest is prohibited without a special permit and we've kind of got a combination here it's kind of got the two you've got permissions, you've got prohibitations, but like I said, my biggest thing is, I just thought it'd be streamlined if we didn't have anything, as far as anything, anything that we prohibit, everything else is automatically by rights. So if you've got that, you want that little chicken coop we was talking about the last time, if it's not on the prohibited side of it, with special use, you wouldn't even have to get a variance or anything. and like we stopped at the little homesteading situation where they did a little personal farm and that's kind of the terminology i kind of incorporated what i was looking at is homesteading and it's basically all that resident and that's basically the terminology but that's kind of the reason i brought it up because you know i just want to make sure we do this right if if it was the pleasure of the planning commission to to go down that route then we would have to have some work sessions on

or at least one, on what would you want to include in that list of prohibitions. And I think you've probably already got a start on that, but there probably needs to be some thought put into, are there other prohibitions, things that we're concerned about? You can always amend the ordinance if there are things that come up later that you want to amend.

An open public session before you can amend it, correct? Yes. So you get a chance for the public to put their input. Now to me, we went on the basis of this thing when we started to try to maintain and control all these energy companies and all this other stuff coming out. That seems to me to be, if you did start this thing or kind of get the wheels rolling, that's where you would start it. is that would be across the board. And if you had special use on all those, it would have to come for the zoning bills or whatever to get a special use permit to let this go forward. And if it wasn't approved, it couldn't. But anything you would change in it, if you set the framework like that, just like it is now, anything that's not interesting would come before the board or whoever. But everybody would have a chance to have an open public meeting to voice a change of any kind. And that's kind of why I brought it up. Other than that, I'm trying to keep my mouth quiet.

My thoughts are if the Board of Supervisors would like to meet with us for a work session. I think that gets us both together. You know where we're at. Because we have a lot of citizens who don't want to keep seeing things coming in because we've got nothing to help them. And we're worried about our water resources because that's the one thing that I'm getting a lot of calls on is you know keeping our resources not just our water but our resources when they need to be so i'm of the thought if the board of supervisors would like to meet with us that puts us all together because we've been working on this for a long time and and i get calls every day of when does the board of supervisors going to vote on this because people want to protect the county and what they have

The data center proposed in the eastern end of the county, it has no access to public water, correct?

Not currently, no.

Are they going to drill wells or have access to county water? Because if they're going to drill wells, then they need to have everyone's wells tested within a mile area because they're going to draw down big-time water.

I would say that we are not far enough along in that process for sure, but I would think that they would have to have a public source of water for fire protection. That would be the key thing. Usually when you see 12-inch water lines around these, it's for providing fire protection, not for usable water. Have you seen...

on the plan they propose a three inch horse mane and we do have a

casing down there that were pinned with that, so that means there's not a lot of people there.

But the plan showed 12-inch water lines all the way around, so that's not a problem. They'll have to tap in with our 10-inch water line with a pole underneath the interstate, most likely. And then they'll have to fill their lines, and then most likely have a fire suppression tank there, because 12-inch line, that's way too big for water.

Well, and we're not far enough along in the approval process yet to say with certainty, but I would think that public water is going to be their better fire protection option.

I mean, I've heard rumors that they're going to drill wells, and I think there's no way that they could. You're talking about big-time wells. I don't want that to happen.

How far does Puyallup County come up from X of 89 with their public water? I was just curious. Do what?

I know an interconnect between Pulaski County and Wythe County has been discussed in the past, but I don't think there's any momentum for that.

It depends on that data center, whoever gets it as a closed loop or the open system.

water it does seem to be the way the business works and Johnny you made a comment about them to tap it onto your line they would only it would be a dedicated line only to them and to no one else Okay, because you've heard rumors in Georgia that all of a sudden the line was only dedicated to the data center and not anywhere else.

The plans we've seen, it's not a big water user. The one out here is 28 hundred gallons a day.

You're talking about the one proposed in progress?

that one it consists of closed-loop system I mean that and don't have the water usage but it will have the example is the closed-loop system that we have at the arena the Hadassah energy arena

So that's 14 miles of pipe under that 200 by 85 foot section. Very closely spaced. They control the temperatures. And it would be a similar sort of setup here for this closed loop system.

It's like a home geothermal unit.

Some similarity, yes.

Yep. I mean, some of them, my brother has his buried lines. There's some people that have a well dedicated only to that. They don't have to land wherever they're located at. They drill a well and go that route.

They're not proposing any ground source to your ground source? No.

So what are we going to do? We're going to come back?

If you'd like us if you'd like to set a date for a future work session We can circulate that to the board and see if it works for them and I know seasons proposed as a joint meeting with the Board and us and that work session.

Is that correct? I think that would be a good idea. I Just have to work out the logistics.

That's why I was looking at Mr. Hankins to see what works on his schedule because he's got three hats right now.

If you want to stick with Mondays, we could try to get something done in two weeks and meet on the 20th or could look at the 27th. Or we could circulate those days to the board if they work for everybody here, just to see which one works better for the board. The board has its regular meeting on the 28th.

Works for me. Either date? Either date. All right.

If it suits, the commissioners will circulate both days to the board and see which one suits.

Either the 20th or the 27th. At least.

That's Bobby's.

So, I forgot to hold this for you. Are you out that whole week? Who, me?

I'm waiting to see what the doctor says.

I'll circulate it with the 27th as the preferred date and the 20th as the fallback date. I'd like to have you here, but it may be that I have to go without you here, so...

I can call a doctor and cancel my procedure. I'd rather you didn't.

If you need to go see your doctor, go see your doctor. You grabbed me. I ain't never had another one before.

There's probably brain surgery in it. That won't take long. Go there now. You opened the door. I did that.

Aren't you proud? I was so quiet.

I saw you throwing money their way.

Mr. Hankins, I would miss the 20th and the 27th. I'm out of town for vacation the week of the 20th and work for the 27th. But I could zoom in if that's a possibility or whatever. I don't want to mess up the whole schedule just for me.

And it may be that we don't have enough on the board that can do either day. But I think if I can get at least five of you here, we should probably go ahead just in the interest of time.

I think we need to get, it needs to move. It needs to move. And I think we're smart enough. Smart enough to make it work.

Are you saying I'm the weakest link anyways? No, no.

Because whatever we decide, it's on them to decide at the end.

That's exactly right. The Board of Supervisors is going to have to make the final decision. Yes, sir. But we need to give them the best presentation that we possibly can so that they can make a decision one way or the other. Amen.

Yep. We're appointed. They're elected. They're the ones in the hot seat, more so than us.

Probably we'll try to meet in here just because of public interest. I think we have more available seating in here.

We'll just each sit on our supervisor's lap.

We will probably do it the way that we do with the school board. We'll have tables set up here for the planning commission and have the board at the desk and have it as a conversation between you all.

Fair enough. As long as we have something. We can't keep kicking this can down the road. We've got to do something. People are wanting stuff done in certain parts of the county.

Well, thank you all for your patience, and we'll try to get something set.

Well, Susan, how's the solar? You still got drones and lights in your eyes?

Oh, yeah.

Johnny, why don't you take care of that?

Now she's taking her sheep. The zones and the... Cow sheep. I mean, what's the difference?

The lights in her eye, can't you shoot them?

I have a drone show once or twice a week. That's a George Wright education.

No, actually...

again how about all the sheep on her and have you down to the dirt Johnny yeah that was gonna happen if you can't congregate those animals somewhere where your water at one spot right brain you come you're gonna beat it up

Not to sound mean, but I hope that's any minute. We need the rain.

Mr. Chairman, do you have a question? I've got a question. I don't know.

I would suggest you recess to a date to be announced.

Could we recess since we don't know what the date is? That's what I was going to ask.

I believe you can recess to a date to be announced later in July.

I'll move to take a recess on our planning commission meeting to a future predetermined date that will be determined by Board of Supervisors and County Administration. Do a roll call, folks. This has been seconded. Aye.

She seconded.

Yes, she did. She seconded. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye