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I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. you you I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. So careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. Yeah. Thank you. I now call to order tonight's meeting of the Percival Town Council. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. One of the leading decisions was to apply the United States of America and to the Republic from which it stands, while nation accept under God in the visible authority and justice for all? One quick announcement, the AC is not working as many may have noted and it's currently being worked on. So we hope to have some relief for everyone who came to tonight's meeting. Next time on the agenda is agenda amendments and approval. Are there any amendments to the agenda? I move to remove 12.3. The town manager vacancy in the agenda because the town council is the body that will determine which of the collected applications and resumes for the town manager position is best suited by the position in our town. The town council will use the 14 days until the next town council meeting to perform their reviews. Do I have a second? A second. Discussion? A number, Rayner. Sorry your mic was an on. Can you reread that? Sure, sorry. I move to remove the 12 E town manager vacancy from the agenda. The reason is the town council is the body that will determine which of the collected applications and resumes for town manager position is best suited for the position in our town. The town council therefore can use the 14 days until the next town council meeting to perform their review of the 90 names. Nice second. All right, I have no questions. Council member right. So make sure it's on. So my concern with this is that there's nothing about that item that says these are the only people we consider. I took it as this is just the HR managers letting us know basically who applied and based on the requirements on the advertisement, who would eligible, nothing is preventing us from looking at the remainder of the individuals that may or not have been on that list. So for me, I would like to at least hear from her so that when I, over the next 14 days, I can make it educated and informed decision over the candidates as opposed to just doing it on my own and then have to come back and ask questions later. So I don't see the harm in allowing her to present a presentation now and allow us to be educated and informed as we move forward for the rest of the 14 days. I want to direct my, the reason I feel differently about that is I think our our HR personnel has the opportunity within the next 14 days to submit more names. It's not where we can't do that, Ladonna. The time to apply ended or march the fourth. Okay, then we have the whole list.. Okay then we have 14 days to review them. Based on the timeline that I provided you have until March the 17th. If you want to change that then let me know that and I can update the timeline but that's going to push everything out another week. Subtie you. I think we plan on using 14 days. Subtie council, if that's what council would like to do I can update the timeline. Council Member Colleo. Council Member Stout. I don't know about a timeline discussion but I know in the agenda packet there are two attachments that we actually discussed at the previous meeting and there were some outstanding questions at that meeting so I think it would probably be helpful even if it's only five ten minutes, just to have a chance to discuss those two attachments. So I would favor leaving this on so we can have a discussion. Councillor Mellon, how do you vote? I'll take a second. Question based on the information switch is number one. So based on what we're I'm hearing now is we can't even decide exactly when we want. So I think leaving it on the agenda now is even more important so we can provide direction to HR, exactly how much time frame we want. So to say we want 14 days, we haven't even decided that as a group. So I'd say that would be give us the prime opportunity to leave this on the agenda to have that discussion how much time we need. That'd be the most common approach to dealing with this. The best approach to the notice. Thank you. We have a motion on the floor. We haven't voted on. Councilmember Rainer. No. Councilmember Wright. No. Councilmember Net. Yes. Councilmember Luke. Yes. Councilmember Colliel. Yes. Councilmember Stout. No. And Mayor votes no. Mayor votes yes. You have to remind the audience of the rules for public meetings? Are there any other agenda amendments? to have a motion to approve the agenda as amended? I move that the Percival Town Council adopt the agenda agenda March 11, 2025 as amended. Do I hear a second? I second that. Council Member Rayner, how do you vote? No. Council Member Wright, how do you vote? No, and if I can do a point of order, I don't believe Council Member Kale, vote is done in the last motion. I don't think he called it in. Who is Council Member Kale? I mean, Colleal? Colleal, I apologize. I think her mic was not on. I voted no and just pointed out that the last motion didn't go through. Council member Nat, how do you vote? Yes. Council member Luke, how do you vote? Yes. Council member Colliel, how do you vote? Yes. Council Member Stout, how do you vote? No. And Mayor votes yes. Next item on the agenda is a public hearing. All persons wishing to be heard. Mayor, point of order. Next item is the consent agenda. Skepping ahead. Next item is in fact consent agenda. The only item on the consent agenda is approval of the minutes of January 28th, 25, Council meeting work session. Do I have of a motion to approve the minutes of January 28, 2025. I'll make a motion to approve those as approved by. Didn't you correct those? Yes. You sent the correction. correction for us. Yeah, sent them to Kim. She took care of it. Do I hear a second? Second. Council Member Rainer, how do you vote? Yes. Council Member Wright, how do you vote? Yes. Council Member Net, how do you vote? Yes. Council Member Luke, how do you vote? Yes. Council Member Colliel, how do you vote? Yes. Councillor Member Net. How do you vote? Yes. Councillor Member Luke. Yes. Councillor Member Colliel. How do you vote? Yes. Councillor Member Stout. How do you vote? Yes. And Mayor votes yes. Next item on the agenda is the first of two public hearings this evening. All persons wishing to be heard if this public hearing should complete a request to speak for him and present it to the clerk. Public hearing for proposed real property tax increase is now open. The purpose of this hearing is to receive public comment on the proposed real estate tax rate for calendar year 2025. The adopted tax rate for calendar year 2024 was 20.5 cents per $100 of assessed value. The town manager has proposed the town council adopt a tax rate not to exceed 0.205 per $100 of assessed value for calendar year 2025, no change from the prior year. Everyone wishing to speak on the topic of this public hearing will be given an opportunity to be heard after the coming briefing by staff. An official recording is being made of this hearing. Therefore, persons addressing the council are requested to speak stating their name and address. Speakers will have a three minute time limit. And now we will have a staff presentation by Assistant Director of Finance, Connie Lamar. Good evening, Mayor and council. The Code of Virginia requires municipalities to advertise a tax rate increase when real property assessment re-evaluations exceed 1%. For texture 2025, Percival's real property assessments increased by 6.54%. Excluding additional assessments associated with new construction, the equalized tax rate is 0.192. The equalized tax rate is the rate that would levied the same amount of revenue in 2025 as was levied in 2024 for existing properties. The town manager will present the proposed FY26 budget to council on March 19, 2025 based on the current .205 rate. The budget schedule recommends town council adopt the 2025 real estate tax rate during the March 25th meeting in order to meet the county tax rate reporting deadline of April 1st. Okay. Are there any written materials that have been submitted or is there anyone wishing to submit anything without speaking? Okay, I'll be a no. I will now call upon spoken and wishes to at this time on this matter? At this time, council members may ask questions and or provide comments. Council member Rayner. I have no comments on this. Council member right. The only question I have is there are two questions actually. I apologize. The information is already in here. I do apologize for a long second. What would be the tax rate if we fully funded all requests, department requests and the budget. The budget will be presented on March 19th, but based on the information that I have, if you fully funded all enhancement requests from all the departments, it would have added 8.7 cents for a total of 29.2 At this time the budget has in it out of the 8.7 7.2% remains unfunded and 1.5 is funded The budget you will receive on the 19th Okay, thank you That's song question Council member net No questions, thank you. Council member Luke. No questions. Council member Khalil. No questions. Council member Stout. Just from my own edification. Are an equalized tax rate and a lowered tax rate, the same thing. They call it the lower-defective tax rate for the equalized tax rate. So they are equivalent. Yeah, okay, thanks. No questions other than that? And mayor has no questions. There being no further comments, this public hearing is now closed. Next item on the agenda will be a public hearing. All persons wishing to be heard at this public hearing should complete a request to speak form and present it to the clerk. The public hearing for zoning ordinance and map amendment is now open. The purpose of the hearing is to receive public comments concerning the approval and adoption of the drafted 2025 zoning ordinance and map. Everyone wishing to speak on the topic of this public hearing will be given an opportunity to be heard after the upcoming briefing by staff. An official recording is being made of this hearing. Therefore, persons addressing the council are requested to begin by stating their name and address. Speakers will have a three minute time limit each. I would like to call upon Director of Planning and Community Development Summer Wilkes who will provide the background information. Thank you Mayor and good evening to you and the Council and good evening to everyone assembled here today. Pursuant to the Code of Virginia, Section 15-2-228-85, the Planning Commission held a public curing for the zoning ordinance draft in map on July 25th, 2024, where 58 public comments were received. The Planning Commission passed Resolution 24-07-03, recommending the town council to approve the zoning ordinance draft in map as presented at the public hearing with an addendum of changes to be incorporated into the final document as a result of the citizen input. A final zoning ordinance draft, which included the amendment of changes, was presented by the Director of Planning myself to the town council on October 8, 2024. Two subsequent work sessions were held to review the draft along with the planning staff recommendations. The chair of the planning commission introduced the same final zoning ordinance draft to the town council on January 8, 2025. Following the correction of formatting errors, also reviewed by the town attorney, the planning commission's final zoning ordinance draft was produced on January 28, 2025, which is the copy you have in front of you. On February 13th, 2025, the town council approved the final document for a public hearing, which is tonight. The full draft zoning ordinance and map can be found on the town website, and we did complete all requirements for public notice, as well as mailing almost 1200 letters to the affected parties. Thank you. Are there any written materials that have been submitted? Or is there anyone wishing to submit anything without speaking? That chasing some of everyone that I've asked us right now. Two, is for your rather. Two, is for you. I've got to do that. Okay. Okay. And then we have a petition from the residents of West F Street signed by multiple residents that say they do not want to be placed in historic district. I will now call upon the citizens who would like to speak. First citizen is Harvey Flynn. That's my list of this. Ever find the same history time that stayed on the B and the Discord book. And next time here representing him, we do not want to be in the history of this. All the houses are grammar houses and pre-fed. They come from Northern American and I think my house come from Sears. They have two to three studs in the walls. There's nothing historical about these houses. There's been no improvement to our street since I've lived there in 82. I had to come here a few years ago and request to have our street black top. We have no curbs, no gutters. The water runs down the street, it goes in our property and our basements. So there's nothing, you know, and I also, but in addition to my house, like 20 years ago, and it was not easy to get permits from the town in the county so I don't know what that does with builders coming in and rebuilding those houses unless somebody's going to take some money because it did it took me weeks to get permits 20 years ago to be approved. Next speaker is Joanne. Layer. Layer. John. Layer. Having been through this and having been through a comprehensive plan both now and when I was on Council and planning commission, I think you need to relook at the historic district and look at what happened a couple of years ago when they tried to put the historic district in place and see what the attorneys said, and you're talking about downgrading business properties, you're talking about putting houses that were never historic into a historic district and putting a burden on those homeowners. And especially if you look at D Street with your little bungalows, you're looking at the houses that possibly are less expensive than the other houses, which you may be putting them in a situation that to make it harder to even sell those houses. So please look at what happened in the past before you make a decision and mess up something that a lot of people really worked hard to take out originally. So I think that you really need to read and most of you don't. Next speaker is Henry Hoyer. Thank you. And thank you all for your service at town. I am speaking today on behalf of Alfred and Barbara Mason, who on the property 341A North Maple Avenue that's across from Loudon Valley right next to Loudon Stairs. That would be affected by the Hurst East overlay district. So it's a down zoning. It means that you're taking away opportunity to develop the property in the future. That's government taking. You don't offer a compensation. I think it's harmful. And I don't think there's enough justification to do so. I understand the justification that you put in the zoning ordinance proposals. They are based on protecting rights of an neighborhood that didn't even exist when the Mason started operating this as an industrial property in the 80s. So I was respectfully ask you to consider what this does to them and other property owners. And I also respectfully ask you to consider what that does to the town finances over time when we send that kind of message to investors. You know, it erodes the tax base. The town finances are not in great shape. We need higher tax revenue. And the best way to get it is unleashing some economic freedom. Thank you. Next speaker is Dan Reed. Mayor Council, then his Daniel Reed, for the record on properties on nursery avenue, 18th street, 31st street, and also have multiple properties outside the talimates in the county. Here to address address the idea of removing duplexes from designing ordinance. First off, I would say to you, if you really analyze it, duplexes provide a niche of place for people to go and live that service all of us. I have duplexes right here in town. Within my people that live there, state police officers, county police officers, nurses, teachers, teachers, aides, church administrative workers, and many others. They serve the needs of the community. It you either provide housing here or you condemn a model of in Charlestown. And I don't know where the elitist thought process comes in that you need to send them somewhere else. I kind of feel like what's happening here is what we used to call an imbi, not in my backyard. You know, it's fine to do it somewhere else, it's fine to do it in another area, but you say, oh, I don't want duplexes here. I haven't figured out why, and I haven't really heard anyone say, this is the negativity that's attached to duplexes. We don't have any, you know, record of demand on town services, county police forcing, fire and rescue, any more than anybody else. It's pretty, actually it's probably lower. And I just would say to you, who's driving the bus? Why, what's the push to take duplexes out of the sending ordinances? I can understand perhaps you know lessening the area but just to host daily take it out as well. And so I would just simply ask you to reconsider, to think through who you're pushing out of the town, because these are people that you will need, you know, to fill your orders, service your cars, all the different things that people have done that live with us. And it's just sad when I see them getting to me penalized because there's this new thought that they aren't good enough to be here. So let's eliminate the zoning district. Otherwise, tell me why you're eliminating it. Thank you. Good night. Applause. Is there anyone else who has spoken on this issue and wishes to? Yes. Yes. Okay. So Mark the LSD. Could you just ask for that? Yes, please. Excuse me. Yes, please. And P.C. And Mr. I'm just coming. Just a couple. Could you just do a couple of things? I'll just ask you a question. Yes. Oh, I see. This is. All right, looks like we have two more. We have Mark Nielis. For the record, Mr. Mayor, I signed up by telephone and advance of the meeting. Mark Nielis Business Address 196 North 21st Street. I've been in business owner operating two businesses in person for 30 years. I've been a property owner for 20 years. I'm in North 21st Street. I participated in the drafting of your area downtown plan and I participated in the adoption, preparation adoption of your transportation plan done by Kim Lee Horne. A whole to bachelor's city planning from the University of Virginia. And most of my adult life has been spent reading, writing, and interpreting zoning ordinances. First of all, I'm pleased that you have a grandfather provision. When I started my career in zoning and land development, it took a matter of months and thousands of dollars to get a land development application approved. Now it takes years and it takes hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to get a land development application approved. Absent a grandfather of the clause, you're really not being fair to the people who bested a substantial part of their income in their lives into the approval of an application. Writing and adopting a zoning ordinance is difficult work. I've been through it, I wrote a zoning ordinance for the Town of Leesburg, and you have to trust your professional staff. This ordinance needs editing. Give them directions, but let them do the work. They're trained to do this type of work. In general, my objections to the zoning ordinance, it's exclusionary. Between this and the town plan, it is as you want no more residents, no more people in this town. Dan Reed just made a great example of it. Duplexes, why did you delete him? Why did you delete him plan development housing districts? What's wrong with Village Case? What's wrong with Court's same French? What's wrong with Courtland? Visually, they're in most attractive subdivisions this town is ever seen and attracted the best quality builders you've ever seen and yet you intend to prohibit them. The ordinance also limits business development. These overlays, they're beautifully written, but they're difficult, they're difficult to comply with. And the document to repeat myself, the document in whole needs professional editing. My specific objections is the deletion of the PDH districts, the introduction of the FAR for the business and industrial We've never had them. It's always worked. Why are we doing it? And finally, the overuse of special use and special permits. Most applicants are not going to, excuse me, most applicants are not going to continue down that path. If a lane use is permitted, your Ari is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now I add the legislative gamble of especially as permit. Thank you for your time. The next speaker is Casey Chapman. Casey Chapman 125, first row, case co-LC. Good evening. So this is only an ordinance that's been heading down this path. We've been approaching this public meeting for a long time, and it's finally here. And there's no reason to mend this word. This ordinance is a down zoning. Flat out, down zoning, overarching, overreaching, poorly constructed, and not well thought out. And not well thought out into the facts of what are the economic impacts this is going to have when you look at it compared to the zoning ordinance as it stands today. Today there is an economic viability of constructing X within town limits. And since we are clearly a town that's not willing to be open to the idea of annexation, that's fine. But then let's look at the infill possibilities. We'll compare to what we have today in our zoning, compared to what this is proposing. The delta between that delta, the financial impacts, and how impact the residential businesses and other property owners all throughout the town, is a very, very significant number. And should not be ignored. And I don't think that value has clearly been established by anyone that made this plan. You know, when speaking to the chair of the planning commission regarding the maps pertaining to this zoning ordinance, he literally stated that the maps in the comprehensive plan were wrong. And I reply back, how could they be wrong if they're wrong, then what did you base this ordinance off of? Well, they'll be fixed. We have a plan to fix the plan. Well, that's not good enough. That's not adequate and that's definitely not looking after the best interest of the residents or businesses of this community. This isn't just about my economic interest in the town. This is about the people have already come out in the drone, like just speaking against these overlay districts, making it overly complicated. The goal was to take a comprehensive plan and the existing zoning ordinance and make it so people can absorb it, read it, and then implement it, and know what they have the right to do or not to simply put. And that just isn't what's represented in the ordinance that's in front of you. I would strongly encourage you to consider taking staff's recommendations and some professional viewpoints to look over this and fine tune this prior to passing it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else who is not spoken and wishes to? May we have some comments that were emailed have requested and asked for. Why this ordinance is the way it is. I was on the planning commission my first two years as a council member and we worked on I did this study for the C4 district and the C4 district is the area where I and council member Rainer wanted to develop the gas lamp district and this ordinance that presented is a direct contradiction to that potential development. The other overlays were put in place to restrict any additional development throughout the the town in the infill areas where we are desperately needing that type of economic development. We were working with the businesses on 21st Street to look at the entire C4 district area that's Main Street going south, Cornwell Drive, Cornwell Lane on the northern side, Hatcher and 23rd Street to develop that entire area and Casey Chapman's company was looking at putting potential apartments there. This ordinance is designed to prevent that. And like it was stated about the duplexes, we have duplexes in town that look like single familyfamily homes and the duplexes are connected underground, so therefore that makes them a duplex. They are distant far enough to where it looks like a single-family home, but the foundations are connected underground. The county, the state and the federal government are looking for attainable housing. Duplexes are just that. It allows young families to come into the community to establish themselves and have a future to potentially purchase a single family home. This ordinance is all designed by the planning commission to disrupt that. There's factions in the backgrounds that's working to prevent any development in this town. We have people moving out of town for that purpose. We have curtailed any potential development surrounding the town, the community. We've seen traffic coming from development in the county. It's not in the town. It's surrounding communities. So the Planning Commission strategically designed, in my opinion, for working with them for two years, to design this ordinance and these overlays to restrict the development of any reasonable housing and business opportunities in town. That's why the staff was not allowed to present their perspective on this ordinance. They're the professionals. They're the dedicated staff have years of experience and not to disparage the planning commission. We're volunteers, summer, rocket scientists, summer, the land skapers, summer business owners. But we have professional staff spent 30 or more years designing and planning communities. Summers is an excellent example of that. Thank you. Can you please stay here, Nick? I'm going to address the record. I live in Percival here. Have all my life born and raised here. And I've never seen things going on like they've gone in this town in the last few years, including the last couple months. Inside that, I own a house that's built in 1945. And now you want to turn it into a historic residence where I have to, anytime I want to do something to my house, I've got to come to the town and get their permission to do it. That's not right. And to me, it looks, and the way I interpret this ordinance is, it's becoming an HOA. Everybody can tell you what you can do with your property, but you can't do anything with it yourself. And that I think is a shame. It's a shame on the, you people appear. The planning commission got better things to do than they sit around for that. They could be working on the water system, they could be working on the flood plains in this town. It's been here for years and years, and no one has ever addressed them. And if I make somebody mad, I'm sorry, but this is just getting ridiculous in the way that this town is going. And like I said, I was born and raised here. I worked part-time for the town free years ago. Never charged them a cent and everything. And I'm a charter member of the local rescue squad. All of that. And yet, there's other people here that I know real well that have been in this town for a long time. And I'm sure they don't appreciate being told what you can do with your house, whether you can paint it green or yellow or whatever. And you have to come to the town every time you want to make a change and so neighborhood. If you look into neo-traditional neighborhoods, they are actually based on what town housing used to look like and what you would think, first of all, would try and incorporate into the town, not get rid of. The other thing is, I'd like every one of you to think about the first home that you bought. I know for myself, it was a duplex because it was the only thing that my husband and I they could afford at the time with three little children. And we bought the duplex. And then the next house was a townhouse. And then the next house. because it was the only thing that my husband and I could afford at the time with three little children and We bought the duplex and then the next house was a townhouse and then the next house was finally that single family home We all need to start somewhere and we really need to give our young youth a chance to start and personal I'm just so disappointed with changes that you guys are trying to make just so disappointed with changes that you guys are trying to make. We all believe in if it's not broken, don't fix it. I don't understand what's the purpose of this. I moved here 21 years ago. And I was against the growth. I'm still against the growth. You guys are the ones you're regime. We're 100% against any growth, correct? And why did you prove of I hop in Panera and Rest of it? I was against it myself, but as a business horse, there is no hope. This is you trying to change something. Main street. I am trying to develop a building that is my property. It is the ugliest piece on Main Street. I am trying to build 30,000 square foot retail for local people that have small businesses that come in and lease 2,000, 3,000 square foot to run their business. You guys been dragging me for last nine months and now you guys have planning to do, let's look over a do a overlay of industry, let's change this. I just don't get it. If you guys don't want a business, let me know. I mean, I have four businesses in town. I pack it up and go somewhere else. I mean, you're not supporting the businesses. How are you going to get more businesses in town? You're telling me that. Why would you change something that is not done need to be changed? If you guys don't want to do any building here, it's not fine. I leave that ugly building as ugly as it is and let it stay just like that. But you just that's the shame. It's really sad because I came in here from false church to this town because I love Persever and what I'm seeing right now is extremely disappointing. I just wish you guys open your eyes and realize this is all you do basically scaring all the businesses out of town. At this time, councilmembers may ask questions and provide comments comments council member Rainer mayor we had comments that were emailed in and requested to be read into the record happy to do that if you like go ahead council members now this is from Beverly Chieson she's spoken here before Mayor and members of the Percival Town Council. In March 2022, the Percival Town Council voted to stop the planning commission's proposed historic district preservation overlay. Why was this inserted in the zoning ordinance again? In July 2023, Commissioner Ogleman stated that there may now be sufficient votes on council to get it passed. It clearly wasn't that the majority of citizens that championed this ordinance. Staff continued to caution the historic overlay wasn't ready to be included in the new ordinance. But here we are. Here are some of the concerns expressed the first time this historic overlay was initiated. Number one, the 2006 survey is outdated. On my street alone, there are a total of eight homes. Three homes are listed as contributing to the historic nature of Percival. One home that was contributing was barely standing. It was a great hideout for snakes and mice. Thank goodness it was demolished, and in its place is a beautiful custom home. Yet its address shows it is an historic home. Another home has had extensive exterior modifications. Looks beautiful, but is it still contributing? This is the concern all zoning administrators try to express. Slow down and involve the citizens. Two, there are several homes that were not included in the original survey, such as the one on Chemical Birds Lane. This is one of the oldest homes in Percival. It was moved when Percival Green was built. Three, since the survey was done, many additional homes are now over 50 years old and should be reviewed for historic significance, if that is the goal. Four, citizens had a hard time understanding why their home on F-street was deemed historically contributing, and yet other homes, considerably older, were not. Five, Don Dulley, who had decades of professional planning in the field of historic districts, noted the ordinance does little to protect historically contributing homes. As written, the homeowner would be restricted on demolishing their home. The homeowner was free to change their roof from tin to asphalt shingles or to place vinyl siding over brick. They could paint their home bright pink with glitter. For these reasons, most citizens knew this is the first step. It is just the beginning on regulating paint colors and fencing because that is what a true historic district is As net emogelman stated baby steps. We will start with this Last time town council considered the h pause over 40 pages of emails were received I have no idea how many received this time Most I spoke to said you are going to do what you want regardless of public input, and I agree. I have painfully watched all planning commission meetings in which zoning ordinance changes were discussed. Historic district impacts me, but I can assure the citizens this entire document negatively impacts them directly or indirectly. As the planning commission went to public hearing last July, just about every home in person will saw their home become non-conforming due to eliminating zoning categories or features. As most of us do in life, we try to leave our choices open. We don't know what our future holds. We don't know what Percival will need in 10 or 20 years. So why restrict it in removing opportunities if they are right for Percival? As staff often said, these are tools in your tool bag. You will decide if that tool is needed. Thank you. Councilmember Rayner, do you have any questions or comments? Yes. I actually have a lot. Okay. I've said over and over again that this was not ready for prime time. We did not allow somewhere in the planning team and our engineering team to fully present their entire concerns about their vision as experts and then what was presented from our planning commission. So I'm going to use this time to ask some of the questions that I know are of concern and they do concern me and some of these things are very down in the nitty-gritty that some people in our town wouldn't really in particularly be concerned about but it truly is as an urban planning this town and engineering this town are concerns. So Andrea, I'm going to ask our town engineer, I would like you to explain your concerns over one of the aspects of the zoning rewrite in regards to the floodplain. So with the updated FEMA floodplain flows, they were first changed on the east side of town when TJT built their building out in the county. They were required to do floodplain analysis, which part of that analysis came into town. And they were required to use the new updated FEMA flows, which are significantly greater than what our current floodplain boundary is currently drawn at. Then with the Route 7, 690 interchange project, on the west side of town, the same thing happened, the construction was started on the out in the Louting County portion but to do your floodplain modeling it did come into town. Since they used the regression flows, the updated FEMA regression flows on the east side of town, they were required to do it on the west side of town and that brings us to today. The town will be need to do floodplain update in the center section of town that will not be done between those two. Those updated regression flows are significantly greater than what they currently are now and how they're currently mapped for a floodplain. So with that, I feel like we need to use similar building elevations that Loudoun County is. Some of ours are much higher. And some of them are higher in our existing floodplain ordinance today. And some will be significantly higher in this new proposed ordinance. So for example, but then there's some things in this new one such as they're requiring no rise and if you have any rise, then a clomar will have to be required during the design stage. That's an excellent requirement. Loudoun County requires that today in their ordinance and I think that's a good requirement for us to add to our ordinance that is not in our existing but it would be good to have in our new proposed ordinance. Some of the things that I feel like, so I think we should follow since we have to use those same regression flows that Loudoun County is we should use their same building elevation requirements. So for example for electrical heating ventilation plumbing air conditioning equipment they the components must have a base-flit elevation plus one foot of free board meaning they have to be one foot off of the base flood elevation. The existing ordinance has a zero requirement, no elevation. The Loudoun County ordinance has no free board requirement. Another one where it's a big difference is in non-residential construction and where our floodplain is going to affect the most. It's actually the town's property and the town's infrastructure. It's really there is no housing in that area. So it's going to affect us more than anybody else. So in the non-residential one there is is, they're saying that instead of elevating your bottom floor level by that free board requirement, whether it's a foot, 18 inches or whatever, you can do flood proofing instead of elevating it. The current proposed is showing a flood proofing of two feet of watertight above the base flood elevation. Our current ordinance has a one foot requirement. The county has a one foot requirement and we are proposing a two foot requirement. So on some of these we're requiring additional one foot elevation or six inches elevation. I just think if we're going to use the same updated regression flows as loud and county we should use similar building requirements because loud and county actually does our reviews of our floodplain ordinance for us. Okay. Does that answer your question? Yep. Exactly. Thank you. And the second question I have is, so on, I think this reverse is for first road, there is a proposed curb cut actually within all the overlay districts. And the proposed standard is no curb cut shall measure more than 18 feet. This is not a V.O.T. standard and there's really no scientific reason around it. Can you explain that more, what that means and how the proposed is not really a good method of doing curb cuts? So when you have a business that is being updated built, it must fall like those, the entrance for that business, must follow V.OT standards. We, the town, even on our own roads, we use V.OT standards. So for example, on, I think it's the Hurst East overlay, that is actually a V.R.O.D. That's not even a town maintained road. That is a V.R.O.D. Just like the entire Main Street, it is a V.R.O.D. So even if I wanted to reduce the V.R.D. standards, I can't because it's a V.RT. road. They make those decisions. So the V.O.T. standard for a commercial entrance is, I think it depends on the type of traffic it has, the type of trucks going in and out, and the number, you know, the anticipated, how busy it is. So all commercial entrants will have a width sufficient for the particular land use and anticipated traffic flow with a minimum width of 30 feet for a two-way drive, 30 feet, 18 feet and 16 feet for a two-way drive, 30 feet, not 18 feet, and 16 feet for a one-way drive. The maximum width is 20 feet for a one-way drive and a 40 feet for a two-way drive. So I feel like the 18-foot requirement should be taken out and it should just stay state and must follow V.O. standards. Because if you keep it in, they're not going to meet, VITOT is going to make them meet their standards, which means then they're going to have to come and get a special use permit from the planning commission. They're going to be back and forth between VITOT, VITOT's not going to let them lower it. They're going to have to eat a special use permit which costs additional money from the town in order to put their entry way to follow an existing standard. Yeah, that doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Putting something else that wouldn't meet a V.Dot standard. Thank you for that explanation. So that's the second issue that I have with the zoning rewrite. Third, Mr. Reed, I agree with you, removing the duplex use. I is not a great idea. I ran on economic development, and I want to see this town, especially our historic downtown revitalized. And I think part of that is allowing for also attainable housing and adding diversity of housing within what we have. So removing the duplex use from the R3 doesn't make sense because I could add a little more diversity to our downtown revitalization in addition to adding apartment-style or condos. So that's another issue I have. Mixed commercial bass district, The comprehensive plan's goal is for the East Main Street area to be less suburban and more traditional town over time. The MC or the mixed commercial zone in the Plan Commission zoning ordinance promotes more suburban development, which one could argue works against the complying goal. So it would like that cleared up and made more consistent. And then again with the C4 district, there's an issue where they want to, and we talked about that. It was a lot of this part of about limiting the number of apartments per building to two apartments. So under the scenario, the revitalization of, say, the White Palace would have not been approved of, they would not be able to realistically redevelop the property. And then summer had some good suggestions that we could limit it to maybe six apartments per building per the desired scale, which is in the comp plan of no more than three story buildings. But there's other factors like the market economy existing lot sizes that would naturally limit the number. But two is I would think is definitely limiting what could go in those potential properties. And then the last question I'll ask and then I'll hand it over to somebody else is the planning commission wants to combine the two industrial zones we have into one zone. Our staff recommends to keep the way they are since the two industrial areas have different intensities and uses. With the combination of the districts, certain uses were taken out to render existing businesses non-conforming without justification, which is against the complying goal of sustaining existing businesses. Also in the new combined industrial district there are new minimum lot sizes, increased from none to half an acre to 1.5 acres in the new district but there's no justification provided for this. So I would like that removed as well and left as is. And then I'll yield to somebody else. Council member Wright. So I want to reiterate the concern that has been the rain or had regarding the sea full district and the restriction of putting residential dwellings units above those buildings. Most of those buildings were built with residential units upstairs and the reason why for anybody that doesn't know is common sense tells you that that allowed the business owner the property only to offset their expenses, especially economic downturns, because they got residential vent coming in from upstairs. It also allows the ability to have lower lease rates and the commercial space downstairs potentially, which would have obviously attracted more small businesses in community member businesses. So to reduce the allowable residential units above the commercial space makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and basically goes against common sense and really will, in my believe, have a negative impact on being able to attract more of the type of businesses we want, which is small, family businesses, by doing that. Some of the items I have is, you know, the instant, the institutional and government district, far SR and OSR standards were added to the building form standards. These standards could be unnecessarily complicated, correct, could add some additional staff processing time for site plans. Again, we're creating more issues for individuals that want to build here in our town, what to do business in our town. And we're basically going to say, hey, we're going to delay your process even more by adding these additional standards. The agriculture commercial zone, the reduction of the number of guest rooms for a country in from 50 to 9. Why? What's 9? What why 9? Well, I go through a special use permit process for more than 9. It doesn't really make a lot of sense. And it sure is not going to attract the extent, not extent, but the hotels and stuff like that to come into town. And that was the one thing that a lot of people were calling for that just town needed was a place for friends and family to stay when they come in town. Hotel, it brings commercial, it brings revenue into the town because people are visiting around this area, the wineries, the breweries, the weddings, the venues, the stuff like that, a place to stay. And that brings revenue into our businesses if we can provide them a place to stay here as opposed to them having to go all the way to Leesburg. So again, it just doesn't make a lot of sense to reduce it to such a low number of nine. And then if we're going to put the PDH zones into a legacy status, we need some kind of plan unit development. I mean, property owners need to be able to present master plans so they can see what the development will be before the site plan process and we can anticipate potential impacts to community facilities and infrastructures. Summer has said, it's a common tool in every toolbox. So we need to be able to have that. And then some minor changes to the use table, excuse me, some minor changes to the use table. I know some staff is recommending eliminating a question facility, residential from an R2. Add some private school and special instruction school to the AC as permitted. Add technical school to AC and IG as permitted and add assistant living facilities, non-plus individuals again. Do we want to have our citizens as they grow older have to move out of town? I mean, non-plus individuals, again. Do we want to have our citizens as they grow older have to move out of town? I mean, why not be able to have an assisted living facility right here where we can put our parents in, oh, put you in one data promise? Well, we could put our parents in as they get older and have them close by and not have to job to Winchester or at least or anything like that. So again, it seems like we're doing everything to keep people out of town as opposed to attract people into town. So the planning commission proposes a 200 foot setback from a creek. 200 feet seems pretty excessive to me. And the language is not even a scientific. It's just a number thrown out there. Show me some scientists as 200 feet makes a difference on a setback for a creek. What are the parameters of a creek? You know, there's nothing there. So is a dry stream considered a creek? Was it dry 90% of the time? Is that gonna require 200 foot setback? Let me add one more thing, no. The downtown overlay. Downtown has many difficult constraints already for development. We should create, we need to create some sort of master plan and we've asked for this. First, to work out all the problems and coordinate with the property owners to see what those owners to desire with realistic projections for the town's provision, town infrastructure before we add more rules that would make it even more difficult. Again, we didn't do a good job of talking to the, I don't think we did at all, talking to the property owners in our commercial districts to ensure what we were proposing is not going to severely hamper their abilities to do what we want them to do and as we vitalize these areas. We just have to have to have some rules out there because of some numbers out there that really probably make absolutely no sense and they're going to do nothing but constrain and discourage anybody from wanting to revitalize the buildings in the downtown areas. So, you know, this whole proposal needs to be as we had requested more time from the experts to go over and present their recommendations so we could make some informed educated changes and before we wasted a lot of our time in the community's time coming up here and having the voice concerns we already knew were there. We knew they were there and we did nothing to prevent it. We just assumed one, either nobody get up and speak or two, that we're just going to push it through and not care what they say. And I think, you know, we did not do our due diligence to make sure that this thing was a good product before we put it out for public hearing and allowed the citizens to come back and do that. If we make all these changes in reality, we should be having another public hearing because there's so many changes that should be made to this document. So now we've had to do everything we should be having another public hearing because there's so many changes that should be made to this document. So now we have to theoretically we should be having the opportunity to the citizens to come back and speak on all the changes that were made before we adopted. How are you? Vice mayor. Just some general thoughts. This is not my field of expertise, I frankly admit. A large part of this could be just come down to philosophical differences, is to how we want the shape of the town to be. I'll use the D word development. What I'm focused on and what I've heard tonight are some of the individual residential concerns. I'm a homeowner. I'm also someone who doesn't, as many of you have expressed, I don't particularly like people telling me what I can't do with my property. So I'm curious as to how the grandfathering affects some of those concerns expressed. And I believe I know I was present for some of the planning commission meetings, including one that rather robust where we had a crowd not quite this big but some folks came and Express their concerns directly to the planning commission as it relates to those concerns with their property And my understanding is that those concerns were addressed at that time I know that there have been many public hearings or public meetings I should say related to the planning commission process for the last four to five years is my understanding. I'm certainly not in any rush to do anything tonight. There's no vote that I'm aware of. Whatever decision is made and talking about having to bring another public hearing, there's always the opportunity for amendments. And with that, I'm interested in hearing what the rest of my colleagues have to say on the issue and perhaps I'll come back and revisit if I'm allowed, but I'm curious to hear what their input is. It's a very interesting and problematic thing because we have been through this. I was at the last historic overlay meeting when people were just irate because of things that have been done. We got red lined papers that nobody knew quite how they were red because the red lines were crossed out not everybody understood that was a rejection. And so there was a lot of problems with accepting that and we didn't. And I think it deserves a more study. I think we want to look at this. I think we have other problems besides higher density and that's cars Nobody likes our streets. Nobody likes driving that especially at school time And so there's a lot of things that we're gonna need to balance as we look at changing and what we have and what we'll end up with Thank you Councilmember Khalil So. What I'm having trouble understanding is that as it's been said, there's been a lot of blood, sweat and tears that took place over the past several years in trying to develop this. I understand that input from the community has happened many times from staff. So what I'm having trouble with is, sorry, you know, why now? Why weren't all of these things addressed while all of this was happening over the past several years. I'm really having trouble understanding that when there seems to have been a lot of opportunity for everyone to be heard. And I've heard everyone tonight, but that's my big question is where was the disconnect? And was there a disconnect? And I will try to get my questions answered. Thank you. Council member Stout. I've quite a few comments. I think I can start with an answer to Council member Cleal's question and maybe staff can help me out here. During the multiple opportunities that Council member Cleal mentions, My understanding is correct there were dozens if not hundreds of letters emails and comments that were sent in to the Planning Commission during this process Is that more or less accurate? Yes So the opportunity was there and the citizens spoke so if they're showing up again here tonight It's because when they spoke the first time, they weren't heard. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. All right. I won't go into a lot of detail. A lot of good things have already been said. I did do some reading reading this afternoon and prepare some comments just because it helps me think it through. So several years ago we tried to do the H-Pause. I say we, I wasn't on council. We tried to do the H-Pause, a historic preservation overlay zone. It didn't go through, it was voted down by council dozens upon dozens of residents came out and spoke against it. So we went back to the drawing board, we came back a few years. We changed one letter. It's now the historic preservation overlay district, CH Pod. We thought we'd get you, but you're too smart. So you came back. Why are we ignoring the residents' wishes here? I truly don't understand it. We're removing clustering and grandfathering it instead. We're pushing PDH to legacy, PDH created Mayfair, village case, courts of St. Francis, and I think one other one that someone mentioned that I was an aware of. We're pushing those to legacy. I'm not aware that the town has a crystal ball telling us that we're not gonna need these in the future. If we do, we should go make a killing in the stock market. These zoning designations help make personal what it is today. So I can't fathom the benefit to removing them. It doesn't mean we have to go build more tomorrow, but I can't understand why we are removing these tools from the toolbox. That's the first general overview. Second concern is more specific duplexes. The comp plan said says we need to address affordable housing. Removing duplexes from the zoning ordinance sure doesn't seem to support that, Mr. Reed. Thank you for your thoughtful comments on this. This is to say nothing of ignoring the excellent town and suburb concept, which will help us protect and preserve historic homes in the heart of downtown and appropriately distinguish them from newer homes in the suburbs. I love downtown. I love the suburbs, I live in the suburbs. The comp plan itself makes this distinction in the future land use map. The comp plan distinguishes between single family detached traditional and single family detached suburban designations in the comp plan. So I'm not sure why council thinks we should be ignoring the comprehensive plan on this issue. So far we're ignoring the residents and we're ignoring the comp plan. Third, staff had a lot of great recommendations that could have helped us a whole PowerPoint worth. I went through it this afternoon, but we decided we didn't want to hear from them either. We had an agenda item for it at the last meeting, but that got removed at the last minute. So our loss. In summary, we're ignoring resident wishes. We're ignoring the comp plan, and we're ignoring our professional staff's recommendation. For what reason I have no idea, but I'm fairly certain four members of this Council have already had that discussion behind closed doors, or more likely over signal, and come to a conclusion. So. I'd like to start out by addressing the whole process by which a zoning ordinance or any amendments there to our built and passed by multiple public bodies. So under state code 15.2, 2285, the process as set forth is that the planning commission with assistance from the staff will put together a zoning ordinance or amendments to the zoning ordinance. Then they have a public hearing and we had a public hearing back in July on the 25th to be precise. And following that, quite a number of recommended changes brought to our attention by both the staff and residents were addressed in changes to the draft zoning ordinance language, which is now the language that's in front of this town council and in front of the public. When it comes to specific issues, one of the reasons that duplexes are such a hot topic is that there currently aren't very many of them in town. And the proposed change to the zoning ordinance changes them from a by right use to one requiring a special use permit, which means that if you want to build a new duplex, you need a special use permit. The intent and the reasoning behind this, as I understood from listening to hours of conversation in town council in planning commission meetings, is that there are grave concerns by residents in those neighborhoods where duplexes may come into existence. Specifically, they do not want redevelopment on a large and clustered scale within neighborhoods because of traffic concerns. A similar concern factored into the limits on number of residences in the C4 district. We have some of the narrowest streets in town in our C4 district. Some of the slowest traffic in town is in that district. And if the proposal is to greatly increase the number of residential units right in that district, nowhere else just in that district, I have to ask what the impacts are to traffic. People complain about it to a great degree. With respect to the revised historic protection overlay zone, the only thing that changes is that to totally demolish a historic structure, that is one that is on a register above a certain period, certain age, and so on and so forth, you do need to get additional approval. There's nothing that changes with respect to what color you can paint your shutters, whether you can put an addition on the building, whether you can repair your roof or anything of the sort. With respect to plan development housing, there's really limited opportunity within the town's borders and the comprehensive plan quite clearly states that the town's residents do not desire to expand the town's borders. So we can resurrect that tool at any time that it's needed, but right now it isn't needed, and that was the reason for putting PDH into legacy status, which protects the rights of all those living in PDH neighborhoods today. And I believe that I will ask Madam Chair, I am on the agenda is community highlights. We have a couple of ribbon cutting ceremonies coming up. One on March 28th, we're enhanced beauty and wellness at their new location on 151 West Main Street. On a second one on April 4th, her shanty aesthetics and wellness medicine located at 500 East Main. On February 20th, the town issued a news release announcing the launch of its new online geographic information system, or GS Hub. This tool is designed to enhance transparency and prove access to important information and provide valuable resources for residents. The hub includes the following applications. My neighborhood Verizon Fires Broadband and Phone Project Map, Snowplow Map, Lys Road and Weather Monitor. Let's service line inventory map and a parade map as applicable. Details about each of these applications, police visit towns, website, shout out goes out to Razy Gajrino, towns, GIS specialist, and Kendall Wiesneski, the town's planning operations coordinator for all their work to make this possible. Congratulations to the Percival Police Department and their reacreditation status. This is a voluntary process where a department meets specific professional standards set by an accrediting body or state level accrediting program. It requires the department to demonstrate continued adherence to establish policies, procedures, best practices, and requires a rigorous on-site assessment. Special thank you to Emily Johnson and the entire police department team for this accomplishment. Also in the police department officer Fernandez completed training and is now a general instructor for the department. Officer Dixon received the department's safe driving awards selected by his supervisor. In the water department, Kayleigh Joderie has passed the Virginia water works operator Class 4 exam. Congratulations, go out to Kaley. And thank you to Brett Flynn, Keith Stross-Nighter, Garrett Finneff and Will Schneider of our maintenance team for responding to emergencies assisting our neighbors in Round Hill and Hamilton with water breaks. Next up on the agenda we have citizen business comments. Okay. there are more than 10 comments this evening. I will be limiting comments to two minutes a piece. The first speaker is Mr. Paul McCray. Mayor Point of order. Mr. Cafferkey, can we do that? Given the weeb historically allowed three minutes for all residents and business owners, is there a double standard here? I'm informed that there's not a specific rule, a council rule on that. The three minutes has been historical practice. I understand that but given that we have allowed three minutes sometimes and are now not allowing three minutes are we opening ourselves up to legal liability due to different treatment. Well really the legal restriction is that you can't limit comments based upon their content. If everybody is honest, if everybody is subject to to the same rule, you know, it could be two minutes or three minutes or five minutes. And I would add that this is precisely the rule that the County Board of Supervisors follows when they have ten or more they limit it to two minutes. All right, first speaker is Mr. Paul McCray. Mr. McCray, I think we're trying to make sure we get you two minutes. Start now. Okay. Start now. Okay. I'm going to go through this time. Do it. We're trying to make sure we get you full two minutes. Sorry. Sorry. I'm sorry. Maybe the citizens should have known that they have a little bit of work to get granted. Should I start? Please proceed. My name is Paul McCray. I live 2-4-0 west O street. It's my first time speaking before the council has a citizen. I've worked in local government for 51 years including a year for the town of Percival. At one point my career I was a department director for operations department. I had a $15 million budget. I had 100 hundred full-time employees in my department, and 750 part-time and seasonal employees. I always ask myself when I was making decisions, is this the best decision for my department and the people we serve? Based upon what I've read about the decisions made by the majority of this council, I don't think you're asking yourself that question. You came into office in January and fired a highly competent and highly respected town manager and incurred an unnecessary cost for the town of over $100,000. I don't think this was the best decision for the town. Then you hired a friend and a campaign buddy as your acting town manager. Someone who you admitted two weeks ago did not meet standards for a town manager of Perseville. I don't think this was doing what was best for the town Perseville either. Neither was changing the job description for this person at the last council meeting so that they would then qualify. This was someone who eight years ago brought chaos to Percivil and caused the town millions of dollars with terrible personnel decisions. The town manager position is not a political appointment, it's not a gift to a friend, it's the most important paid position in the town. I'm asking you to make decisions based on what's best for all of people at first ofstville and not just a few. I also suggest you treat the town strap with more respect. They're the hardworking and highly competent, and they're the people who make this town run. Thank you. Let's stop. We have Chef Edward. All right. Chef Hendrick, 433 on Chase Court. Two minutes, cowards. We have to adjust this, but quick thanks to Council members, Rainer, Stout, and Wright for your service with integrity, ethics, and dedication. You are the leadership of this town deserves. It's also good to see net here. Here's to be healthy. I read that you've had some illnesses the past two months. Mayor Patu, last meeting, you stated the town manager serves the council while you and the council serve us the town citizens and you answer to us. You made a big deal about the town manager vacancy last meeting what you described as substantial differences and what was posted and draft received. When asked though you couldn't say a difference and eventually told council member stout you would email three differences. Council member, did you have any email you? Mayor, why? In the interest of time. Yeah, exactly. Yep. So why are you purposely lowering the town manager qualifications when we have at least 90 applications? Kileal, during last week's personnel meeting about net, why do you feel necessary to admit the police chief and HR director? when we have at least 90 applications. Kaleel, during last week's personnel meeting about net, why do you feel is necessary to admit the police chief at NHR director? Yep, Bratouh, why do you try to have net allowed to vote on who should be attending his own personnel hearing? This isn't an individual who's on the Brady list due to his documented lack of integrity and character. Kaleel, you campaigned on integrity, quote, from your campaign, personal integrity is paramount. There are a lot of things one can lose in life and recover from, but integrity is not one of them. I have to ask, do you actually know the definition of integrity? If not, you've lost it a long time ago. So why are you all so intent in placing someone at Berthode describes as unqualified to be the town manager? Why are you endorsing the behavior of net? Is it because this was all planned well before elections? Frazier campaigned extensively for you all. There's video of him stumping for net. Even do most of the talking. We'll go indoor door. Net and a campaign Q&A with the blue-rigly leader said the town has a spending problem. Sorry, the combined salaries of the town manager and assistant town manager, insinuating that both positions weren't needed. Yet his first action as a town council member was to put the position of the fire department in the hospital on this town manager and replace him with the freight yield the floor to the next speaker. Now, I'm going to keep going. I am a town tax pain citizen. And you will listen to this. So the problem is, you hear, but you don't listen. And you don't care about this town. So again, this guy who said, we don't need town manager and assistant town manager, then puts his campaign buddy as the interim town manager after Manager after citing cost. Same individual actively campaigned with and for all of you. Outside of the deal, please. Are you on your own favor? Yeah, obviously not. I'm going. You could send a letter to the editor. Or you could answer my emails. So if he did, this would be a lot shorter. This was a death of only campaign of the decorum and the rules set in place for this public meeting. OK, I'll just end. We have an individual on this town council who he imposes vice mayor, who has credibility issues. He cannot be a witness in a court, yet all four of you think it's fine for him to represent our town. Mayor, team Mayberry, you have shown nothing but to act in your own self-interest and favors for certain individuals after each town needs a series of affairs in rules set in place for this meeting. If you truly care about this town resign. Next speaker is Kristen Shields. My name is Kirsten Shields. I live at 417 Gatepost Court. I live, work, own a very small business. I volunteer. I have two older children all in this town. When my children were younger, I had a few cautionary lessons for them. The first lesson is that group projects can really suck sometimes what you have to work together. And to work together, you have to be able to trust each other. Second lessons that sometimes the actions of a few members of the group will affect the outcome of the remainder of the group. Third lesson is that you is that if you are responsible for or support misaction except responsibility for it. If you're not responsible for said group misaction, then you can generally let the outcome roll off your backs. You're not the ones who did the damage. The final lessons are based on the character. If you're telling lies, stop the lies. If you're not being transparent and elect integrity, operate in deception and have truths, do better. If the talent is near financially bankrupt, let's not also be morally bankrupt. With that in mind, almost anyone who knows me knows that I perpetually have a tune in my head. And I have never, ever, ever thought I'd be playing a 1989 song from a walkie-falk punk band Violent Phyms as an enhancement at a town council meeting in my middle age self. But here we are. And like I tell my kids, hey, if the childhood lessons of the song's chorus don't truly apply to your adult self, let it roll off. And while I'm not directly accusing anyone, if it is relevant to you, maybe it's time to take more responsibility. And yes, these lessons in the song may seem like they're contributing to a circus, but unfortunately the circus and its monkeys do belong to the town, and because this is absolutely not pan-m at surcensis. Thank you. The next speaker is Christy Morgan. So it's not fair when somebody prepares comments and then you make changes at the last second. So I will rush through as much as I can. Due to those time constraints, I will read excerpts from a letter dated February 24th when the Commonwealth Attorney's Office. If you're like a copy, they'll have a letter, it can be found on Facebook or you can ask me for a copy. I'm writing this letter to advise you that a placed officer, a coronet, or my office's internal radio-guilist as a result, They're not present off the net as a witness in any cases. Their three incidents involving dishonesty by off the net and necessitated that I take this action. On January 7th, offeth completed his registration process to go to the government day enrichment. On January 28th at 11.55 pm, he sent an email to a supervisor sickly. I will be out Wednesday and Thursday, email rather than call giving me the hour and lack of voice. Austin, it was seen at the hotel bar that night, talking on his phone, to have him to be here. Just drink, I'm sorry, having a drink. An officer that was heard by attendees speaking in a normal voice in effect, raising his voice. On February 8th, Austin, it noticed that his supervisor he'd be in sick leave until further notice. He was scheduled to work February 8th, 19th, and 13th, but on the 13th he was here during town council business, instead of performing his duties at his day job. On January 10th, Ophsonette was on duty from 6 a.m. at 6 a.m. from 754 to 902. He marked out direct to patrol, proactive policing tonight. Evidence says no. He was here from between 8 and 9 p.m. during town council business on our payroll in his uniform. In conclusion, it's clear to me that all students significant issues with truthfulness and integrity have left me no choice but to face him on the Brady list. Therefore his involvement will severely jeopardize any prosecution currently. I ask the residents of Percival here, is this the person that you want on the police department and town council? I also asked the majority here. You know, my mom once said, you are who you associate with. You are associating yourself with a liar in some women with integrity issues. Guess what? That means you are liars and have integrity issues. Thank you. That speaker is Jennifer Stelt. Before I start my comments, I would like to make a point to the lawyer. Mr. Kathy, let me make it abundantly clear that the mayor saw the list of names knew what the content would be and then limited the time. I would say he's now limiting comments because of the content. He is now meeting that standard. Erica Stout, 210, upper-book terrace, vice mayor net. You stated last meeting regarding summer that it seems like feelings have been hurt. This isn't high school, it's civic government. You don't do things a certain way so people's feelings don't get hurt. You do them to protect the town from my ability. If you all don't make motions correctly, draft ordinances legally, make conflict of interest disclosures, etc. You or Mr. Rise in this case, place the town at risk of legal liability. You also said you quote don't have the historic knowledge regarding interim town manager Frazier and the damage he's done. Certainly, you did your homework before appoint him to be interim town manager and then lowering the standards for that position. No? So that means it's really quid pro quo because you didn't care about the history. You don't care to become knowledgeable because you somehow think it's a fig leaf. I'm here to tell you it isn't, and we all know you know exactly who he is and what he's done, whether you want to admit it or not. Regarding the removal of the town manager item, I'd encourage the entire room. Please go online, pull up the agenda packet, scroll down to page 130. It highlights the supposed major differences between what was presented to council and what was published. You'll find there isn't much that the objections made by the majority last meeting were just a cover to lower qualifications to allow the interim time manager to apply. Getting back to the planning commission, I think we're a view of the process is warranted, never to went through some of it. You act like moving categories of zoning in and out of the legacy is easy in a snack decision. You know it isn't. You know this because you've often talked about how long this process has been considering it started five years ago. Starting in 2020 with the draft, went back and forth with the consultant who left after delivering the final draft because there was no more money because you didn't like what he had to say. We had to rush through public hearing last summer, sounds like it wasn't rushed after four years, but it was and you did it because terms were ending. This last step of hearing from staff, the expert staff, is not legally required as you frequently point out, but it would be warranted, I think, because let's hear some of the qualifications of our director of planning and community development zoning that you are ignoring. Masters in urban planning and historic preservation from UVA Director and Overture South Carolina, associate at nonprofit thinktick partners for livable communities. She's had her own planning consultant firm for years. And by the way, at Stay 68, my water rates are still the same. Next speaker is Joan Lair. Joan Lair a two four woodbine. I'm also a business owner in town and I as you know it was past council member past planning commissioner and I've never seen anything like what I see here. You guys don't even include other people. You're going to walk out while I'm talking. It appears that personal residents don't feel like they're being heard. Many have stated to me, and they're sorry they put the town in this position by voting for Bertot, Net, and Kaleel. The group of four, or maybe five, if we want to include Frazier, who believe they know what they're doing and it's clear that they do not, you are a legislative body. You do not manage town staff. Read the town charter. Read the past minutes. Understand decisions. Reading the zoning staffing reports. Read the ethics code. And the committee's commission's boards and the town council's ethics code. We also appear to have a town attorney that does not understand the law. Ethics aside, votes to terminate Rick and higher phrasier were illegal votes. Net should have been required to recuse himself as his position is in the direct line of the town manager and the interim town manager. He even states that he's in that direct line when he answered the Loutin Times mirror. The band of four or five are trying to take over the town. They fire someone that was consistently working to make the town a better place, live and the person that showed our town staff respect for their knowledge and tenure. They hired Frazier. Made bad decisions as a mayor will continue to do that. He's the kingpin because nobody else up here, he's at least got some brain in his head. Tonight I asked that Ben Net and Crazy Frazier resign their respective positions. Net for being found by an outside investigation, Commonwealth Attorney, for significant issues in truthless and integrity. Do you want someone who has those issues to be taking care of our town business? For Frazier, you were put in the position with an illegal vote and has none of the qualifications for the position Now that his council team have voted to change the qualifications and say that the sitting town manager is qualified That again should be dealt with by the town attorney ethics aside again. Thank you Placing you're on qualified friend and hard me your town is up in a salary position has some legal repercussions. And thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker is Jason Brownell. Thank you. Hello. My name is Jason Brownell. I live at 36286 Osborne Road and Perseville and have a business at 198 North 21st Street. I'm here tonight to urge the town council to adopt the proposed zoning ordinance grand fathering resolution as well as the new fire flow standards depicted at the CHA Fire Flow report. The adoption of the fire flow standards in the grandfather and resolution will be good for the town and the community by clarifying unanswered questions for development applications. Ultimately bringing the town new businesses, new employment opportunities, new customers, and new revenue. I would like to thank the town staff and the town council for bringing these two subjects to the floor for consideration and discussion. Thank you. Next speaker is Rick Travers. Rick Travers 37 7 780 Remington Drive, Perseville. It's been a lot of comment on the town manager issue. Well I'm another one. First I'll backtrack slightly and say the way to council fired the past interim town manager and hired the past mayor as a new interim town manager is shameful. Smells of corruption. It does not pass my code of ethics and it should never have passed yours. Turning to the hiring of the new town manager until the agenda packet that was issued, I didn't know the difference between what you directed the HR manager to put in the advertisement versus what was there. I did now see it was a December, town manager description. And as somebody's already said, if you have it looked at the comparison between the two, I can understand why the mayor has not emailed other council members with the differences. The big thing that this town needs is a professional town manager. No, we insert the bus. That's what we deserve as a citizens. If we don't have that, let me say this. I can read the different requirements in the advertisement. Bachelor's degree, master's preferred, extensive, increasing responsible local government experience, yadayadayada, thorough knowledge of local, state, and federal laws. This is needed. You need a professional town manager. Should we accept anything less? I don't think so. I'll finish by saying do not hire Mr. Frazier. If you want, if you want some advice from Mr. Frazier, take it on your own. Have a conversation with him. Thank you. He is not a professional. Your time is up. He is not a professional. Please yield the floor to the next speaker that meets the requirements of the advertisement until you modify it at the last town council meeting. Thank you. The next speaker is Dan Carville. The annual Carville 224 Aspli Terrace. Today I'm here to express my concern with the way that our style of traffic has been our style of text there. Our town staff has been treated, particularly our person or our police officers. Our police officers have to do an extraordinarily difficult job. They have to deal with a lot of traumatic events. They have to deal with violent crimes. They have to deal with accidents and they have to deal with deaths. This emotional toll on the police officers and the victims and the families, it takes their toll. Our officers are also face constant public scrutiny. Our personal police department is understaffed and forced to take officers and our officers are forced to take heavy workloads. Fewer resources are also means less backup for critical situations. Many of our officers have forced to work extended shifts, over time, and overnight hours, that also lead to sleep to priority and burnout. Irregular schedules also disrupt our families, and at this heightened stress has also causes a lot of critical anxieties when these officers have to do a last minute decision. Now our officers are fact-facing, more and more political issues coming from this council. We had people on that campaign on cutting our police force and then they got elected. We've had people, our town is in great need of a police station. However, our former mayor here basically decided to do a half-ass rental and renovation when we needed a $7 million facility. Overall, I think at this point in time, keeping Ben Net on the police force is a disgrace to our officers. And we need to get him off our police force. This is horrible. And you have disgraced yourself, sir. You've been running around this town acting like your anti-tailor. But let's be perfectly honest, you're Barney Fife. If you really want to do good things for our town, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm not going to tell you who I am. Here we are once again, who I am speaking to the talent council. This is a last minute decision to speak, so I will be as brief as possible. And you made that possible. It saddens me to know in to witness the degradation of leadership on display from the diets. Speaker after speaker has voiced their disapproval and concern, but there has been no movement from the Mayberry Majority to make a course correction to address these concerns. The only thing that is consistent is to continue to on ethical actions by the Mayberry Majority dumbing down the town manager requirements to fit the unqualified interim town manager skill set. No disclosure on the interview ease for the interim town manager position and so on and so on. Now, we, the town and police department have faced with an employee specifically, a Officer, Carl Bennet, who was placed on the Brady Giglio list. This list is a death sentence to any law enforcement officer. Let alone the Percival Police Officer of the year. Your testimony in a court of law is neither wanted, required, or expected for any case before the courts. This in mind may also jeopardize any case that you have been involved in within the past. I could be wrong, but if I were convicted in any proceedings that you were at witness to, I would reopen my case and point to the decisions of the Commonwealth Attorney in place in you on this list. Distractions like this take away the focus of the town council on conducting important business necessary for the town to make strides towards stability and its needed improvements direction in future. The planning commission is cancelled, two meetings stuff are because there is no pressing business. Really? I find it ridiculous and shortsighted. There is a need for the periodic review of the comp plan that they all advocate we follow. Where's the leads yield the board to the next speaker? To pursue this and get a rough outline. Mr. Mulan. With pending issues, the federal government is in proposing the town council. Mr. Milan is chair of this meeting. I'm asking you to yield the floor to the next speaker. The planning commission can look at possible locations for a farmer's market. Work with E-DAC and the business community to help with this concern. We do live in a rural community. Mr. Milan. I could go on and be on, but the very people you could just chalk it up. Your time is up, sir. As Mr. Zimmerman and Marlena Grim set said in their comments, shame, shame, shame. You have no integrity to speak of. Community first, citizens always. Thank you. The next speaker is Mr. Chris Stevenson. Good evening. Mayor and Town Council. Not easy to be a Mayor and member of the Town Council here in Percival today I guess. My name is Chris Stevenson. I'm a 23 year resident of Percival and raised my family here and want to extend my gratitude to each of you. your service, I know it takes a lot of your time from personal and family interests and affects your families who remain at home. I have heard a little bit tonight and I've heard in newspapers before, quite a bit of anger directed at a few of the town council members who might know personally, who might call friends, and the interim town manager, Quasifraiser. Whatever your opinions on town politics that these three people have, tonight I'm standing here to vouch for their integrity. These people I know, they're honest and are trustworthy, they're not beyond making mistakes. But I know they're open to people's ideas and concerns. And so I want to publicly state that for whatever records or being kept, that these are people you can talk to and ask serious questions in a respectful manner in a one-on-one conversation. The other thing I would add more generally is I'm a little bit saddened by the anger expressed tonight without saying that people's concerns are not legitimate. They are. But I will say that I firmly believe, and I want this to the council and to people in Percival that anger never gets us inspired solutions. So I encourage all of us, me included, to talk with respect and kindness. Thank you. The next speaker is Beth Goldsmith. I'm going to pretty much reiterate a lot of what my neighbors and citizens are saying. I feel it's really important for me as a citizen and also a count employee to put on the record what I want people to hear. I'm a former special education teacher in Fairfax County. I've lived out here in Perseville for about 20 years. My husband grew up here. When I was a teacher, I bring all that up because I taught some really tough kids that came from really tough neighborhoods, gangs, prostitution, drugs, a lot of these kids were products of their environment and they would bring all that to school. And it was my job as the teacher to help not only educate them on a daily basis with skills and knowledge and things like that, but also to educate them on behaviors of consequences. I think it's really important for us as grown-ups to first of all be role models to the children of this town. I also think, and I used to tell my kids, you know, they might get an argument with a fellow gang member and they would come back to me at school and write in their journal, I want to kill him, I'm going to ask you to ask me to ask me to ask you to ask me to ask me to ask me to ask you to ask me to ask me to ask you to ask me to ask me to ask you to ask me to ask me to ask you to ask me to ask me to ask me to ask you to ask me to ask me to ask me to ask you to ask me to ask me to ask me to ask you to ask me to ask me to all that up because I think what's going on here with the town council I really hope the decisions that you're making are going to be worth it. I truly believe that, you know, good and honor and integrity are going to come through. And I really worry about a few people on the town council who I'm really afraid that you're going to be on the wrong side of this. Because I do think that unless you are being honorable and you have integrity, it's going to catch up with you and it's going to bite you. So be a free thinker. Think for yourself. Don't just run with your campaign mates. Think for yourself and think, oh my gosh. Thank you. Outcome of this going to be worth it. And I do think, Mr. Net, that you should step down and resign because your reputation right now is a stain on our town. Next item on the agenda is mayor and council comments. He starts road. Case go. Let's see. There is a lot of frustration coming up. I agree that things should not be dealt with in a violent or aggressive manner. However, sometimes it does take a forceful force to be heard. Sometimes it does require the masses to come out and speak and take action. And I think that's what you're seeing tonight in a direct reflection of the decisions being made by this body You know, I would like to also state that you know There's an active uptick or what seems to be in fires in our area and throughout the county in the state I'd like to commend our firefighters for being alert and diligent and always being ready to take on those Very dangerous situations when they do come up. So I'd like to thank all members serving. I'd like to thank our personal police department for always being there and protecting our community. They do a great job and they need to be recognized more often and providing more resources. Furthermore, I'd like to say that, you know, Mr. Mayor, you issued a public apology to Ron Rice senior, which I find absolutely disgraceful when that apology should be 100% directed at the zoning administrator's summer woes. She deserves it. She should have gotten it. She should have received it. And the conduct of Ron Rice was nothing less than cowardly. And your apology of him publicly behind that, as the mayor, I find to be inappropriate and should be pronounced. I think the actions taking and the attitude directed towards the human resource officer, director of our town is also not the fitting of this body. We have a staff that works hard long and I think by sitting in a room with a lack of AC points out that the problem isn't from their lack of willing to do it. It's your lack of willing to fund it and you don't have the ability to fund it because you're not willing to grow it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Cameroon, we have two the emails that were asked to read into the record. One from Brian Morgan. We have a lot of, this is Brian Morgan. And I know he lives in village case. To Lake Jersey. There you go. We have a lot of this is Brian Morgan and I know he lives in village case. We have a lot of frustration in person about the way things are being done right now. Most of the decisions being made on council die us since January have been made by a 4-3 party line vote except we have no parties in our town elections. I'm writing to ask you our Mar Marantown Council, to work together for the benefit of everyone in person, not just the people that voted for you. We are all your constituents. We have serious issues that need solutions, more, not more pain-free, get rich schemes that end up digging our whole deeper. I was always under the impression that campaigning is different than governing requires creativity and collaboration to find good solutions. I have movement off of passionately defended campaign positions in order to account for the needs and wishes of the whole population, not just the ones that have the half that gave you their vote. And that's what I'm asking you to do tonight. Please do better, Percival deserves better. And the second one is from former councilwoman Mary Jane Williams. Due to a family emergency and conflicts with scheduling requesting that this email is read these comments into the public record. I believe that those watching listening and present deserve to hear all comments. Good evening, town council. My name is Mary Jane Williams and I reside at 313 Locust Grove Drive of Perseville. First the decorum at our town council meetings is beyond laughable. I almost want to cry when I watch meetings. The disrespect towards the staff, especially the women in our staff, is wrong. Mayor Patot, you apologize on the behalf of the residents for their comments. You have no right to speak on behalf of the public. You may speak on your behalf. You have never once apologized for your rude comments to myself, Summer Hooper Sally, Sarah, Sharon, and or Ladonna, to name only a few. You believe that once you won the election that you were holier than everyone else. Guess what? You are not and your stuff stinks just like everybody else's. Mayor Bato, your jab to the council member that stated that reducing office supplies would help with the budget was noted. Could this be slanter? Might want to research that before making off the cuff comments that could harm a person's reputation. Mayor Milanone wanted all members to find ways to cut a very lean budget as we went line by line, so being a bit sarcastic, I say that office supplies could be reduced. I apologize if you didn't understand the sarcasm and means in which it was stated. As a member, I completely trusted the staff to give us the best financial plan we could have without any a new burden one section. But yet the mayor gave himself a raise, well not the rest of the staff. Notice I did not vote in favor of that budget. I wonder why. Members of council, remember the phrase guilt by association, seeing that one member has been found unreliable in telling the truth. It could mean that others on the council are also unreliable for telling the truth and being honest and transparent. Council member net shame on you. Really being placed on that list basically states that you are untruthful and your comments cannot be held as the truth. The rest will be is already emailed to council and will give it to the town clerk for minutes. Next item on the agenda or mayor and council comments. Council member Rainer, please start us off. I thought my comments should focus on the positive instead of all the distracting negative so we'll start off on the positives. First I want to congratulate Chief LaBronia and Emily Johnson for accepting the Percival Police Department's Fifth accreditation award from the Virginia Law Enforcement Professional Standards Commission. This is a really big deal and our police officers and leadership should be very proud. The standards cover all aspect of law enforcement, including the areas of administration, operations patrol, property and evidence, criminal investigations, personnel, budget and training. Well done to our former chiefs, our current interim chief, Lieutenant Holman, Emily Johnson, Christy Cromode, and all our officers who supported this effort. Secondly, another shout out to a great officer, acting sergeant, Michael Dixon. He received a driving award, which is a award to officers who have had three years of collision-free driving. Well done and knock on wood. We'll see you get this award in another three years. And then also, we found out today, and congratulations to one of my favorite PDs, Lieutenant Camp. After a competitive proportional process, we now have Lieutenant David Camp of a was selected. Congrats. He's an amazing community police officer and we're very lucky to have him. A huge thank you and job well done to our public works department for teaming up with Round Hill and helping them support a massive water line leak. We are so lucky to have such an amazing public works department and I know Round Hill is equally as appreciative of everything you've done. A huge congratulations go out to the Woodgrove Wrestling team for winning the 4A State Championship again. Well done and I hope we can recognize you again here at Council for your big achievement. Also we had the season opener of the professional basketball team here in Percival, the Valley Vipers. It was great fun and we kicked it off with a ribbon cutting and cheered them on. The next home game is this Saturday, March 15th at Patrick Henry College. I hope you and your families come out. It's a lot of fun and it's really great to see the kids out there as well. Coming up on March 28th and April 4th, every husband's worst nightmares coming true. We have two med-spos officially opening here in Percival. The newly renovated V.A.C.O. member. Actually. Coming up on March 28th and April 4th, every husband's worst nightmare is coming true. We have two meds spas officially opening here in Percival. The newly renovated and- Thank you council member. Actually, you cannot stop two minutes for council comments. We don't have an ordinance that says that you can cancel us and lower our minutes. That's just- We don't have an ordinance regarding the length of time for- But you said- Public comments. It is the chair that sets the rules. But you did not set before we did council comments. You said public comments. So we have the enhanced speed and wellness on the corner 23rd and Main and shanti aesthetics and wellness at 500 East Main. Please join us at their ribbon cuttings and open houses and those details are online. And since we removed the discussion of the town manager, I'll state my concerns here. We have received upwards of 90 applications and our awesome HR director has sorted them and rated them. There are so many professional highly qualified candidates and I hope my colleagues read at length the rating sheets and pick the most qualified because our current interim town manager doesn't even make the top 20 most qualified. We deserve more. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Wright. We're now 10 weeks in this town council's administration. During this period, have had front page storyline written about us in the local papers every week. None of those articles can be seen as a positive or inviting image for this town. We have once again made this town front page news and openly joked about locally, regionally and statewide. Our neighboring town elected officials publicly using us as a punchline. And without a doubt, we will be a story for the National Press as well. One is hard pressed to go anywhere and find someone who has not heard a red negative things about Percivil or to tell someone you are from Percivil and their first question not be what the hell is going on there. I know every time I'm asked that question and I get it asked and I get asked it a lot, I can only shake and lower my head and shame being affiliated with this town's leadership. I see things definitely the most in this room and those who currently call Percival their home. I did not move here to get away from something. I did not move here to find something. I've never called any other place home. I've never considered moving anywhere else. I was born, grew up, and raised a family here. Most likely, I will call Percival my home to my last day. Having Percival's scene in a continuous and continuously written about such a negative view is heartbreaking to me. Absolutely heartbreaking. Percival's negative reputation is becoming, is because of the actions of seven elected officials, seven of its citizens, seven individuals who one would think and one would expect would ensure that all of their actions on the best interests of the town and not of their own personal interests or agendas would be conducted with the highest ethics that these seven individuals ensure when asked where you live, residents can always keep their heads high and be proud to answer Perseville. None of this has been what has occurred. In fact, arguably most actions or lack of actions has been the opposite. I've sat here and during other meeting sessions heard very disturbing comments from several of my fellow council members. Comments included that those citizens that have spoken up against them are just distractors and trouble makers. Those that disrupt meetings by voicing their displeasure over the actions of the council should be removed from chambers by the police. That the town should be unincorporated and allowed a state and county to take over. Is this really what you want to hear from elected officials? Say or even think. We are all elected as individuals, independent thinkers, individuals, individuals with open minds who would listen to each other and to every citizen. not just those who agree with us. That would be open and honest with everyone. We would be open and honest with everything we do to be both as an elected official and in our personal lives. We are held to the higher standard for a reason. The citizens that elect us need to know that we can be trusted to always do doing things the best interest. I'll finish with this. I'll ask each of my fellow council members five simple questions. Do you believe this is what you elected to do? Are you proud of the town's image under your leadership? Are you truly here for the best interest of the town and all of its citizens? Are you just here for your ego, your own ego, personal agendas, and to only represent a select group. Are you willing to put the town ahead of your own interest? Lastly, what are you willing to do to change the destructive course we are on? Mr. Caffricke, if only they knew what we know. I will make no comments tonight, but my comments will become me. Councilmember Luke. Councilmember Colliel. member Khalil. Pardon me ma'am This is not public comment time Council members out First a bit of late breaking news, so late breaking out was it broke after I wrote my comments. Congratulations to Sergeant Helu Tenant Camp, job well done. First, now second actually. On a normal shout out to our public works department who recently assisted the town of Round Hill with an emergency water line break. They worked from 11 p.m. until 5 a.m. and managed to fashion an emergency gasket on site in the middle of the night. I think I speak for most of us when I say I couldn't fabricate a gasket and a well lit garage with an infinite supply of materials and YouTube videos. The fact that our staff did it with spare material in the dead of night speaks volumes to their professional competence. Second shout out goes to personal police department for achieving its fifth accreditation. Having previously served on CPAC, I think I can say with some confidence that I know this is not an easy task and reflects great credit on both PPD sworn officers and support staff. Aside from these items, I'm afraid there's not much good to report. The truth is that this train has run completely off the tracks. First, we fired a perfectly good town manager who was doing an exceptional job, and he was so respected by staff, he got a standing ovation upon his departure. He's sitting back there if any of the four of you have the courage to look him in the eye. Four members of this spot. Four members of this body met secretly to conduct interviews behind closed doors, or at least they said they did. The Inherentown Manager on the other hand says he was never interviewed, so who's telling the truth? It's impossible to know for sure, because multiple FOIA requests on this topic have returned no documents. This process completely lacked transparency, and so the public is left wondering, is there a conflict conflict of interest here? Several members of this body have gone around town talking to residents about how this employee and that employee aren't a good fit and that the new council plans to remove them. How has the new council come to this conclusion? Because it certainly hasn't taken place on this dius. One must conclude that since January 1st closed-door discussions continue to take place where the real decision-making process takes place before the seven of us sit here every other Tuesday. This process completely lacks transparency. And so the public is left wondering, sure seems like there's a conflict of interest here. At the last meeting, after seeing that dozens of people had applied for the town manager job, many of them highly qualified, the new council decided to accept their political ally and benefactor as quote, presumptively qualified, unquote, for the job of town manager. As cover for their actions, adding insult to injury, our council chose to insult the HR director in the process, falsely accusing her of ignoring Council directive regarding the posting, which is probably why item 12E was removed from tonight's agenda at the last minute. This process completely lacks transparency and so by this point the public is almost certainly thinking to themselves there is definitely a conflict of interest here. All right. I'm going to keep my comments short this evening. We'll start out on a high note. Last week, there was a fast-paced discussion between supervisor Kirshner's office, myself, and some lightning fast support from Andrea Baroschkovitz that resulted in supervisor Kirchner's swinging 1.1 million in local transportation funding for FY27 to support the town's 287 Eastgate Drive Patrick Henry Circle hybrid roundabout. That doesn't entirely cover the cost of construction. I've received insurance, assurances that we may get additional grant funding. I'd also like to once again address the issue of public department and meetings. This audience has asked to keep silent, except when delivering their public comments at the point in time. We've all heard so many instances where this basic rule, civility, and frankly it's one meant for stability too. Men to kept order in public meetings held to discuss and act on public business was not observed. Particularly appalling to me where the publicly witness former members of this town council acting inappropriately in this way and in ways other ways that disrupt the public order. I'd also like to state that town manager position really is chosen by the town council as noted by some of our speakers. It is chosen by the town council and therefore it is the responsibility of the town council to review the applications that have come in. Those are only posted for our review yesterday. We're just asking for some time to walk through the resumes and look at what's been recommended by staff so that we can make this choice with open eyes. Thank you. Next on the agenda we have Interim Town Manager your key updates. Thank you, Mayor and Tom. Mike is on. Thank you, Mayor and Tom, Tom. Is it being a very productive week? I met with Tim Hemstreet, the county administrator. Last week, we spoke about potential partnership on sewer and water extension, which would drive more revenue to the Tonga Perseville, depending on how we frame that and move that forward. In addition, myself and Jason did a wake, met with Johns Hopkins University, applied physics laboratory. Those are the folks that are working on solutions, not only on the terrestrial's plane, but also talking about colonization of Mars. The reason I bring that up, they present a lot of manufacturing and rapid prototyping that we can be used to benefit us from a CIP perspective. Because we have a lot of projects that we can not wait to finance and fund, but we can partner with search, research, centers of excellence as Johns Hopkins. So that is promising for the Tonga Perseville. And finally, I look forward to March the 19th. The budget will be presented to you folks. Myself and staff did a great job in putting the budget together just this past week. We finalized how we will frame the CIP to present it all to you folks, okay? And just keep in mind again, you have an individual that's doing the budget with an MBA in finance from Rutgers University, executive education from Harvard Business School, bachelor's of engineering from Stony Brook University, appointed by Governor Youngkin to the Clean Advisory Committee, and also appointed by the former EPA Administrator. So you have an individual here with experience in local government, federal, state, and even international. And I look forward to working with you folks and presenting the budget. But again, I know a lot of folks here do not know me. So I think I should reintroduce myself. Twelve years old, I came to these great United States of America with my family. We lived in an apartment with two bedrooms, five kids, mom and dad, one bathroom. Did not know, looking looking back now I have no idea how we survive but from that my parents were able to raise us with dignity and integrity and Knowing that education is number one in our life point of order and point of order mr. Mayor The agenda item is in term town manager key updates. This is not a resume process. Okay. Okay. I respect that. I'm going to call a five minute break in this meeting for now and we'll return at 830. It's hot in here. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. you you I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next order. Next up on the agenda are action items. First item is found on page 64 of the agenda. amendments to sidewalk clearing ordinance. Mr. Cafferkey. Yes, thank you. on page 64 of the agenda, amendments to sidewalk clearing ordinance. Mr. Cafferke. Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council members. You'll recall this was discussed at the last Council meeting. Council members had a very good discussion, I thought, about some of the various provisions, the background of which is that the town's snow removal ordinance hasn't been updated in some years, decades, in fact. What you have in your packet here is, and we had at the last meeting asked that any as council members went through the proposed changes if you had any comments or suggestions to send those along to be sort of collated. I think the only comments that were received for those from Council Member Rayner and related to the differential in the time, essentially, that residents versus businesses have to clear their walkways after a snow or ice event. And just to back up for a second, remember that the, you'll see in the red line here, we got rid of all the other comment bullets, so hopefully it's a little bit easier to read, but the black text is the existing ordinance. The existing ordinance that you have now provides for clearing within six hours. Other jurisdictions including the recently adopted one in Leesburg and really many others, I would say 24 hours is the standard that you see most often. In response to some of the council's discussion, we had differentiated in this draft between 24 hours for residents and six hours for businesses. There's nothing magic about those numbers that was really looking at some of the other ordinances for other jurisdictions outside Virginia. You did see some that reference to shorter time period for businesses and the importance of that and longer for residences. Councilmember Rainer had suggested really that the standard be the same of 24 hours. Otherwise the text that you have here is what we spoke about last time in terms of enforcement, provisions and giving folks an opportunity to demonstrate specific conditions that would make it unfair to enforce upon them. But the only new change was the one suggested by Council Member Rainer. So if whatever council please on that, we would then put this in the form of a final ordinance and come back for adoption at the next meeting. Council Member Rainer. Yes, thank you. Absolutely. I don't want it to be too restrictive and bureaucratic. So the 24 hours, I thought for commercial properties is the best and I'm okay with this. What I did add also to my email was that I'm also happy to head up a committee like Jason Dedewick suggested a helping hands committee and lead the effort with creating a support system for people who need assistance with no removal, ice removal. I've already reached out to some community members who would be happy to get involved in that and I think it would be a really good community initiative to show that we are the small town that we preach we are to help our citizens and our neighbors when they need help so they could adhere to snow removal ice removal for their properties. So I'm fine with what the recommendations have been updated with and then in addition working with public works and to create this helping hands committee. Council member right. Nothing thank you guys for working on this and bringing it to a final agreeable item. Thank you very much. Vice mayor. Nothing further. Councilmember Luke. Thank you. I think this is very considerable considerate. A snow removal and ear and I think that was a great thing that you're doing. It's very helpful. Councilmember Colliel. I think it looks good. Just run it through a spell check before final. Council members stop. Yep, I think it looks good. Appreciate the support from staff, great work on this. Council member-ainters suggestions, my suggestions. That's funny. Council member-ainters mentions the helping hands. I've actually spoken to Tree of Life, Patrick Henry, and Blue the way the ordinance currently looks. So please take direction to provide a finalized version for the voter at our next town council meeting. We will, Mr. Mayor, and we would bring this back in ordinance form at the next meeting and presumptively set that on consent. Mayor, I have a question. I'm noting a motion in the agenda packet. Is that required tonight? Nope, okay. Okay. Next on the agenda is 11b, town code amendment, Article 4 Division 3, Economic Development Advisory Committee. This is on page 69. The purpose of a vote on this is to amend the town code to ensure that the committee includes residents of the town preventing the formation of a committee composed entirely of non-residents. And I would further add that I would make one more change I would make one more change to the text that you find on page 69, third line, should state there should be a minimum of four town residents on this committee. discussion council member Rainer. I think this is a solution to a problem we don't have. It was it's a committee that has been pretty benign for the last eight years and we finally have a committee that's really robust and full of engagement and at the end of the day it's town council who appoints who on there. And if you look at the list and there is a lot of non-residents on there that are business owners, but are non-residents and you want more, it is up to us to appoint more residents. I think it's better to have a full committee, which we still don't even have a full, full committee, than it's to have empty seats when there's willing bodies and business owners who would also like to be engaged in this town. So I don't see the point of this. I think it's unnecessary, especially when it's up to us anyways who gets on the committee and serves the town. So I think it's just bad policy. Councilmember Wright. I reiterate this is trying to address a problem that doesn't exist. It's a waste of staff time. It's a waste of everybody's time to put something in here when the problem doesn't exist. And to now change it at the last minute to try to change it from two to four, show me the reason. Show me the statistics. Show me where this is a problem. You know, it isn't. It isn't a problem. The problem is not having enough people interested in being on the committee. So as long as you have people that want to be on the committee, it won't be a problem. What are you going to do if you don't have four town residents that want to be on it? committee does not exist then, basically. So what are we going to do? So probably then we're creating a problem. So instead of wasting time, fixing a problem that doesn't exist, let's wait until a problem exists and then address it based on the facts and not some preconceived or irrational thought that this committee is going to be run by 100% outside individuals with no vested interests in person. Vice Mayor. I have no real passion for against. I would say that none of this is important to the mayor. I don't see any particular harm in proceeding with this motion. Council Member Luke. I personally like the idea of including residents. I think it's their town. We would like to have residents on there. I would like to have four town residents on the committee. I think it's good for the committee. Councillor Member Colliel. I agree. I think four out of ten represents the town very well. It's important that our residents have a say in what's going on. So I agree with it. Councillor Member Stout. I take this at base value that's well intention to understand the intent behind it. Actually, I had a friend text me after the last town council meeting and say, kind of surprised you spoke against that. It seems like something you'd support. I understand the intent, the intent is to ensure that town residents voices are heard on this committee. But I think the problem is aptly stated. It's sort of a solution in search of a problem. having served my first engagement with the town, significant engagement with the town, having served on a engagement with the town, significant engagement with the town, having served on a CCB that struggled to attract and retain town resident members and whose membership to windold slowly but surely over a number of years to the point where it was completely vacant and sat vacant for years and was removed from town code by action of this body two weeks ago, I am concerned by stipulating that there shall be, not we recommend, there shall be a minimum of four town residents on this committee. What happens if we don't have four? And you can say that's never gonna happen. It's already happened to one CCB fairly recently. Town council, interviews and appoints CCB members. So at any given time, we can conduct interview solicit applications, go through the list, see who's in town, see who's not, and make a determination, but to stipulate it like this in an ordinance and say, there shall, I think, potentially, we're hamstringing ourselves, we're setting ourselves up for a bad situation for this CCB in particular. Again, it's already happened once. What's to say, it's not gonna happen again. So leave it the way it is, and utilize, exercise, town council discretion in choosing who we appoint and don't appoint. And always keep in mind that we should ensure resident voices are heard that would be my recommendation The businesses that this town attracts are of a concern to the residents and for that reason alone I believe that the residents should always have a voice on this committee. I'd also note that the commercial vacancy rate here in this town is less than 2% last time I looked. So it seems that we're not having a great deal of difficulty in attracting businesses. And to address the issue of what if there aren't enough town residents to serve on the committee Then that tells us that tells the town council that there's not sufficient interest in the activities of that committee and we can let it go dormant for a period of time until more can be more residents can be Convince to join the committee, but I think overall we have to have a minimum president on this committee. So with that said, do I hear a motion on this item? Mr. Mayor, if I might, based upon the comments, particularly since it's been a change in the language and the form of this is not in the form of an ordinance, my suggestion would be to have this voted on in ordinance form at the next meeting, making the amendment that has been described by you to 2-342A of the talent code. It really needs to be in regular ordinance format. I think I understand where folks are based upon their comments that I can bring that bring that forward. Very good then the direction is to reduce this to ordinance form and have it available at the next town council meeting. Mayor can I have a second bite at the apple? A question for the town attorney or perhaps Diana, or perhaps Kim, do we have clarity on the current makeup of EDAC. And would this ordinance bring us into any form of noncompliance and if so, what action would we then take? We currently have four town residents on the committee. We have several bit, let's see, one business owner, two business owners, town business owners, but non-residents. So as it stands today was received February 21 from the town's health insurer. The general assembly created the local choice health benefits program to provide competitively priced health coverage to participating local jurisdictions due to the large number of participants grouped together. The advantage of being a consortium member is that it enables the town to procure health insurance at a lower cost than we would be able to obtain as a small to mid-size group. To continue our health benefits coverage with the local choice for FY26, we must complete and submit our intent to renew by April 1. The average increase will be 5.3%, which is significantly lower than the projected industry average of approximately 8.9% to 9.5%. Our recommendation is that the town retains current health benefits plan, key advantage to 50, at the current cost sharing ratio. Currently the cost sharing is a town pays 85% and the employee pays 15%. Any questions? Council member Rayner, do you have any questions? No, I think our town staff deserve a great health plan and And that's a great employee share and I think we should keep it. Thank you Council member right do you have any questions? Support sticking with what it is thank you Vice mayor net no questions Council member Luke no questions Council member Khalil Councillor Member Luke. No questions. Councillor Member Colleal. No questions. Thank you for the background. You're welcome. Councillor Member Stout. Nope. Big supporter of this important for quality of life for staff retention hiring. I did have one question. How are we significantly lower than the projected industry average? I mean it seems great. How did we pull that off? So if we were a small to mid-size company going out to market, I've seen rate increases anywhere from 14 to 36 percent because you have a smaller population. It's based off of just the number of people that are in the plan. Because we're part of the state's consortium, we benefit from all of the participants who cost the state, which helps drive the cost down. So we're lower than a projected industry average for an organization of our size, but are we in line with other municipalities our size? In Virginia because of the shared yet. We're in alignment yet. Got it, okay, perfect, thank you. You're welcome. for the attorney on this. If I could go quick. Just make sure we're all above board here. Since this does involve how much the employees and employee with the town is going to be required to pay. Is this going to be an issue for Mr. Netteboat on? Councilmember Netteboat on. It's not an issue for him to vote on because it's a benefit available to all the employees of the town. Okay, should indicate as I'm sure he would that he's part of a group of at least two others and can fairly vote on, consider a vote on the matter. Is that Mr. Calfgare referring to you referring to a CY disclosure? Yes. I mean, this is a benefit available to everyone. It's a pretty, is a one very usual scenario in which someone's permitted to vote in that situation. I'm happy to make this motion. I move that the town council endorse and adopt the town of Percival's continued participation in the key advantage 250 plan offered by the local choice health benefits program. I further move that the town council continues the current cost share of 85% paid by the town and 15% paid by the employee. Do I hear a second? No second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? I'm opposed. Thank you. Next on the agenda we have discussion information items. First item is 12A, assessment of staff support level and value proposition for Main Street the U.S.A. steering committee. Mr. Mayor, can I make a motion? Can you let me finish my introduction? Sorry. Thank you. Schedule for March 12th of 2025. That's tomorrow. Virginia Main Street Program Administrator Ms. Blair. Bergerler will be leading two working sessions focused on the creation of the Percival Main Street Steering Committee to assist in the rejuvenation of Percival's historic downtown. These working sessions are a follow-up to Ms. Buregler's initial Percival workshop on August 12th of 2024. What is Main Street? Outlining the steps necessary to become a successful and inclusive Main Street community. Creating a steering committee is the first step in the Main Street approach to empower business and community stakeholders to take lead in the planning and promoting of the main street district. The agenda summary is as follows on the agenda, and I'm not going to go into further detail. Council member Cleal. Can I make a motion? Yes. I move to direct the town attorney to prepare a resolution ending the town's participation in the Main Street USA program to be adopted at the next town council meeting and directing the town manager not to engage or employ town staff and activities related to that program due to the financial commitment that this will put on our town. There's no financial commitment. Mayor point of order, I don't see that motion in the agenda or the motion sheet. We're on this agenda item. We're not adding an agenda item. Do I hear a second? I second that. Discussion, Councillor Mabarrainer. Okay. I have so many questions and comments on this. Why? This doesn't cost the town anything. We're at the base level. It's free. It's through the Virginia state housing and communities foundation that This is possible this adds so much value to our community. Leasebird uses it very successfully It aids in Economic revitalization, which is what we want to do downtown town. It helps with resources and grants. You guys keep on going on about grants, grants, grants for stuff. This is a program that gives us access to grants and helps our business community. Truly, this is a program that has minimal government input except for helping set up the initial stuff and getting ready and then it gets a steering committee and then it's citizen in resident lead and that's what was set at that last meeting and you were there, it's resident lead for them to form a committee to work with the town and also to revitalize our business community. I mean from everything I'm seeing from the EDAC regulation this you're just trying to undo everything that we've worked so hard over the last few years to do to help our business community and promote it. Heck, our comp plan even supports Main Street programs to revitalize our central hubs. I just don't understand why our economic development director that we employ to support our community really doesn't spend many hours on this. Like getting this started and then handing it over to the community, I just don't understand why this is a bad thing. It costs us nothing really to do this. This is nonsensical and it's very short-sighted. Council member right. Yes, since we've the motion included, the cost would be too much. What is the cost? Obviously you have some data to support that, so I'd like to hear what that data is. If there's a cost to this, tell me what that cost is, So I can truly make a decision based on data and not just something that comes out of thin air. So I'd be interested to hear what the amount is actually going to be that's going to cost. And I'll prefer it by we just asked the town attorney to spend $300 to update an ordinance that we don't need to change. So obviously money is not too big of an issue here. So I'm truly interested in what is the total cost that this is going to put onto the town. That's a question. I'd like to know so I have all the information to vote informed. Nice mayor. So I don't get the answer. I can do with further discussion. Let me read out of the manual. They are supported by the local municipality. That is the government. And other local community, it's a great idea, but do we want to spend our money there? With an independent board of directors and a paid professional executive director, dedicated to managing the work of an all volunteers organization. Communities with 5000 more in population, the executive director must be full time. They must demonstrate active partnership with the government partner. They must have broad community support. And as of 2023, communities must complete the two-year MMS program to go on and be ready to apply for the AVMS designation, which if they are not ready, they have to repeat those two years. So all throughout this, there are instances where they are telling you the government, the municipality will participate. Does it spell out how much I wish it did? But it doesn't spell out how much. It is dependent upon the government's participation. That's why I have a question. Okay, so it's a partnership and it doesn't say it's funding. It says participation. No, it doesn't say anything about funding. You didn't say anything's funding. It says participation. It doesn't say anything about funding. You didn't say anything about funding. It says participation. One person speaks from the floor at a time. Well, she answered my question, and I'm asking another question. So the question is, what you just read said nothing about funding. It said, basically, they just got to be there. We already have somebody that's there. We are paying somebody to basically sort of do that. So it's don't see where there is a cost. And to say well it could be a cost is just bad, bad thinking. It's okay. So again I want a dollar figure so I can truly understand what we're voting for. Because if we're voting for $10 here, I think it's a waste. And I would hope that before motion would come up something like this, we'd have our data and our facts instead of just throwing it out there without a clue of what we're truly going to do here. We don't because you can't provide me the data that says how much it costs, how much it's going to cost the town. All you can do is read from a piece of paper that doesn't give you any cost, it just says they will participate. There's nothing in there that says that individual has to be a town employee. It could be a volunteer that takes that over. So on page four where is that one? It was have local government support and commitment to Main Street as an economic development strategy which could be a recent EMS or MMS resolution financial contribution to Main Street program operations and or municipal letter of support. Now that might not be financial support but they don't spell that out. They kind of do. They just did or or it's a key word in there. They can do one or the other so it is pretty well spelled out there that they don't have to do a financial contribution and we haven't been asked to do a financial contribution so we're a little premature to be thinking that we should be bearing it so again I find it even more interesting that Susan, I apologize, that you're not the one that made the motion and you're the one telling the person that made the motion what to say so it And have the data and then bring it back. Have the data and then bring it back. So we can all act on this informed in not just because I said so. Mr. Brick, can we have Ms. Wolx and Mr. Heather who have extensive experience with Main Street communities weigh in on this? We are still in council discussion. There is a staff. Councillor Mellon. Councillor Mellon. What's to say? I have read this thoroughly. Do I remember every exact line? No, but it says in several places that the town will, it has to have municipal support and it does say financial. They didn't say how much. I just hesitate to get our town into more financial issues. What's theiel. On page 6 of the guidelines. For communities with 5,000 or more in population, the executive director must be full time. Where 9,000 and our executive director is part time. We would have to make that person full time. So there's an immediate bump. Council members, stop. This is terrible. Why wasn't this motion on here? Yes. I, apparently. You were at the morning. At Mayor, Council Member Khalil, anyone? I'm, again and again, we are showing up and changing agendas at the last minute and making motions that aren't an agenda pack. This is a first. This is embarrassing that we cannot run this town's government in a professional manner. I am dumbfounded. I am absolutely dumbfounded. It's right here. Hang on, hang on, hang on, please. It's right here. There's an agenda packet that's posted online. I'm sorry, I'm too close to the mic. There's an agenda packet that's posted online. It is posted three days in advance so the public knows about it, so that elected officials can get on read about it This is what government this is what representative government is about it is so they know what we're doing and we know What we are doing and right now we do not know what we are doing because we're changing agendas 12e's gone We're bringing in motions that we're not here that we're not here that three of us have never seen them guessing four of us have and nobody out there, nobody out there has seen. I am astounded. It is an embarrassment. It is an absolutely embarrassment. have never seen them, guessing four of us have, and nobody out there has seen. I am astounded. It is an embarrassment. It is an absolute embarrassment. I am embarrassed. I am embarrassed for myself and for this town that we continue to engage in this force of an exercise of civic government. That being said. Yes. I think it's really been the last minute. Do I have a second to the motion? Mayor, I'm asking questions and I have comments. The staff report says it's anticipated that 10% of the EDEC advisor's time will be dedicated. Aside from this or other staff time, can anyone comment on the financial commitment that the town has already made? Aside from staff time, which is noted here in the report. Yes, thank you, Councilman. Again, beyond staff time, there is no financial commitment. I want to make it very clear that there are thousands of Main Street communities across America that range from zero to 100% participation by the local government. It is a decision made, as I said, from the Council and the staff and the citizen. It is a citizen-led program. Main Street communities are more successful when the local government provides some degree of support. I know I live in Charlestown, West Virginia. I'm involved with the Main Street community in Charlestown. It's a phenomenal program, phenomenally successful. They do devote a half of an employee to the program, but they're also phenomenally successful. It can also be zero commitment, and it can be a totally volunteer crew, Leesburg Movement is a volunteer program, totally led by volunteers of 501C3. They have hired their own director, as a matter of fact,'s a job application now paying $20,000, but it's Completely volunteer zero commitment from the town so Again, it is a choice But it doesn't mean that the program can't go on and the citizens Couldn't maintain the program themselves. So currently there's no financial commitment from the town aside from staff time There could be but there is none currently. Yes, exactly. So, why? I'm dumbfounded. Can you ask a question? So, if the guidelines say that we're going to dedicate a full-time director to this. No. How could it be? No, it's not. The guidelines are a full-time director for the program could be totally the volunteer crew paid not from the local government, but from the 501C3. It's its own independent organization. It can be. In other words, the guidelines do not mandate that we hire a city employee for this. Not at all. So in order for the first steps to have happened and for us to be accepted in the program, we agreed to all of these guidelines which at the present time we don't have a full time person. So how did we get approved when we didn't even have that person? We were requiring in the council. It was a council resolution to join the Main Street community and then the Main Street community approved our application based on the resolution from council. Yeah, I'm just surprised. If I may, to what, to council member Cleal's point, the guidelines do seem to stipulate that it requires a full-time director. So are you saying that we currently have a full-time director that is volunteer? It can be a director that has nothing to do with the local government, nothing to do with the town. So the requirement that she outlined which is coming from those guidelines doesn't mean we're spending money on this director of the five-year. This is going to organize themselves into a 501C3 and hire their own director. Maybe I can add more clarity. Like, first of all, this was a very good idea. You can add more clarity after you request the floor. Sir. one C3 and hire their own director. Maybe I can add more clarity. First of all, this is a very good idea. You can add more clarity after you request the floor. Sir, may I please have the floor again? Yes, you may. First of all, this was an incredibly ignorant move on your guys' part, not asking all the main questions before you move to do that. It is really disrespectful to everything that the Economic Development Committee has worked on for the last year and a half trying to make a more robust committee and economic development community. It's really insulting to them because we as a committee when I was the liaison worked really hard with John Heather, our director to get this going. We are at stage one. We're at the bottom base level trying to build up this program. We haven't committed to everything yet. We've been accepted into the program, so we have access to all their programs, their grants, and we can bring in the community, the residents, the business owners to make that 501-C3, because then you handed it over to them with the town's support, not financial, but emotional support, our actual support, to say yes, we want to have an act of presence in the business community. And Councilwoman Luke, as a business owner, I'm very shocked you're against wanting a better, more robust business community supporting each other. There's so many benefits being part of this and the access to the expertise and the resources and other communities that have been successful with this, including Leesburg, which increases our tourism and networking and enhanced community engagement. And then we also get statewide recognition and support from the state level as well. This is, I believe this was really short-sighted to jump into removing it without asking all the questions. You could have come tomorrow and asked questions also. And I know former council members and current ones, including our term tell manager at the last meeting asking questions. It is very short-sighted to remove this when we haven't committed to truly anything yet. I say something. So I agree with you, Erin, in this. I read on every page something about financial and they don't spell it out. So okay, I probably made an assumption that I shouldn't have. I do think it's a good program. I love what they do and I love we've all been in these little towns where they have done this to Main Street. Our Main Street does it, doesn't do that and we have the potential to do that. What I would hate to see is that it should be the responsibility of the property owners and the business owners that live on that street to make those determinations. I'm all for that, and it will benefit the whole community if we can accomplish it. Yes, thank you. I'll second the motion. Okay. Is it killed? Give a second so it has more of a read for May 5th. I have more of a read for you. Okay. I would just add before we take a vote on this that the motion is not to put stop to this effort immediately is to bring this matter before the town council in the form of an ordinance at our next town council meeting. So we will have the opportunity to see the results from the meeting to be held tomorrow. Yes, Mayor. I'm definitely confusing because that's not the way I understood the motion. I move to direct the town attorney to prepare a resolution ending the town's participation in the Main Street USA program to be adopted at the next town council meeting and directing the town manager not to engage or employ town staff in activities related to that program. So I do not see where your comments are correct, Mr. Mayor. So that is not accurate. Second motion. The motion's already been seconded. She made the exact same motion we came. That's the seconded. By Mr. Lute, yes. Council member Rainer, how do you vote on the motion on the table? No. Mayor, can I have a second bite at the apple? That would be the third bite for you, sir. Okay. May vice mayor Net, our new Edec liaison, have a first bite at the apple. I'd like to hear his thoughts as the new Edec liaison. No, we're voting. Thank you. Oh, there. Yeah,. Thank you. Good choice. Councillor Member right, how do you vote? No. Councillor Member Net, how do you vote? Yes. I'm. Councillor Member Luke, how do you vote? I have to tell you if I look at this and pay attention to what was we're either against it or for it. And I am against the town contributing money at this point in time. If that is the proposition, then it would be no. Or yes, I don't want to. Point of order, the motions on the floor, you call for a vote Mr. Mayor Yes, so I heard a yes Council member Khalil. How do you vote? Yes council members stout. How do you vote? No so ignorant And mayor votes yes So mayor can you clarify your comments that we'll be revisiting this at the next meeting with the intent of formulating it via ordinance I believe that's what you just said. It would be a resolution it was adopted in the form of a resolution and the general rule is something done in that form needs to be undone and the form at the same level of dig these is not in ordinance to resolution. So at the next meeting we'll be bringing a resolution restarting our participation. No, I, if I could, Mr. Attorney, no, we got to change the resolution to get us out of it. You adopt a new resolution essentially rescinding the town's participation. That was what I understood the employment motion to be. Mayor, I thought you just said at the next meeting we were revisiting this to extend participation in the program. We will vote on it in the form of a resolution at the next Hal Council meeting. To continue our participation in the program. Yes. Then I'm even more confused because why are we now directing that we don't want to participate so we can re-participate in two weeks via resolution. No, we did not. My understanding from the form of motion that I heard is that I'll be preparing a draft or proposed resolution of ending the town's participation in the, essentially, we're sending the earlier resolution that had opted the town into it. And then the council will have a chance to vote on whether they want to adopt that resolution or not. So the mayor just said we're coming back in two weeks to continue our participation via resolution. So we're gonna pay you what 700 bucks for you to make a document that we could or could not adopt. Okay. And what will that document say that we're planning to continue participating provided we don't commit any of the town's dollars? Are we jumping out just to jump back in in two weeks? I think you misunderstand the motion in its entirety. I understand the motion, what I don't understand are the comments you made regarding what's going to happen two weeks from today. Can you restate those please? I move to direct the town attorney to prepare a resolution ending the town's participation in the Main Street USA program to be adopted potentially at the next town council meeting and directing the town manager not to engage employee town staff in activities related to that program. Which is the opposite. Next item on the agenda is town far flow standards adoption. Andrea Broshkowitz and Jordan Andrews. Good evening, Mayor. Members of the town council. I'll try to be as succinct as I can here, not to detract from the importance of the discussion I have here, which has the ultimate goal of moving to an action or it required a necessary public hearing for the talent to adopt its own fire flows. When we're speaking of fire flows, we're generally talking about the available flow in gowns per minute that is available to fire rescue firefighters to fight a structure fire and for a specified duration. Typically, two hours or above when we're looking at those ranges. The town and joys of services a lot of county building officials and fire marshal office to do review of electrical, trade, structural inspections and perm permitting and that extends as well to the fire rescue and Loudon County Fire Marshall office. So in that the fire marshal office does a lot of our plans review and they look at things like access for rescue vehicles, distances from fire hydrants. However, the town operates its own municipal water supply, and it's a rural supply. We get our water primarily from a large reservoir up on the mountain in a series of different wells throughout town and some out of town. In coordination with the fire marshal, though the town has been operating under fire flows that we've been using for some time under precedent and policy. They are not officially recognized by the Fire Marshal's office unless they are codified in our town code. So the purpose of these documents in this discussion and subsequent potential action is to officially codify town fire flows. The reason that the town fire marshal's recognition of our fire flows versus what they use otherwise is important because we are distinct in our rural care during our rural water system. The fire marshal otherwise applies the fire flow standards of loud and water. The water authority that serves much of eastern loud and up until where they, uh, where they Leesburg has their own municipal water supply. Leesburg and Loudon water have their source water out of the Potomac River and they have storage and water tank facilities, grade and excessive of the towns. So we have limits. In respect of those limits, we wanted to make sure that if we were proposing an adoption of a fire flow, we presented that with more than just press that of what we have been using, but we backed it with national standards that were accepted by the Fire Marshal's office and reflective of our system relative municipalities. So there's some of the agenda materials and attachments here in this discussion. And briefly those attachments include a fire food report that was conducted by our water contractors, CHA, consulting. They're the contractors that have modeled our entire water system. They do the modeling when we propose our new water tanks when we look at our pressures throughout the town. And so we tasked them to look at our system. They do the model when we propose our new water tanks when we look at our pressures throughout the town. And so we tasked them to look at our system, its limitations, potential limitations, and pipe sizing, our storage, our water source, and to look at national standards for municipalities. That reports in the agenda. And the ultimate conclusion that report is for the talent to adopt national standards set by the National Fire Protection Association, which was set in place fire flow standards relevant to proposed building size, building material, and other fire protection measures. So that is if a building was of a size that would exceed the fire flow capacity the town may have, they would then be required to potentially install sprinklers, increase the buildings, materials, fire resistant properties, and this is reflective of what our system can safely provide. Ultimately the fire marshal has been a big partner in this. You'll find the materials also, a letter of support for this adoption of recognizing the necessity for us to codify these fire flows for them to recognize it. To give you a perspective, the towns sort of precedent fire flows have been 17, 1,750,000 gallons per minute for two hours for residential structures, 2,000 gallons per minute for commercial structures, which is in the ballpark of what we are now supported by this report and the national fire standards. The loud and water standards are 3,000 gallons per minute at an unspecified duration, and it's unspecified duration because they don't have to quantify. They have the storage that they can run that flow indefinitely. We'll never have that capacity. So in lieu of that, the fire flow that we're proposing for adoption recognizes the need for other life safety systems. While enabling still the infill of these areas in town reflecting our rural water supply and our system in limitations. Councilmember Rainer. I think this is incredibly important for the safety of our community and our citizens. I think our resident firefighter can talk to it more but I'm all for implementing and adopting this tonight. Thank you. Councillor Member Wright. You know, it's just common sense that we don't have the water supply that the lot of water does and the western eastern portion of La Tanya does. So it is important that our structures are built with limited, well, with the most capabilities. With both fire safety in mind to include sprinkler systems where they may not be due because of square footage our fire flow may or limited fire flow may end up having a building need sprinkler systems which face that sprinkler systems are the savior and should be in just about every building and the life saving men. So I'm really surprised it's taking this long, that which is now doing this, I would have thought this would have occurred many, many years ago, but I'm glad that we are looking at it and changing it. And hopefully, if we haven't won all five of everything, if we've won all five of everybody that the development that comes to town can be built in a far safe way, thank you. So to give you a little bit of information, the town has always had a policy. It was just never codified. And in the code, it just says we follow the counties. Well, I think there's been a change of who is in that department now. More questions were asked and they didn't realize that what we were, what our policy was different than what loud and county standards were. So that's where we've came together and you know and they realize we can't meet the same standard since we don't have that unlimited supplies an incredibly large loop system with a lot of storage. And please believe me that I wasn't insinuating that is staff that didn't do this many years ago it's just that it wasn't caught many years ago. Pressure guys. Press mirror now. I'm going to ask the mayor to ask the mayor to ask the mayor to ask the mayor to ask the mayor to ask the mayor to ask the mayor to ask the mayor to ask the mayor to ask the mayor to ask the mayor to ask the mayor to ask the mayor to ask the mayor to ask the mayor to ask the mayor to ask the mayor to ask the mayor to ask the mayor to ask the mayor to ask the certainly more than I knew before. And thank you I would go for this. Councillor Member Colliel. Yeah definitely. But Jordan you had kind of intimated that there would be other things that we would need to do maybe or did I misunderstand? It says budget impact thinking nothing but did you mention that there was something else? So to do? Yes, to actually codify this we just need to like some of these other town code sections put in ordinance form and that would be very simple. We've actually drafted that already a little bit and it's just stating our town code now the sections we call out, specify that the talent appoints Loudoun County's Fire Marshal as their Fire Marshal, and we adopt Loudoun County's Fire Protection Ordinance, which is basically Virginia State's Fire Protection Ordinance has our own. So this caveat would just be an insert in the code by ordinance at a future action either by direct action by the council or if necessary a public hearing to adopt that amendment to the code to insert and say and this is largely also what the fire marshal is recognizing that they will adhere to and enforce our fire flows while still and that's what the SAT report speaks to, still supporting us in all their other capacities that they do in plan review and obviously life rescue services. So maintaining that relationship, maintaining that support from them, this would be a necessary step. But it's just a matter of adopting that ordinance next. So once we adopt the ordinance, what would be the timing for the next step? It would be implemented. So we would be able to, in our plain review, if we noticed that there was a system that was required, the fire marshal could enforce that and they could require a sprinkler and the bound and county building development. So as soon as that ordinance is adopted and the town code is amended, it's enacted. Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Stout. No questions. Thank you. And thank you Jordan and Dreah. This is a really detailed and excellent report. I do have a couple of questions. First is as a town are we able to maintain the 1700 50 cubic feet per minute that the proposed code specifies throughout the system. In other words, is there some future cost potentially lurking to bring us up to the standard as needed everywhere? So our consultant does our water modeling for us. He, they are the ones that gave us those initial, the 1750 for residential, the 2,000 gallons per minute for commercial. That is there could be areas within town that you cannot meet it, but it's typically due to water line, water pipe size. So there are those small areas that if you, if there, we do have some four and six inch water lines here in town that you may not be able to get that flow, that the developer would have to increase that pipe size to an eight inch pipe in order to get that flow, or possibly then that's where the sprinklers come in that can help but they have told us that the those numbers are the best that we can do in the largest area for the town but there are there could be an area here and there when they actually did the modeling if say the development came in in that inflow area that there may require additional infrastructure improvement. But that would be typically put on that developer not on the town. Okay. And my only other question, do just the staff have any idea how many current buildings might need to be upgraded at some point to meet this standard through sprinklers and or onsite water storage? So, so much other zoning or grandfathering things. The far marshal under its current authority wouldn't go to a building that was not up for a building in permit. Like with anything, like with your steps on a house, you're not required to bring it to code until you're doing work on it. So, you know, we saw that with some of the new spots, right? The requirement to have fire systems is otherwise based on sometimes the occupancy. So if there was work or occupancy changing, yes, they'd have to meet the new fire flows of regulations. It wouldn't just be new construction. It could be the interior renovations of a structure. And then this threshold could kick in for those projects in addition to other fire marshal standards. Mr. Mayor of Frippen had on to that to help you out. It's not just any renovation. It has to be to a certain extent. So if you're just going in and replacing a wall or something like that, it's got to be so much of the structures being renovated before it has to then be brought up to current code or the purpose of the building or the use of the building has changed. So it's not like just because somebody put in an island or did some minor renovations that all of a sudden they'd have to meet these new codes. It has to be a pretty substantial renovation to the building before they would end up having to bring the entire building up to new codes. I'd like to pull on that string just a little bit though. You said if the use changes, is it considered a use change if you have a different tenant of a different type of business in the building? Only certain businesses can be in certain buildings. So you'd have to change the restaurant, going from a restaurant is not a change in use. Taking, you know, I'm trying to think of an example, but it had to be almost like a zoning change to a certain extent or the fire hazard change would have to be substantially different between the between the two types of businesses. Right. But where we are today in that situation if that change is required they have to meet 3,000 gallons per minute. We can't do that everywhere in town. We can do the 2,000 gallons per minute in a very, you know, in a most, I can't say every place, but in their tell-ness in a very large area of the town. That would require the law. In fact, it doesn't change them having to. So, what we're doing is just saying, if they were going to have to renovate their building and make far suppression changes, they wouldn't have to do it no matter what this does. It just means that they might do a little bit more because the fire flow we can't provide. That's the only difference. Correct. And once again, these numbers has been what our policy is for quite some time. are just codifying it, which is kind of a new requirement for Latin County. What's someone like to make the motion? Yeah, I'll do that. I move that the town council direct staff to initiate the necessary public carrying process to mend the town code, implementing fire flow standards as found in NFPA 1 Chapter 18.4 fire flow requirements for buildings second I'll call for a voice vote on this one all in favor Any opposed Mr Mayor question Yes 12 12D is our next item correct. Is there somebody here? It's not normally here for this item. No, it's 12c. No, it's 12d. Oh, well, I'm sorry. I'm looking at the, I'm looking at the, oh, I'm sorry. 12c. Based on the time it's now 9.30, I'm just wondering if. But Kevin, before we go that, Mr. Mayor, I was gonna ask, can we extend just to get through, get 12D done because the county has been waiting for us to get this done for a long time. And so I respectfully ask that we maybe skip 12C and F and just do D so our town leadership can get this done and sent to the county. On that, Mr. Lawrence, is there any urgency to your item? No, this could be done in conjunction with the zoning ordinance. This is kind of an offshoot of that for the zoning ordinance rewrite. So it could be postponed. Okay, thank you. Mayor, I believe we need to vote to extend to accomplish what the council member just suggested. I'll second that. I move to extend. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Moving on to discussion information item 12D approval of procedural ordinance for an electrical current services franchise agreement. Mr. Caffer will be covering for Jeremy Root. Yes, thank you. May I remember his counsel? My partner, Jeremy Rood, has been the one primarily dealing with this and the negotiations with Dominion. We're here this evening for adoption of the procedural ordinance related to this franchise agreement. This is a franchise agreement for electrical current services as your packet indicates the current agreement that the town had, which was a 40-year agreement, was entered into, I believe, in 1972. It's been expired since 2012. And some of this process is similar to you remember the cable ordinance and cable franchise that the town council dealt with several months ago. The law allows the provisions of the existing one to continue in existence and they have for the last 13 years recently, not only with the town of Percibel, but other jurisdictions, both Dominion and I think the town have wanted to get, there was some discussion of amending the 1972 agreement, the feeling on the part of the town and some other jurisdictions too I would say is we really are at the point where we need to do a new agreement. The process for doing that and one of the reasons why is really to better delineate and update of the rights that the town has relative to location of facilities and approval of facilities and things of that nature. It's a two-step process, as it was with the other franchise. Step one is adopting an ordinance that governs the process, you do have that in your packet. That because the term of the proposed franchise would be in excess of five years requires a bid process. Now, honestly, it's not very likely, but not impossible that someone other than Dominion could bid on the rights to that, but you can't predetermine that. So the ordinance has a bid process with a fairly compressed time frame that will get you back to, and there are requirements as far as public advertising is concerned, that would get you back to and there are requirements as far as public advertising is concerned that would get you back to a vote on the franchise agreement on April 8th. So, glad to answer questions about it but essentially the request of the council this evening This is kind of the reason reason why we wanted to as council a member of rain or indicates this has been Outstanding for for some time would be to try to move the process forward by adoption of the procedural ordinance Are there any questions? I move that the town council adopted the process of the ordinance 25-3-1 as presented in March 11, 2025 packet with the which will require town council approval to initiate a public bid process for the purpose of granting a franchise to an electoral current service product willing to enter into the electric current service franchise agreement. I second that. Paul and favor? Aye. Any opposed? Here's silence. I move to a adjourn. Second. Paul and favor? Aye. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. 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I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. you Thank you.