March 17, 2026 Board of Supervisors Meeting - Mar 17, 2026

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Fairfax County Board of Supervisors 7h 41m 6 speakers 8 agenda items transcribed 6 days ago official recording ↗

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What opening remarks and moment of silence recognitions are made at the start of the meeting?

Susan McCracken 0:04

No, they said they have to switch one to our large,

Jeffrey C. McKay 0:07

we'll take our cards. Yours should be fine.

Susan McCracken 0:08

They said some of them they should be. So

Jeffrey C. McKay 0:19

Good morning everyone and welcome to our board meeting of march seventeenth, twenty twenty six. Um and for those who celebrate, happy Saint Patrick's Day. Can't think of a better way of spending Saint Patrick's Day than here in the board auditorium. So, um, I do want to also announce that uh Supervisor Sizemore Heiser, due to a longstanding family commitment, will not be with us today. Um, but we'll be following the board meeting uh remotely, as will her staff. And we're gonna begin our board meeting the way we always do, uh, which is with a moment of silence to be followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. And in a moment, I'm gonna ask all who are able to stand for a moment of silence to be followed by the Pledge of Allegiance.

Jeffrey C. McKay 0:57

But before we do that, we do want to announce a few uh folks and individuals we want to keep in our thoughts and prayers, and I'm gonna recognize my colleagues after I go through uh what unfortunately is a pretty long list of of mentions this morning uh that we can all reflect on during our moment of silence. Uh first, um, as everyone knows, uh we have lost a number of US military service members in their current engagement in Iraq. Uh we would ask that we keep all of our men and women in uniform and their families in our thoughts and prayers, particularly uh in a community like Fairfax that has such a large military population of both active service members as well as veterans. Uh secondly, uh we know that uh the Commonwealth of Virginia lost Lieutenant Colonel Brandon Shaw, who was unfortunately tragically, uh lost.

Jeffrey C. McKay 1:47

Lost his life in a shooting that happened not far from here at Old Dominion University. And of course, there's a lot of people in Fairfax County that have connections, uh deep connections to ODU. Uh unfortunately, as I mentioned, Lieutenant Colonel Brandon Shah uh lost his life after an act of violence that occurred on campus. Uh he was a veteran of both the wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan and a professor of military science. as well as the department chair Of ODU's ROTC program. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends, as well as uh particularly those involved in the ROTC program, both at Old Dominion and across the Commonwealth, but also uh with all those in the ODU monarch family who have been affected uh by this act of violence that occurred on campus.

Jeffrey C. McKay 2:35

Um secondly, I need to mention uh someone who was close to me and I think Close to potentially other members of this board, including well, not he's not a member of our board, I almost demoted him, but also our county executive in the passing of Patricia Pat Matthews. And if you didn't know uh Pat Matthews, she was a force uh in our DMV community. She passed away after a courageous battle with breast cancer. She was born in Baltimore, Maryland, um, and was coming of age in Washington D C during the civil rights movement. And those experiences had a profound effect on her, shaping her lifelong commitment to racial and social justice. Pat was the founding president of the Northern Virginia Health Foundation and her vision to advance health equity uh shine through where her leadership uh

Jeffrey C. McKay 3:25

Generated more than 17 million dollars in grants given out to nonprofits, increasing access to health care. Uh Pat was recognized by the Washington Business Journal as Women Who Mean Business Honoree. She was also a trusted community partner right here in Fairfax County, and someone I got to, and I know a lot of our staff and other board members got to work with her very closely throughout all of our work on our one Fairfax. Yeah. And her dedication and commitment to underserved communities was second to none. Our condolences go out to Pat's family, friends and colleagues across our region uh who knew her well. Uh, we sadly also lost master technician Raul Perla, and he was a master technician in our Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department who passed away from occupational cancer.