Board of County Supervisors Meeting - Work Session - Jun 11, 2024

meeting

Prince William County Board of Supervisors 6h 41m 9 speakers 8 agenda items transcribed 1 day ago official recording ↗

▲ 0

Transcript

jump: agenda · speakers · find in transcript

Transcript

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

What opening remarks and procedural motions begin the meeting?

Deshundra Jefferson 17:45

All right, good afternoon everyone. We are gonna start today's meeting. Today is two o'clock on Tuesday, June 11th. Let us start with a moment of silence.

Deshundra Jefferson 18:08

All right, let us rise if you are able for the Pledge of Allegiance. of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Before we move on to our regular agenda, I have one addition. Supervisor Margaret Franklin has requested to join us remotely. If I could get a motion.

Alan Gloss 18:40

So moved. Second.

Deshundra Jefferson 18:42

All right. All in favor? I doubt there's any discussion.

Alan Gloss 18:48

Deshundra Jefferson 18:48

will never live that down.

Deshundra Jefferson 19:08

I got you, I got you. I'm sorry, let me.

Deshundra Jefferson 19:31

Let's see. Is it working again?

19:42

Yes. Okay. I'm going to go.

Unknown 19:42

Okay. Vote unanimous. Supervisor Franklin absent from vote.

Deshundra Jefferson 19:50

All right. We will welcome her in because now she can vote with us. We see you, Margaret. How are you? All right, now we're gonna move on to item three, public comment time. I am gonna call people up in groups of five. Please remember to say your name, your magisterial district, or where you generally reside. And let's see, I'm gonna start with Mr. Jason Brown, Matt Wonder, Kyler Johnson, Michael Whitlock, Brian O'Hara.

Deshundra Jefferson 20:34

And remember, we have three minutes. You'll have three minutes, and you'll see it up on the screen. Oh, up back here. Yes. All right, sir, you may proceed. Thank you.

Jason Brown 20:48

Good afternoon. Sorry, can you hear me? Good afternoon. My name is Jason Brown. I am in the Brentsville District. I've been a resident in Gainesville for a little over 16 years. and I'm here to oppose the initiative to remove the data overlay district. Not only am I a resident, I am a business owner, a local business owner. I am the president and partner of the Anderson Company. We've been called Prince William County home for a little over 25 years now. We have three other affiliated companies within the county, and we genuinely love the county. We're proud supporters of many organizations and charities in the county, charities such as Osborne Park High School, Youth for Tomorrow, the local turnover police.

Jason Brown 21:31

We donate to, we adopt local families every Christmas, and we are happy to do so. We love doing it, and we do it because we're able to do it. And right now the reason behind being able to do it is the data center market. Our company, like I said, with the four companies total, we're approaching 500 employees, over half of which are Prince William County residents. Over the past several years, over 85% of our business has been in the data center market, and the last couple years alone, over half of that has been in the Prince William County alone. Without the data center market, the 500 people, 500 employees, 500 families that look to us to support them, that number would probably be under 250, probably closer to 200.

Jason Brown 22:13

I don't know what it would be, and I really don't care to find out, to be honest with you. What I do know is we would be kicking 300 families to the curb, so to speak, because we couldn't support them, and the other 200 families that we would employ would also be struggling, as we would be struggling for existence. And that doesn't stop with us. It funnels down to all our subs, our suppliers, the local asphalt plants, the quarries, the concrete plants, all provide several hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs. That's several hundred, if not thousands, of families that are relying right now on the data center market. You go knock on their door and ask them if they're busy. They're going to tell you they're, they're slam busy and they're busy with data centers.

Jason Brown 22:50

Construction is by far the single largest employer people anywhere around and without data center market in our area. That's, that's just it right now. That is the employment here. Um, the U S chamber of commerce did a study and I'm going to quote them. They said each building supports or each building employees about 1700 construction workers during its construction. You multiply that by the number of data centers in the county, and those are the people that are putting money back into our local stores, our mom and pop stores, the gas stations, the restaurants, the box stores, doing the home improvements.