Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

[Music] [Music] Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us for the first August work session of the board of supervisors meeting. Roll call, please.

Mr. Holoy, present. Mrs. Nolles, here. Mr. Drew, present. Mr. Ran, here. Mr. Shepard, here. Madam Chairman, you have a quorum. Thank you very much. We've got two presentations tonight, but we will do the one about the resilience adaptation feasibility tool. Thank you, Caitlyn, very much. Oh, I'm anxious to hear all about this. Absolutely.

All right. Well, you won't see me for very long, so I'm here mostly to introduce the um raft team who's going to be presenting to you tonight. So, this is an effort that we've been engaged with since February. And not to steal their thunder, so I'll let them kind of explain what the raft is, what the process we're undertaking, and what our next steps are going to be. Um essentially this is an effort that's born from began in 2015 and it's a collaboration between EDA's Institute of Engagement along with ODU's um Institute of Coastal Resilency. So that um I'm going to go ahead and introduce Jessica Whitehead, Wendy Stout, Elizabeth Andrews, and Abby. Thank you so much.

Thank you for being here.

Yeah, thank you. And thank you for the invitation, Madam Chairman. and members of the board. Um, my name is Jessica Whitehead. I'm the executive director of the Institute for Coastal Adaptation and Resilience at Old Dominion University. Uh, when we do these presentations, we always do them as a team. So, I will also be joined by Elizabeth Andrews at UVA and Wendy Stout with Virginia Tech's coastal collaborator. Um we've had the pleasure of being able to work with a number of um residents from York County, really engaged staff over the past few months with launching our effort on the resilience adaptation feasibility tool in the historic triangle. This round we are York County is one of three localities going through this process. We're also currently working with the uh Williamsburg as well as James City County. And what the RAFT does, it stands for resilience adaptation feasibility tool. But what's more important than the acronym is what its purpose is. And it exists as a process to help Virginia's localities and tribal nations to improve their environmental, economic, and social resilience to climate change and other stresses through a community centered collaborative approach. It is very much a team effort. Uh the full team u from UVA includes Tanya Denla Cobb who's the director and Elizabeth Andrews who you'll get to meet today. Um I am the leadership point of contact for ODU and Dr. Wendy Stout is the leadership contact for the James City County implementation team. Um for our York County implementation team, I'm also joined in project management and facilitation by Dr. Trang Lee who is an assistant research professor with IICAR and uh very newly joined by Andrew Larkin who is our newly hired as of last Thursday assistant director for engagement with IICAR. Um the good news

is that he is very familiar with the raft having come to us from a 27year career with Noah including as the Chesapeake Bay program officer. So uh we're very very glad to have him join us. Um, and I think Elizabeth, this is your next slides. I'll let you take over the center chair. Thank you.

Good evening. Thanks for having us. Um, I'm Elizabeth Andrews with UVA, as Jess said. And the raft has been around actually for about a decade. We started with three pilot communities, the city of Portsouth, the county of Gloucester, and the town of Cape Charles. So, geographic diversity and also municipality type diversity. And they helped us to um develop a scorecard that we're going to talk about in a minute to score how much resilience is incorporated into a local government's policies and programs and ordinances. We launched in partnership with the planning district commission on the eastern shore next then the northern neck then the middle peninsula. Then in crater planning district commission, we've worked with Petersburg and Hopewell, two very underresourced cities, so we limited it to those two. We've worked with some tribal nations, four of them, two that we're working with currently and two previously. Um, and have launched in Southwest Virginia in two localities as well. And we're excited now to be working in the historic triangle, Williamsburg, James City County, and Yorktown, York County. Um and what we're doing is um we're presenting the results to the different elected bodies in the three jurisdictions and then we will be having a regional workshop and then we'll be launching a year of implementation. So I think I just tapped the right side where I do the arrow or if I'm doing all three hit space

space.

Thank you. The one I didn't draw. All right. Thank you. Um, so as I just mentioned, the raft is it's a three-step process. We uh did the scoring with the scorecard. We also concurrently did a qualitative assessment which involved uh focus groups and interviews and surveys. And then we're going to host a community workshop on August 18th. You'll hear more about that in a moment where representatives of the localities can come together and look at their different opportunities and select some projects to work on for a year of implementation and we support the localities in that year of implementation. As Jessica said, ODU is taking the lead with you all and UVA is working with Williamsburg and Virginia Tech is working with James City County.

Can I ask a question real quick? I'm sorry. the very beginning I feel like I just woke up and didn't have my coffee. Uh what exactly is it? You talk about resilience. Resilience and what? That's a great question. You did have your coffee. Um so resilience is actually different things to a lot of different people. That's why it's such a great question. We define resilience very broadly. What we look at in the scorecard and in the qualitative assessment is social resilience, economic resilience, and environmental resilience because you can't have one or the other. It sounds like you're implying that it's uh a resilience you had to go from something bad to something good or fall back to go forward or what. So,

so all kinds of different stresses and challenges that especially here our coastal communities face in u more severe storm events, more severe flooding going on, things like that. So developing your resilience means developing a community that can handle that across the board, whether it's emergency response, infrastructure planning, um planning for your social network and your more vulnerable communities. So if I if I substituted capability for resilience would that I think that's a great substitution. Yeah. capability, ability um to respond and to actually thrive at the end of the day to survive and thrive and and survivability. Survivability those are all great words from the

military kind of called it a surge, you know, if you had to do that. So, I'm just trying to make sure I understand. So, sorry they interrupted. No, I appreciate the question here. Okay. So, um these are the five in the circle. The uh five scorecard categories and policy leadership and collaboration kind of speaks for itself. Um risk assessment and emergency management. That's often the category people would expect when you're talking about responses to hazards. May I ask you a favor? Because I don't we don't have on the screen and I would love to have a copy of that. I think Are you going to share that or do you want I'm going to share that with the board's correspondence package. What?

The board's correspondence package next week, ma'am. Okay. You got to remember all this for two weeks, right? There'll be there'll be questions at the end.

Thank you, Kayla. Um, so risk assessment and emergency management is a category that a lot of people expect as well as infrastructure resilience. That's so important. Planning for resilience is key as you can imagine. comprehensive plans, hazard mitigation plans, things that our localities are engaging with already. And then the category that often takes folks a little by surprise and where communities often score a little lower is community engagement, health, and well-being because that's something that we address in this because we address resilience so broadly as we're just talking about. So we had focus groups, we had individual interviews uh for those who couldn't attend the focus groups. We did surveys. We had over 50 responses from uh representing 25 different organizations. Um and we go through and we score. There's a professor at Olderman University. She couldn't join us tonight, but she oversaw some students in doing the scoring. And so you can have her give sympathy to her for weeding through all of those ordinances, comprehensive plans, hazard mitigation plans. Um and for the qualitative assessment that's again it's done concurrently with the scorecard the quantitative assessment. These are the key themes that came out for the region. One is that there's a serviceoriented community. You probably are not surprised to hear that the region is characterized by strong collaboration among nonprofits and local governments the community members. But service providers are increasingly feeling the strain by funding cuts and growing community needs. economic disparities. Those were raised frequently because the uh region's tourismdriven economy does rely heavily on low-wage hourly jobs which can create a stark divide between the service workers and the higher income residents and some of the vulnerable neighborhoods face compounded challenges including limited access to health care and food and transportation. Demographic shifts. A growing retirement population brings wonderful

opportunities and challenges. But while retirees contribute to the volunteerism in the community and the philanthropy, many may eventually require services they could no longer afford. And finally, access and affordability. Affordable housing is something we hear about all the time in the news across America, but it remains a critical issue, particularly in rural areas lacking public infrastructure. was noted in some of the more rural areas of the region and many residents struggle to access essential services due to limited public transit and language barriers and geographic isolation. And now I think I send it back to Jess. Thank you so much Elizabeth. So what were the results for your county? Um, I have to say that York County is one of the higher scoring counties that we have ever done throughout the raft. Um, and is well ahead of both Williamsburg and James City County in terms of its score received. Now, taking a look at the scorecard, one thing that we always emphasize with this is that you shouldn't interpret it as a grade. We actually very specifically don't put letter grades on this. What we do is we look at the number of points that you receive, compare that to the possible number of points and then think forward into how can you use that to target actions in these different categories. We refer to them as opportunities across the five categories where we scored. So for York County um have a total score of 91 out of 113. And as you can see, some takeaways from this. Again, York County scores were much higher than those of the other raft localities and higher than those in the region. Um the highest scoring areas of the five areas were in risk assessment and emergency management and in community engagement, health and

well-being. Those are areas which are frank particularly with community engagement, health and well-being tend to be our lower scoring categories. And so I wanted to make sure to emphasize that York County is starting from a very good baseline here. You're already doing a lot of good work. That said, having a score doesn't automatically mean you check a box and you're resilient. There's always things that we can do better and there's always more and more ways to develop how we deal with flexibility and nimleness in a community to be able to respond to the changing stresses that we experience. So, uh, comprehensive, uh, plan and land use ordinances are are very good at incorporating and supporting resilience and, um, found a lot of opportunities as well for incentive programs to promote resilience that could be supplementing a regulatory based approach.

So, going back to those scores, were they derived from the study groups? So there were questions that people asked about policy leadership and collaboration and based on their responses that generated a score of 16. Yep. Um there were the the interviews. There was also the actual analysis of the written plans. So we took a look at what is in the regional hazard mitigation plan. We took a look at the comprehensive plan and looked for the components that are in that. Um in addition to focus group interviews and surveys. So they were looked at against a standard that that the raft have developed for collaboration and for risk assessment.

Absolutely. And really in a lot of these it's is something present or is it not? And so in a lot of cases we had places where you had elements that were present. So um that was I think an exceptionally positive uh score to be able to get. What's I don't Okay. So with the other communities in general sense, why is this why is the got to go back? No, the right there the risk assessment, emergency management and all that health stuff and wellbeing. Why is that such a problem? Why is there why what's driving it to be low out elsewhere

and and in other places? That's a good question. And Elizabeth, I don't know if you you have more experience going all the way back to the earliest draft cases than I do. Um I could see you want to talk about James City to answer James City County. Um so one of the Sorry.

So I can address that for James City County, but I can't address it for City of Williamsburg. Um I'm Wendy Stout from Virginia Tech and I'm the lead for the James City County um raft assessment um and implementation. And for James City County, what we found with them is that there was several opportunities and things that they were doing in their locality that they were not identifying as resilience items. So there were things that they had in place, but they weren't connecting them in the way that would make them resilient. and so they weren't able to get a point for it in their assessment because they had not made those connection points.

Could you give us an example? Um so yeah so one of the things that we noted in the health and well-being category is that they had um programs for um families that would have qualified um specifically I think that they were doing um a library program where they were going to of of the way that they just made those descriptions um in those you raised a question in your study because it sounds I mean you created a framework for your study But the county is was doing something anyway, but it made it just didn't fit your framework.

Well, no, they didn't identify it in their plans. So, I think that um the disconnect there is that they are they have an opportunity that they can do that in the future that they they didn't allow for any planning beyond the whatever they were doing at that point is what you're saying. They had something good going, but there was probably no ability to sustain. You hadn't tied it together, right? Okay. Right. So, I see the opportunity for James City County's score to go, you know, to be higher after they go through this process because now they're aware and they'll add them to the plans next time. They understand better now. They understand sometimes this is thrown out and people are not quite sure how to answer the question. Exactly.

So, you are mainly against the existence of these programs as opposed to the quality of of the programs, right? It's a either or like Yeah. Either either have collaboration as part of or or you don't. We don't evaluate the quality. Okay. Okay. I got you. Right. Thank you. It might. Yeah. And I think that that's that's something that can be fairly objective. Is that right? Subjective. Subjective. Yes. I would think that'd be a better word.

It might help to we we strove to make it objective to make it yes or no in the scorecard. So it's a quantitative assessment. It's not a subjective one person saying I think that's pretty good, you know, but it might help just to read the description. For example, of the risk assessment and emergency management category examines how well a locality has conducted risk assessments to prepare for coastal storm hazards, identified vulnerable populations and their needs during or after a coastal storm hazard, and developed plans for disaster preparedness, including a hazard mitigation plan.

Okay. So, with a lot of those examples, and you'll have in your uh packet all of the materials that we have so far, we worked to propose a number of opportunities. We started with a list of 20 based on what we've seen in other localities and then worked with Caitlyn and a number of staff to I winnow these down to about 10. When we go to the the public and we try to to narrow this down, 20 is often a lot. So, we try to identify what does staff think are the most important things to put in. And in addition to having those 10 uh staff identified opportunities, we also asked them to say if you have what your top two opportunities that you would like to make sure that we make progress on over the next year. Um one key thing about these opportunities is it may be something that takes a long time to accomplish, but we're looking for opportunities that you can make progress on during a year. Um the top two that staff identified were um we we pushed together in leadership uh adopting the Noah sea level rise projections and incorporating those into a flood resilience plan and the efforts that the county has on the CRS the community rating system to work from a class 7 to improve to a class six. So that was a very very high priority that staff would like to make sure that we address progress on during this year. And the second opportunity was in resilience planning again in the idea of you're doing things but making those explicit connections being able to align the CIP with some of the preservation actions that are happening taking a look at feasibility studies that are being needed and incorporating some of these

actions into existing programs like park and storm water upgrades so that you lower that barrier to implementation. you're looking for the easiest ways to get as many win-wins as you possibly can. Um, the other opportunities that came up under risk assessment, conducting a business impact assessment and incorporating some of those risk profiles into a hazard mitigation plan, specifically to ensure that economic vulnerabilities and recovery priorities are fully addressed. I used to do a lot of work in disaster recovery. there is very little information and support out there nationally for businesses. And so this is something where as we're seeing um more and more disasters with longer and longer recoveries, that is becoming a lot more common as a need to recognize. Businesses need the same recovery help as uh individuals and homeowners do.

Well, it's conduct a business impact. Is that for the county or is that for the businesses in the county? That would be for the businesses in the county. County.

Yep. um infrastructure resilience um using storm water plans to advance green infrastructure and environmental habitat goals. Um also coordinating with the regional planning efforts and the nonprofits that are out there to work on how to have criteria to evaluate proposed development based on resilience impact. Um and then offering fund matching or tax incentive programs for homeowners and property owners to incentivize nature-based landscaping projects. Those are the things that help you not just with your water quality but also managing your storm water because we tend to have a lot more infiltration from those nature-based features. Um and then finally closing it out as opportunities that staff identified within their top um I think we ended up not with nine because we ended up combining two in one of those top two. uh the under resilience planning, again considering those additional incentives for property owners who are both building and maintaining eligible natural and nature-based features. And then a couple for community engagement. Um looking at developing and adopting a written policy statement about the roles that residents and businesses and other stakeholders have in resilience. It's really important to recognize in building resilience that is not the sole responsibility of the government. It's also not the sole capacity of the government to do so. And then in community engagement, collaborating with those local youth groups, elders, service providers, and nonprofits to get the message out about coastal resilience and what people can do and be able to help make those connections, that's the kind of work where recognizing that staff are already doing a whole lot. When you can tap into the members of your community to have them be a part of this process, it not only engages their ownership, it also takes some of that burden off of staff from having to do

anything. And with that, uh, Wendy, you're already here, so do you want to close it out and talk about the workshop?

Thank you, Dr. White Hit. Um so um we are really excited uh to share I think Jess touched on this and Elizabeth touched on it too that um the resilience action checklist has already partially done. Um the top two that Jess referred to earlier are things that the locality staff uh chose. Um and that was based on the opportunity list and so they reviewed those and and came up with two items and that was developed that opportunity list was developed from the review of the qualitative uh documents um like you know the different plans the hazard mitigation plan and other comprehensive plan capital improvement plan and and also uh through the interviews and the assessment piece. So um now in the workshop what we're going to do is uh look at those items that from the opportunity list and have the citizens a community-led process to decide the other three of the top five that will be pursued in that year of implementation. And so the citizens will actually have a voice and they'll actually now we have the top 10 that the locality decided on based on the input that will be shared with them. Um, and so that will be they'll know that these are the top 10, but they may decide to choose something different.

And so they will have the opportunity to add to and say, you know, these are also things that we care about and that we would like to consider. And so that will be a collaborative process and we will have all three localities will come together and then we'll break out into breakout rooms and and be able to discuss things that are very specific to that locality. What's the time frame for all of this? So, that's on the next slide. Thank you. I'll jump the gun each time.

No, you were on top of things. So, um this is the date. It's going to be August the 18th from 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. at the James City County Rec Center. And um we really encourage um people to come out and um and to register. There's a QR code. If you take a picture of that with your phone, it'll lead you and prompt you to the registration for the event. And then also the um URL is there that you can join. And um so we would love to have a big turnout from York County uh to come and be part of the process. And we also a very important thing is that we are providing child care for children. So we good. Yes,

we're providing child care and hopefully some refreshments as well. What you're hoping is to get the younger people out.

We do. We do. We want to make sure everybody feels welcome and that everybody is able to participate um even if you have small children and and so you know the the goal of this is is to learn the citizens to learn about the locality's resilience um and also that you know we want the locality representatives to come as well um and so to learn about the strengths and the needs and to develop the priority actions that will be implemented over the next year I think and so um the implementation process is 12 months And so the county staff will work with the implementation team in this case at Old Dominion University and led by Jeff and um they will work have monthly meetings um implementation team meetings and we'll even help to find funding to try to incorporate to support the implementation of the resilience action checklist the five items that are on that. So we we intend to be a very good collaborator, a very good teammate and um and to work with the locality to um achieve these goals

because that's something we want to put out on our IT uh tool. Yeah, I got a question to get rapid. How is this how is this being funded for you all? Sure. So we have two sources of funding from the Noah coastal zone management program. Noah um Yes. So the um from uh Virginia DCR and then um sorry DQ the uh other source of funding that we have is from the Virginia Environmental Endowment. Okay. No, nothing from Ches Bay.

No, not for this one. Um however a lot of um certainly for IICAR in our case we have a state appropriation for our collaborations with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and that funding helps to support both uh Dr. Lee and Mr. Larkin. So those are um we we get a little bit of that support indirectly piece and pieces

through some through some staff time. I I will say that we can't promise that we'll be successful in bringing in any additional funding. So, we all know everything is exceptionally competitive these days, but we can provide support to try. And the other thing that we can provide is um often when you're a university and you have great ideas, you're able to get faculty involved. So we now have a faculty roster program for not just our locality or our three universities but universities from across Virginia of faculty who are interested when ideas come up we can actually match some of the opportunity list items with some of their areas of expertise to see if they have availability to jump in and help. So sometimes that inind support when the funding doesn't come through

advancing their education as it go along with exactly the project. Okay. Yeah. You you were asking a question. I was just asking is this a topic we want to put on our IT tool for uh sending out to the flash to for a flash vote survey? We could certainly consider it. See if it works with the ladies place. So the flash the flash though we just ask questions. What are we you're trying to get the questions to feed to somebody to go to the meeting. Well, you've got a list of 10 topics and that are all tied to resiliency and you might you might want to ask the community what would they rank them at or what would their top three choices be.

First of all, you're going to have to explain resiliency. Excuse me. Consideration. Certainly. I think we should take it one step at a time and and see how we get into this. I think that's a good idea, but I think let staff look into it and see whether it's practical for us to do it at this time. We got Well, we got a short window though. It's less than two weeks is this community engagement. We want to get it done and there's two weeks. So, we're talking August 18th trying to advertise the fact that they're having the meeting that that we need that we need to do. That's the important thing to advertise. Not so much. They're in the but they're in county like ours too. You end up with a problem because you're up there in James City County doing this. You got his district right there. You stood up.

I'm sitting up as far as I can. My back hurts. No, I'm just saying that we're way down here. District five. We're at the other end. We're down near Hampton. You know, getting people to participate. It's going to be great up there. Down here it's gonna be a little tough. And we have a different environment. They're way higher in elevation down there. Fewer people. and we're crammed in and close to the close to the beach, different attitudes. So, do we do we have those 10 topics has already been already been chosen? Yeah. So, we have the 10 nine well nineish nine together that we have but the at the workshop we do offer the opportunity if there are things that we really need to add to the list.

Um, good. Trying to think on think on my feet here. here. The top two are the top two are on the list for sure. So, we know that we have these two. We need to select more from these as kind of the highest priority opportunities.

Well, in order in order to get good engagement in less than two weeks, we need to really put it in front of the folks say, "Hey, listen. Here are the things we're going to attempt to accomplish. We need your input on this." We need to get that out in front of people pretty pretty quickly so they can plan accordingly. Um, a flash vote may be one way of doing it. Broadcast night off the website of course is another way. However, but we got to we we can't just go, hey, come to the raft. Caitlyn has a suggestion.

Hi. Um, I just for the benefit of you all, uh, we've been working with our public affairs um in the prior weeks. So, this has been advertised in citizen news already as well as um on the social media. And then we're also working on contacting some of the homeowners association and community groups for that direct That's good. I will be. Yes. But it needs to be more than just saying, "Hey, there's a there's a thing on on the 18th." They need to understand what what the opportunities are. They they need to come and consider. We need your help. That's why we expect the staff to be there. No, that's what you just said.

But when we put out the the information to the citizens, we want them to help us with this. It's an opportunity to make input to help us. Okay, it's what it is. But you have to understand what you're doing. You got to be willing to drive, you know, 30 miles to get up there. I think you can manage. Not a problem, man. Tired. I average twice a day, so I think you can handle it. Get people there between four You may I may be joking about it, but it's gonna be tough. It's an issue. Yeah. Okay. I I I would say, you know, Caitlyn, after the meeting, we can circle back with you

and talk about are there any kind of alternative strategies that we need to try to to absolutely quickly think about to make sure that we can enable that public participation. I'd invite you to go down to uh TAB uh library, hold a meeting there. I understand what you're doing. Yes. Well, I mean, seriously, you're right, center, you got three districts right there. All the population is actually down in this area's office little part of the county. What you're trying to do is not just York County. You're trying to do it for for James City County and Williamsburg. And that's why you're having it up in the historic triangle area. Right.

That's right. But during the year of implementation, there will be opportunities if there are other meetings that people want to have in person versus virtual, they could be held in your county. It's more convenient. As long as it's not virtual, I'll be happy to attend. Yeah. And that that is something where um our team has made a commitment to do the meetings in person. We are right across the water at ODU. Um I will say that the tunnel is a little bit fixy these days. Uh but that's something where you know provide again using that IAR funding we're going to make sure that we're doing those meetings in person. Get better participation I think that way. Yeah. Okay. So,

so, so I I have a couple questions kind of in general. What what what was the genesis for raft? What what was it that motivate this program to get put together that was become known as the raft and who was championing that? And um how do y'all measure your success at the end of the year? How do you look back and go, we were successful, we met our marks. So, how do how do you all do that? Really great. Elizabeth, you've been you've been here since the beginning. So that's her polite way of saying I'm the oldie moldy. I was not going to put it that way. Um, so actually um in 2015, so I used to be a professor at the law school at William Mary before I went over EVA. And I'm going to have to ask you to speak up a little bit.

Sorry. And the um I directed something there called the Virginia Coastal Policy Center. and that center and the institute at UVA, where I am actually now, um co-hosted an event to talk to localities in coastal Virginia about sea level rise and increasing flooding and increasingly severe storm events and what what could we do about it? And afterwards, some of the representatives of the Coastal Planning District Commission said, "We really need to have some kind of a program to help spark this conversation among our localities." Right. Part of it is, as you all know better than I know, you know, there's schools and there's transportation and um emergency services right there in front of you needing funding and something with a longer time horizon, it's hard to to bring it to the four. So, um at first people talked about a report card numeric a through F, you know, and um we felt like that wasn't first of all a great way to establish a relationship with the locality to hit them with a bad, you know, and leave. here's your bad grade, see you later.

Exactly. Um, we did some research. Some graduate students in planning at UVA researched other report cards and scorecards and found they didn't really move the needle on policies and programs after they make a splash, but they don't necessarily move that needle and make progress. So, that's when we developed the three steps where we're going to stay with localities after the scoring. And we did it as a numeric score rather than an A to F because we don't want people focusing on that. We want them focusing on these are the things that we can do to become more resilient and you know the positive path forward. And so to answer your question about measuring success,

part of it is how many communities that we've worked with and we've been partnering with the planning district commissions each time and they've invited us to come in and do it. That really is the biggest success to us that they want us to come because it is at no cost to the local government other than the staff time to assist us and when we do the scoring we do it in partnership with the staff which we really appreciate to make sure we get it right.

Um and also then we ask them to participate in the monthly implementation team meetings so that they can help connect us to resources. And so the fact that the PDC's and the local governments actually want to work with us is the biggest success. but then seeing the completion of their checklist of items and seeing how they've gotten more resilient. I mean, one of the ones that we love that's a very small example is on the Eastern Shore, the town of Ankco had a repeatedly flooding harbor masters parking lot. They're not um as low as a lot of the Eastern Shore localities, so they don't have as much flooding in general, but that parking lot was just recurrently flooding. So, we had a fellow that was um paid for by the Crant program from Noah and he connected us with a design firm, Clark Nexon, who drew up designs for things they could do to get rid of the flooding. And then when some grant funds became available, they had what they call shovel ready designs to apply for the grant and they got it. So, they were so happy that they could get that expertise to them when they needed it to be

relationships. Right. So that's what we're trying to do with the faculty roster as well that Jessica mentioned that we're trying to bring the expertise in.

Yeah. And I I think the the relationship building about this is so so important when the funding opportunities come. It's usually a very short turnaround compared to what it actually takes to get the right partners at the table to come up with the right designs to come up with the project and get the project done. And that's assuming that it's something that is going out to build a thing, whether it is upsizing a covert or installing a living shoreline. There's other things that help with resilience, too. It's those community building aspects. Um things that we used to do. I I came up to Virginia uh four and a half years ago from North Carolina where we had villages where uh they know that they experience hurricanes often. So they all know, they have lists of who needs help, who stayed, who goes, like that's not something that you necessarily need a big infrastructure grant for, but you do need the relationships and the willingness to have someone be the local caretaker for that process. So what raft really helps to do is to get these things started for you. And once we leave, if we are able to look back and say, "Oh, here's these new relationships. here's this new um willingness to try to think of we're going to champion this project and we're going to figure out how to get it done whether or not we have to look for creative sources of funding. Um those are the kinds of things that that I see as successes as well.

Okay. All right. Good. Thank you. So, have you have you um you know we're surrounded by military uh 40% of the land in uh your county is is federal property protected. um how are you involving I know through PDC they have military presence but that's right how else are you incorporating military um into your studies

so one thing that we do in that year of implementation is we try to grow the implementation team and we have discussions from the beginning and say who else needs to be at this table as Jessica said the relationship building and often it'll be something like someone will say we need you know to contact the commander of the adjacent face to see if they have a liaison they can assign or you know this one church is so active in the community they really have to be here they've got the volunteers lined up they could reach the folks that might be more socially vulnerable so we try to expand the team throughout the year if there's an item that involves something like infrastructure that you know goes to a base then from the beginning we we invite the base the staff to come so it really depends on what the items are on the checklist So in Hampton Roads, there's roughly 17 different jurisdictions from Virginia Beach, you know, all the way up to uh James City County, Williamsburg. Um and you know, you're touching on only three of them here, which because we operate as historical triangle,

but but we are all part of that that larger PPC. Sheila is member of that, our representative that and um they do a lot of coast resiliency studies and and work. I mean

gosh for the last at least 20 years I know they've been doing things like the Dutch study and all kind of stuff. So um I think we're kind of unique in the although we're a historical triangle I think our our our resiliency and effort really deals around a lot around tourism and the unique historical aspects. That's why it's called historical triangle, right? But the the things that we've got to really focus on are like the communications, emergency communications, the transportations up and down the, you know, be through uh through Hampton Road to get get your stuff from one place to the next, shipping, you know, that that the big stuff. And it's obviously we've got to have both sides of it. That affects our overall um resiliency, if you will. That really does. We can't we can't operate independently of that. and and then the studies the PDC comes up with the grants the money they get from the state pass through money whatever it it bleeds over to us also at the Virginia Beach and stuff like that

so this is you're taking on a you're taking on a bite size I think you know bite-sized piece of this but the overall in Hampton Roads that's tough one bite better than no bite but also we should tell you so bite bite bite the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission is our partner in this and we actually went to them first and their chief resilience officer Ben Mcfarlland you probably know will be attending the workshop. Um but um they suggested that we work with these three localities because like you said there's a

joint uh vulnerability kind of thing to to the housing for the workers for the tourism etc. that they felt like it'd be great to work with this segment. There's a lot of attention as you said to the coastal flooding for Norfol and Virginia Beach and Chesapeake, but they felt like you all have some things in common that would make it good to work focus on these three. So that's that's exactly how we got to this. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you very very much. This has been very interesting. Looking forward hopefully we get a lot of people turn out for the workshop. So we'll try to do that.

Thank you. That would be great. Welcome. You know, I'm glad that you started to do this even though it's we've been doing it for a number of years, but as we said, by by by moving forward. Exactly. Thank you so much. Thank you for your time. Have a good evening. Thank you. Thank you. You too. Mr. Perry.

Okay. So, since we'll save him for another meeting. Uh with that and we'll move to the consent calendar. And let me see where we've got item number three is special use permit a two-year extension of a deadline for establishing a car wash at at 6440 George Washington Memorial Highway. We've seen this one before and this is the second time through. Uh number four is a request for refund of cigarette tax. All right, that one I think has been explained. Number five is a request for refund of business tangible property taxes. And then number six is request refund for real estate taxes for disabled veterans. Number seven is a request for refund of real estate taxes also. So anybody have any one they would like to pull for discussion?

Yeah. Can we chat about number three for just a minute? Number three. Okay. Number three is the Oh, yes. You and I both asked questions about that today. So, thank you. Earl, you going to talk to that? Yes, ma'am.

Uh, so this is for the Tommy car Tommy's car wash application. Um, so they have they were approved two years ago. Uh, they're bumping up against their deadline, which is in August. And so what they're requesting is an extension to their special use permit so they can continue their work. If you've been by the site, you've seen they've started the work. Uh but our requirements are that they have a foundation in the ground or otherwise they extend it. Um if you don't extend it, they would just have to go back through the full process before the planning commission board.

They'd have to go through and pay again for it. And I I talked to Earl before and we don't have any limit on the number of times that we can renew a special use permit depending on the circumstances, but it's up to the board to decide whether or not you wish to continue with that. This is the first time they've come forward other than their original. This is the first time. It's a two-year standard. Yes, sir. It's in the ordinance that there any special use permit approved it lasts for 24 months. If you don't do it, if you don't establish your business, you know, we consider foundation on the ground, then uh within that 24 months, then it's expired. Could you describe what they have done?

So, they have gotten their uh site plan approval. Um they've gotten their LDA started, so their land disturbance activity permit. Um and as you can see, they're they've started taking trees down. Uh started working in the building to close it up so they can take it down. Uh they are moving forward. I think it just, you know, financial wise, they just had a little bit of a slowdown and now, but now they're ready to roll. They just can't get the building torn down and their foundation in the ground by the 15th of this month. So, you're you're saying the impediment to this point has been some financial stresses. I'm guessing, Tommy, I can add color if it's appropriate.

If you that'd be great. Yeah. the uh the road widening project on 17 was a significant delay for us. VOTE ended up buying a piece of land from us and we had to move some utilities and some signage and thing that that ate up I think eight or nine months of that time period and I mean we've worked with VOTE all along the way. Those things just take time especially when you're selling chunks of land. Um so that was a significant delay for us. We had to come to an agreement with the Harley dealership next to us. That was a challenge getting a hold of the owner and getting that taken care of. That was another couple months there. So, we've been pressing as hard as we can. It's just the VOTE project and the Harley situation ate up almost half of our our aotted time. Um, as he said, I mean, we've actually got demo crews ready next week to start. The whole building will be gone within a matter of a month. Okay. Um, it's just those those couple items just

I'm glad to see the activity there now and and thanks for putting some color around the delays. This has kind of been a black hole. Not sure what's going on. Yeah, there's a lot of things behind the scenes. We What's your What's your confidence level with this two-year extension? You'll be able to uh I mean, like I said, that building will be gone in six weeks max. Um, and we're we've we've been on calls for the last three months with the franchiseor. The contractor's in place. The subs are I mean the contract is signed. We're we're ready to go. Okay. All right. All right. Thank Thanks for the back. Thank you very much. What's your estimated time frame would you say?

Uh we we built one in Norol that was a challenge and that took eight months. So, I mean, provided everything goes okay, we're projecting six to seven months to to open. Okay. Um, and trust me, it's been sitting there. You guys have seen it. We want it open faster than anybody else. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. The next one was item number four, the cigarette tax. Yeah, this was just different and I hadn't heard of it before and I I think just for sake of uh telling our public what it's about is worth taking a couple minutes and just describing it. Go ahead. Go ahead.

So Mark, I'd ask questions. Uh I know your staff has responded to me. It was why are we why are we refunding anything related to cigarette tax? How does that work? How do they how does a proprietor come back and ask for that tax and show us that in fact he's owed that? I don't know if there's anybody here that can speak to that. Are you sure comfortable doing that? Yes. So I I know she's working with Miss Webb on on this a little bit.

So yes, I talked to Commissioner Revenue about this. They sell the cigarette stamps in rolls of 15,000. And so our code allows for them to be returned and refunded as long as the commissioner of um can ensure that they haven't been tampered with. So they bought them. They never affixed them to the cigarettes. They never sold the cigarettes. Um they've stopped doing that kind of business in New York County and so they've returned the stamps that can be resold now to other folks. Yeah, they were still not tampered with. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. This is more for the public's information. Thank you. If there are any more no questions, I will entertain a motion to approve the consent calendar. So moved.

Roll call, please. Motion made by Mr. Holoid is to approve the consent calendar as submitted. Mr. Holoy, yes. Mr. During? Yes. Mr. RH? Yes. Mr. Sheepard? Yes. Mrs. Null? Yes. Motion carried. Thank you very much. Now, we'll have open discussion if anybody has any comments they'd like to make quickly. Very nice. Who would like to go first? Would you like to go first? Yes. Short and sweet to the point. I'll try. Hurry. Um, so I uh I just heard supposed to do. Go ahead. Okay. Thank you. So, it's informal.

I just heard uh from several people recently that the the dump is now requiring commercial vehicle um traffic coming in be um automatic dump trailers now. And so, be what? Automatic dump trailers. We can't come in and hand unload the the trailers now. So, I'm getting some calls and push back on why that is. So that's my question. Don't know. So anybody can answer that question. He was here right behind you. Rob. Rob.

So I'll have to look into that. Generally when they have a long line, you can go to the transfer station. A dump trailer gets in and out of the way and is gone. So they may push them forward because because of the traffic. So that sounds unusual but there might be a circumstance. So but I will check and if you could I'll reach back out to you. Anybody else want to say something? Go ahead.

I had two items madam chair. So first topic uh I'll begin with a meeting that I had last week with Miss Adilia Thompson Peninsula Community Foundation CEO. you recall she presented to us back in March on March 4th and it was a presentation on uh aging

and there was some follow-up questions from that and Mr. Shepard I believe you asked what is the financial profile of the uh older residents in the peninsula and um they've had a young intern working at the community foundation uh for the last several months that person has provided a research project and generated a report I've passed the report on to Mr. Bellamy and he'll include that in our POS folder. Um, you know, not surprisingly, JCC and York County the list for retirement incomes beyond just social security income, high pension income uh versus our counterparts in Hampton and uh Chespake who were quite quite low in comparison. Um, as I said, I'll leave the report with Mr. Bellamy. The second report that she provided was how older residents watch program could help. She really like uh the county to consider

Hampton does it. Hampton has a small group doing this now. And then so this this is modeled off of off of Arlington and one other Northern Virginia neighborhood our neighborhood watch. It ties in with with in the neighborhood just keeping track of your neighbors and if you don't see them for a while or or you know they're older is just a knock on the door or something like that because we don't normally happens. You want to read the rest? No, go ahead. I I can't help it. I'm sorry.

So, it describes a system very much like uh neighborhood watch. Uh but a successful watch program for uh elder care basically has to also consider social services. So things like food and transportation and even possibly me medical or healthcare needs. Um and that's and that's again what she has asked us to consider as a county. The uh the report is with Mark and he'll uh include it in our information folder. I thought it was very good piece of work. Intern had obviously done some great work for them in a very short period of time.

The foundation has two interns that have really done a terrific job and they've been loaned from the colleges. One's been paid for by a bank and the other one's been from the college and their enthusiasm. We've moved forward so fast because their energy and getting things done and I'd love to be able to keep them, but it's just a one year type of thing. We'll see what happens. I thought you wanted to get out of here early. Rubbing it in. I'm rubbing it in. I start talking. I I told you I have a motor mouth. I'm sorry. Anything else? Yes, I did, Madam Chair. Oh, good. Go for it.

So, second uh second topic, not as pleasant. Heather, I could get you to pull this up. I'm going to begin with some photographs. And this is uh what the board is seeing here is um progress on Fenton Mill project. And we have had some issues of of where is this? Where is this? Mill is right at my glasses on. I can do it. District one. District one. right at uh behind the fire station 5 on Newman Road. Uh that's not me. I knew that be a security alert. I knew that.

So this this is the end of uh Indiana Lane which is in the existing Skimo Hills uh subdivision. Um and there is a cutthrough obviously created between this and the area behind it which is the construction area for Fenton Mill. This was never approved in the site plans. Um there was in fact a buffer zone there that's been removed. Uh so a number of issues associated with zoning and compliance. And if you look down in the bottom right corner picture, you can see cracks in the ashvault already where the heavy vehicles passing through there have already started to damage the uh the ashalt. I'm just very concerned that if we allow that to continue, we would very quickly have a Springfield road situation of heavy construction traffic over a a road that really isn't designed to handle it.

Um, are they taking traffic through there? Is that why the silk fence is down? There is there is tire tracks through there before the rain came last Friday? Yes.

The next one, Mark, please. This is uh the results of the rain from last weekend. And you can see the silt fence. You can see the uh the collection pit that they have there which is supposed to collect all this water. But you see the result. It's it's flowing down the down the slope into Skimol Hills. This is Alabama I think it's Alabama Lane. And this is the backyard of one of the homes. Um and this is not the first time this year. I think this is the third time it's been reported, but the fourth time in fact it's happened in uh since December. So, we just all of that all of that earth that's been piled up much much higher elevation now behind Alabama Lane than used to exist. So, it's it's funneling all the rain uh in that direction. And finally, the next photo is just the amount of dust that's being created. This is one truck going through there on uh I think it was um Monday afternoon and it's just it's just very very dusty. And you know that whole Skimo Hills area is a is a family oriented uh community. A lot of young kids in that area and they're just being denied the opportunity to enjoy out outdoor life. So Mark, I you know I I turned this over to you last week. I asked for some help from the county. Uh I think we need to get to the point where we get attention of the construction management and get some of these actions fixed and and certainly in the case of the cutter that that just needs to be stopped. If you want to brief the board on actions taken today, I'd appreciate it.

Sure. Today the um contractor and the developer were served with a stop work order. So, and I've already had a phone call from the contractor today. They have set up an appointment with us for Thursday. They'll be having a meeting with public works staff. Um, and they are, according to the conversation I had with them today, they're very anxious to get this resolved to get it where get the project where it needs to be. The number of violations is excessive. I think that's that's a point worth making. This is not going to be developer from uh York County. Oh dear. He actually resides in Mr. Hole's district.

Well, that's that's the subcontractor. Well, but the developer is, I believe, in Virginia Beach. Virginia Beach, that is correct. Beach, I thought. Okay. Thank you. I want to raise it to the board's attention. I, you know, obviously don't want this to downgrade into a a Springfield issue, tranquility. Um, they've done a very good job of turning that around and being very positive and and the neighborhood is quite pleased with it. I want the same results here. Okay. Thank you. This running man. Yes.

No. and uh the Running Man's 600 uh 600 unit neighborhood and right in the middle of it was a place called Sugarberry and so you know you can imagine all the this wellestablished neighborhood and then they Harrison Lear which was the developer decided to make this nice beautiful 27 acres in the middle of it. They just all the people were upset because they just lost all that forest and everything and they were going to be looking at their homes and we went through this and what was happening is that the work was stirring up as construction will stirs up a lot of dust, right? And so the construction company actually went over and hosed the houses down, you know, just to clean to clean them. Uh and then they had this process where they would during dusty areas, they'd spray it down. That's that's what they're supposed to be doing. And um so it can be difficult.

It can be done. Tranquility is a good example where it was done successfully. All of the same issues that that were dealt with. So so the these issues aren't going to go away as the developable property in the county is adjacent to already developed property. So we're going to continue seeing this. So, does do do we set a good expectation with their with the de our developer community that when they start their project, they're going to need to take things into consideration like water trucks to keep the dust down and so forth or do we need to reinforce that more? We generally have preconstruction meetings with these folks and they have an understanding of what the expectation is.

The most significant part of that picture that I saw was the mud flows. um uh my farm in Jacksonville. They said, "Oh yeah, we're not going to change the structure." And they come up next to it, put a subdivision right next to it. Next thing I know, we have we have a creek going across the middle of our the farm and um and then flooding the people out on the main road and going down the road. So those that development development will alter I don't care what they say, it'll alter the landscape and the flow of water. And so, um, we that's just totally unacceptable. I mean, hey, it's just completely I know they get away with the sheet flow part and all that, but that's just totally unacceptable. That stuff needs to have to build a wall, a barrier to flow that push out water somewhere else, but you can't be flooding people off their property. Yep.

So, anyway, that was personal. Yes. My question is how did it get there? I mean, how did this get to this point from from your county standpoint? Are we sending inspectors out and they're missing this or we're not sending inspectors out? So, as this is all I' I've been on vacation last week and I walked back into this home. Yes. Thank you. would you give uh with you know immediately

with a with a couple emails about this but from what I know about it so far um there's been a change in leadership in the contractor and the developer we had a good relationship as I understand it uh with the developer and they were very uh good at communicating and receiving feedback back from the neighborhood and then the that person went on to another job and they replaced them and the new person is not is not that. And so I I would say that there's been a few changes that have allowed us to get here.

In fairness, the early stump clearing portion of the work went very well and there were some issues with mud getting on the road and they were very fast to respond to that. um all in all all early signs suggested we had a pretty good contractor working that uh but it's gotten it's gotten out out of control recently and I wonder I wonder the extent to which it's a bigger project than they are used to handling I'm not sure well that you're all looking into now right I would say okay you know so

when we have an issue like this we certainly have to stay on top of it and so maybe we do more spot inspections along along the way when we know that we've got issues with the contractor and we stay on top of it before it gets to this point.

And and I I 100% agree. Matter of fact, uh when I had this conversation with uh Mr. Holoid about the issue on Friday, um I called Mr. Kger and said, "Please make sure that we have someone watching the site over the weekend and that you know they're not creating any more trouble over the weekend." So we we're going to take a extra watchful eye on this particular project until they get back to the point where we feel that it should be. Yeah. Okay. Good. Thank you, Tom.

Yeah. I've I've spent um since the last time we had a meeting, I've spent an enormous amount of time talking to neighbors, your neighbors, my neighbors, uh probably some of your neighbors, too, about the intersection 17 Victory and 134, those two intersections. Um, I didn't quite understand what they were doing in terms of putting up the the barrels, you know, and and I thought it was just a it was a kind of a test to see how much pain we could go through down there. Um, so, you know, I'm still waiting for the answer. I did talk. Rossi just got back from leave and then he walked

I sent a letter to Rossi to for for answers and he's forwarded on to somebody else because I had a long letter from

so I mean well people are you know it it's eventually the road will be better but we got to wait five years here to get this get this all done because there's another project coming in right behind that one. So this I want people that are watching this the staff to understand it that you know u to we are I mean we're experiencing ourselves we're asking questions are the light I mean here's a great example if you come off Victory Boulevard off 64 okay and that's that's about like now probably eight lanes you come in there and you get you start scrunching down and you get in front of the uh assisted living facility at Kmart I mean Walmart

and then then you're starting the lane starts backing up. Okay. And they will back up from Kroger all the way to 17. And that's a huge gap right there full of cars. And that's all going westbound. I think it's eastbound going eastbound. And so one of one of the bounds. I don't know which way it's going. Okay. It's going towards.

So then you get you get you get down there. So you're up against 17. Cars are waiting trying to get across. But you look across 17 going towards 34. And that whole section is there. It's about, you know, less than tenth of a mile, but it's full of cars. So, where are people going to go to get across the road? So, my question was, you know, how are you sequencing the lights between 134 in victory and 17 in victory so that you end up flushing out or giving us some space? Because what I'm afraid is going to start happening is people going to get anxious and to try to sneak across and start jamming up 17 and then you create another problem and um and so they're backing it up and it's going to affect the businesses all down in there.

When I coming to the meeting now I don't go I don't do that because I get so backed up I can't get on to 17 because of all the traffic. So now I'm going to 64 and coming up coming up that way on four uses Boulevard. Yeah. So every I mean I would I I I I know this is terrible, but I suggested one of the guys that worked over in production drive. He was having, you know, four or five lights trying to just get through it. I said, "Well, you know, somehow you got to work yourself over to 134 and see if that works." Well, how do you do that? They go through Tab Lakes. Okay. And so Tab Lakes, you know, I'm probably going to hear raising from Tab Lakes, but the point is this is a jammed up mess that's going to last. If you're going to Tab Lakes, you're going to have to go down and turn around.

It's quicker. I he tell you this is still quicker and the problem the problem is that we're going to have to live with this for the next five years. But the whole the whole problem also is that if we don't accept the money for it to be done when we have it we lose the money goes away. So we have to go ahead with the projects even though everybody's

and so they can they can do it. They're they're they're hearing from hearing from us. They're making adjustments when they can but I want to have answers for people when they talk to us. Okay. I don't want them having to blow through neighborhoods to get everybody starts whining around in there, but it's going to probably happen. Um, also, uh, I I've been getting, um, over the years since we put that sidewalk in, uh, on 34 134 in front of Kirkwood Church that goes over to the Victory Y, I've gotten a lot of compliments and, uh, from folks and they pass along that the board. We appreciate what the board supervisor and staff did to put that sidewalk in there. And I'm not I be honest with you, I've never seen that many compliments about a sidewalk since I've been on the board. But it's people are using it. They they appreciate the crossover there. Uh it's a community area that gets a lot of activity, a lot of walking and uh so that's good. And u so there'll be more more to come.

Comments. So yes, I've been having some conversations too. Been work talking with RC and he's been very responsive. Appreciate that. Um, like I said, there be a lot of conversation about that. I'm wondering if if maybe we should petition petition um, VOTE to have a community engagement leaison that can help answer some of these questions. It's Rossy. Well, but Rossy outside of Rossy, I I think that might that might be somebody with a better fit for that as opposed to us just being the the middleman. He's senator to public affairs, right? But anyway, just but we're doing the same thing,

right? I know. Well, that's part of one of the things we have to do is I mean that's we're gonna take they're going to take the grief even though we don't build roads. You know, I spend half my time working road issues, you know, filling holes. So, yeah, that's and that's agreed, but I don't know the point is that people a lot of get frustrated and can't figure out how to find the information. You pointed out last meeting that, you know, I think it was you. It might have been uh Wayne there, but they they pointed out uh um that there's a site you can go to. We have it on we have it on our site, right? Uh you can go to VOTE and you got their site that tells you everything that's going on.

So, uh I think you know citizens just kind of get used to who do they go who do they go to and and and go to the supervisors. We publish our names and numbers out there. Okay.

Right. And and I just wanted to well I just wanted to share that as a member of the uh Victory YMCA advisory board I attended a planned session this past Thursday with the peninsula YMCA community. We were looking at our 2030 impact brainstorming what is it that the YMCA's of the area can bring to the community to help better the community. What services can the YMCA provide? and the and and in this area that included Middle Sex or Bana as well as well as down here too. So I just want to encourage everybody who are members of the YMCA to go to your local YMCA, find your director and say, "Hey, I have some ideas to help bring that to to the table. We just don't want to do this in a small vacuum like to get as much of the community involved as possible." So it's again, if you're members of YMCA, go talk to your local YMCA director and say, "Hey, here's here's what my visit for 2030 will look like." I'm also scheduled for that setup.

You got Okay, I come up to Okay, good. A lot. Yes. Anything else? Ghostbusters. All right. Okay. Hurry up. We do not have a closed meeting. So, we are going to return and the next meeting it will be uh at 6:00 on Tuesday, August the 19th in the boardroom upstairs. And thank you all for joining us this evening.

Thank you. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music]