I would like to call it order the March 11th 2025, Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, Finance, Government, Operations and Economic Development Committee meeting. Excuse me. This room has a hearing loop. If you need hearing assistance, which you're hearing aids to telecoil mode, if you need a headset, we have those as well. Please ask the clerk to request one. Our questions and comments are not timed, however, once a motion is on the table, committee members will have three minutes to ask questions and make comments during the motion. The proposed consent agenda is as follows, excuse me again, item two, quarterly report, FY 2025, second quarter, financial update, cash, proper report, and debt report. Item 6, contract renewal, public safety, two-way radios and related equipment. Item 7, contract renewal, day support and employment services. Item 8, contract award, roadway and transportation design services. Item 9, award authority increase, roadway and civil design services for Westwind Drive from Loudon County Parkway to Oldox Road and Item number 10 loud and museum memorandum of agreement is their emotion Thank you do you have a second for the consent agenda? Thank you The consent agenda was moved by chair Randall seconded by supervisor Sains all in is there any discussion? Okay great all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed? That motion will pass 401 with supervisor Luterno off the day is we will now move To the finance government operations economic development items. Hello. First up we have the monthly Department of Economic Development report with Buddy Reiser. Hello. Good evening everyone and we have with us tonight from the EDA, Carmen Ortiz McGee and Shilha have a quick update after our update. As part of our small business week, the third annual small business summit is scheduled for Tuesday May 6th from 8 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. I know a few of you have been to this in the past. This is at the lodge at Hanson Park in Brambleton. Keynote this year from Roheap Baraga. He is a three time Wall Street Journal in USA Today best selling author of ten books and is widely considered one of the most entertaining and original speakers on trends, innovation, and marketing in the world. And then we're going to do a deep dive on customer service with Louis Gurveys. He is the author of your superpower, service as your superpower. He worked at the Disney Institute and he is an acclaimed author. The registration is already open at biz.loudin.gov, slash small business summit, and it is going fast. So please register soon. A couple of rural updates, DED hosted the second loudin, farm exchange event at Harmony Hall in Hamilton on February 25th, the event provided networking opportunities for loud and farmers and rural support businesses in support of DEED's online loud and farm exchange website. Over 120 attendees attended this event. Local farms, trusted suppliers, they identified product services and partnerships for the upcoming season. It was a great event. Through the end of February, DED has reported 106 wins, 3,850 jobs, and 7.84 billion dollars in commercial investment. Nationally, 151,000 jobs were added in February, but the unemployment rate increased from 4.0 to 4.1. The February payrolls number showed federal government employment declined by 10,000. December is still the most recent month for local unemployment data. The rate was 2.3 for Loudoun County, 3.0 for Virginia. The unemployment data has not yet been released for January. Newly posted jobs in Loudoun County in February, 3,616. That's up from 3,011 in January. Inactive jobs in Loudoun County in February 11,642. That's down from 17,095 in January. The most recent CPI report showed that price increases in January up 3% compared to a year earlier. That's up slightly from 2.9 in December and 2.7 in November. The next monthly CPI report, Consumer Price Index, will be released tomorrow. DEED is responding to the federal workforce situation as part of the overall county response. We're doing the Loudoun Resilience Initiative or LRI. Dedicated program and one stop portal for residents affected by federal layoffs. LRI connects job seekers to thousands of private sector and Loudoun County government openings, career coaching, upskilling opportunities. We offer free business coaching classes and networking through the launch Loudoun program. We're uping our business retention program, proactively reaching out to employers who might be impacted by offering workforce solutions, including HR consultations. And for the employees affected, the working loud in program is working directly with job seekers, coordinating with our partners and continuing to lead the way with our workforce to keep it as strong as possible, even at this time of uncertainty. The other thing that we're doing is really trying to do a deep dive into data. We are tracking all the metrics with regard to workforce, layoffs, commercial vacancy. The most recent census data estimate that shows 17,596 federal workers residing in Loutin and 6,671 federal jobs based in Loutin as of Q3 2024. 3.3% of the 2001 O20 jobs in Loutin County are result of those federal jobs or federal contracting. Across Virginia, the average salary of federal government employees is just above 116,000, while the overall annual earnings is about 60,000. Virginia residents average length of service for federal government employees is 12.2 years, and 58.8% of those employees have at least a bachelor's degree, while 65.8% have at least an associate's degree. Hopefully some of these employees that are highly paid and highly educated will have opportunities. There are currently 45,000 open positions in Northern Virginia, but less than half of them are highly paid and technology related jobs. We have to make sure that we're doing everything we can to make sure there's not a big brain drain out of Northern Virginia. Most recent data we have suggested 10.4% of Loudens GDP of $41 billion comes from government and government enterprise. compared to 12.3% in Fairfax and 22.9% in Arlington. Wow. And with that, I'll turn it over to Carmen. Thank you, buddy. Good evening, members of the board. I am Carmen Ortiz McGee, one of the directors of the Economic Development Authority, here representing Chair Angela Wilson, who could not be in attendance. I joined the EDA in 2023, and in my professional life, I am the chief operating officer of the National Association of Investment Companies. The EDA started 2025 with the annual orientation of the Economic Development Advisory Bodies, and we've recommitted to our strategic priorities of supporting entrepreneurship and supporting the county's housing goals and priorities. We intend to continue to explore these areas by meeting with staff and industry experts. We've also committed to a sponsorship along with the Department of Economic Development of the National Pitch Competition to still intelligence 3.0 which will be hosted in loud in this October. On behalf of the chair and the entire EDA, we look forward to continuing to support Loudon and DED and working with all of you throughout the rest of the year. Thank you for your time and I'm happy to take any questions. Thank you. Thank you very much for that report. Do any of my colleagues have questions for staff? Chair Randall. Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, first of all, thank you for coming. And we think the EDA is such an important work for Loud and County. So thank you and please tell the chair. We appreciate all the work you're all are doing as well. Mr. Ryder, those numbers are stark and we know that they're probably going to become more, become increasingly concerning as time goes on. I've always thought that to some degree that Northern Virginia and the MWCAH area was a little bit, maybe even a little bit recession proof because of the federal government. It never struck me that it would be the federal government that would push us into so many job losses. And so it's very, very concerning. I very much understand what we can do and what we can't do and that we can only focus on Loudon County and you're doing that and so I really really do appreciate it. Tweet that in. I have a couple of questions. As you are going out and talking to people who may need to change the jobs upscale, do something different. Are you talking to our unions to help people who might want to completely do something different or are you talking to any of our labor unions at all to find out what their employment needs are because those are very good paying jobs and they can be pretty stable jobs especially right now. Yeah, we're actually doing as a broad base as we can do. Everything from working with the Northern Virginia Community College and the unions to working directly with the companies. I would say at this point, there's so much uncertainty that that is driving the conversation right now. Not a lot of people directly have been impacted just yet. There are people that have received notices, but they're still getting paychecks. There are a lot of people that are trying to look at what a transition could be, but it's that uncertainty that's been introduced into the economy that I think is causing most of the uproar right now. But yes, we are taking a very broad-based approach to this because until we get a little more information, we don't know where the pain points are really going to be. So we're trying to be as broad as we can. Well, that makes perfect. I mean, it literally has not even been 60 days yet for the new administration to be in. So that makes sense. I do think, though, three months from now and nine months from now, one year from now, if we keep on this trajectory, we're going to be telling a very different story. And so, so you're a great answer because we want to be talking to all industries as much as possible. Is it possible that you can send us those numbers that you just gave us because they went by pretty quickly. I want to make sure I have them right. the Council of Governments is going to be meeting of which I am on the Board of Council of Governments to talk about some of the same issues. How to help the landing be as soft as possible for our constituents who are federal government workers in this area in every way. And of course, we're even talking to some of our state people about helping people with just get over the anxiety and the depression of losing a job in such a abrupt way and losing the support system that comes with the people who you work with or opting your friends and all those types of things. So I think we're in this entire cog area and allowed and are, you know, it's gonna be tough and I think we have to just work together to get through it the best we can. So I appreciate you so much. Thank you. Sure. And I will send the information to the board tonight. And beginning next month, we will be producing a one sheet that is specific to the Loudon Resilience Initiative that will be provided to you in advance of this meeting. Thank you so much. Thank you, Memcher. Thank you. Supervisor Stance. Thank you. Thank you, Betty. And thank you for being here as well. I thought the McKinsey and Company report was actually actually pretty spot on. So I'm assuming you share the information with the prospective businesses looking to update our looking for their new spaces. So hopefully take that to heart because the images here in the PowerPoint are definitely what was old and is definitely not new again, right? And thank you. I just wanted to say thank you for doing the Loudroom Resiliency Initiative. I think that's going to be very helpful. And Chair Randall is 100% correct. I think we're just seeing a small fraction of the results of what's taking place down on the hill and then the White House right now. But I think we're really going to start seeing the effects come April, May, June, once some of these contracts are, because some things are in court, record, going back and forth, but I think we're really going to start seeing the effects of everything in the next couple of months. So thank you, supervisor court, and I'm going back and forth, but I think we're really going to start seeing the effects of everything in the next couple of months, so. Thank you, Supervisor Sains. And I would say that with our metro opportunities around office, our targets are obviously in large part technology and federal government contractors. So some of those projects are being put on hold until there's a more certainty in where these companies are going to be going with a contract, etc. Yeah, and I don't know if you can't, but we can talk offline, but obviously we do have a few government entities in the county and obviously a lot of government contractors who have space so as far as you know are any of those being affected right now or are you hearing anything? Not at this point, but we are monitoring closely. There's a lot of people that are nervous, but as of right now we haven't seen any major impacts yet. Okay, very good. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks again for the presentation. I think you were getting to this point when you were talking about the skills versus the availability of the jobs. And there was a VPN article recently that said there may be a 30% overlap. Maybe if we're lucky between the skills of the people that are being fired and the need the jobs that are out there so it's it's gonna be that's gonna be tough. You were talking about vacancy rates, office space vacancy rates. Actually let me back up for a second. Do we have any way I think we talked maybe talked about this last month. Do we have any way to know the number of government contractors in the county? Have we found a way to figure that out? Yeah, we're still doing the research. There's no database, so we are literally going through the VCS data line by line. But we're close to that and we should be able to give you that answer next month. Okay, all right. I'm tied. Okay. And then and then as far as the office, again, but when you and I met in 2019, all we talked about was getting more class A office space. And now we're like, we don't have that much class A office space. So I think we're OK in that way, because we don't have that issue with about I think it was like 4% Anyway, they can see the question I was wondering though have you know the Doge team I guess tried to list a bunch of properties for sale last week Do you know if any of the properties they listed for sale were in Loudon County? One was the National Passports Center. But we met with them this week. They have no indication that other than reading it in the paper like the rest of us. Okay. Okay. That's something that, but, I think it's important to note that, you know, we allowed in, are in a better position than most, our underlying fundamentals and our economy are very, very strong. But this, with it being about 10% of our GDP, that is at risk, that is a significant number. That is, that is a significant number. And that's scary because we've been working so hard to diversify our economy and I would imagine that 10% is one of our areas that we want to grow. So yeah, thanks for your work on this. I guess the other interesting stat I saw the other day, UVA Weldon Cooper Center said that cutting 10% of federal jobs would wipe out all of Virginia's projected 2025 growth. So that's... Yeah, I mean, it is scary from that standpoint. You know, some communities much more than hours, but we do think that it's something that we have to be paying attention to, and that's why we're trying to be really proactive in taking this multi-pronged approach. Do we get local statistics on unemployment claims? Yeah, I think that was what I presented earlier to. It was in there, okay, right. Okay, I'll take another look at it. Okay. All right, well thanks so much. We'll talk to you guys soon. Thank you. All right, now we have loud and water annual update. Next information item. Three. I'm sorry. three. Good evening committee committee chair, Brisbane, Chair Randall and committee members. As Mr. Hemstreet's liaison to the loud and water staff, I'd like to take a moment to introduce the loud and water staff that are here with you tonight to present their 2024 annual report. The presentation will be led by Brian Karns, a general manager. Mr. Karns is accompanied by the Loud and Water Chair, Terry Allen. Also with us is Deputy General Manager, Deputy General Manager Mark Peterson, and Deputy General Manager, Alton Eckles. Okay, so Eckles is on this end and Mr. Carns is on that end. Okay. And I'm sorry who were the two in the middle again? This is Mr. Allen. Allen. Our chair and that is Mr. Mark Peterson, our DGM. And then also in the audience we have Vice Chair, Mr. Brent Campbell and Board Member, Mr. Jack. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's our pleasure to be here tonight to present our annual update to you. Some of the highlights of the presentation will cover our financial condition and investment in capital projects, our education and outreach programs, cybersecurity measures, industry connections and community partnerships and our collaboration with county staff on critical initiatives. We are a AAA rated utility with a stable outlook by all three rating agencies. Our most recent audit was on our 2023 financial fiscal year. We operate on a calendar year and we did receive a clean, unmodified opinion. We are underway with our 2024 audit and expect that to be completed in May. We do have a very robust capital spending program, which will total over a billion dollars over the next five years, and we still have comparable rates and charges. A little bit more of our financial condition. Every three years, we have an independent consultant conduct a cost of service and rate study And that was presented to our board in the fall of 2024 and our board approved rate increases at their December meeting of 7% each year for the next three years starting January 1st 2025 2026 and 2027 The study also showed a need to increase availability charges 7% for the next three years as well Those adjustments allow us to continue to meet our financial guidelines for your near-catch balance and debt coverage ratios And as you'll see on the next slide we still have very comparable rates and charges to our neighbors This is a sample quarterly bill for a household using an average 21,000 gallons per quarter. As you see, we still have the lowest compared to Prince William County, Fairfax County, and the town of Leedsburg. This is as of 2025. These are availability charges. You will note we are on the higher side of availability charges. These are for when connections are made to our system. The thing about us is that we are still growing and expanding system as where as Fairfax in the town of Leesburg are more built out. So what's impacting our billion dollar CIP? The big item in the next few years is the Broadrun Water Reclamation Facility Expansion. That's our wastewater treatment plant. We just wrapped up what we're calling phase two, which was an expansion from 10 million gallons per day to 15 million gallons per day. And right on the heels of that, we are beginning our phase three expansion, which will double the size of the plant to 30 million gallons per day. And that project is expected to take between 10 and 15 years. Milestone reservoir. This is our project to convert the retired Luxstone quarry into a raw water storage facility. We've just wrapped up our first year of construction and expect that to be online in 2028. And the Leesburg Joint Land Management Area, this is being built out by a combination of both developer and loud and water-led projects. Most of the initial projects began construction in 2023. We've wrapped up one of the pipeline projects and two of the pump stations are expected to be online by the end of this year. Education and outreach is very important to us. In October we opened Reservoir Park at Beaver Dam. This is a very new county park that celebrates nature, recreation, and the protection of our water resources, and we're very proud of the work we did with Nova Parks and the County to bring this park to the community. We have a very strong partnership with the Loud and County Public Schools and community groups. We offer in-person and virtual formats to ensure inclusive outreach programs and educational lessons. In 2024, we served over 6,000 students in Loudoun County. We also work with the Children's Science Center, the Loudoun Environmental Education Alliance, and the Global Inheritance Leading Ladies Initiative. And we serve as an executive council member of the Loudoun County School Business Partnership. Cybersecurity as an owner and operator of critical infrastructure, we take cybersecurity very seriously and we've implemented a robust and resilient cybersecurity program. Our approach is based on the National Institute of Standards and Technology framework and our policies ensure regular scanning, patching, and penetration testing. We've also implemented network monitoring and segmentation, multifactor authentication, and identity management and vulnerability management tools, and we collaborate with numerous security groups to make sure we're keeping up with the newest threat intelligence. And finishing up with our collaboration with the county staff, we've collaborated with county staff to address several water and wastewater issues on the county. You're very familiar with Howard'sville, as well as broad run farms. And the county water and wastewater program projects that we're currently working on are the Pionian and Waterford connection, as well as Unison, which both have had feasibility studies completed. And we're moving forward with those projects and coordination with county staff and the communities. And with that, we are happy to answer any questions you all may have. Thank you, supervisor Sains. Well, thank you. Thank you guys for being here and give us a thing of the update. I just had one question, was there any, how can I say? Lessons learned, how we can move forward to better communicate with the residents. Case example was there was a letter sent out about rate increases for the next, I think it goes at three to five years. But there was, if I remember correctly, there wasn't any true public hearing or anything of that nature until there was some a little bit of uproar and I know a few of us had a reach out and I asked questions and I think something was put together the last minute so was there any lessons learned in that? So the the public the issue was the letter did get to customers late. The public hearing was scheduled and I'll give credit to our board who scheduled an additional public hearing upon hearing the feedback from you and our customers as well. But certainly lessons learned as far as the communication and what to include in the communication to explain the drivers for that rate increase. So yes, definitely. Okay, yeah, very good. And how's the, well, obviously, whether starting to get a little bit better now, but how is everything going at the new park? We actually reached out to Nova Parks this week. It's been five months since it's been opened, and all the feedback they have received has been extremely, extremely positive. So I think they're excited for the warm weather as well. Yes. Good. All right. Thank you. Chair Randall. Thank you. Well, first of all, thank you for all for being here. You know, in my opinion, for me, Howard's Field is a legacy project for us. And the work loud and water did with Howard's Field Mark. Thank you, Brent. Thank you. It was so important to get that done. It, in my opinion, was taking care of some of the citizens who really felt forgotten in the county and you all were just phenomenal in that whole effort. So thank you so much. I do want to associate myself to some degree of Mr. Sains as comments. You know I I'm really glad lessons were learned. I think maybe sometimes we forget that we're one another's partner and so if there's going to be something like that's going to happen in water increase or something, if you let us know, we can put it in our newsletter as we can put it out. So we can, you know, the last time something like this happens when you all had to, you did something on your system where you had to, where you had all the fire height, all the hydms were clear now that one time, And I got like all these phone calls like loud and county is wasting water. Right? And I had to call and say, this is what's happening. So. where you had all the fire, all the hydms were clear now that one time, and I got like all these phone calls, like loud and county is wasting water, right? And I had to call and say, this is what's happening. So if you let us know, then we can all communicate at the same time, and then people just know what's going on. I do tell people a lot of time that you're not a profit making organization. And so if you do raise the rates, it's because you have to, it's because you have to pay for things and keep up. But we're still, as people will see, have the lowest water rates. Any. So if you do raise rates, it's because you have to. It's because you have to pay for things and keep up. But we're still, as people will see, have the lowest water rates anywhere. And so I very much appreciate that as well. I think the work you all have done, we write sites this ship some time ago. And it's been going very, very good, you know, through Dale, through Carla, and now with you. So really thank you. I have, I think I have four pointies on loud and waterport. So it tells you how important I think it is. The collaboration with Nova Parks is absolutely amazing. That place looks, it's phenomenally beautiful and I have had people ask me about it many times. And finally, I would say the cybersecurity initiatives are just key. No entity, no county, no municipality, no entity. It's going to keep a high bond rating. Definitely not going to keep your triple, triple A. If you don't address the cybersecurity issues when you go for your rating meetings, they're going to ask you. And I know that they've asked you, especially if you're a utility, they're going to ask you about your cybersecurity for obvious reasons. And so the fact that you all are already ahead of that, and you're already dealing with it means you can keep that triple-triple lay, which means you can keep those rates low. So I really appreciate that. And, yeah, let's absolutely stay on top of the cybersecurity matter thank you all for your service thank you supervisor I'm stuck thank you madam chair so I know you all are aware of the debate that occurred at the Leesburg town council whether they would extend water to a county government facility their utilities director estimated that if the county were to go with loud and water, because the town is declining to provide water, it would take 18 months to two years. Do you think that's a fairly accurate schedule? I'll defer to Alton. He's a little more intimately involved with that. I do think that's a fairly accurate schedule, probably in the 12-day-teen month range. Okay. The other point that was made during that town council meeting was that the reason most of the council declined to extend water was because they believed based on a staff report that Leesburg was beginning to run up against capacity ceiling. If that is, in fact, the case, do you think you all are apt to get tapped by the Microsoft data centers as they build out and perhaps stack as well for water rather than the initial plan which was to go with town water? They have that option to do that. Microsoft does, but that's not our understanding at the moment that they're looking for us to serve them. Are you at all concerned that we may need you to provide water into that area? No, if needed, we can absolutely provide water in that area. So you can if needed. Yes. All right. Do you think that's 18 months to two years out as well or sooner? That's on a bit sooner timeline. That construction is underway now, which is extending the backbone infrastructure from the the cyclone road area toward the village clear springs. And again, that's actively entering the construction phase, so approximately 12 months or plus or minus. Okay. Thank you very much. Welcome, supervisor. Littorno, do you have some questions for the water? Yeah, I know. I'm sure my colleagues have already been asking questions about rates and rate increases. I'm going to dive in a little bit myself and I apologize if it's a little bit repetitive. But specifically looking at revenue and debt coverage, which looks like it's in pretty good shape, the drivers for the future year rate increases, it was a little bit hard for me to understand exactly where that's coming from, just looking at the financials myself. Some of it is catch up from the last several years where we experienced 40% increase, 50% increase in chemicals, electricity. Yeah, that's all that. Yeah. So the outer years are largely our $1 billion capital spending plan where we're planning to expand Vrawdron and so we need to spend our cash. We'll be spending cash down and need to. Okay. Okay. So is there any potential to scale back any of that capital plan? So in most of the capital plan, the large projects that we showed have to be done in order to treat the waste water and the water that we need to serve. But there's nothing else in there that could be. that would move the needle. Our board has directed us to relook at the rates prior to 2027 to see if the projections have played out and if there's any possibility of reducing. Yeah, I mean we certainly understand increased capital, but at the same time we've also done a fair bit of value engineering here and the laying projects in order not to have those issues. Yes, we delay projects. We go through a yearly process and present that to our board as well. Yes. Okay. Well, and these say we're going to go through this next year too with the rate increase. And it's not going to get any easier for anybody. So appreciate visual and it's on that. And if there's anything that can be done, please let's try to do it. One other question, which is a perception out there that commercial users like data centers are driving some of that, is that at all accurate? Driving the rate increase? Yes. No. No. The more a customer uses, the more that they pay. So the data centers are paying more for their water than a regular homeowner would, because they're not using as much water. But it's not one customer causing another customer to have to pay more for their water or waste water service. No. Okay. All right. Thank you. So most of my questions were answered. I guess on the lessons learned question from supervisor Sains, I guess the idea is to get the letter out earlier. Because when I opened it at my house, I think the public hearing was a day after or something like that. So that I was like, there's no way. Did you get a good number of people to the second public hearing? We had one person show up to the second public hearing in person and one person attend virtually to the public hearing. Did you get any feedback any other way besides? Yes, we also accepted email and phone calls and did get a numerous phone calls and emails and we responded to every inquiry. And when you say data centers pay more for water, are you saying that they pay a higher rate? The commercial tier one rate is higher than the residential tier one rate. Yes. Okay. All right. And then on the Broadrun Farms project, it sounded like we stepped back a little bit or loud and water stepped back a little bit so that the EPA could finish their work. And now we And now you are sending out an RFP, I guess, to finish the work. Yes, so the EPA and Alton can jump in at any point. The EPA and Army Corps of Engineers has awarded a contract for their portion. And so we are going to follow on the heels of that because we need to tie in to their system. So we will be issuing an item. Gotcha. Okay. And do you have any sense whether that work at the core of engineers or the EPA will slow down at all? Given the climate right now? The answer so far has been no. This project is planning. Okay. Alrighty. But that is something we've been monitoring very closely. Okay, because the money for the water lines that the federal government's putting in has not been allocated, right? Because they just put out the RFP, is that correct? They awarded the contract. They awarded the contract. That's correct, yes. Okay. But money has not been allocated. Does Congress need to allocate? Do you know, you may not know, I'm sorry. I apologize. You'll be okay. Yeah. Yeah, I will say that question for somebody else. But I think, oh, and I also wanted to say, I think it was last summer. I had a tour of the Trap Rock facility. And it was really cool. So I just wanted to say I appreciated that. And I learned a lot about the work of loud and water. And it was well worth it to go do the tour and I just wanted to thank you for that. Thank you. All right we will move on to information item number four. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. Hello, thank you. Welcome. I am my colleagues are here to give a little bit more about the I'm going to be a little bit more about the I'm going to be a little bit more about the I'm going to be a little bit more about the I'm going to be a little bit more about the I'm going to be a little bit more about the I'm going to be a little bit more about the I'm going to be a little bit more about the I'm going to be a little bit more agencies and other economic policies put forward by the White House. Again, this information is extremely preliminary and as Mr. Reiser said during his presentation in item 1, the level of uncertainty around a lot of the topics in this item cannot be overstated. So I just want to say that up front. We analyzed the topic from a couple different areas, the first is economic outlook as well as employment and then moving on to the impacts or potential impacts on the county's direct federal grants as well as any pass through funding that the county receives from the federal government through the state. And then finally, the item, Complement's Mr. Reiser's item and its effects on loud-end businesses as well as residents and employees of the federal government. And so we're happy to take any questions that you might have on the content of the item. And staff does suggest that we continue to monitor the situation and report back to the Finance Committee as we learn more about actual actions being implemented by the federal government. And as I'm concluding, I will note that our federal lobbyist is on the web act. Should you have any specific questions for him? Both of us. Thank you. Are we going through the slides? Oh, I'm sorry, I apologize. And the slide up here just summarizes the federal funding items that are in the item to this evening. Oh, okay. So you didn't initially have a presentation. No, we just pulled it together this afternoon and sent it out. Thank you very much. I just assume that there was going to be one. Okay, well I appreciate that. Do any of my colleagues have questions? Supervisor LaTerno. Yes, it's a county staff question really and it's probably not necessarily one you can answer. I'm just curious on certain projects like just say the root 50 Latin County Parkway interchange where we have federal funding near and due to my heart. Have we already actually received those funds or are we still waiting on a schedule to receive them and if so, you know, is there anything we have to do or on the funds have, if we have received them, do we have to spend them down or risk losing them at some point? As far as staff understands right now, there have been no changes to any previously awarded federal grants. And we will proceed spending them as our grant agreements stand right now. Could you just give back to me offline, then, specifically on whether we've actually gotten the federal grant on that project yet? I know it was awarded, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's been delivered. So. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Supervisor Sains. Thank you. It's kind of the same, but for everything, especially CDBG,, home investment partnerships, the Housing Choice Voucher Program, have he been receiving the funds since kind of the shakeup down in DC. And do we feel there's any issues that might be coming soon that we can foresee or have any information about because obviously no Mr. George, we had the issue over the summer with the voucher program and what not so and that definitely heard a lot of people for a brief period of time so we don't want to see the whole program be put on the shelf. So I don't know if you guys have anything or if our lobbyists who are joining us today have any insight, whatever can answer. So the latest and greatest as I've shared in other board meetings that I've attended like the T-Luck for example, you know, received the same type of questions. To this date I am still the Department of Housing and Community Development is still receiving funding notices. We are still communicating with our counterparts, you know, our program management counterparts. And we have not been given any indication that the funding will stop. We have had conversations where in the effect that there is impact, that there would be some type of a process. For example, that the housing and urban development would communicate with all the department, but at this point in time, no changes. Okay. And the supervisor saying to my dad, if it's appropriate, the continuing resolution that was passed in the House roughly, I guess about an hour ago now, specifically went down and listed certain block grants, including CDBG, the rental assistance program, several others like that, and specifically funded those within the. Now what happens with that CR going forward between now and Friday? We'll still see, but it kind of gives you a sense of Congress as to kind of where things are headed with those types of block grants. But we'll keep an eye and report back as often as we can. Okay. And then how long does this CR last, does it extend extended to this the US going through September 20 September the end of September? Okay, oh September 12 of this year. Okay. Okay. The end of September September 30. Okay. All right. Thank you Thank you Chair Randall. Yeah, but that's your that's your past the house at this point, right? Just just the house Just the house. Just the house. Just the house. Yeah, it has to go soon. Gosh, first of all, I hear you all loud and clear and I agree that there's much more that we don't know right now than we know. And we can only take a moment by moment. I have two questions. It will be helpful for us to also know in the future as we know what is impacting our school system. We don't that's not here yet. We don't know that yet. We know that tomorrow already we know that tomorrow the the Department of Education has been is going to be closed tomorrow and that it will be supposedly reopened on Thursday and we will be seeing some job losses. We have no idea what this means for our schools. And so we're going to have to know that since we are the funding source to the school system. So in the future, that would be helpful. The past through benefits programs, this was this is much more money than I then I realized. Although I guess that's about what I realized, to be honest. So this is money that is received from the federal government that comes through the county to basically pass through. It might be Medicare, WIC, SNAP, TANF. Is that correct? Is that what that is? And that is $20 million a month. That's specific to Medicaid. That's just, oh, that's just Medicaid? Correct. That was on the slide and in the item just as an example. Correct. That is just Medicaid. Oh Okay Okay, thank you Okay, thank you, but that example is that's that is the Medicaid amount Yes, ma'am. We have no idea what with WIC or TANF or snap what look like? That is solely Medicaid to snap. We don't know the amount specifically. We have a general idea based on the number of folks in during expansion. But no, and again, we have not received anything from our federal partners, which means our state hasn't. Okay, all right. Thank you, thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. So it says, said in the item, a total of 280 health and human services positions receive some portion of federal funding accounting for 11 million and then it said DFS health department M SADs Including those but then DFS administered 221 million in direct client support and that's TAMP Medicaid child care supplements energy assistance energy assistance, SNAP, rapid rehousing. So, what we're saying is of the 221 million that we process every year, 20 million a month is Medicaid. Correct. Okay, okay, great, okay, I just want to get that straight in my head. And then the HUD bucket is 15 million. it looks like if you kind of add those together roughly, the HUD bucket is 15 million. And then we know the schools, it's 48 million because they told us that at our joint meeting. And then on the grant side, I was a little confused because it said the county is 54 active federal grants across 20 departments Equalling 57 million as of FY 25 budget, but we expended 116 million FY 24. Does that mean that we've expended maybe half of what we spent last year so far and we're going to spend more in grants in the second half of FY 25. So that expenditure figure also includes not just the FY 25 but when we see funding from the federal government, they could be multi-year or no year funding. So we're counting for those expenditures in that room. Okay. Okay. I guess while we're on grants, do we see how we analyze or do we see how the hypothetical tariffs that we're on again, off again, and now appear to be on again might do to the CIP? We are evaluating the impacts of those tariffs and if they do proceed at the level that they are being discussed It will have an impact on materials of course And then do we have and I know we didn't talk about this before the item But do we have any idea? the amount of money that our residents are receiving in Medicare and and social security. And would we have any way to know that? Because that's different, right? Medicaid is different. Medicare is that those are Medicare and Social Security are benefits, not entitlements. So I know that we don't process any of that, but do we have, maybe our federal lobbyist would know? But do we have any way to assess? Because really if those stop, if those stop, I mean that's like a death spiral. But do we have any way to figure that out? I think that's a question we can take and do some research on for you. I appreciate that. And Ms. Fernandez, as far as you know, and I think we talked about this in the budget work session, are there folks, you think said, I believe that people are not stopping with their appointments and they are not stopping with coming to the county right now for your department. You haven't seen any decline so far. We have not seen any of it. Okay. Okay. But Dr. Goodfriend has said, I believe that health works and the free clinic, Northern Virginia dental clinic and health works have seen appointment cancel thank you buddy appointment cancellations and fewer new patients so what why do you think that would be well I could tell you from our experience that initially there was a significant drop-off in patient appointments and cancellations I think some of some of that initial fear seems to have abdibit for our appointments. But it is, as folks who said, there's a lot of uncertainty. So if there was something high profile in the county that may change again. What we are seeing for the health department that's impacting us is when we do an outbreak investigation and we're trying to get information on contacts, it can be more difficult. Individuals are less likely to want to give names and contact information of people that they know to us tonight they had been. That is interesting. Okay. And then for MHSADs, have you seen a drop-off or reluctance to obtain services? Not at this point. No, you're good. It's not that we can say is significantly significant. Okay. Okay. All right. Okay. I think that, do we know, and actually on the CR, if maybe the federal lobbyists or I want to say Mr. Alfonso, but that's Mr. Lopez. The continuing CR was not clean. So were there any cuts in anything attached to that? There were significant cuts including language in there that said that gave Doge a bit of a free hand in continuing the work that they're doing. And so that came out in the language as all the last couple days. So, considering also what's happening with the potential for cuts that we're hearing about in Department of Education, this is going to, I think, change some votes when this goes to the Senate, and the next day or two. And so, I would say right now, it's better than 50-culture chance that we see a shutdown and it's unclear how long that shutdown would last. And the one thing to be aware of, if we do pass the CR through September, the end of September, all of the appropriations, earmark requests that had gotten through the process would be gone. We'd have to resubmit them for FY 2026. Okay. All right. Boy, that gives me a lot of anxiety. Okay. Thank you. And I understand staff that the thought is that we'll bring back this item quarterly. Unless there's something significant to talk about. Is that the idea? I think our recommendation is as needed. So if you choose quarterly, we can accommodate that. Okay, we can start with that. Madam Chair. Dr. Griffin, just a little different subjects. Just imagine just maybe there was some person born in 1965. Does that person need to get their measles shot again? I'm getting it tomorrow, Madam Chair. In general, no. If you're in a high risk occupation, then likely if you've only had one measles vaccine, you may want to get a second. So people in the healthcare care industry, if you're going for international travel in areas that have measles, if you're going to domestic travel in areas that have measles, that it may benefit you to get a second measles shot. But for most people, if you're staying domestically and you've had your one measles vaccine, then that's probably fine. Thank you. Thank you. A little off topic there. But thank you. I appreciate all your work on this and appreciate you guys all your work and do let us know if you'll let us know funding something suddenly stops, I suppose. So thank you very much. Thank you. Madam Chair, I am getting my measles vaccine update tomorrow. But it wouldn't be me. I mean, with the case, Oh, item five, volunteer fire and rescue. I'm watching Chief Johnson, I guess, does Chief Johnson doesn't have to come down? No? Okay, okay. I'm getting mine tomorrow because I keep seeing there's cases, there's measles cases. They flew into dollars, I'm getting it. I'm getting it. Okay, good evening. I fancy seeing you here again. All right. So good evening, Chair Briskman and committee members. We are here to present an information item to you on a core Hort to internal control maturity assessment. So to my immediate right far right I have Dr. Meakin Cox from our Department of Finance and Procurement. Mr. Ms. Tiffany McCoy, who is from Forensic Manager, from Cherry Becker, who performed the actual assessment. So the two are going to present to you together in the presentation, so I will pass it to the team. Thank you, Georgia. So Madam Chair and Finance Committee members, we will just start with some highlights from the background for the Internal Control Maternity Assessments as a result of some changes in 2019. We did do a planning for a new internal control maturity assessment process in 2020, where DFP staff brought back a framework based on continuous improvement in September of 2020. That was moved forward by the Finance Committee. In 2021, the DFP staff in conjunction with Terry Becker and the volunteer fire and rescue company leadership developed a new process and a new tool in 2022. That tool was both evaluated for validity as well as then approved by the Board to make sure that we have a transparent, continuous process that helps the volunteer fire and rescue companies improve their policies and procedures and also look to support ongoing development of those procedures knowing that the primary responsibility of these companies is to help residents. So it is this give and take in terms of time and capacity, which we recognize. We also had the new tool validated and completed cohort one in 2023. The results were better than expected for our first cohort. And when we reported that in 2023, we did have four companies who had strong internal controls to with high internal controls and then one with average internal controls. For company cohort two, we will walk you through what those controls look like this year. And with that, I will turn it over to Ms. McCoy. Thank you. I'll turn your mic on. Good evening, everyone. Thank you. So I'll start with the background of our overall engagement to provide an overview of the different phases that we went through and then I'll provide individual results for all those that participated in cohort 2. So as a background, we are engagement for each cohort and calls for faces. The first would be interviewing. That's where we take the opportunity to meet with the treasurers and their staff to understand their current state of their processes in our core five process areas that are included in the assessment. So that means we have walkthroughs related to cash receipts, expenditures, vendor management, account reconciliation and credit cards. And then also too we do an evaluation of the treasurer or those responsible for the financials of their education and background experience. So the first phase after interviewing is interviewing and then after that we walk into testing and so we take a look at their policies and procedures and we compare that to what they are actually doing in practice to potentially identify discrepancies or opportunities for improvement. From there, we take all that information and we score based on the criteria provided in that approved FRC tool to then provide rankings for each of the company's individual controls in those five process areas. So in terms of the FRC tool, again, we have those five core process areas and we're looking at overall documented policies and procedures and we're also evaluating what's happening in the current state processes. And so you'll see on the screen the eight companies that participated in the cohort two. And so I won't read them off, but those are the eight for the second cohort. So for the next slide, these are any questions about the overall process before I move into individual. Okay, great. So for the evaluation back to that criteria of how we're evaluating, so points are assigned in each of the areas based on the strength of the internal controls, and obviously that education and experience as well. And then based on those points, everyone is, each company is assigned a percentage and that percentage would then classify them with either having low functioning controls, average functioning controls, moderate functioning controls, strong functioning controls, or the goal standard of controls, which is perfect score. Everything is great as pie. So for this particular cohort, so we can take the opportunity to provide us with a summary of cohort one. It was similar to cohort one, but we did have three companies that were identified as having strong functioning controls, two that were identified as having moderate functioning controls, and then read that were determined average functioning controls. So the results were consistent with what we were initially expecting so there were no overall surprises. Are there any questions? No? Great. So then this particular chart provides a summary of the ranking of how the company scored across those different process areas. So the highest area or the area where companies did the best or have the strongest controls were related to credit and debit cards with the highest score being 7. And then the area that had the greatest opportunity for improvement across all companies was vendor management. And so at this current time based on those results, there are some additional efforts that will be made going presently and going forward in the future to help support companies and improving the maturity of controls across all the five process areas, but most specifically the most urgent need would be vendor management. And so our final chart just gives us summary on obviously with any assessment or audit we provide management with the opportunity to respond to the findings and our assessment and so the overwhelming majority of our responses were a concur which means that the companies agreed with our findings and then there was also a few that had concur with comment or not concur with comment. And so in those instances, the majority of the comments there were just the companies taking the opportunity to provide a rationale for the discrepancies we identified and to kind of talk through how they could work to improve their maturity based on their existing resources. And that would be resources between people, resources between their processes, resources between their technology. And I think that now turn it back over. Yes. So thank you, Ms. McQuay. The next steps are that we are working with LCFR staff in their administrative offices to develop and support improvements to the vendor management policies across companies. This is something that we know will be built into the Treasurer's Quarterly meetings. We will provide specific examples for them to help build up the controls, but also balance that efficiency or the strength of the control with that efficiency given that they are volunteers and they are non-profits. So we are looking at the nonprofit literature for examples of strong controls that balance the timing. We also will be planning for cohort one for their fiscal year 2026 assessment. So this will be their second assessment. And we will be working with them starting in July and training them on their second assessment reviewing any additional attributes that may need to be re-looked at in terms of cohort one and then provide detailed feedback on specific samples for them. And with that, we will take questions. Thank you. Did my colleagues, oh, supervisor, Luterno? Just one kind of general question. So we've been doing this for a little while. Have we seen a general improvement in the performance of the volunteer company since we started? Overall I would say yes. Qualitatively, we have seen improvements in the policies and procedures and we've also seen improvements in their collaboration on policies and procedures. Okay, because ultimately I think that's what we're trying to achieve here. We're trying to sort of help them along themselves to see where they have weaknesses and look at others and look at past results. So are there any kind of lagging areas that need more emphasis still? Well, I think one of the lagging areas is vendor management and one of the issues that we continue to see is often the vendor management area is lacking because they don't have new vendors. They're working with the same vendors over and over. And so the process may be absent because they've had no need for the process. So that is something that we are working this year to shore up to make sure that in the case that they eventually have a new vendor, they have a process in place. All right. Thank you. Chair Randall. Thank you. This is a lot of work for volunteers to do. And so I see Chief Johnson and Chief Pro back there, two volunteers who do this work. Please give them our thanks because that's a lot of work. And as you said, these are volunteers. So it's pretty amazing. There are eight companies in cohort two. How many are in cohort one? Seven. There are seven in cohort one. All right. And so you said that cohort one will be starting phase two. Is that what you said? That's correct. So we only have two cohorts. They're just split in half. Right. And so they're assessed every other year. OK. All right. All right. Thank you. The only question I have is the vendor management was the low scores. What vendors are we talking about? Do they manage? So it could be anything from purchasing gas or purchasing that may be a poor example. I will have Chief Johnson come up and say something if I have missed speak. Glad he's here. But no, it's things like an bookkeeping service is technically a vendor. Anything that goes to a procurement process should have a process in place. Anything that they're purchasing related to uniforms related to supplies related to masks or apparatus would be part of a vendor management plan if they are purchasing it through procurement. Okay, cool. All right, I'm good. I think we're good. You know. Yeah, thank you. All right, our last item for the evening will be item number 11, beneficial use of landfill gas. I'm sorry. You should be chair. I'm not sure. I'm sure. the I'm fine. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening, committee chair briskman, chair rando, members of the committee. We have a presentation for you this evening and I'd like to kind of start it out on the now turn it quickly over to Mr. Veney to provide a little more detail. But as just a little bit of background, gosh, March 15th, 2022, almost three years ago, BMI was brought forth by the board to explore some opportunities that we could look into relative to capitalizing on some of the waste energy trash, right? I'm trying to talk to trash tonight. And so that evolved through a process where we went through an RFI and in narrative down in seven of the 10 respondents really focused on capitalizing on the landfill gas itself as a renewable beneficial use to capitalize on. So we went through that and we're now ready to bring back to you some recommendations for your consideration. And I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Vini. Thank you. Good evening, Chair Brisbane and Chair Randall. Happy to be here, Mark of any Assistant Director with General Services to talk about the beneficial use of landfill gas, some potential uses, economic and environmental benefits, and then some considerations and recommendations for you all. Little background on our landfill, as you all know, it's been in operation since 1971, 180 acres, a disposal capacity of over nine million tons of municipal solid waste with a still 60 year life. Landfills all over the world, whenever trash decomposes it produces a lot of gases. And in particular, a gas known as methane, which is one of the most harmful greenhouse gas emissions that we have. So most landfills, flair, their greenhouse gases, if you go to the next slide, Ernie. But we can do much better than that, and I think that was the intent of this board member initiative. It can also be captured and refined as a potential clean energy source. And all over the US, we see different uses of this methane, direct use, electricity generation. But as Mr. Brown pointed out, renewable natural gas or RNG is the one that we're most interested in. And we'll talk about that in a little more detail for you all this evening. And as I said, this has all been done successfully in the United States. In fact, our neighbor, Prince William County currently has an R&G plant at their landfill where they're converting this methane to renewable natural gas. The benefit of this is it provides monetary benefit. This energy source has value and it also is very much an alignment with our county energy strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Interesting fact, the Loudoun County landfill is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions from county facilities, not overall in the county but from all our county facilities. Not that it's a large number, but if we look at government by example, our largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions is our county landfill. So it behooves us to try and address that as well. So when we look at the potential uses, I want to show you a little diagram here, and it seems to be missing there. On the left side of the equation, you see a typical landfill, and then you see the blowers. We have blowers at our landfill that help capture that gas and currently we're flaring it. But what we're suggesting here is if you go to the middle of the diagram on the right where it says processing of vendor or the county through a capital project could put in filters and different types of equipment that basically captures and distills and refines that methane gas and puts it in a pipeline for further use. So we're really just taking that gas and turning it into another source of energy that has value and that's really the crux of what we're suggesting here. Either the county does it as a capital project or we get a vendor to come in and do it for us. So that's really the decision before us. If we look at trends for landfill gas in the United States, we see that renewable natural gas is clearly on the up. Electricity and direct use have fallen off. RNG has a lot of value currently. There's a lot of demand for this renewable natural gas. There's something known as RINs. You might have seen that in the article, the agenda item known as Renewable Identification Numbers. These come from the EPA. And basically, a vendor or the county keeps track of that landfill gas and you get a credit for those RINs. RINs are a market commodity. They can be sold, they can be traded, they have a lot of value. Currently, the value is very, very high. So what ends up happening, if you go to the next slide, is we can take those rins and basically in a closed loop system, get credit for them and use them to fuel our RNG buses. So that's what's particularly attractive about this item. The feasibility study indicated that the quality and quantity of landfill gas is sufficient to have a beneficial financial benefit. Obviously, if there's not enough landfill gas, then, you know, a vendor wouldn't be interested in coming in. The feasibility study recommends landfill gas to renewable natural gas. And as I mentioned, there's the two options. A vendor to design, construct, and operate it. Or a future county capital project. I do want to mention that this is very specialized, as you would imagine, and we would need a specialized vendor and consultant to help us deal with the many legal, financial, and environmental considerations. Fortunately, as you all know, and have provided funding for, we have a county energy strategy consultant, ICF, which is doing a great job for the county, that we can can use to help us do some of this work. So if I can go into a little more detail on the first option, there's no capital cost to the county. The consultant can help us develop an RFP, and we can develop an RFP very specific to build, own, and operate a facility at our landfill. And we think we can probably get that out there in early fiscal year 26. We expect that we'd get a robust response to that, and then we would go through those recommendations and come back to the board and look about potentially rewarding a contract. I will say that such a facility at the landfill is possible, but it is subject to a special exception approval. We did ask the zoning administrator that question and they did respond that it would need a special exception. This would be considered a government use and it would probably be allowed but we would need to go through that process just to make that very clear. So our recommendation is that we would, that you would authorize us to do an RFP for a vendor to build own an operative facility at our landfill and convert the existing landfill gas to renewable natural gas for both the economic and environmental benefits of the county. That's our presentation. We're happy to answer any questions or go into more detail as needed. Thank you very much. Supervisor Amstad. Thank you, Madam Chair. Is our assumption that renewable natural gas would be economically beneficial to the counties? That assumption based in any way on environmental protections that are in place now, but given the administration's reluctance to embrace climate change, might those economic insettives disappear? So in our discussions with our consultants and our neighboring counties that actually perform this, they believe that this is still extremely viable under the, all of the above model that is, is currently being evaluated because what you're actually doing is you are producing at a much cheaper rate, essentially, gas that is local and can directly go into the CNG pipeline. So it is natural gas. It's CNG, which a lot of people use. So there's no indication right now that the current all the above model would have a detrimental impact. We don't know. But because it's not technically in that basket of alternative energies that may get de-incentivized, it is actually a natural gas that is used universally in the all of the above category. It's good to hear second question and my last question. I know from time to time we hear that citizens would like to encourage their neighbors and for us to encourage their neighbors to compost. What strikes me about this is that this proposal is actually a smarter approach than having individual compost piles at everybody's home around the county, because then you're not controlling the methane, whereas if we go with bringing all the garbage into the county, into the landfill, and we can convert that methane to renewable natural gas. Then that strikes me as environmentally a much better approach. And on its surface it certainly is. The challenge that you have is landfilling is extremely expensive and limited in its longevity. We have 60 years of life left. So what conversion rates can take, conversion to a different process can take 20 to 30 years based on permitting. So for example, if we were to able to find a technology that could scale down to our size for energy, waste energy, right? The incinerators that you see out there that are operating. They operate in much larger volumes than Loudon County is going to produce for a very long time. Fairfax is a good example. They have an incinerator. They are twice the size of us in volume and population and they have flow control so they control everything and it comes to their site. Because they're out of landfill space, They're very limited landfill space so that was the option they had to go to so you are correct Capturing the the decomposition gases associated with composting And they call them digestors in an agricultural and small scale Decomposition or composting and they capture that and they and they use. They use this in dairy farms extensively to capture the methane, and it is a very large contributor to some of the RNG out there. So the balance is, so small scale composting, like we do in our backyards, actually has a better direct benefit because you're taking that quickly and introducing it back to the soil, where the are then breaking down the methane in the soil as opposed to letting it compost and release. So it's a timing issue. So balancing those nuances are really important. Thank you. You're welcome. Supervisor Luterno. That is the cost on all this stuff and that out. That's the one thing that was kind of missing from the items. So it's in the report itself, the cost. I didn't go quite that way. The cost for a capital project. And we intentionally did not put that in here because the variables are wide. So what was the actual number associated with the estimate for the build? the estimate in the feasibility study to build a capital facility at Arlandfield was over $20 million. If that was the question, what would it cost for? And then, but what is it produce and revenue? Or they estimate and again, these are estimates about a 61% rate of return. So it is a positive rate of return. So where it gets a little tricky is you negotiate, because of the rins, you would negotiate how much of that credit would go to the county versus how much would go to the vendor. But yeah, let me stop on that because I think we're confusing it too. So there's two scenarios here. One is which the county does it ourselves. The recommended, I think first, action is to try to get a vendor to do it. So starting with the vendor approach, does that mean the vendor is responsible for the cat-bex on construction? Everything. Operation maintenance, everything. So essentially, we're allowing them access to our landfill. They come in, build a facility, they get probably a large share of the revenue, but not all. Presumably, we get something, right? A percentage. A percentage of that revenue, 10, 20, whatever. That's one scenario. The other scenario would be if there was no vendor, then we have to build a facility ourselves. And then we still have a vendor to operate it, or we don't know. either way we could operate it ourselves, we could have a vendor come in and do the operation. There's a lot of options there So in that second scenario you're saying the rate of return is 66% but the rate of return on what? So in his example to the capital cost would be about $20 million Estimate the over a 15 year period on them. They're estimating about.6 million dollars. The energy sale revenue would be about $7 million and the 15 year environmental credit revenue. This is the rents, would be about $123 million. So- Explain to me how that works. I'm going to talk to the rent man, ask the rent man. So explain that. So the rents are a market value. They're constantly fluctuating and changing. Currently right now, they're very, very valuable. And I would also mention that both sides, both administrations like Ren's, so we don't think Ren's are going to go away. They're very much used a lot for landfills and other things. So what we believe will happen and what our consultant has told us is you will get a lot of vendors that want to come and build a facility at your landfill. The question is going to be how much do you want to give them versus how much does the county want to keep. In Prince William County when they initially did it, the vendor did everything, operated, maintained it, but the county got zero return. So there was some criticism, this was years ago, there was some criticism that the county gave too much away and now they had this valuable source that was, you know, going to the vendor. So they recently renegotiated the contract and I think they're giving the county a certain percentage of those rents. So what we would try to do is work with our consultant to decide what's in the county's best interest. There's a rent, but the rents themselves, these are essentially credits. They're credits. These are admissions credits that you're selling. Yes. And the admissions market, a carbon market basically. Exactly. And it's controlled by EPA. So they come from EPA and EPA controls it. So we wouldn't want to get involved in the market exchange. The vendor would be doing that and we would get, you know, the facility at our landfill without a capital cost. we'd also get the ability to close the system to use some of that RNG to fuel our buses. So we see that as quite honestly preferable to a 20. And then like, there's still, if we have to build it ourselves, there's all these soft costs or these all these unsuitly. We're tying up staff, we're tying up parts of our capital to program all this kind of stuff stuff on something that will ultimately pay off, but it's a mess for us. So yeah, that's definitely preferable. So hopefully, I know it's the item said we tried this before, and we didn't have interest, but things have changed, the markets changed, these are much more in demand. And there's more landfill gas, so the older landfill gets, and the more feel that it's been used, there's more methane being produced. So we're finally at the age of maturity now, we're producing enough methane that there's value to come in. Okay. No, this is very interesting. That's very helpful. Ernie, I was at the landfill this weekend, which is not a common occurrence, but as always, great operation there. Always a good experience as going to a landfill could be. That is my last meeting of every week Friday evening afternoon at the landfill to have my one-on-one with our assistant director down there. One of my favorite places and I know that Chair Randall loves to go down there. That is one of her favorite places to go. We had a debate about how it smelled. I mean it's not horrible. It's not like, smell money actually, uh, super personal channel. It's, uh, it's what they did. They did get my $8. Yeah, we had a debate about how it smelled. I mean, it's not horrible. It's smell of money actually, uh, Supervisor General, it's, it's, uh, I guess, it's what they did. They did get my $8.60 sell. Right, so. There you go. Yeah, all right. Thank you. Could you just, uh, before I go to Supervisor Sains, what does the acronym stand for, Rin? Rin stands for Renewable Identification Number. It is an EPA, a government- God only government, renewable identification number. It is an EPA, renewable, government, renewable identification number. And it is an EPA credit for these gases. Okay, all right, thank you. Supervisor Saints. Great, thank you. Chair Brisbane, I'll go to a motion and speak. Are you on do your motion now? Yeah, I'm going to do the motion and speak within. Go for it. I move that the Finance Government Operations Economic Development Committee recommend that the Board of Supervisors authorize staff to develop an issue, an issue a request for proposal for a vendor to build, own, and operate a facility at Loudoun County. Landfield to convert, existing land, fill gas to renewable, natural gas for economic and environmental benefit of the county. Second. Motion made and seconded. Do you have an opening? Yes, thank you, Chair Brisbane. Thank you, staff, for the update. This has been weaving in and out as you mentioned. This was looked at way back in 2015 or so. Didn't get much interest in 2022. I believe I brought up a BMI to look at this and do a RFI, which we did get a lot of information and support on this initiative. So here we are finally in 2025, bringing this forward after doing some study and some homework and some research. I'm glad we're at this point and thank you for the information that you guys have given us here. And I think this will be beneficial for the county to use, obviously to capture some of the gas and turn it into renewable energy for buses and possibly into the grid as well. We can, as you mentioned, we can get some credits, some funding for it. And obviously please do not follow what Prince William County did originally and not get any You know direct benefit for the county. I know that's definitely that model. We're not gonna follow So Real quickly do you feel we might get some of those folks that were part of the RFI part of now the RFP? Some of them have already reached out to us. No, to look at that. Yeah. A lot of interest. I'm sure there is. I think we're going to get a lot of interest and have some good proposals and I just thought it's out here for staff. Make sure we renegotiate a good deal. We're obviously going to bring it back to us anyway to see. But I'm sure we'd no go share a good deal for the county when that time comes because it's obviously two-way street, but definitely make sure that it's been overfitting in the county. Thank you. Any other comments in the motion? Madam Chair. Happy to go. Happy to go for this as long as you don't ever make me go to the landfill. I'm glad you got me. You're not going to come for the ribbon cut? It sounds like Friday nights the best time to go. So, when do we think this will all come to fruition? So, do we have a timeline? Rough? I know it's rough. It's very rough. We believe that we can bring the RFI out, RFP out early in fiscal year 26. It'll run for its course. The challenge that we have is they have to do this special exception. So they have to actually go through the design phase, go through the special exception, get that approved. And then you'll actually have something to negotiate. And that's where the meeting potatoes as I've been told where the negotiation happens. So 2030, 2028, 2027. No would be much closer to us. I think, depending on how the permitting process goes, it could probably be inside of five years. OK, great. And can you just, so it's said in the item, 3.3 million tons of CO2E over 15 years would be taken out of the environment. Can you contextualize that? Is that a lot? No, so what I would like to do. It sounds like a lot to me. What I would like to do, Committee Chair Brisbane, is work with our energy consultant to help contextualize that and give us a visual, so I'm giving you accurate information. But it is a lot of gas is being removed. OK. Listen, I'm super excited about this. I came back from the NACO at Hillsboro, where I visited their landfill, which is obviously much bigger. And I was super excited that what they're doing is burning and then powering their own wastewater treatment facility with it and it's very impressive. I came back and was all excited, called up Ernie and you probably hate it when we do this, but like, can we do this? Can we do this? We're working on it already. But it's my understanding that our land feels just not big enough to do something like that. So, but I'm really proud that we're doing what we are doing here. And I can't wait for it to start and good work. Motion made by Supervisor Sains, seconded by Supervisor Briskman. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. You're going to give me my closing, but that's OK. Oh, I'm sorry. Would you like a closing? Go ahead. thing we would say is like smooth as fast as possible. All in favor? Hi. I'm sorry, would you like a closing? Go ahead. The only thing we would say is like smooth as fast as possible on this. Yes, sir. Thank you. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. That motion will pass unanimously. 5-0. And with no further business in front of us, I call the finance add some salt. Thank you.