Board of Supervisors - workshop

All right, I'll call this August 4th, 2026, Board of Supervisors Work Session to order. Roll call, please.

Mr. Holroyd? Yes. Mrs. Noll? Here. Mr. Jury? Present. Mr. Rohn?

Here.

Mr. Shepard? Here. Mr. Chairman, you have a quorum.

Still waiting for five different answers to that roll call.

You really want all the same?

We should do it procedurally. The word is present. If you look at the procedure, so, sorry.

My God, this is going to be one of these meetings.

We're going to move to work sessions. I'll have you call on Dr. Carroll for an introduction.

So, we welcome Dr. Carroll back for another visit with the board to talk a little bit about facilities. He's brought his team with him, and we're anxious to hear what he has to say as a follow-up to the last time I think we were together. So, Dr. Carroll. Thank you, Mr. Bellamy and Mr. Holroyd. Board, thank you for having us in tonight to give you a current picture of our facilities as well as start the discussion on our future plans. I brought with me tonight our Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Bowen, and our Associate Director of Capital Plans and Projects, Mr. Kilburn. And board members, in the past, we might have come in and spoken about certain projects, done that on occasion. but not the larger scope of our capital needs. So that's what we're gonna talk about a little bit tonight. So first of all, I've got the presentation in four phases here. First, we'll talk about our historical approach. The second piece, I know when you look at your CIP, you're looking at the entire county that includes our projects, just focusing on our CIP that we passed last January and you accepted into the budget. in the spring. Then we're going to talk about how we've started a facility study a while ago and then where our next steps with that are. So I want to talk about the historic approach first. So I don't know if you know it, but we signed a memorandum of understanding, uh, between our two boards in August of 1993. And to give you a little context there, that was three years before Grafton was built. I don't know how much that was part of the, uh, you know, the deal making or whatever to, to get that built. But, We entered into that at that time. And in that MOU, there's kind of three major pieces I'd like to talk about. General guidelines that were now going to be regarded for school construction decisions. And the first one was that we would use existing buildings and expand them as a preferred means of obtaining needed student capacity as it was necessary, rather than constructing new buildings. And the second piece was when we renovated that we should plan for any projected needs or enrollment for at least the next decade to come. And so we've tried to do that. And then the third thing is the comprehensive plan for you all would include the following program capacities for planning purposes of elementary schools being around 700 students, middle schools around 1,000, and high school 1,200 to 1,800. Now, the interesting thing about that is we only built one school after this MOU was signed. And there were two additional pieces to it that were tools for us to help us balance things out as necessary. The first one was that we would use temporary buildings, portables, because sometimes things just flex. You have enrollment spikes. Sometimes you have economic upturns and downturns. You have military movements, that type of thing. So temporary buildings was a way to have flexibility before you made a brick and mortar commitment. And the other one was that we would redistrict students as needed, which nobody ever enjoys, but it is a necessary tool on occasion. So this agreement has been in place and honored and has been our methodology that we've followed for 30 plus years now. The latest examples are the addition and renovation at Seaford Elementary School. We did both there. The new portable classrooms at Waller Mill to absorb growth after redistricting and the 2024 redistricting that we did where we moved students between Waller Mill, Magruder, Yorktown Elementary and Seaford. Now we only did half that redistricting because we kind of hit a bottleneck and that's the parking lot that the SBO and Dare Elementary share. It's not big enough to allow for more students at Dare. So we've done the design work, but we did not hit the window for doing that work this summer. So that work is going to get done next summer, which will expand that parking lot, which then will allow us to continue the redistricting between Dare, Grafton Bethel, Coventry, and Tabb Elementary. So where we're bumping up against our capacity limits at those schools right now, we'll be able to relieve some of that. So let's look at our facilities, specifically our schools. I shared this the other night when I was with you, that the average age of our school buildings is 55 years old. And if we include our operational buildings, that average increases a little bit. But I know that the focus for most people is on our schools. And up here you see the ages of each of those schools when they were built. And let's look at the oldest and the newest. So if you focus on our oldest school building, we are talking about 1954, which I think for some of us that are a little older, it doesn't seem as far back as we, we want to think, but, uh, those schools are now 72 years old this year. And, The lifespan of a school building is generally accepted roughly 75 years, give or take a few years. So, but these three are coming up along that kind of general guideline and none of them are in our current six year horizon on the CIP. So we don't plan on visiting them in the short term. So you've got York High School, Yorktown Middle School, and Grafton Bethel. at the other end of the spectrum you have our newest facilities and i already mentioned grafton school complex which was built exactly 30 years ago this year 1996 and six years before that was magruder elementary which is now 36 years old and so at this point i'd like to pass it to mr bowen to talk about uh how we come upon the capital improvements program and where we're at with our current most recent program. So, Mr. Bowman. Thank you, Dr. Carroll.

So, our CIP, how do we construct or how do we develop our CIP? These are the typical projects that can be found in our CIP, certainly new construction, renovations, additions, HVAC replacement, we've prepared some other projects. So anyone that owns a home is certainly aware that they have major systems that have a life cycle, roofs, HVAC, appliances, furnaces, and water doors. We have the same with slightly different life expectations that are larger, more complex, and certainly more expensive. The point here is that capital spending is an ongoing maintenance process that has to happen with or without enrollment growth. Another point is that when we do renovation, we may not be back in that building for another 20-25 years. So we're getting to the point where some of our older buildings that are now approaching 75 years of age, if we do a smaller renovation in 10-15 years, it may be that the age of that building is over 100 years old before we come back and do another renovation. So, Projects are placed on our CIP based on a variety of factors, but include instructional capacity, security concerns, age of the structure, building conditions, and most certainly the cost. Now this next slide is just a synopsis of our currently approved capital improvements program. We've condensed it down just really to show you the big projects that are currently on our six-year plan. And then we've wrapped up many of the smaller projects in the very last line of other projects. For some years now, Dr. Carroll has shared in his facility's master plan presentations and in discussion with board staff that some of the smaller items were wrapping up and we were going to hit a stretch of bigger projects on the horizon. And that horizon is now here. We have all but secured funding for the TAB high school project, and you see that in the FY26E, 27, and 28 columns. The next two projects in line are Queens Lake and Waller Mill. And I'll take a minute with just each of these. Queens Lake was last renovated in 2004, and currently we are struggling with emerging leaks and shingled areas of the roof. The HVAC is due for replacement, but we are most in need of space, both classroom and common area. Queens Lake is at capacity, I'm sorry, Queens Lake is at capacity as only has a brick and mortar instructional capacity of 540 students, which is about half of all of our other middle schools. As currently zoned, Waller Mill is the elementary school with most growth. It was placed on the CIP where it is and we can monitor the current residential development activity for what elementary enrollment numbers it will yield before committing to the size of additional space. Now at the bottom of the slide in the lower right hand corner You'll see here that our current six-year plan has a total funding of roughly $117 million, $100 million of which will be funded by bonds secured by the county that required debt service payments. And this is a typical range for us. And keep in mind, this does not include any of our oldest buildings Dr. Carroll referenced earlier.

Well, if I could ask just one question, what would the typical cost be of a new build for an elementary, middle school, high school?

For a new elementary school, we're looking somewhere between $40 and $50 million, depending if we have available land. If we don't have the land, it's going to be additional cost. We see costs for middle schools in the neighborhood of $60 to $100 million, depending, again, on land purchases, and then on high school in excess of $100 million.

pretty close to $200 million for a high school. Yeah. Well, and it depends on what you're doing with those high schools. And I think I've said this to the board before. We're not in the business of winning architects awards, but you're still looking at a large number. Thank you.

So is Queens Lake the only elementary school you got up there in your district? It's not elementary, it's middle. No, there's a, oh, that's right, it says middle.

Okay.

Waller Mill and Monroe.

Okay. The Walden Mills, the elementary school. Yes. Okay. And in Queens Lakes, the middle school. Yes, sir. Okay. We also have Magruder Elementary.

We have Magruder up there, don't you? Yes.

How many of them are Magruder? That are there right now, we are around 600.

And what's the max?

We've pushed it to just over 700. It's been a, when it's gotten older.

That's when the redistricting kicked in and moved about 150 students out. Move some of them down. Okay.

So board members, about eight years ago, our CIPs had a 10 year... Can I pause you right there for a second?

I think the board would be interested in understanding, I don't want to get into the redistricting part here, but you know, you've indicated that growth in that area. And I think we all know that that's the area where you can have more growth because you've got more land there for growth and homes. So, and you've indicated that like What was it, McGruder, the one you said that was maxing out? Waller Mill. Waller Mill, okay. So, on this plan here, where's the new schools? There are no new schools.

Well, that's my question. Do you need new schools? Because right now we're operating under an MOU that we expand and we redistrict or we do some other tool that we do it before we consider new school construction. So the MOU, well, okay.

So you're saying that the MOU is your guidance, your agreed guidance here. But in the end, we have students, okay. If I go back to your comment about 55-year-old schools, all right, education back then and population, were way different than they are today, okay? You jump forward here, you got a lot more people, okay? 55 years ago, you got a lot more people, and the education needs have changed. The structure has changed, right? So you're saying that you can remodel the schools to meet the new, all the new student requirements, the educational requirements, What are you going to build in this goal?

Well, that's something that we would have to consider, but we're going to talk about that a little bit at the end. All right. Okay. So, board members, we, about eight years ago, our CIPs had a 10-year horizon for And the County staff asked us to reduce it down to six at that time. So we did. Uh, Steph has now requested we go to a 15 year model to better forecast the broader picture. And we agree with this longer horizon if for no other reason, uh, what's out of sight is out of mind. So new projects six years out, uh, you know, then start to hit the outer years. And it feels like a surprise because where did that come from? But as I stated earlier, the need is always there. The clock is always ticking. And maintenance deferred is maintenance that either ends up being more expensive down the road or snowballs into other projects. We had a little bit of that at Tab High where we had a renovation due. We also had some smaller projects we did other places. And we said, well, let's put that off until the renovation. So the scope got larger and larger. We also believe that if we're going to go with a revised forecast, then bringing in a third party to evaluate our facilities and make some recommendation was a really good idea, get some fresh eyes on it. So we contracted for that back in March for a study. And now I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Kilburn to talk about where we're at with that study. Mr. Kilburn.

Thank you, Dr. Carroll. So just a quick update on that timeline. In fall of 2025, we were which we have been doing internally. Very quickly and actually thank you Mr. Shepherd because that led to a lot of questions to where we felt like we needed some outside consulting and so that's when we reached out in March, had that contract issued the week of April 13th we conducted. What did that contract cost you?

Some change. And so you're using them to come back and tell you it's something you already know?

No, they so some yes, I'll be honest. Yes, but but they are coming to us with things that we haven't thought of as well. So they have some very interesting ideas. We have not received that final report yet. So we're not really going to dive into those tonight, but it has been worth bringing them into us. The week after spring break, we did go and do full walkthroughs of every single one of our buildings, including every single school, the academy, and all of our operational buildings. Since then, we have had a couple of work sessions with them and additional internal staff so that we could brainstorm, talk about what's working, what's not working, to try and guide their recommendations for us. And so again, that MOU, this is an example of York High School and how our agreement to expand has impacted the campus at York High School. The green section of this image is the original building of York High. Since then, there have been six additional expansions filling that campus up. so what we've led to and why we're asking questions is because what we're ending up with is undersized campuses smaller classroom sizes undersized parking lots and driveways and data infrastructure and i'll clarify dated not data because really what i'm tying into there is electrical components sewer lines if we don't upgrade those when we do the renovations then they just continue to age, continue to age. We have original sewer lines in most of York High School. And that does lead to problems that we're having to deal with. So and then if you look at it from today, we have not really done any major expansion or renovation at York High except for the roof in 20 years. So where would it be the field? The field is behind the red building in the upper left. But I'm saying that was an upgrade. But that wasn't a full, that was actually part of the 2006. So it's been 20 years.

I know, but see that, so we don't sugarcoat this too much, okay? The point is that one of the things you're finding out that you don't have the space, you've already said this several times here, the land you're on, you can literally fill that up with buildings, but you don't meet the educational needs of the students because you've got to have some physical activity that's going to require you being outside. Right? I mean, tell me, as a teacher. Right.

Well, I wouldn't say we're not meeting the needs. We've been very successful, but it is difficult at times. And so things, when we're just adding on, you take old buildings, those classrooms were built under a different time, different guidelines for the sizes of classrooms. So we get into a situation like Seaford Elementary School, where the old, the rooms that were renovated are still the original size, but in the new wing, we've been able to make them larger. and the following VDOE guidelines for the time. Then another issue is when we talk about undersized campuses, buildings that have been built before Grafton were all one story. And so we've spread them out on a smaller campus, but you're spread out. haven't gone vertically at all and the only and they're not built to go up there's no infrastructure and just add a second floor and therefore if you're going to continue to expand horizontally you're going to have to eat up some of the field space which then gets into our other agreements with the county for you know park space and that type of thing so it gets it just makes it harder to So going vertical is definitely a solution, but we haven't done it except for a grafting, which is ironically in our largest track. You have to tear stuff down to be able to build it up. You would have to do that. Some campuses you would have to, some you don't.

So going back to the facility studies and the contract, condition assessment and then future space needs assessment workshops with the internal staff and then provide for us a recommendations report in addition to that we ask for them to establish a threshold and a rationale for when replacement made better fiscal sense than a heavy renovation where we have urgency is that we're already into the design of Queens legs roof and we are very interested in any novel solutions the consultants have to offer for addressing the upper Uh, so even though we do not have the full final report from these consultants, we have been made aware of six critical issues that they have identified within your county schools.

Those three steps have been completed. Am I?

Yes. Yes. The next step would be a slide that we'll talk about later, but we're looking to do a joint meeting between the two boards. So the first critical issue that they identified is infrastructure. And while this is not one of our historic buildings, um, as Mr. Shepherd pointed out, the times change, right? Instructional needs change both for the teachers and for the students, whether it's, you know, in a classroom or whether it's on an athletic field, this would not meet today's needs. Right? And so the agreements we were under 30 years ago, might need to change as well. You're pointing out we might need to change, rebuild. That's what we're looking at. But to emphasize here, 14 out of our 18 schools were built before 1980. So 56 years. You know, when you say that, you know,

I guess you got a point. You're trying to say they're old, OK? But you're talking to a guy that when I went to high school, the school was built in 1935. And I had my kids went to school in Europe where the school was built in 1830. So you can have an old building. as long as it's built well, okay? It's got good bones to it, and you can adapt it to the technology needs and the infrastructure that goes along with it, right? So, I mean, you're stressing that. You guys constantly do this, stress the age of these buildings, but the thing that matters is what's the problem with them? What is the problem?

Let me tie that in two slides ahead of here, and I'll just jump to it if that's okay. We used in this study what was called the FCI facility condition. So it's the requirements we have to upgrade a building and then the renewal cost to upgrade a building all divided by what the current replacement value would be. So my response to your question would be when is it fiscally responsible to tear down and build new? versus doing a super heavy renovation to get it up to day-to-day standards. So to go in and rip down load-bearing walls throughout all of Derry Elementary School to expand it to modern VDOE standards for square footage per student and the networks and get the CMU out with something that'll help with technology. That's all starting to get to the point where it's more cost-effective to build new than it is to do these heavy renovations. That's assuming if you try to do it all at once.

If you rebuild a section at a time, cost equation is different.

The problem we have with that is we have nowhere to put those kids while we rebuild. Where are you going to put them if you rebuild? That's why we're here talking and that's why we brought in the consultants. We're looking for suggestions. We don't have all the answers today.

Mike, my concern in all this will be that we do it sooner than later. Okay. I mean, if we want to hear a lot of screaming and hollering, all you got to do is put trailers out somewhere. Okay. And then we start getting it after a while. People are tired of that. And we do that. I mean, it makes sense when you're doing remodeling and you're going to within a reasonable timeline. But when you got kids sitting in trailers going to do an education for maybe up to five years, or the trailers are sitting there, parents just see trailers, trailers, trailers, and that doesn't look good. So, you know, I'm kind of waiting for the shoe to drop on this. And I mean, I... Sorry if I'm a little paranoid about it, but knowing the cost of these schools, and I think you're very concerned. Well, you weren't conservative in the school cost to me. And what I know about high schools, that it's not unreasonable to find a high school costing $200 million, and finding a middle school probably costing you $125 to $130 million, and an elementary school somewhere around $80 million. not in the lower end, but in the higher end, and everything is going up. So I'm just, I'm concerned, I'm really concerned, and I understand you're, you know, you want to take this in a rational manner, and you want to do it so people can understand it, but I don't want us stumbling to the point that we all of a sudden end up building two or three schools.

Well, first, let me assure you, Mr. Shepard, that you all are the ones that decided you're going to give us the funding to do that. Well, that's why I'm sitting here a little worried. And I also want to say that Look, when we have that joint meeting and when the consultants make their recommendations, that first of all, that's their recommendations. I think that the things that we've seen is they have come up with some novel solutions to some things that we didn't think about. But I think we all around this table and around our table are that there's only so much pacing you can do. I mean, we can sit here and say, you know, half of our buildings are 50 years old and older, but we can't replace them all, nor would I make that recommendation. But I think we just have to start thinking about it because some, as we look at some of our buildings, when we get to them, It's exactly what the point Mr. Kilburn is making right now. We do have to ask the question when we get to a certain older building, is this the most cost-effective way to deal with this? I think actually, Mr. Holroyd, you and I had that discussion around Tab High at some point, was isn't it cheaper just to go new? Yes it is. But you have to look at what the alternative is. You have to weigh those things. So would I say that we need to replace all 18 buildings? Absolutely not. And you can't, and you can't possibly do it and wouldn't be cost effective. But I do think we have to start entertaining thought. There are some, some spots where we need to think about that because as we said earlier, the next time you come around it, a building's going to be 110, 115 years old, or the next time after that, it's going to be 140 years old. So we do have to start thinking that way. This division built 18 schools in a 46 year span. And now it's just been hodgepodge since. I think it's prudent for us to think about it, be purposeful about it, and at least see what some opportunities are for where we should start to pick our spots.

Okay, along those lines, Dan, if we think, let's forget the buildings, okay? Let's just think of the land. And you know that I'm making any more of it, right? That's right. So we have spots that we can put schools on, but I don't know that we have enough. I mean, I don't know that. That's what I would have you guys come back and tell us. And we, and, and is it cheaper to go over and move homes off of property or is it just cheaper to buy the raw property in preparation for the schools? I mean, obviously the answer is going to be the raw land.

No, the answer is you tear down the school on the existing site and rebuild a two-story. Right. Maybe. And then you got... If you have, if you have it, but see... That's a lot more desirable from a land use standpoint.

Right. Oh, yeah. I agree you can do that, but you've got to house those students.

You've got to put students somewhere. Correct. Right. Which is going to be a nightmare.

So we don't have any spare elementary schools. Or you put them in new yards and trailers.

Temporary redistricting.

Or you forsake some of the athletic land in the short term while you build new, and then you, you reconfigure the old buildings and and reclaim that land for fields. So there's a lot of opportunity. And I think we want to suspend judgment until we get to those recommendations.

All right.

I can see land evaporated that we can possibly pick it up. Once we see the report, then we can ask those questions. Let's move on. Let's get him moving. You can finish that, but you're going to need to go back.

To finish this slide, basically what you can see from this is their cited critical issue is something that we have already cited as well. Queens Lake being an issue, Tab High, New York High Annex, which we view as part of our operations complex. Both of those were all high on their facility conditions index was the word I was missing. And so those are all visible on our CIP from 2027.

So repeat for me, FCI basically means the cost of fixing is approaching the cost of replacing.

Any upgrades that we have to do that we're required to. So if it's, you know, ADA, if it's an expansion, something like that, plus renewal costs divided by the replacement value. Okay.

Thank you.

Is that a one-to-one ratio or is it?

one to one in terms of one is higher than the other.

You go with the lower one or is it, or is there some other nuances to that? It's a judgment call. It really is. Um, and it depends on the situation at the time. You know, uh, you guys pointed out some campuses could support a rebuild while we make some sacrifices at the same time without having to move those kids somewhere else. Whereas some would incur other costs, transportation, just political. So it's not a one-stop answer, but FCI is not the only factor you consider in making that decision.

Yeah.

Right.

I understand that. I just wonder what their algorithm recommendation is, one hour and the other, or is it a factor of 1.5? We get into that.

The second critical issue they pointed out was a capacity imbalance. So while the division does have adequate capacity overall, utilization varies through schools and networks. So currently we have six elementary schools who are operating above capacity, while Dare and Yorktown Middle are respectively 72 to 74 percent utilized. That changes from year to year with our program assignments.

And I would jump in there and remind you that the DARE is underutilized, but it's there to be had when we continue the redistricting. And so that's an example. Also, I remind the board, when we talk about capacity, we're talking about the brick and mortar because we do use employee, I think it's around 20 portable units to help us flexibility.

Issues 4 and 5, I'm going to tie together, but number 4 was cited as the housing pipeline pressure. So as of October 2025, over 1200 approved pending or planned housing units are identified in the Queens Lake and Bruton attendance zone and 400 in the York and Yorktown zone signaling sustained enrollment pressure. which leads to enrollment growth corridors. The Bruton Zone is experiencing the strongest growth with Waller-Mill Elementary, the most vulnerable for rapid growth, and Seaford is also experiencing meaningful growth. The sixth issue, which Dr. Carroll actually just touched on, was that we are using portables and they do have a life cycle. We have 18 portable units throughout the school division. Some are owned and some are leased, the majority of which were installed between 1992 and 2009.

Didn't you run into a buzzsaw when you tried the district water mill?

Not a buzzsaw, but we did have some resistance. It was kind of an unorthodox, I call it the donut hole, the marquee area. And so we've shifted them over to Waller Mill. But it was part of the process. I thought we actually had a very smooth process when you add it all up. All right. So the school board has not yet received the finished facility study, as we said. And as such, no priorities. or implementation recommendations have been adopted. And for that reason, we don't really want to delve into the questions about the recommendations because we haven't officially received them yet. We have, however, discussed with county staff having a joint meeting organized to jointly receive of the report as soon as we can arrange it where we can get all the board members of both boards in attendance. Then, as you look at the timeline in November, our new Chief Operations Officer, Melissa Pettigrew, will present our latest FMP, which will include a new 15-year recommended plan as we expand from the six. And then our new CFO at that time, a player to be named later, will present the CIP at the December work session. And so, board members, that concludes our presentation. We're happy to take any questions.

When do you think these board meetings are going to be?

I'd like to be sooner than later. I mean, I'd really like something. Are we talking a month? Yeah, in the August-September timeframe. We do have to open school on August 24th, and that can be a very busy week for us that week. Actually, we have our regular board meeting that Monday. First day of school, it's great. But yeah, we'd like to do that sooner or later. The contractor is ready to do it, to finish up. We certainly look forward to that joint meeting. Thank you.

There was a line item on Yul River Academy, you talked about a little expansion there, but how is that looking for enrollment?

I haven't looked at those numbers. Specifically, we start to really look at numbers as we get into that kind of T minus 10 days. That's going to be around August 10th, August 11th. We start to really hone in on how our enrollment is looking.

Historically, has that been constrained where you have students who want to attend there but can't because of space?

I think it's a mix. It's the, uh, I think, uh, we've had years where we didn't come close to full enrollment. Uh, it has done better the last few years. Uh, so there is some constrainment there and that would be certainly something we could look at if we were to expand the building.

All right. And I'm assuming that was part of the facility study, like with other schools. All of our buildings were.

Thank you. I think one more comment on, uh, upper district. Um, so we've got marquee crossing coming in here shortly for 125. about 50 condominiums, sorry, 100 condominiums. They're already existing buildings, but they were timeshares, so you didn't have folks living in them permanently or students attending school.

Right. So we have two tools there as we can be, or three, we can be looking at any redistricting that we would need if we made some appropriate moves. Secondly, you have the ability to, we would have to look at, can we move some programs? So that's one thing we didn't talk about. Sometimes it's programmatic, right? We have gifted classes at one school. We have free schools. We have special education, self-contained classrooms. So we may need to shift some things. Also, Waller Mill, the way we built that portable class wing was that we have the ability to add. We don't want to, but we have that ability to add there. Portables can be expensive these days, so we want to get out of the portable business as much as possible. But it does give us flexibility when we decipher what that actual yield is going to be. You just mentioned things that weren't in the developmental pipeline. Something's happened in the private sectors.

And that was something we would like definitely to have your input on of what you think the real world impact will be to the schools should those places get built out like we expect.

Right. And part of the study was they did some analysis. And when we did the redistricting, we were looking at you usually take a fraction of every unit and say i forget what it is like 0.13 or 0.16 of every unit will yield a student and then that can be across the k-12 sometimes it's affected by the price of the property you get a much more expensive property you're probably going to have less student have a lot of young families living in $750,000 homes. They are but less of them. So that there are some some variables there.

That's but that's your work in algorithm is 0.13 to 1.6.

That's my memory from the last time.

Because we kind of struggle with we see that how do we make an assessment of how many students come in so that that's a good number to we can do some math.

I got that from our contractor to help us with the with the redistricting but Tim Cook used to give us numbers. That was a while ago. Gentlemen sitting right back there is going to

OK, I think that wraps up that presentation. I do want to make a change in the agenda. We have a consent calendar item that I think we want. Well, that's why I want to do the consent calendar. It's the school security officer discussion that we carried over from the last board meeting. So if we can continue with you at the table to have that discussion.

We didn't come with a presentation. I mean, we're happy to take your questions. It was a grant application with the Department of Criminal Justice, which has given us grants before for SSOs, but also to help facilitate adding SROs to our schools. So we're happy to take any questions.

So I think the questions we had at the last meeting, and we just didn't have enough answers to be able to accept that consent calendar item. Why are you choosing SSO versus RSO, are these permanent positions? Do we have a chance to reevaluate in two, three-year times when the grant money runs out? The board didn't want to just walk into agreeing to a grant and then discovering that it's made a permanent headcount change without having that discussion. So that was a series of questions.

That's right. And actually, one of the things we raised, at least I read it, is that if we go through with this, we'd like to report after one year to see how effective people are in the job and if it's really serving what you think it's going to serve.

Okay.

Well, let's take a few of those at a time. And I've asked Melissa Pettigrew to come up, Chief Operations Officer. But let me take some of the historical stuff first, that whenever you look at a grant, first of all, it sunsets. There are no continuously running grants. This is three years, correct? Four. Four years. Okay. So whenever you hire somebody, you understand that it's a grant-funded position. We even advertise it that way. So people know that there's an end. Now, sometimes when you get to that last year, if things are looking good, you can kind of let them know, hey, it's looking good. We're going to be able to add it to our budget. But there's never any guarantee until you get there, if you, in fact, want it. And I would say that if you put grants into buckets, there are certainly grants that we apply for that just seem like no brainers. And that's a way to soften the blow to add it. Sometimes you can kind of build your budget up over, let's say, a three year period or something, get the money built in and transfer those over because it's something like reading specialists or something else that makes a lot of sense that you doubt that it won't work. There are other things where you're responding to a specific situation. I think of when we had federal funding in reaction to the Great Recession and then COVID where we needed to get people caught up. And so we didn't overload on staff because then you've got to get rid of those people at the end. But there were certainly, in the last go-round of federal funding, I think there was something like 45% or 55% of the positions we felt were a value add, and we could also afford that on our budget. And then the other positions went away. And then there are some where it's truly an absolute pilot, and I think this is a situation where we can pilot something, see if it adds value, see if it takes some work, Board members, educators are asked to do more and more work every year, have more responsibility, things that they have to do, especially administration. And while our discipline numbers have been reducing, we have been seeing some spikes in more extreme behavior, especially with our kindergartners. We've spoken publicly about that at our board meetings. And so the SSOs is one tool that we could possibly We've also had SSOs in our secondary schools for three years now. Eight of them, so two each at each of our high schools and one each at the middle school. And they help with a variety of, you know, a variety of things. I mean, their primary purpose is monitoring building security. And we prefer to use human, you know, strategies with our school security. And I think we've been very successful there. But they also help with the security and the discipline in the building because there are another set of eyes or two in the building, and they can help with behavior. You've got to remember with SROs, there's two different things about SROs. SROs, first of all, are... very expensive. I think when we add one, it's usually around a half million dollars to add an SRO. When you're talking about the person, the salary, all the equipment, it's a big investment. So if you talk about, uh, elementary, you're talking about a, uh, you're talking about a five, right? $5 million, right? Uh, uh, commitment. Um, and also when you're talking about SROs is there are things they can do and there are things they cannot do. And they're very restricted. Certainly, worst case scenario, it's nice to have an SRO in a building and responding to something. But when we're talking about the daily behavior that happens in a school building, there are things that they're restricted and that they're limited by law. And if it talks about, let's say, a search, that's a good example. they're held to, they have to have probable cause to do a search, whereas school personnel only have to have reasonable suspicion. And there's a difference between those thresholds. And so this is one of the things that we can, the SSOs can help with. And I want to be really clear. These are people that are trained. They have to receive training from the DCGAS. I think we met with... Mr. Shepherd, that manual's about that thick for the training. Oh, there you go. So it's, you know, we have to get them trained within 30 days of hire and so that they can be effective at helping the staff and the school, especially administrators.

I think one of the most important points that we discussed, and this was at the end of our conversation the other day, is that it's important schools, and these become an extra arm for us to do that. The students will encounter these SSOs at the middle and high school level, so having them in the elementary schools and having them have that opportunity to build that relationship with, you know, SSO Tom who's in the hallway who knows me and knows that, you know, I can kind of be a knucklehead sometimes, but knows how to redirect me or, you know, head off a behavior problem at the pass, it builds those relationships as a foundation with our elementary school students before they get to middle and high school.

Do these schools have SSOs now, or would they be on new positions?

No.

I'd like to add one thing to this. I did spend about an hour with them the whole security staff there or at least the chain and you know I was real concerned very vocal about whether we're hiring mall cops or we're getting some getting some value well I mean I'm not disparaging mall cops but they have a job to do in a different setting and we have we're spending money on education so anyway When I got through with the conversation, one of the things that came or we got through with the discussion, one of the things I thought was really important was try to put in context that we might all remember. And if you remember when we didn't have cops in the schools, you had the principals, the teachers, assistant principal, the coach. You had these guys. These were people that provided discipline. So you guys correct me if I'm wrong on this, but this is my takeaway from our discussion. One of the things to look at is the teacher's in a classroom full of kids, okay? A kid starts acting up. They have a button on the door, on the wall. It's not a panic button. It's just a button. Somebody would say, I need an SSO here. And they come down, and the SSO will remove the student, okay, take it to the principal, wherever. The teacher continues to teach. OK, so you've got a student disrupting the class. This is what the teacher now is not the muscle. It's going to be the SSO. The other part that was tied to that is that we think about, OK, physical security. They go down there, and they're checking the doors. Some of these incidences where we've had problems where kids got into schools with guns or whatever, it was because the door was unlocked by somebody and the window or whatever. And so these guys walk around, and that's what they're doing all the time. looking for this physical security cafeteria where you have can you know you get a bunch of kids together I remember food fights in the cafeteria well these guys that's what they're in there their presence that will that better to help keep that under control and I remember teachers had to come in and do that a lot of times they have this as the SSO is going to do that You already mentioned it, to get to know the kids. And I never really thought about that. But the kids will come up and talk to them. They talk to the kids. They can see problems developing that the teacher might not see. In fact, they may want to talk to the SSO instead of the teacher because it's a constant, kind of a constant person. Another thing that was interesting is that they're not hiring Joe Schmuckarelli off the street. What they're doing is they're hiring people with security backgrounds. They can be retired policemen. They can be retired military police. And so these guys have some knowledge of how to interact with people and how to control that. I thought it was interesting that they interact with parents sometimes, okay, and they can talk to parents about what's going on. They collect phones. You're not supposed to have a phone in there. They'll take a phone away from a kid and put it wherever they're supposed to take it. So there was a lot of more things going on than I realized. It wasn't somebody just walking around in a blue uniform or whatever. They were building relationships. They were providing a level of security that allowed the teacher to teach, allowed the disciplinary part of it to be handled separately. Because they just take them out of the room. The teacher doesn't have to walk someone down and let the kid do that. And then the certifications. I know you talked about the training here, but these guys get certified to do this.

Real quick on that. Is it a certified? Do you get a certification afterwards, or is it just training?

No, it's DCJS certification.

So you actually get a cert afterwards. Is that renewed annually, binaurally? Every two years.

Every two years. Retired Captain Hahn does all of the security training, and he definitely is the subject matter expert. Okay, so they're accredited. If you're interested, I'm happy to pass the binder around for their training.

So and then finally, you did talk about the probable cause. I thought this was really interesting. Probable cause versus the reasonable suspicion. So if you call the policeman to come in, what's the policeman trying to do? They take you down. You cross the line. You get physically wrestled to the ground. They got issues with searches and stuff like this they have to deal with. these SSOs don't. They think some kid comes up and says something. They go, they can react to it. They go in and say, okay, empty your pockets or something like that. They can, they can, they can get into, they can get into it before it gets anywhere out of control. Probably, I would think that kid that had that gun at the school that shot the teacher, probably could have been prevented if it was an SSO there to do that, sounding if everybody was doing their job. And I'm not going to get into that part of it. But my takeaway, and thank you very much for doing that, my takeaway was this was actually something that we really want in our schools. So with that, can I call for a motion? I'll make a motion to approve.

Roll call, please.

The motion made by Mr. Shepherd is to approve the consent calendar as submitted. Mrs. Noll? No. Mr. Drury? Yes. Mr. Rohn?

Yes.

Mr. Shepard?

Yes.

Mr. Holroyd? Yes. Motion carried.

Thank you. Thank you for the session.

I just think that you've got enough personnel there that can handle the issues without hiring somebody, some more people.

We need more classrooms for the teachers.

Thank you very much.

Thanks for coming, Jim.

Alright, we'll move back to the work session and call on Susan Goodwin, Deputy County Administrator, for presentation on Commission Pacts.

Thank you. So as the Board will recall, the General Assembly recently gave York County the authority to impose an admissions tax. So tonight we're going to review what that means for us, the options that we evaluated, and the direction that we need to be able to move forward. The General Assembly granted York County this new authority effective July 1, 2026. In the FY27 budget, we included $200,000 in anticipated revenue for an admissions tax with an effective date of January 1. Because administering this tax affects multiple county functions, we met regularly with an interdepartmental working group that included the treasurer's office, the commissioner of revenue, finance, county attorney, and county administration to evaluate the implementation options and also operational considerations. The Code of Virginia divides admissions into the following classes for tax purposes. And that provided us a framework for evaluating how we may apply the admissions tax. So using those classifications, the working group evaluated which admission-based activities could or should be included in the New York County ordinance. administrative impact, and types of businesses that would be affected. The businesses marked on the slide with a double check are those that staff recommends including. These include water parks, tours, private sporting events, and performances. Collectively, these businesses represent the overwhelming majority of the county's potential admissions tax revenue and are primarily visitor and tourism oriented. THE BUSINESSES MARKED WITH A SINGLE CHECK ARE ACTIVITIES THE BOARD COULD ALSO CHOOSE TO INCLUDE, SUCH AS ARCADES, LASER TAGS, ESCAPE ROOMS, MINIGOLF, ET CETERA. WHILE WE SEE THESE TYPES OF BUSINESSES OR TAGS IN OTHER LOCALITIES, IT WOULD GENERATE RELATIVELY LITTLE ADDITIONAL REVENUE WHILE INCREASING THE ADMINISTRATIVE RESPONSIBILITIES FOR BOTH THE COUNTY AND THE BUSINESSES. And finally, we've marked some of these activities with an X. And those are the ones that staff is not recommending for charging an admissions tax. These include charitable organizations, nonprofit fundraising events, sport participation fees, school events, and museums. We are recommending FY27, WHICH THAT TIMING GIVES US THE ADEQUATE TIME NECESSARY TO MAKE THE MODIFICATIONS IN OUR SOFTWARE, ESTABLISH ADMINISTRATIVE PROCESSES, AND COMMUNICATE WITH THE AFFECTED BUSINESSES SO THAT THEY UNDERSTAND WHAT THE COLLECTION AND REPORTING REQUIREMENTS ARE. AS A RESULT, THE FY27 BUDGET ESTIMATES OR REVENUE ESTIMATES THAT WE'RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT IN A MOMENT WILL SHOW JUST SIX MONTHS OF REVENUE FOR FY27. For context, staff also looked at admissions tax rates currently imposed on nearby localities. Hampton and Newport News both impose a 10% tax. Williamsburg also has a 10% rate, but caps the tax at $1 per admission. And James City County has adopted a 5% rate. Please come.

Yes, and we kind of did that catch. It's a flat tax. Both have it. So the support center, in fact, has two admission taxes.

Oh, interesting.

What?

Yes. One for the city of Williamsburg. One for the city and one for CW.

So what is Colonial Williamsburg taxing? What authority do they have to tax anybody? It's their property. It's their property. It's their property, but it's not a tax. It's just an admission fee, right? It's a fee, yes. An additional admission fee. It's not a tax. Yeah, it's a fee. OK, well, that's just something they're doing based on what they think they can get.

But it's Williamsburg. They're in Williamsburg, right?

I mean, are they physically in Williamsburg?

Yes. So then that's where the tax is. something like that, you know? I was there today and clarified some of their fees.

For instance, the $12 they charge to go into the adventure gym, and it includes the taxes. There is no additional fee on top of that. So it's already included in the total amount. Tom, that's for the sports center. Well, the adventure gym is a portion of the sports center. It's $5 within there. It's already built into the fee.

Okay, so the sports center, the tax, who's taxing them?

I just know that there's two $1 admission fees paid on top of the cost of the venture entering.

Looks like the city of Williamsburg is getting the 10% up to $1, and then Colonial Williamsburg is just a flat $1. Fee, not a tax, is what I would assume. Not sure. OK. Because they don't have a tax. It's not two municipalities taxing the sentence. Well, of course, Williamsburg doesn't have that ability to tax, I don't think. They would under this. It's in Williamsburg.

Or is it just a dollar that goes? Is it just additional dollar that goes to Colonial Williamsburg?

I understand it's two taxes, two admissions tax. OK.

Well, anyway, there's nothing we can do about that. No, but I do have a problem with it if it's taxed. And because how many people are taxed?

It's part of the lease agreement between the Historic Triangle Recreational Facilities Authority and Colonial Williamsburg.

That's part of the lease agreement. That's a fee, I'll guarantee you. Okay, so that's not a tax. No, it's a fee. So the sports center is being taxed, though.

That's not my understanding, and I've spoken to Scott on this. We could do that.

Yeah, we'll give you that follow-up. And, you know, we show these are useful comparisons just to get a sense of what the region is doing, but this is not an apples-to-apples comparison because each locality includes different things in the bucket of what would be taxable and what would be exempt. But it's just good for regional context. So staff evaluated three implementation options. The first is this moderate option here of a 5% rate that would be effective in January 1. This is aligned with what James City County recently imposed on amusement parks. This would result in about a half year collection of $450,000 and a full year of

further, compare that number to the number on the first page where it says the FY27 budget includes $200,000 in admission tax revenue.

Sure. So, when we were developing the budget, you know, we just learned.

You just had it in as a placeholder.

It was really a conservative estimate. We didn't want to overshoot it. We didn't have enough information at the time. We were getting closer on being able to drill down on that.

That was just a placeholder.

YES. YEP. SO THE 5%, YOU CAN SEE THERE IS WHAT WE WOULD CALL A MODERATE IMPLEMENTATION OPTION. ANOTHER OPTION WE LOOKED AT IS WHAT IF WE PHASED IT ALL THE WAY UP TO THE 10%? YOU KNOW, THAT'S AS HIGH AS WE CAN GO FOR STATE CODE. DOING 5% IN 27, 7.5% IN 28, AND MOVING TO THE FULL 10% IN 29. OF COURSE, NO CHANGE FOR FY27. WE'D JUST BE GETTING A HALF YEAR AT 5%. BUT AFTER THE FULL PHASE-IN, WITH 10% IN 2029, WE'D BE AT 1.8 MILLION ANNUALLY. And then we looked at what the revenue would be if we did the full 10%. That'd be $900,000 for the half-year collections in 27, and then $1.8 million annually thereafter.

How much is it going to cost to collect the revenue?

What did you say?

How much is it going to cost to collect the revenue?

So, you know, meeting with the Treasurer's Office and Commissioner Revenue, we talked about that we can administratively make those changes in the system, and it's not too arduous. So, we think we can do that relatively easy, and depending DEPENDING ON HOW MANY BUSINESSES ARE AFFECTED BY THE ADMISSIONS TAX, I WOULD SAY THAT WOULD KIND OF GO TO WHAT ADMINISTRATIVE BURDEN IT WOULD BE. HOW MANY ADDITIONAL BUSINESSES THAT COMMISSIONERS LOOKING AT REPORTING REQUIREMENTS, ET CETERA. SO IT KIND OF DEPENDS, BUT WE FELT LIKE IT WAS MANAGEABLE WITHIN THE EXISTING STAFF.

We wouldn't have to add another headcount to the revenue?

And one of the problems would be that, I mean, a business, let's take one business, and they have a tax from us, they have a tax, another tax from Williamsburg, and they have another tax from James City County. And so they've got three different taxes that they have to account for, which is a real burden.

Which means this is only a municipal tax. It's a municipal tax. Why would you have two municipalities?

Well, I think what you're referring to is companies like a Busch Gardens that has, they have two parks, one in Newark County and one in James City County.

But we're only taxing the part in Newark County.

That's right. But they do sell passes that have both, right? They have passes, yes. But we have seen by looking at... There are businesses of that size are used to having localities that have different admissions taxes. We looked at Florida, you know, each neighboring locality has a different admissions tax. And so they are able to attribute admissions to York County separately than the admissions to James City County. So As far as administratively for the business, we don't think that's going to be too big of a burden, but that's why the commissioner is going to be reaching out to, once the board decides how they want to move with this, the commissioner will reach out to those businesses to make sure they're clear on how to report.

And Busch Gardens, which straddles the line, what are they currently being charged by JCC? 5%. 5%, okay. Yes.

But it's a point of sales, isn't it? It should be point of sale. Point of sales is where the tax is collected, right? Yeah. Who am I talking to here? Who's going to answer my question? Okay. So the point of sales, so they could have property in your county, but the offices in Williamsburg, that's where the tax, that's their tax point right there. It's not your county. We get the real estate tax. We don't get sales tax. Okay.

But online purchases for water country, we will receive an emissions tax.

Including parking? She's not saying yes. She's saying there's one. It depends on how you ask the question.

So tonight, we're looking for board direction on two items, which types of admission-based businesses the tax would apply to and what the preferred rate would be. And based on that direction, we would come back to you with an ordinance and, of course, public hearing possible adoption on August 18th.

Do we have the ability to exclude rural county residents?

No, I didn't think so. Yeah, yeah.

Do you have the ability to offer them a discount?

No.

I don't know. I mean, the law is the law. But I mean, if I got someone from Iowa coming out to Busch Gardens, a war country, I'll charge them the mission tax. Well, why I got to charge the family down the street?

So the two one-checked items, how much, if we added those in there, how much are we increasing?

We were estimating conservatively around $100,000, but we're talking lots and lots of small businesses to get there. That's kind of where we started with. We looked at all the businesses in York County.

He's one of the one checks. I'm just trying to see what the, what's to be gained. I'm not particularly interested in going after the big taxes on small business like that.

So I guess my question is, if we started at 5%, what's the, what is the 900,000, what are we doing with that?

It would go to the general fund. And so right now in the FY27 budget where we have the $200,000 placeholder, we put it to cash capital. And we've been talking a lot about our capital needs over the last couple of years about diversifying through the CFP and diversifying our revenue. So it's cash capital for CFP.

Oh, this would be going out in general fund? Well, the general fund makes a contribution to cash capital. We pull that out. But I'm saying that this is kind of specifically, we would slate this as going towards CIP.

I would designate it to. That's where the $200,000 is in the $27,000. That's where we put it. Of course, you know, the board each year when we do the budget has an opportunity to kind of look at that.

And we put more than we do. A lot more. So why restrict it? I mean, our decision to do it in the general fund is that we take the money from the general fund and put it in the CIP. I mean, I don't see that a value in just restricting this. This is not a significant amount of money in terms of a 200 million plus budget. We might need it for something else.

At least our citizens would know where it's designated for rather than in a slush fund.

A slush fund? We have a slush fund? Tell me about that slush fund, Sheila. I want to know where our slush fund is.

I've been looking for it for the last 25 years. I'm not asking the questions.

All right, folks. I want to know where our slush fund is.

Susan, my gut feeling is that the lion's share of that projected revenue to keep no emission tax there to enhance people, entice people to come here and do that, as opposed to trying to bust them for 5% to go do putt button or laser tagging.

Well, it's just an additional burden for them. I don't know how big a burden it is, but it seems to me it's just maybe an inhibitor for the small venue, like the ghost tours or maybe putt play. That's just a small thing. moneymaker.

If we're getting recommendations for what activity to apply this to, I would limit it to the first item, which is the amusement and water parks, which is postcards and water country in our case.

Well, what you're looking at, if you look at the list, the second one is tourism related. Walking tours, ghost tours, sightseeing.

Right. Don't apply more tax burden to that. Let's encourage people to come.

I'm in line with Steve. I think the first line is the bulk of the tax. It's going to be the bulk of it, yes. And I wouldn't go after the small businesses, the ghost tours, et cetera.

Do we have a breakdown on how many people go to boost gardens and water country or local residents versus not local residents?

No.

I want to remind the board that the idea of having businesses was to generate revenue to take the tax load off the real estate and personal property tax. Okay? It's not going to be pure. It's going to get some of the visitors, excuse me, it's going to get some of the people staycation here. But that's the whole purpose of why we've been pushing and pushing and pushing for businesses. A touring business is the purest business you can get for unloading burdens of schools and infrastructure and stuff like that. The state of Florida doesn't have an income tax. because of that, OK? Many states, Vegas, all these guys don't have income taxes because of this. So my point is that we're looking, I mean, I know we want to be sympathetic, and I do too. I'm not going to, that's why I'm kind of making noise about double whammy with multiple jurisdictions. You know, if you've got something that's going to draw tourists, let's get the tourists to help pay our schools and reduce the load on our residential taxpayers. And so I'm not pushing off on this. To me, these double checks are okay. All right? Because that's tourism. That is strictly tourism. They go up there. We go up to Williamsburg and they'll come down here for ghost tours. Okay? They do all that kind of stuff. I don't know anybody in your county who believes there's a ghost tour here. I mean, I know there's a ghost tour, but they actually think it's got to go see spooky stuff. Okay? We're going to have businesses. We're going to promote businesses to bring in visitors and let them pay for our stuff.

I'm all for it. If the vast majority of those people are actually visitors and not local residents, I don't like the idea of plucking our local residents is to do these things. No. And that's why that led my question to what is the breakdown on local versus out-of-time people to go visit.

Yes, that's another one. What's going on?

They bring a lot of visitors from outside of York County. So that's one. What else?

Well, venues like that could be used for like other type of activities. Concerts. Right. Performances. Right.

And some of that's local people for sure.

Yeah. Could be.

We're not talking about going to Bailey Field to watch football. No. Even though they charge you to go there.

That's in us.

No, I go along with the first three. You've all done the work on that. And I go along with the 5%. I don't know that I go along with escalating it, but it would be something you'd have to work out with all three jurisdictions so that it's the same amount, I think.

So do you guys have a breakdown of the top three? what we think the additional revenue would be.

To Mr. Rohn's point, the majority is in line one.

We have some estimates for the other two, you know, based on... What are we talking about?

80-20, 90-10? 90-10 I think would be fair.

I would say just do it.

And we were conservative in estimates, so I wouldn't change the estimate even if we only do the top line. But 90-10 is probably fair.

90-10 meaning what?

90% of the revenue estimates from line one. Line one.

But the 10% is not. I don't think it's worth messing with. That's a significant amount. Take a look.

People around here go on those tours. It'll make the administrative burden a whole lot easier, too, because really just talking to

I think you got water park, 5%. Bush Gardens. Great Wolf.

And if that's the case, I'm going to go for 10%. I'm going to go for 10%. We're going to go for one. No way. Water park and amusement. I'm okay with that. There are people outside. I mean, there's a lot of people outside. They're going to pay it. They're going to pay it. It's 10%.

No, I'd go with five.

I'm at 5 only because JCCC has started at 5%. We're lining it up. I'll go along and line it up with them. We're lining it up with JCCC. And if they increased to 10, then I would increase to 10.

All right, I go along.

That part, it makes sense.

And we can advertise that we're lower than Williamsburg and some other than Hampton and Newport News.

So consistent tax rate among the historical triangle. And then, which is 5%, right? Yes. In line one, because that's what the bulk of the money is.

5% or 6% that they voted on?

I'm sorry, excuse me? 5% or 6%? Who are we talking about? 5%.

They proposed 6% at first, but they adopted 5%.

Just be competitive. Just keep it at the same thing.

We're all trying to keep it the same.

So if you all are good with that, we will go with line one and 5%. Yes.

Or is it before the board?

Well, yes. One of the things, as I said before, that I enjoy sometimes when I go to the functions is people who come up and talk to me. And it turns out that they've been students in York County years ago and what they were doing. And when we went to the wind tunnel, a woman came up to me. And she told me that she'd gone to Tabb High School. And she became an intern at NASA. And NASA has a really good program for interns. And I don't know. how students apply for it or what. But I would encourage parents, if children have any interest whatsoever, is to look into the internship that NASA provides. And she did. That was the move that she took. And then gradually, she got her degree, went to high school. She finished, as I said, TAB high school. And she was working, and she got her degree. And now she's got a very, very responsible job at NASA. IN FINANCE, AND I JUST THOUGHT, YOU KNOW, And by the way, she is living in now in York County. She had left York County for a while, came back, and her children are in York County schools. And I think that sort of shows people that our schools are doing a very good job. And you want young people to come back to the area, and this is an example of it. So I was really pleased with that. Now I'm going to let you talk about the wind tunnel.

Yeah, Sheila and I had an opportunity to go to the ribbon cutting and I have been laying land forever and so it's growing a lot. They've got a couple of new buildings, really beautiful buildings. The wind tunnel was very impressive, the new wind tunnel. They gave us a view of some of how they do it. The Brainiacs over there, a lot of those people over there are just Brainiacs. I mean, they're just super, super smart. And I think that that program for the younger students to be a part of that early on in their life, and it was, I thought it was very, the...

The talk was very good.

Yeah, the fireside talk, whatever they call that. But the administrator was there, there was an astronaut there, and then the director of the facilities. And it was about an hour long. And they asked them really good questions. And so I think a bunch of the students were there. But the whole program was three hours? Yes. I think it started at 11, 10, and we were over at 1. So we got a tour through there. And it was about an hour presentation. Lieutenant.

I can't remember. What I was fascinated about is the drones.

Oh, yeah.

They had a huge drone. I thought it was a plane. But it was a drone. But not operated by batteries like most of the drones that we're accustomed to. But... by fuel. The only thing is, you still have to refill it. So that drone was good for three hours. And then that has to come back and be filled. Whereas our batteries only last, what, a couple of hours, one hour?

Depends on the size of the drone.

Right. Depends on the size of the drone. But they had such a variety of equipment there to show what they were able to do in a small way to magnify what the job actually is going to be, rather than building it and seeing the reverse. Very effective.

It was, yeah, it was a great tour. or new technology like the drones and stuff like that.

And by the way, we have the NASA program on our TV station, so I hope you'll all take the time to tune into it. If you're on Cox, otherwise you don't get it. Oh, well, sorry about that. Those of you who can do it, please do, because it's very interesting.

thing I'll say is I think it wasn't the first one built 40 or 50 years ago, 40 years ago and the wind tunnel and it was the first in the states is my understanding and that's where the astronauts came and you know a lot of them studied at NASA for that so pretty impressive with the new wind tunnel and all that. They used to do the race cars in there. Yeah, all the cup teams used to bring their cars there to test them out.

Yes, they do.

And cheat them up. Well, and they're not real cars because some people, oh, they brought a car. No, they're models.

No, they were bringing a full-size car. You wouldn't fit that in.

Not that one, but... But the big ones that you used to have there, they would bring full-size cars in there. Okay. I didn't know that. Yeah, these are just models. They build models and they put them in the window. So it was really robotic and pretty cool. That's all I got.

So after talking to a few folks and looking at the low voter turnout for this primary that we're in right now, I get a sense that a lot of people are probably suffering from Bowdoin fatigue, you know, it wasn't just last November. We came off our general election. It was pretty, um, um, competitive. We had a very, um, energized and exhausted and special election here. We're going to redistricting recently. Um, the primary election, I believe wraps up today and then September 18th, boom, right back to early voting for this year's general election. So I kind of get the sense that people are like, just, just, just, just fatigue. They're just, they're just tired and kind of burned out. Um, and I get it. Um, but still want to encourage everybody, um, Take a break, take a breath, and when you get a chance, starting September 18th, go to the polls, cast your vote. There will be three special referendums, very important referendums, constitutional amendments, considerations on the ballot this year, as well as offices up for election. So I get it. There's a lot going on. Seems like we're at the polls all the time, but take a break between now and September, catch your breath, and please plan on going, getting into the polls and casting your votes. Let's get a good turnout again this year.

Very small turnout today.

Can I add one more?

All across the state too, not just here in York County. Yeah, I'm sure.

Think of all the people who are working the polls so that you can go to vote. And they're almost at burnout because And so hats off to them. I mean, if they weren't doing the job, what would we do?

Thank you. Thank you. Today, I had in the finance committee at HR Tech, We did some contract stuff, which I can't talk about. But the part of it, one of the things was a big discussion on how to move forward with a proposal to somehow get the state to allow either the state to either put money into a fund or to allow us to tax ourselves. to go in nowadays anyway into a special fund so we can work only primary secondary roads okay all the money we've been collecting that point seven percent tax sales tax that we collect through all the miss 17 miss pallets of the area goes in to paying for the major road projects hampton bridge tunnel the widening of 64 and and then high rise bridge, stuff like that. It all goes in there and it's just billions of dollars. Um, and it allows lease. We've got, we're getting there. Okay. The tunnel, I was told, uh, last month that the tunnel would be open in December of 27. So that's, I mean, that's another year out. So, um, we'll see if they make that. And, um, so, um, the, the big thing is there was a, um, 64 on either side of the tunnel is a disaster.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

When we say other side, you mean the other side from? Both sides. Both sides. Yeah, well, it goes across the high rise bridge. And so they're working around. We do not have the authority actually to create express lanes or do any improvements to 664. Okay. Coming around. So that was supposed to be the loop. And so we're, uh, the body's asking for permission to extend that so that we can work the projects and continue around from Bowers Hill and bring it on up. Um, but, uh, the big thing was, uh, is that we're trying to get 17 municipalities to work together to try to do something. And it's pretty amazing that we've done what we've done so far. So there's a lot to be proud of. Right now, we're looking at just trying to get a fund established so the state can dump money into it. If we had to work on our secondary road programs or primary road programs, we would do it. OK, in the primary, for everybody's knowledge, a primary road is anything that doesn't have it's 600 and below. Okay, so Highway 58, for example, that's a primary road. Victory Boulevard, 171, 17, these are all primary roads. 60, Route 60 up in your area there, those are primary roads. Secondary roads are roads that are higher than, they're actually 600 and higher, okay, like Big Bethel Road or neighborhood roads where you see 3,000 and stuff like that. And all that funding for those things comes out of different pots and in different priorities. And that's all set up by the Commonwealth Transportation Board, the state, and maybe the code of Virginia. And they dictate where we can spend the money and how that money is spent. I get a ton of questions every month about, why can't I get my street paved? Running Man Trail is a good one. Why does Kiln Creek get more money for that street? And why can't we do all that kind of stuff? And it's literally the amount of money that's needed. Secondary primary road construction, not construction, but the projects we've identified right now is about $60 billion worth of projects. And there's probably enough money in there for maybe $900 million the most. So some of these roads will never see a light of day for funding unless we end up doing it ourselves. THE OTHER THING IS VICTORY BOULEVARD, WHICH I'VE BEEN HARPING ON FOREVER, AND I CONSTANTLY Well, the widen right now in the 200, it's in just the fact that it's in the 250, yeah, the 250 plan, whatever we call that, or the 50-year plan or the whatever. I can't even keep up with it anymore. But anyway, the fact it's in there, it's $176 million to widen that road by adding 250. maybe three and a half, four miles. It's $176 million. It's just incredible the cost of these roads. So it's a constant struggle balancing the competing demands with the cities and all that. And that's what I do in the finance committee. One of the things kind of go to your NASA thing. It really kind of bothers me. They had that open house about two years ago. It was about two years ago. What a turnout. What a turnout. I heard anywhere from 40,000 to 60,000 people showed up. And there were people coming in not only from across the United States, California and all the out west, but people from Europe flew in just to come in and get in. And it was a pain in the ass trying to get into this thing. Because just think, all of a sudden, you're going to have 60,000 people show up, and you've got to bus them in. I mean, you have the bus routes. You can't get enough buses up here to do it. Well, they're not going to do that anymore. NASA right now has been restricted from doing any open houses because of funding issues. NASA has been funded properly with no more open houses. And I think that is really sad because if you go in there with the kids and you take them down to see the fabrication machine they had They got to meet the astronauts and get pictures and meet a lot of people. And there was a group there that in this one building, I can't remember what it was. They actually build circuit boards. They actually build their own circuit boards. I was just blown away by that. And then they go out and test them and they fry them up and then they go back to it again. So there was a lot of great stuff coming out of NASA that really can influence the future of kids. You know, really, really influence them. Don't you think they can have field trips over there? I'm not sure what they do in terms of, I know they're trying to do everything they can to deal with kids, but no more open houses for the time being, and that's kind of sad.

The same with Jefferson Labs, that open house I went to, I guess it was last year, it was fascinating what they do there. And it's such a huge campus.

Jefferson Labs is fantastic.

I don't know if they're under the same funding constraints. It's a small number of kids that only get to go through there. So I think it would be very inspiring for children to, one, get a great education, see something they like, and then actually live here. So this is great.

Tom, regarding the tele opening up in December, are there performance enhancements to entice them to open earlier? Yes.

There is a, it's $90 million. There is a, they, it's called, I want to call it significant. They got a word for it, but they reach a point of like, it's where it's mostly done. Okay, I can't remember the name. Significant cost. like that. And from that, then if they reach that milestone, then they get the $90 million. But if they extend beyond it, they start losing the money. They start losing the money. Yeah, so we had to actually extend the contract. In fact, I can't talk about that. They should lose all of it. I want to, but I can't. I'm glad there's some performance and incentives.

pretty good job of summarizing that and sending a report to us. I want to make sure that we include that in our legislative priorities. The reason I say that, just to add a recent example, we had a 325 unit apartment going up Newport News side of our York County boundary with the intent of tying into our sewer systems and using surplus available in our sewer system a long victory to basically get away with having to invest no money into sewers so your county residents get to pay the bill for a new 325 UNIT APARTMENT BUILDING. THAT'S THE REASON WE NEED AN IMPACT FEE FOR DEVELOPMENT. 100%. WE TOLD THEM NO, AND THAT'S THE RIGHT ANSWER, BECAUSE THAT'S YORK COUNTY INVESTMENT. IT'S DESIGNED TO HANDLE FUTURE INVESTMENT THAT YORK COUNTY HAS IN THAT AREA, NOT TO JUST GIVE IT AWAY. BUT THIS IS THE THEME THAT WE NEED TO HAVE SOME PROTECTION AGAINST, AND HENCE THE NEED TO HAVE THAT IN OUR PRIORITIES. I do need to state to announce the next year