Board of Supervisors Budget Work Session #4   3/23/2022

All right.

Thank you, Mr. Morris.

Good afternoon, everyone.

I call to order this meeting of the Albemarle

on March 23, 2022.

This meeting is being held pursuant to and in compliance with ordinance number 20-A16 and ordinance to ensure the continuity of government during the COVID-19 disaster.

The supervisors who are electronically present at this meeting are Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna District, Supervisor Jim Andrews of the Samuel Miller District, Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District, Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District, myself Supervisor Donna Price of the Scottsville District, and Supervisor Ned Gallaway of the Rio District will be joining us momentarily.

The opportunities for the public to access and participate in the meeting are posted on the Albemarle County website, on the Board of Supervisors homepage, and on the Albemarle County calendar.

I would also like to mention that our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, our County Attorney, Mr. Greg Campner, our Senior Deputy Clerk, Mr. Travis Morris, and our Clerk, Ms.

All right, I do not have that.

Yeah, I do not have that on.

Okay, I will hand it over to Mr. Washburn and Mr. Becker will share his screen once he comes in with maps.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Campman.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members of the board.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Okay.

We are following the scheduled timeline for the local redistricting.

We started with the kickoff on February 2nd.

That began the public comment period.

There was the public hearing on March the 2nd, I believe.

And today is scheduled for the board to vote on one of our three proposed

County local disannual redistricting plans.

We went over, I think, all three of them in pretty significant detail at the March 2nd meeting.

And after that, we have had additional discussions.

Brian Becker of the mapping department with GDS, who is the mapping wizard, and me.

with several supervisors.

And as I understand it, you all, I believe, are close to a decision, but I don't want to read too much into the tea leaves.

But Brian is here with all of the cadaver that he can do with the maps.

And I'm here with my little summary of the

The written summary of the changes that each proposed option would effect.

All right, Mr. Washburn, thank you, Mr. Becker, thank you for being here as well.

Before turning over the supervisors, I would like to just preface this

that you did operating within the parameters that this board has previously set for you to work within in proposing options for redistricting.

Subsequent to that work, there has been some further review that brought in some other factors, which I think is what we'll be talking about today.

And so at this point, I will go through our order.

And Supervisor Andrews, you are

I want to point out that Supervisor Galloway has now been able to join us by telephone so the entire board is present.

Yes, I think that others probably have more to say in this particular context on this item.

That's correct.

And this requirement is necessitated by the census having occurred.

It's not necessitated at any other time if we happen to find out that the districts are no longer within five percent.

I'm going to make the point that we are likely to look at an option here that puts at least one of the districts at about 95.06% of the average and that happens to be Samuel Miller and it happens to also, we had a report at the previous meeting on the consent agenda on 2021 certificates of occupancy and 2021 building permits.

I mean, if you want to ask if others have questions of Jake, we can come back to them.

Thanks.

Yes, please.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Yes, good afternoon.

And maybe this is a question that Jay can answer because I think, because I know Greg is busy, but I believe that it is allowable under state law or state code that at any time that our community, Albemarle County,

wanted to go back and relook at the maps, the district lines, I guess I should say.

We are certainly able to do that.

That's not against the law to do it outside of the 10-year census data.

Yes.

And I think that sort of gets maybe one of the questions that some of us had earlier.

Donna, I really appreciate your comments early because we certainly appreciate all the work that Jake and Brian have done and we realize that this

Remapping process this year has really been sped up.

It's had to happen very quickly, not the fault of anybody at all on this Zoom call or in this locality.

It's been driven by factors beyond our control.

Quick timing and having to really make decisions very fast has led to some of the rush that we've all felt, but we really do appreciate Jake and Brian and everybody responding quickly as they can throughout this rush process, so thank you very much.

I wanted to just bring up the concern, and I guess I have a quick question for Jake.

Jake, the last time we talked about these options, you mentioned that, I believe that, and I'm going to start with option three, that option three

What you all discovered and announced at the last meeting about this, option three was the most dramatic in that it changes the most voters and almost at 6,000.

That's correct.

Option one affect the fewest number of voters.

And then I had a note that option two affected 650 more voters than, and I wanted to just clarify, so option two affects, and I say only when I'm comparing it to 5800, it compares 650 more voters than option one.

Is that correct?

I believe that's correct.

The numbers that we got were that option one would affect 1,746 voters and that option two would affect 2,418.

And as you said, option three would affect 5,860.

Right.

I think everyone had some small concerns when we looked at the three options.

I mean, in the reality, nothing's perfect, right?

We all had some concerns.

We all agreed that we were going to try and not that 6,000, almost 6,000 people seemed like a lot of people to be moving was our discussion.

And then I think in addition, and Ann can talk for herself, but I think Ann had a concern with option 30.

I am looking at in the time between the first time we discussed this and the meeting today Jake and Brian and Rod were lovely enough to print out big maps for me and I'll say specifically for me and I was able to walk through those maps very clearly

rather than just looking at maps online and look at exactly what the option one and option two actually how it affected my district, the Jack Jouett district.

I am very concerned about option one in that it really further changes the socio-economic balance of the Jack Jouett district.

and I guess what I would say is it exacerbates the socio-economic balance that already exists.

So I am very very concerned about option one and at this point I would just like to ask folks if we could review the visit to look at option two again and I am

very supportive of option two.

I am not supportive of option three and I have grave concerns and just don't feel like I can support option one based on the impact on the Jack Jouett district.

So there are, we're talking about the Magisterial District boundary changes only during the decennial census except

as provided by law upon a change in the boundaries of the county or town that results in an increase or decrease in the population of the county of more than one percent.

Two, the result of a court order.

Three, the result of a change in the form of government that would be changing from county executive to the county manager form of government or something like that.

or the result of an increase or decrease in the number of districts or wards other than at large districts or wards.

And since I was speaking, I think you were answering Jim's question, and I don't want to take his time, but I thank you for that answer because that's really good to know.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Supervisor McKeel and Mr. Campner.

And I would also like to go back to Supervisor Andrews if you have any follow up questions or comments in light of Mr. Campner's information.

That was very complete, more detail than I look for.

So thank you.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Each of us, I did not expend as much looking time in other districts than the White Hall district, so my experience is pretty well limited, but I think that the impacts to the White Hall district in either option one or two are so close, even though they are different.

that I couldn't support either one.

I do think also that the questions which we are trying to consider now are ones that we did not ask ten years ago and so that's sort of how we've gotten ourselves into this rather startling pickle and I think it's very important that we consider these things and so

I would just like to put a little on the parking lot for this topic that quite soon I would hope that we would have a discussion to prepare for next time so that we get all these things written down while they're in our minds and not allow us to go nine and a half years and the people who were there then will go, what happened here?

So I am okay with...

I had mixed up, actually, two and three.

I was very concerned about the one that offered a new precinct, which turned out to be option three, which I thought was option two.

So option one or two will be okay with me.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes, I'm not in favor of option three.

I can go with option one or two minimal difference in my Magisterial District.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

I have no questions.

I appreciate staff.

I too was able to go down and spend time looking at the maps.

And option one was my Rabinier option.

It changed some of it down on 29 in the Commonwealth Drive area.

So I agree with Supervisor McKeel of the concern of what is exacerbated

in option one.

And I think that concern outweighs some of the concerns I had with option two initially if that wasn't there.

So I'm certainly in favor of option two.

Thank you.

All right, thank you.

And I really appreciate several things.

Again, I want to

Those people do this every decade.

We don't have the corporate knowledge that we might have with other things.

And I also want to appreciate Supervisor McKeel, who took time to look at some of the kind of the deeper impacts of the redistricting options that were proposed to us.

As with the other supervisors, I am not in favor of option three, and I'll just kind of leave it there.

I think we've had enough expression

from a purely parochial interest, option one, I think is somewhat

for the Scottsville Magisterial District, but our duties as supervisors extend beyond our magisterial districts into the county as a whole.

And recognizing and respecting Supervisor Andrews concerns that with option two the Samuel Moore district is just barely within that five percent differential, I believe that the the negative impact on the Jack Jouett district outweighs the benefit that option one would have

River, the Scottsville Magisterial District, and that our responsibilities to the county as a whole necessitate that I also support option number two for the reasons that it is best for the county.

And I really applaud the tenor of our conversation today by all of the supervisors.

Mr. Washburn, Mr. Becker, I want to thank you again for the time that you gave us as supervisors over the last week or two to allow us to look in

further detail on this.

And so that's where I stand.

I too support option two is the best option for the county.

No, actually what staff would be looking for today is a motion to approve

I would love to make that motion, and I really, Donna, thank you for those words of appreciation to everybody.

I share them.

I just thank everybody for taking my concerns seriously for my district, and I would then move, and you'll have to help me with this, Greg.

And the maps.

I'll let the timekeepers decide which one came in first.

We have a motion, and we have a second.

Is there any further discussion?

Hearing none, if the clerk will call the roll.

Ms.

DeSouza-Kirtley.

Aye.

Ms.

DeSouza-Kirtley.

Yes.

Ms.

DeSouza-Keel.

Yes.

Ms.

Price.

Aye.

Ms.

Randers.

Yes.

Ms.

Gallaway.

All right.

Thank you, Board.

And again, it is so comforting to work with the body that can so easily put the benefit of the entire county above any vocal interest.

All right, Board, at this time, we will move on to our next item, a work session on athletic fields.

Yes, Chair Price, I will.

Trevor Henry, Assistant County Executive.

Thanks for the opportunity to have this work session this afternoon.

I think we're going to need to pause for a minute as staff are being brought in to support this work session.

Steve Hoffman, one of our senior project managers in the Facilities and Environmental Services Department, will be actually running the slide deck for us.

So if we can just stand by here for a minute

Thank you, Mr. Henry.

And it looks like, according to our director of community and public engagement, that everyone has now joined us.

And I do see the slide up.

Thank you.

And thanks, Steve, for going on this.

Next slide, please.

Myself, along with several staff, are here today, as is our engineer from Kimley-Horn Associates, to provide information for this work session.

And we will have some depth to this work session.

I'm glad we have plenty of time.

Great first agenda item and the board working through that matter because this gives us plenty of time to have a good discussion on fields and use in the county.

The objectives laid out on the screen are what we had communicated to the board a few weeks ago in responding to some questions the board had on today's work session.

I do expect the information that we share will lead to additional questions and input from the board.

Our hope is that by the end of this work session, the board feels grounded in the recreational needs of the community, the current

Resources that we have and the conditions of those resources that we have to bring to bear to meet those community needs.

And then strategies, including what's in front of the board in this budget cycle, the FY 23 CIP request to meet and respond to what those needs are.

Additionally, we'll do a deep dive into questions that were raised in the former Darden Towel Turf Project around

both the procurement methodologies, but other questions related to the environment and safety as it relates to the efficacy of turf.

And so again, we have our engineer that will be here to provide that input today.

We have many staff that are here in support.

There'll be just a handful of staff presenting.

We'll introduce ourselves as we go, either as part of the presentation or if responding to questions

throughout the work session.

Next slide, please.

You can see the agenda.

It's meaty.

The way we have laid it out is to divide it really into components with stopping points at the conclusion of each of those major sections.

We're going to start with really what I call a 3,000-foot view of the recreational and athletic field needs in the community.

Bob Krickenberger, our Director of Parks and Recreation will lead that.

He'll talk about what those needs are, how those needs have been derived, how they're currently being utilized, how we maintain our fields, and really what the current state is from that perspective.

Additionally, several board members had reached out to me over the past week or so and have asked specifically for Deb Tyson, who is our most tenured athletic director for Alomar County Schools,

and specifically is the AD at Elmore High School to come in and provide comment on her experience from an operations perspective having lived before a turf field was constructed for the high school and after.

And so she'll be in hopefully at the tail end of the Parks and Rec section.

I'm calling that out specifically because that was a board request and Deb has graciously

accepted the invite, but she also had a conflict during this time period, and she's been able to free up, you know, 30, 35, 40 minutes kind of during the start end of this session in order to be able to provide comment and answer questions.

We'll make sure that her piece is included, and it may be a little bit out of the agenda, but I would be remiss in not getting, and I see now that Deb has just joined, so I think we're right on track for being able to have her

comment.

At the end of the Parks and Recreation section, we'll stop, address board questions and comments, and then we'll move on to a piece that I'll lead, which is talking through the history of what was an approved project, how it was initiated, how it was approved,

and then the impacts of the pandemic and ultimately to where we are today in FY23 CIP request, specifically the request from Parks and Recreation.

Stop for questions on that, questions and answers, comments.

Kimberly Horn will pick up.

piece, which is reviewing what I'll say is a summary of the key findings and points from the engineering study that they completed.

Back in 2019, and I'll get through this history later on in the slide, but they had moved it to nearly complete in early 2020 when it was paused.

They finished that work.

The board received a copy of this last Thursday, and the engineer representing

Kimberly Hahn will do a deep dive into the technology and the construction methodologies, into some of the changes that we've seen in the industry, as well as address direct questions that were raised in 2019 concerning the environment and safety.

Many of those same questions the board has seen through a myriad of communications over the past several weeks as this item has been on the horizon.

Again, we'll pause for questions and then Lance Stewart will finish up the formal content

at the end where he basically brings us through to current state.

There are some post study development questions that have been raised that he'll address and also include a hypothetical turf project cost in today's dollars and using the best practices that have been revealed through the engineering study, again, for informational purposes for the board.

That will then get us to hopefully plenty of time for a continuation of the board discussion

with the goal of, again, creating an even playing field of knowledge, of information shared through staff and through our engineer board-to-board communications and then takeaways or next steps that will come out of this that affect us either in this budget season or in the future.

And I will note that I do believe this will take a good two hours of our work session.

Staff will be mindful of this and will move at a pace crisp enough to provide the board information, but leaving plenty of time for questions and interaction and then ultimately directions at the end.

And so with that, I will tee it up to Mr. Bob Krichenberger, our long tenured director of the county's Parks and Recreation Department.

Thank you, Trevor, and Madam Chair, members of the board, thank you and welcome for this opportunity.

I wanted to start off by sharing with you the number of athletic partners that Parks and Recreation coordinates field space for for the spring and fall season, as well as the current field inventory.

Just as a little background, Parks and Recreation reserves fields at the elementary and middle schools for over 30 organizations.

The high schools themselves, the high school field, excuse me, are reserved by the school division themselves.

As you may have been reading through the slide, we have identified 23 of the 43 fields receiving a higher level of turf maintenance.

I just wanted to touch on that for your awareness that what we mean that is those fields receive a more frequent mowing, a higher level of nutrient management, and these are all done on fields that are irrigated.

Next please.

Here, a little background of how we got here.

and how we identified the need for additional fields.

The need for additional athletic field was identified in two of our community needs assessments as well as coordination and input with all of our user groups.

The slide also shows the timeline of when the synthetic turf field were installed at the high school.

as well as our Parks and Rec CIP request for synthetic turf fields and lighting at Darden Town.

And I just wanted to add a note that in December of 2018, the Board of Supervisors approved the Biscuit Run Master Plan.

And as 2019, the DCR, we received, excuse me, approval from DCR for that Master Plan.

One thing I do want to really spell out is in 2018, the park and recreation need assessment, it ranked Darden Town synthetic fields and light as the second highest need, as well as Albemarle County has a 99-acre deficit in sports complex.

Next slide, please.

Here, again, this is directly from our community recreation needs assessment.

These projects were recommended as the highest priority by the consultant team.

The recommendations are based on the combination of data that considers community input, existing park-specific master plans, studies, and the overall level of service standards.

Again, I want to note that Biscuit Run had not come on fully online during this time.

And I know that if it had, this priority ranking would look much different.

If you reference page 96 of the 2018 Parks and Recreation Needs Assessment, Biscuit Run is listed on a visionary project, meaning to complete the master plan

and again this was due to the timing of Biscay Run coming online.

Next please.

A little bit of the timeline and kind of the background here.

Darden Tow was that was purchased in obviously by the city and the county in 1985 and the first agreement was developed in 1986.

which did not allow night lighting of competitive sports or other recreation facilities.

The 2007-2017 agreement amended the 1986 agreement and now allows for lighting with a mutual agreement of both governing bodies.

The county served as a fiscal agent.

and within the agreement, the funding formula is identified and based on the relevant populations of the two localities according to the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service annual population report.

Current funding split is 70% county, 30% city.

Okay, next slide, please.

Quickly, this slide again, it shows the overall inventory for county and city schools, excuse me, county parks and county schools.

We also added, also reflects other fields in the area that are not owned or managed by the county or the school division.

You'll see on the left fields that are natural grass and on the right are synthetic turf.

We are well aware that there are other small natural grass open areas that are used for practice throughout that are not reflected in this field inventory.

And I use that as an example of some areas in Charlottesville or in some of the other city parks that are just more of a neighborhood park and just have some open spaces but are used for practices and such.

Next, please.

This slide in detail is a management program and the overall timing that is currently being used at the county park fields and school fields that parks maintain.

And you'll see the schedule and what things are, that maintenance program that is being implemented.

Here we get into the identified field deficiency.

Currently, we have identified that we have a field deficiency of athletic field of 68.

Much of this information, if not all, was gathered from formal discussion with users and again our assessments.

You can also see that the slide reflects the number of months, days, and hours of play, practice, and games on the all-county athletic field as well as schools.

So again, those fields are used seven days a week, February through November.

Next, please.

Now these images are kind of a before and during field, to show the before and field conditions and demonstrate how quickly they can get worn.

The April 2021 image is a condition of the field in 2021 at the beginning of the season and that reflects

a full maintenance program and less play and less stress in 2020, and the less play and less stress was due to the pandemic.

The next, the other image, the one taken in June 2021, is actually, and I know it's a little difficult to see, but it's after a few months of play.

but you can see where there were spots that are already developing on the fields pretty much in the center of each one of these fields which are the high traffic areas.

Mainly the center and then in front of each goal.

Next please.

Here we have some of the limitations of best management practice inhibitors.

There's a saying in the turf field industry, grass grows by the inch and is killed by the foot.

And that's what we see.

It's difficult to limit field use for a year for renovations due to the high level of demand and use, as well as the overall deficiency of rectangular athletic fields.

Fields, just like anything else, they need time to rest and time to heal.

and currently we don't have that opportunity.

I did want to share with you the industry standards for best management field practices, which you can read that.

I will say that some staff, we do our due diligence and meeting the demand, which results in field being overused.

And another limitation that we have within our management program

is the inability to apply pre and post emergent pesticides.

And that is a critical step of a quality turf field nutrient program.

And rightfully so, that is due to the restriction of the shape of chemical policy.

On the very bottom there, and she said, if implemented an additional three to four field will be needed.

I wanted to touch on that quickly and just to make you aware that

If we were to depart, if we were to take on a more aggressive maintenance program, which would also include allowing fields to rest, taking fields offline.

And I use an example like taking 10% of our fields out of use for a full growing season for renovations.

Doing so because of the deficiency in fields that we currently have,

We are estimating that possibly an additional three to four fields would be needed.

And this is based on the number of teams playing, and we would have to relocate those teams during those renovation times.

And we don't have the inventory to do so.

Okay, next slide, please.

Now, I wanted to share with you a possible

Field Improvement Potential here.

This is done all the time.

It's not been done at any county fields that I'm aware of, county athletic fields.

But, excuse me.

Okay, I'm sorry, I lost track there.

It just would be a complete overhaul of the existing field at Darden Towers, which would result in these fields having to be offline for a full year.

Two growing seasons.

The project scope is listed within the slide.

The typical cost, again, this all depends and it varies on current field conditions and such, but the typical cost to do this could range from $720,000 to $1.2 million.

Again, this would be a complete total renovation on the field, basically starting from scratch.

Another option would be as to an additional staff support, an FTE with a high level experience, knowledge and expertise, and turf grass management with their primary focus would be in maintaining those fields at a much improved level.

A rough estimate and cost there for the budget impact in town for these would be around $70,000, which that includes, that would include salaries as well as the additional church supplies that the nutrient management plan that would help assist with providing a higher level plain surface for those who

Yes, Bob.

Thanks.

I'm going to transition over to Deb Tyson here in a minute.

But on the previous slide, I just wanted to clarify, on a work session like this, it's easy to start using the word just turf.

And there could be some confusion as to what kind of turf we're talking about.

This is a hypothetical renovation project.

of the grass fields.

And it would be restoring, it would be a renovation to keep them as grass, but one that would be an extensive renovation project.

We provided or we received some good industry data and square foot estimates from our Kimberly Horn consultant to help feed this information.

Site work costs have gone up universally across the

the community just through the pandemic and where we are now in our recovery, these costs reflect that work as well as kind of what the unique aspect of a complete field renovation would be.

But again, this is a potential option for kind of completely refacing and creating a better level of grass fields at Darden Town.

And we'll be pausing for questions just in a couple more minutes, but we want to, with Deb Tyson that's available, we're going to transition to her.

Next slide, please.

As I mentioned earlier, a couple of board members had asked for Deb by name to come to this meeting, and I have the honor and pleasure of introducing Deb Tyson.

She's athletic director for Elmore High School.

She has been with the school system for 32 years.

31 is A.D.

at AHS and is retiring at the end of this school season.

Deb, I'm sure that you probably have lost count of the number of hours that you've sat courtside and on the sidelines for events.

And I'll just say personally, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you for all that you've done for our community, all that you've done for schools, all you've done for

for athletics in our community and for women athletes in our community.

It is inspirational and meaningful to be around you.

I did a little bit of research on Deb, and she may have to explain what some of these acronyms are, but Deb is the VIA AAA Athletic Director of the Year.

She has earned the VIA AAA State Award of Merit.

as well as the VIAA Outstanding Leadership Award.

She is a dual Hall of Fame member of Guilford College and Central Community College and is a member of the Virginia High School League Hall of Fame.

And so that we appreciate all that you have done and I know you have earned your retirement and we appreciate you willing to come and spend a few minutes to talk to our board about your experiences operationally

before the turf field was built at Albemarle High School and since then.

So for board expectation, I'm going to turn it over to Deb.

She has three slides she'll talk through, and then we'll pause for questions on this overall segment around Parks and Recreation and information that Deb will provide here momentarily.

Trevor, thank you.

I'm not sure what those acronyms mean either, but I'll just enjoy them, okay?

But happy rainy day, supervisors.

Thank you for letting me be a part of your valuable time.

You gotta love Zooms on a day like today, right?

So there's some good in all of that.

Look, I know that there are a lot of opinions and, you know, information out there on synthetic turf.

So please understand that what I'm about to share with you is simply coming from someone who's been in the trenches, right?

Boots on the ground, been there every day.

I am certainly not an expert, but I am happy to pass on my experience as a AD who's run a high school sports program with turf and without turf.

You'll find probably my comments will not be a whole lot different than my constituents at Monticello and Western Albemarle.

I did check in with those guys.

I also checked in with some of our county coaches, some student athletes and parents.

But as it turns out, I'm old.

And they're not, and not all of them know what it's like before turf.

They just know the benefits of what they're experiencing right now.

So I hope this will be helpful.

Hopefully it's not too much or not enough, but here we go, okay?

So this slide, and I have to say I'm not used to saying next slide, so that's pretty a nice thing to anyway.

So here we go.

The installation of TERFs on our stadiums, you've seen the years for Monticello Western and Albemarle.

They're about 12 to 13 years old.

Both Charlottesville High School and STAB of course have them now.

I also have to say that my feeling and observation is that

Turf fields seem to be the norm, particularly at the high school level as opposed to the exception.

An example, five of the eight Jefferson District schools do have synthetic turf.

The exception is Orange, Louisa, and Goochland.

And I was talking to my buddy at Goochland today and he said, Deb, they did pass a bond to install turf in Goochland.

but because they came in over budget, they're going to have to put that on hold and we all know what that can be like.

22 out of the 23 schools in our region that we compete in, that includes the schools in Stafford, Loudoun County, and Roanoke schools.

They all have turf.

The exception is Harrisonburg and Harrisonburg does plan on installing two turf fields when they build their new school in 2024.

all of Virginia high school league fall and spring state events that compete on the fields they all have synthetic turf fields and again this is just from the high school perspective and not the you know the community necessarily.

From the perspective of the high school, we practice on our field six days a week as much as I'll let them.

We don't go on Sundays because that's against the Virginia high school leagues, and we do that in the fall, winter, spring, and the summer.

We host about 300 games each of our high schools on the stadium fields each fall and each spring because those are the two competing seasons, fall and spring.

We have about 14 field teams and about 425 student athletes that compete on turf fields.

I mentioned to y'all that I had reached out to some constituents and I thought, of course, it depends on who you ask, right?

But I thought their lens on their response to their thoughts on turf field was pretty interesting.

Of course, a coach is coming from a player's development point of view and you can see what that coach responded to and that it just allows the players to

for lack of a better word, just train and compete at full speed with no worries, right?

A parent is going to be concerned about scheduling and one parent said, Dev, it just gives me confidence that my kid's not going to play on a wet field and I don't have any last minute.

Yes, you can't ever ask a teenager a question that you don't want to get a straight answer, but the teenager said real simply, Ms.

Tyson, it's a game changer.

So I've just thought that those were kind of interesting.

If we can shift to shift to the next slide, thanks to some more specific points from the user point of view, kind of looking at before and after.

So before we had

artificial turf.

We had very limited team use.

All of our varsity games were played only.

They were the only ones played on our stadium.

We put all of our JV games and all of their practices on the adjacent grass field.

I made reference earlier to the number of athletes, number of games that we have to play.

Right, each season.

So imagine half of those were only on the stadium and they also benefited from stadium lights, a PA system, and a scoreboard.

The other half were on the adjacent grass field.

We just cannot put everybody on the stadium field.

It just wouldn't last.

We also had very limited use by season.

So before, we would use the stadium only in the fall and the winter, fall and the spring, sorry.

In the winter, we had to worry about frost.

You have to worry about frozen ground and uneven ground.

And oftentimes we would put on what they call a winter blanket.

And that just goes on a field.

It kind of gives it a greenhouse effect and it makes it unusable, but it protects the field.

In the summer, we keep everybody, kept everybody off the field for it to rest.

Bob made reference to that earlier.

We had to protect the incoming Bermuda grass so that it was ready

We need to go again in the fall season.

Now the result of that is our athletes and our families and our staff kind of felt like this stadium became kind of the golden egg, right?

It was for the chosen few and the chosen times and that certainly was something that we didn't feel good about, right?

Afterwards, it's game on.

Stadium is open.

It's been open to all of our sports, all levels, all seasons.

They have the same benefit with the same lights, same sound system, same scoreboard, and they enjoy it fall, winter, and spring and summer as much as we let them out there with no worries of saturated fields or any overuse.

The next point really has to do with, even with limited use, the high traffic areas on a field vary according to the sport, right?

So when you have a grass field, our stadium field, it's going to show wear and tear in a very concerning way in high impact areas.

Where the soccer goalies stand, for an example, right?

Or the face-off areas in the center of the field decrease.

the sideline where teams stand on the side at the game.

So by mid-season, mid-season our stadium field and those high-packed areas were already bare and had no dirt.

All of our folks moved to the practice fields, much more use.

We saw that wear and tear about the second week of the season but had to continue to play.

We were constantly asking our athletes and our coaches to please keep an eye on the holes, the uneven ground, the divots, the raised and the lowered sprinkler heads that could pop up and drop down.

They're dangerous at times if kids step on them.

We just needed everybody's assistance and attention.

And it wasn't because they were abusing the field, right?

It was only because that's just the side effects of overuse.

and the elements of the weather.

After the stadium turf, dramatic increase in our practice space.

We can practice teams at various different times and all the time.

What was the cool thing is we've been able to extend it to our PE classes, our bands, our clubs, our school activities.

We even hosted middle and elementary field days.

That's a pretty awesome experience.

We've done some special Olympic events on our stadium turf.

We've assisted non-area schools that don't have turf, that knock on our door to come out and use it so they can make up their games.

It just has provided a very consistent surface with no need of constant warning or sideline blankets or any kind of post-game rituals that we used to do on Friday nights after everybody cleared the stadium, we would walk on the divots to push down the grass like you do on a golf course, right?

Another before example is we were not able to have any outside groups use our stadium.

We couldn't afford the impact, quite frankly.

So we moved them over to this overused practice field.

And I will be honest with you, we just didn't get a very positive message.

You didn't send a positive message to those community members and the little peewee leagues and the little league footballs.

We very much supported our youth sports, but that certainly wasn't how they felt when we couldn't share that stadium filled with them and their kids.

Since we've had the turf, we open it up.

It's open all day, seven days a week.

It would go 24 hours if we'd let them to all kinds of youth groups and adult groups, right?

So we've got, you know, certainly the normal sports of football, soccer, lacrosse, but we've had kickball, ultimate frisbee, random UVA club teams, some semi-pro soccer and football teams, some various civic fundraisers, and some that are paying some rental fees.

I think that I saw from Kim Rhodes some community use numbers 10 years ago.

The average number of events at each school was around 45 to 60.

Since we've had turf, it's kicked up.

The average is around 220 to 225 per school.

I'll tell you the greatest challenge we've had right now is trying to accommodate all the requests we get to use the turf.

We just simply cannot make the demand from the public.

So I guess the next bullet has to do with our postponements and I'm not sure how much this would affect

recreational.

I would assume that it would, but games were postponed.

At least 20 to 25 percent of our games were postponed.

We would, on a day like today, we would not be able to play.

We're playing tonight, for example.

So, we would cancel them when they're on the bus coming to Albemarle High School.

We would turn them around frequently.

I'll need to come back the next day to make up the game.

Many times I'd have a bus arrive, parents, official, game workers are looking over my shoulder wondering if we're going to play while I'm trying to evaluate the safety of a saturated field.

They were very anxious and that is not a fun place to be in.

It just created a lot of hardship, a lot of stress on buses and game workers and family schedules, right, ticket refunds, and really unnecessarily losing the loss of instructional time.

Afterward, since we've had turf, seldom do we postpone or cancel.

Now look, we do it.

It's necessary sometimes with extreme heat.

or extreme cold it certainly happens but after a hard hard rain like we get in central Virginia we all know what that's like you know what we do we wait it out and that field that turf field surface plays the exact same after the hard rain than it did before the hard rain um there's just no changes on that um and last point i'm going to make here similar what bob made earlier

was when you have high maintenance, when you have high use, you have high maintenance.

The maintenance on it is labor intensive.

It's time consuming.

It requires multiple staff members that know what they're doing with not only the field maintenance part, but also operating equipment to make that happen.

Daily monitoring of the damage

to the ground surface, cutting the grass once, sometimes twice, sometimes three times a week with two different mowers, putting down all the sports lines.

And I'm going to tell y'all something.

Every single sport has their own lines on a field.

I know that sounds silly, but I want you to think about this, right?

And those fields get down because some guy is standing on a machine and walking that out.

And on a grass field, you have to put those lines down about once a week.

on an artificial turf and put it now once a year.

So that just gives you some perspective there.

Seasonally, you're putting down winter and sideline blankets.

There's aerating, seeding, overseeding, fertilizing, irrigation, and then

Repeat.

You do it again, right?

And of course, after turf, it's very minimum.

There is some.

There's some annual versus annually application field lines.

You go to once a year.

Occasionally, you use a turf sweeper.

but the bottom line is you have an even consistent plane surface every day all the time so I don't know y'all I hope this helps you guys I know you have a very tough task ahead of you and I really want to thank sincerely all of you for your time and your heartfelt thoughtfulness and looking at every angle here

Thank you, Ms.

Tyson.

Mr. Henry?

Chair Price, I'll go ahead and stay forward to the next slide.

We are at the first pause for questions.

And I guess I would ask the board, this is questions for the prior content, so it includes Parks and Rec.

content, and what Deb just communicated.

Absolutely, Mr. Henry.

And Ms.

Tyson, thank you so much for being here and for the information you've shared with us.

And we do appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to be with us.

So, board, let's first just limit our questions that you might have for Ms.

Tyson.

Yes, thank you Ms.

Tyson very much for that presentation.

It was very helpful and I answered some questions, raised some.

You said the fields were put in in 2009 and 2010.

Have they been replaced, repaired since then?

They have not been replaced.

They are the original turf that was put in during the 2009-2010 period.

We have had some sewing issues.

That's the right word.

So certain yard markers will have come up.

It's just this material.

So it does get torn and we've sewn that up and repaired it from that manner.

The replacement of our TERFs in the county probably should be a CIP question, which saw it as out of my lane, but I do know that the intent was to take the rental fees and invest them

into the cost replacement, but I'm going to be straight up on that.

Y'all, I don't have all the answers on that.

Mr. Andrews is Trevor.

I can help with that.

In the current CIP budget and plan, I believe the Monticello High School field is programmed to be replaced in FY23 and Albemarle High School and Western Albemarle High School

are in the five-year plan to be replaced in FY24.

At least that is where the appropriation is, and that's according to the chief operating officer from schools.

Were they all done at the same time then?

Western and Albemarle were done at the same time.

Monticello was done a couple of years earlier, I believe, but Deb wouldn't know that.

That's correct, yeah.

Another sort of line of questioning, we've been hearing a lot from a lot of people and all different concerns and I feel bad that I have not been able to respond to many of them in part because I don't know, in part because they're coming so fast.

Safety of players.

You have mentioned that it is safer in the sense of what happens when you're on boat or wet surfaces to be able to play on a synthetic surface.

But I have a couple of concerns that have been raised, one of which has to do with heat in the summertime.

I guess I should first ask, I'm making an assumption that I shouldn't make

Is this a crumb rubber infill, are you aware?

Yes, it's a very tiny pellet, right?

Okay, so that is one that had been identified as having keyed issues and I wanted to hear a little bit about your experience and whether this has been a problem for the schools.

Yeah, I mean, there's no question.

I think everything you read is, and our experience has been, just on a 12 o'clock noon, you can walk out.

It is hot.

It's hotter walking there than on the grass.

That's undisputable, right?

We do, and I don't want to get into degrees.

I've heard lots of different ones, but our trainer uses a wet bulb to evaluate

I don't know if you all know what a wet bulb is, but it's an instrument used to measure heat and it takes in all the factors that impact temperature like humidity and moisture.

Fahrenheit degrees and all of that, right?

And it kicks out a number that they evaluate to determine whether or not a team should be out there.

So certainly we have had, and we don't play at noon very often because we're in school learning.

Let's hope they're learning, right?

It's at noon, right?

But we'll play at 4.30, 5 o'clock on an August day or even sometimes early May.

Okay, thank you.

If I could just look at the previous slide just for a moment.

So I was also interested in a little bit about this field sweeping and grooming.

Does this sweeping in particular require any specialized equipment?

Is it mechanized?

Yeah, it is.

Understand ours are 12 or 13, 14 years old, right?

And so the artificial turfs that are out now, our technology is wonderful.

They're much, much different.

But ours, it is.

It looks like a mower.

It has brushes on the bottom.

Our field guy sits on top, and he looks like he's mowing the field.

But what he's doing is redistributing some of those rubber pellets I was referring to.

Okay, yeah and I assume that's like a mower also and that it's using gas.

Yeah, it does.

Okay, I'm gonna stop there to give my colleagues a chance.

Yes, thank you Deb.

That was a great and very informative presentation.

I go back with you and I can remember a time when our high schools did not have these turf fields and you and I were laughing at one point over the years about the fact that before the turf fields at Monticello High School that the geese problem was so bad at Monticello High School that it was

Right.

I do remember that, Diantha, in the early years.

Oh, it was just, and it was because there was a water feature over the bank away from, and obviously not all fields have water features nearby, but I think people don't think about even geese.

issues.

And we certainly were getting a lot of complaints from parents at that time that they were very uncomfortable with what was happening with their children on those fields and the geese.

What the geese was leaving behind, perhaps I should say.

Yeah, well, you know, sprinkler, it's like in your yard, you know, a sprinkler head pops up, water goes around,

Pops back down in theory.

Sometimes they don't always go back down and sometimes they'll sink below the surface of the ground, which makes it an invention.

Yeah.

We don't need to do that all.

Yeah, because I have the time seeing that same problem around pools with pool covers and they pop up and people trip and hurt themselves.

That's interesting.

It just didn't occur to me.

Could you speak, and I know what you're describing to us is anecdotal, and I get that, but we do hear a lot about injuries.

I can.

I'm not an athletic trainer, but I can tell you I did check in with our trainer and with some folks at ACAC and look, injuries are going to happen.

Their response was they happen on grass.

They happen on turf.

They happen in your backyard.

They happen, you know, when you're working out.

They happen when you become active and particularly when you become interactive in a competitive environment.

My trainer says there's no more or less injuries with turf than there is grass.

They're just different injuries, right?

So when you train on a grass field and in our area with clay, it gets packed down and it does get hard so you get injuries like

Shinsplints, right, or turn ankles and that sort of thing.

When you move over to turf, a lot of our kids wear turf shoes.

They're used to what the turf feels like and what kind of equipment they should have.

And so they're going at

Speeds that are very competitive as I mentioned earlier one coach made reference to so you get into more of the Collision type injuries from what I've been told I'm sure there are some knees and other things that could happen but but the basic response that I can from my experience is that There's no more.

There's no less.

They're just different because of the type of surface that you're playing and and

Thank you and I think that's all the questions I have other than to just say I can't imagine Albemarle High School without you.

Well thank you, Diantha.

I'm looking forward to finding out but I love it.

But the good thing, Deb, is you'll still live in the Jack Jouett district.

That's right, you got that.

Thank you very much and I'm also offering my congratulations and sorrow to have known you for a long time and appreciate what you've accomplished, especially for girls sports.

As a mother of two daughters and two grandchildren who are now in ninth grade and playing, it's great to see where, and I guess looking for alternatives so there are options is an important thing to think about.

Jim asked the question, Mr. Andrews asked the question already about maintenance which I was going to ask because it was something that we were never informed about or maybe it wasn't even part of the program in 2009 and 10 about the way it was supposed to be a hands-off close the gate you know go to town for eight years and then come back and do something and so I think that is a really important thing that we have learned that is very different from what it was 10 years ago so

That was a really important question that I was going to ask.

So you don't have any irrigated grass fields anymore on your place.

The ones I have seen are the sprinkler heads are outside the playing surface, such as the new grass field where the hockey girls play over at UVA.

And I know hockey is a different system where that's a water-jerk combination, which is even more tricky.

So that's probably one way to deal with that if we wanted to.

I guess I'm trying to wrap my head around how

We can think about the recreational fields that we have in our parks as opposed to the ones, the stadium type setting, which is certainly considering the number of competitive games that you want to host.

So are the gates closed or are they open on the weekends so that families can come and I mean are they welcome to come or is it

something where that's hot and it's not really conducive to sitting on to go fly a kite or something like that.

Yeah, I got you.

Now, stadiums are unlocked and open and we have a track around our stadium field, so that's, I won't say an attractive nuisance, let's say an attraction.

So people want to come out and they want to run and work out and you know and I'll be honest with you when we had that grass out there we tried to lock the gates just to protect that because look you got a choice with your kids to fly kite on a grass practice field or on a stadium with you know with

Leacher, they're going to go to the stadium, but that created wear and tear.

But we got a lot of complaints, and legitimately so, that we should not be able to shut out the public from a public facility.

So we did have to leave those open.

but also Anna and I want to make sure you understand the scene and I know you do but at the public schools we have adjacent practice fields like you know we might have three grass a big big acreage of fields right and then we just happen to use it for three soccer fields right and then there may be times we have to move it so because the goal areas do get worn down and we have to move it so that instead of going

Horizontally, they're going to need to go vertically.

So I think in a perfect world, maybe like UVA, that they can play strategically the sprinkler heads, because you do bring up a good point.

But because ours is so generic, it's multi-use, that's why we run into that, unique to a university setting, for an example.

Thank you so much.

Yes, I will congratulate you on your forthcoming retirement.

Atta girl, thank you.

And by the way, you will love it.

You will not regret it, you will love it.

I've heard it's the best job yet, so we'll see.

It is, it is, it is.

And thank you very much for your presentation, really appreciate that.

Just a couple questions.

The schools, the turf field that you have, it's actually a multi-use.

You play football, soccer, lacrosse, and field hockey, correct?

Yes ma'am.

Okay, because in the 28-page report we received that I know we all read, at least I know I did,

they talked about for our parks to have a different type of turf or yeah different if we use turf different type of turf for football versus

other types of sports like lacrosse and soccer, two different types of fields.

So yours is almost like a turf field on steroids because you use it for everything.

We is ours for everything.

Like the sports you just mentioned, any sport that has a team on a field.

The blades of the turf vary.

Ours is an older turf and it's much different now.

you know you get your soccer players they get a little uppity they like a certain kind of grass and you know because the ball is rolling on the surface and and balls in the air like lacrosse and football they're not worried about how long the blades of grass are necessarily so it can get very very um you know specific sports specific but certainly at the high school level and probably recreational it's a very it's going to want you know

Both?

So those fees have been adding up since 2008-2009 and hopefully because to replace a turf field is very expensive and of course we'll be getting into the more expensive

Terf, the new Terf, I guess.

But it's good to know that there's rental fees for that.

But it's also good to know, which I didn't know, that you have, we have 43, well at least grass fields around, and then all the organizations are allowed to use

not only the turf fields, but the natural grass fields around the county.

So that's really important.

We have lighting on our stadium only.

And that was kind of a bummer for those teams that came in and were kind of, lack of a better word, shoved to the side, right?

Because they didn't have the benefit of the lights or our scoreboard, for example, or a PA system.

There are some schools that like fields.

Okay, but the lighting that you do have at the high schools, those are available in the stadiums.

Those are available in the evening also until what time?

The switch is locked up, right?

Okay, so that would be the rental fees or a reservation.

Yeah, there you go.

Okay, so those are available for other teams to use a lighter seal.

Thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

And I think you already mentioned that you use the crumb rubber infill in your fields.

Yeah, it does.

On the sides or any particular area it might shift over to.

You know, you would walk out there and you wouldn't notice it.

It's not like it changes the foot plant or anything.

Yeah, and that's the purpose of that machine, to redistribute the rubber pellets.

Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you for being with us, Deb.

I really appreciate it.

Oh, Ned, you're good.

Gonna be fighting over that one.

Well, talk to me about overall management, Deb.

You get the turf field, you still have these grass practice fields.

So now when you're managing a high volume of use, which is what we do with the county, with the community fields,

Yeah, oh no, it makes sense.

Initially it was a challenge.

It sounds great, right?

But it does create a challenge because you've got, as you mentioned, multiple people that want to use the turf at the same time.

And that's their choice, top choice, versus being on the grass field.

So it does require kind of sharing it and it does require some scheduling and master scheduling and shared scheduling and making sure that both genders and JV and varsity get their time and their equal time.

Lacrosse by that nature as an example for us we have our track around a turf field so we don't have lacrosse practice for example at 4 30 in the afternoon because a flying lacrosse ball hitting a kid that's trying to sprint is not a good combination so obviously we have to take that in consideration and many of our lacrosse teams in order to get onto the turf

We'll choose to go at night, like at 6 and 730, our girls are crossing, boys are crossing, for example.

Or they'll choose to do Saturday practices.

But that's what they're willing to do to get time on the turf field, right?

So it does require some, you know, mitigation there and organization there.

But it's cooperative effort and, you know, making sure everybody is communicated and everybody has their fair share.

So we don't double book.

And that's for the teams.

That's pretty easily managed by me because sometimes they're going to do what I tell them, not all the time.

But that takes, you know, that's some directive on my part as far as the

Community, that's done through Kim Rhodes.

Somebody goes into a contract, they fill out a contract, it's a request for facility use.

They describe what the nature of their organization is, what time they'd like, what their preferred day is, and that goes, of course, through our system and it has to be approved at different layers.

It's getting at it, because obviously you have the turf field, you're using the turf field more than you use the grass field.

So you have these other grass fields that are still in use while the turf field is being used for game practices, what have you.

So I guess in my mind, that tells me that you're getting more functionality, more usability out of your current grass facilities.

and that your maintenance sounds like it may be a little less because you're not driving as many functions that way when you were protecting the previous grass field.

No, I think that's very accurate.

Our grass fields are in better shape now.

Our practice fields are in much better shape than they were before because we were really moving everybody onto the practice field off of the stadium.

Right now, they want to get on the turf.

We can move them to the turf.

It takes them off of the practice fields that were, you know,

I think our coaches will tell you that.

I think our athletes will tell you that.

Yep, it's just in my mind that, you know, we all think about games and game time and playing games, but those kids are not playing games every day, they're practicing every day.

Correct.

So the practice facilities in some ways better be at the condition of the game field or else the injury, I suppose, could go up because they're just there more often, putting more hours in on the practice field.

So I'm glad to hear that the

It sounds like having the turf has helped with functionality, feasibility of the other grass fields as well in the system.

So you mentioned the injuries and understood I'm not going to re-dive into that, but under a grass field, condition of the field can dictate injuries.

In the early years, we did.

We would have a JV game over on our practice field, and we would have umpires, not frequently, but we did have it happen, you know, arrive to the game.

And that's part of their job is sort of a surveillance of the fields to make sure it's safe, to make sure goals are in place, that sort of thing.

and there was, I remember two times early on where a soccer game had to be canceled and because our field condition on our practice field was not in their eyes, you know, safe, right?

So the surface, that's what I was saying earlier, our coaches and our, and it's not their responsibility, you know, to watch and make sure, it's not their liability necessarily, ultimately it's us, right?

that our field is in good condition, but we harped on that and we were on them, you know, for them to evaluate the conditions at every practice so that eyes were on the surface condition every day.

They're out there every day, you know, foot by foot.

Understood.

I think when I start hearing this injury conversation, we start going, well, turf causes this, grass causes this.

But it's really turf to a well-kept grass field or maybe even an average to well-kept.

If you have a below average grass field, you now have a whole subset of injuries that could happen just because the conditions of the field are so poor.

Right, absolutely.

Which usually is a result of over, well, low maintenance and overuse.

Overuse, yep.

So low maintenance and overuse is a disaster.

Overuse and good maintenance maybe still have issues, but if you have overuse and no maintenance or low maintenance, that can really be problematic, in my opinion.

The paint thing, this is interesting to me.

This hadn't occurred to me.

It's about once a week, but it depends upon the time of the year, right?

When the blades of grass get paint on it, right, when you spray it, and they grow, and I know y'all know this, but I'm just putting it right, and it grows, and when you cut it, when you cut the grass, it takes the paint off.

So it depends upon what time of year.

I would say once a week now, and certainly as the grass continues to grow, it'll be more frequently.

And as you wear, and as you play on the grass,

on the lines where you play, those begin to fade out.

Is this just spray paint?

Yeah, it's a walking machine, so to speak, and it sprays, there's all kinds of, it's not the lime.

Lime, that type of stuff, is used for softball fields and baseball fields, right?

It's a spray type paint, and it sprays down, and yeah, it goes right directly, just like if you took a spray can and walked a line down.

yeah all that paint would just whether it's mowed melted off that paint goes somewhere i presume yes sir and about a week a week and a half again depending upon the high use and depending on how often you cut your field it's just i got it it's interesting to me because we've been hearing a lot of comments about you know when we get concerned about whether it's well concerns are the same maybe they're just different whether it's turf or grass for what happens with water runoff

and the paint picture on a grass field never occurred to me before that you'd be painting more often.

So you basically have more paint going, getting washed away, whether it's been mowed, worn off or what have you.

So that's an interesting, that's interesting to me.

I hadn't thought of that before.

Just looking back over my notes, sorry.

I think that's good for now.

Really, again, thank you for your time, Deb.

Thank you, Tyson.

I have no questions or comments at this time.

I think I can speak comfortably for the board, the county, the school board, the school system, the parents, the students, the

Thank you, Donna.

Thank you for being here.

Hey Board, we still have a good bit of material to cover, so what I'd like to do is turn it back over to Mr. Henry, let them, let county staff finish their presentation, and then we can take the time we need to ask questions.

Thank you, Chair Price.

Thank you, Board.

Yeah, we have, I'd say, 30 minutes of content left.

We'll try to work through that in a crisp pace and with a goal of having, you know, 55 minutes or longer.

Staff is here as long as we need to be to answer your questions.

Next section is really me just walking through the Darden tile project, its timeline.

My goal is just to review the timeline.

It is atypical in what a typical project has occurred since I've been at the county, so I think it's worth noting

Kind of the circumstances from submission for approval through pandemic defunding and then ultimately where we are today.

Next slide.

This, just as a reminder, Bob touched on this as a ranking of community input.

Top priorities were trails, hiking, running, biking, and athletic recreational fields, top of the list.

And again, noting that the quality of life projects that we recommended back in 2019 did not have the benefit of fiscal run being master planned.

That was work that was in progress.

Next slide.

This is a busy slide.

It does try to provide the timeline.

I believe the board has also received this information through budget office on the timing of it.

It was first submitted in 2015, as Bob mentioned.

It was not approved at that time.

In 2017, it was reviewed again with the Darden Towel Committee.

and what came out of that was a specific recommendation of approval that included lighting.

The two really needed to go together if it were to be approved by the committee and supported by the city and that really has to do with the investment in that type of field to get the advantage of use out of it with lighting.

The project was resubmitted

In calendar year 2019, it was approved through the FY20 budget process.

The city also approved their share of the funding, which still is being held.

And it was approved with that approval.

That checked the block for the city and the county as far as approving the scope and the funding.

and to note that the project assumptions at that time were based on the scope of work that Doug Tyson just talked about.

It was modeled after the high school fields.

Crumb rubber was the infill that was part of that.

Those projects were actually managed by our FES department, so we had good knowledge of design and construction.

The budget was built around

that assumption.

And it also was built around the assumption of using a state cooperative contract because the window to do the design and build is pretty short.

We were planning to use a cooperative contract.

The project was approved by mid-summer.

Staff had started spinning up the work, nothing contractually, but in initial conversations with both the turf vendor and the lighting vendor, talking about options, you know, our process, questions around different types of infill to help with those options.

It was primarily a park slide effort.

In the fall of 2019, the calendar year of 2019, a couple of our board members raised questions about

Some of the questions that are still, you know, will be answered today or discussed today were raised in the fall timeframe.

A meeting was scheduled in parts and brought in the vendor to try to resolve some of those questions both on a technical side of the design and the implementation.

There's also some contractual questions that had been raised and I was signed in that meeting and did not result in satisfactory answers certainly coming out of that meeting.

Soon after that, questions were raised at the December 4th, 2019 Board of Supervisors meeting.

Questions were raised under matters from the board that led to

I think over a 15-minute unscheduled discussion between the board members individually with Mr. Krichenberger, myself, Mr. Richardson, regarding concerns that had been raised around the procurement process and as further background, we're on the verge of signing a contract with the vendor.

So that was the timing of, I guess, the urgency around.

that particular board meeting.

Questions were around the procurement process, the use of this vendor, the vendor itself, and there were general concerns between board members around the grass versus the artificial turf and the efficacy of that.

There was a lengthy debate.

You can watch the video if you want to go back and look at that for background.

What ultimately came out of that was direction to staff to kind of pause the procurement, take a step back, assess different procurement methods, and then bring that back to the board with a recommendation that would be satisfactory to the board to address their concerns around both the procurement, the implementation, and to address the questions that were raised about the environment and safety.

That was December 4th, 2019.

Next slide.

I have a memo, the board does too, January 20th, 2020, I communicated what our plan of action was at that time, which was to bring in an engineer, Kimberly Horn, who will be talking here right after me.

to bring them in and do what was called a pre-design study.

They have this experience.

They're nationally renowned for many areas of work, but Parks and Recreation is one of their specialty areas.

They've designed and built fields from the NFL to Division I college to the PGA, both grass and artificial turf.

They've done pre-design studies many, many times in our backyard.

And so we had brought them in.

I communicated a plan to do this study.

with a plan to return to the board in the late 2020.

you know, late first quarter of 2020 to have this work session and get guidance from the board on how to move forward.

That work session was tentatively scheduled for March 18th, 2020.

We know what happened the week before that was the declaration of the local emergency.

We stood down all non-emergency work.

We pushed staff out of the building.

For two weeks, while we assessed the pandemic, we did intentionally freeze projects and pause projects and ended up doing a whole new budget, as you recall.

that was for FY21 both operating and capital using our 366 budget methodology and it was a very cautious financially conservative budget and the only projects that moved forward were those that were deemed essential or already in construction and were kind of in that completion state for mostly school projects.

FY22, we had a, still in the pandemic, but we had a return to a more normal project process, or CIP process, in that we did bring back all of the previously approved funded projects that had been paused in consideration with the rest of the CIP work.

The projects were reviewed, they were considered.

This particular project was near the bottom of the ranking that we did.

And again, it was under a constrained environment.

But because of that process, we moved forward, the board approved our FY22 operating and capital budget.

This project, along with others that had not made the cut, were defunded and with instructions to be reconsidered at a future CIP process.

Next slide.

That brings us to FY23.

I won't go into depth on this, but I wanted to just kind of finish the story Bob presented last week at our work session on the CIP, the Biscuit Run Project.

He presented the master plan.

Some members of the board have never seen the Biscuit Run master plan and reviewed the way we did last week.

And we only, we could do a whole work session on that by itself.

But I think what was revealed in that is a pretty

impressive park that once built out I believe would be one of the signature parks in our commonwealth.

Over the course of that build out, with cost changes, it's probably a $40 million project.

It has passive and active recreation, hiking, biking,

nature walking and recreational facilities.

So the strategy heading into this FY23 budget season and CIP planning was taking Biscuit Run, which again wasn't part of the picture back in the 2019 timeframe, taking that and really putting all our chips in on Biscuit Run Park, if you will.

We knew that there would be competing requests.

Schools have three new schools.

that were being proposed, significant renovation dollars were in the CIP, transportation needs, other critical infrastructure needs, and we knew that this would all be competing for capital dollars.

And so our strategy was focusing on Biscuit Run, and it also reflects what we learned during the pandemic was how critical our open space and our greenways are to our community.

Recall, there's a lot of things that shut down in 2020 through the ambassador program and through our fantastic work of our Parks and Recreational Department.

We were able to keep our parks open and our trails and greenways, our passive facilities accessible.

We had two million visitors in 2020.

And that's with nearly all seasons being canceled for sporting events.

In a normal year fully loaded with sporting events, we would have a million and a half.

And so part of this strategy of 23 was focusing on the extension, the next phase, the one bravo phase of work.

and with that also acknowledging we need to do something to get more fields out there for our community for recreational play and so that's what's in front of the board in the FY23 process.

Next slide.

This you saw last week and again just orienting, this is a conceptual drawing.

The part of Biscuit Run that's in the development area is where the recreational fields would be.

The proposal would be to extend the entrance into additional parking.

We've projected six to eight fields.

The engineering and design will ultimately, and cost, will ultimately determine that.

This went through a review with our community.

What was proposed were grass fields, not lit.

Again, worked through a community process on that for the overall master plan.

The board adopted that in December of 2018.

The state approved it in May of 2019.

There's a saying in parks, and it's in jest, but there's a lot of truth to it, that all trails lead to biscuit rum.

Next slide.

That would be my normal pause for question.

I would ask Chair Price if it would be okay to keep rolling into the Kimberley Horn piece of this.

This is the engineering report.

This is the report that was started in the beginning of 2020.

It wasn't fully completed when we stood down.

They've completed that work, and it really does address a lot of the questions that were asked already by the board, but questions that have been asked that we haven't yet articulated.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Henry.

Thank you.

Thank you, hello everyone, Lance Stewart.

Trevor did such a fantastic job of covering the introduction to Kimley Horne and talking about the study that I'm going to limit my comments except to say that Jason Knack who will be speaking to you was on the team that helped us with the pre-designed study that was

you know what was nearly completed but not entirely completed in 2020 and we were lucky enough to have him come back and be able to you know finish that document and also work with us so we're in the course of the last month or so looking at changes within the market not only limited to products

but also new concerns, including looking at some costs.

Good afternoon, board.

I'm happy to be here.

My name is Jason Knaack.

I'm a landscape architect with Kimley-Horn.

I've been doing sports design and sports field design for 25 years.

I currently have approximately 40 different playing fields in various projects throughout the country that I'm currently working on.

They're all in different phases from initial concept to construction phase services.

These projects include like 16 baseball fields in

in Austin, Texas for a national baseball recruiting service, as well as some fields for an MLS team, their new stadium fields and their practice facility, also a new USL, which is another soccer league, the USL team, their stadium as well as all their practice fields as well.

probably five or six fields in the state of Florida, including some fields for the city of Miami and their Parks and Recreation Department.

Of note on this slide, there are a few fields that were completed in 2018 in Kansas City.

The fields on the left were constructed for the MLS team Sporting KC.

They're the three natural turf fields that are in the background there.

In the foreground on the left, there are two fields.

They were constructed for USA Soccer and their coaches and referees training facility.

So basically all of their referees and coaches that go through their national training program all come to Kansas City and basically train on these fields.

The fields on the right are located just down the road from the facility on the left there.

There's eight synthetic turf fields that were done with unified government of Wyandotte County and their Parks and Recreation Department in conjunction with Sporting Kansas City as well.

There's eight synthetic turf fields there.

And then what's not shown is in the foreground, there's an additional four natural turf fields there as well.

So all 12 fields there in that facility.

Next slide.

So synthetic turf advantages.

Let's talk about that for a minute.

Generally synthetic turf offers more consistent playing field surface as it's generally not affected by the rain or the resulting mud that we experience or can experience on a natural turf field.

These fields drain very quickly and teams can return to play almost immediately after a rain event.

This keeps the

The game's on time, on schedule, the tournament's going, right?

Synthetic turf fields do not require the upkeep and maintenance that is typically required of a natural turf field.

Natural turf being a live plant also requires the rest time to regenerate after heavy use.

We've been talking a lot about that rest time, right?

Synthetic turf surfaces can be used almost continuously, really the

the stoppage in any play can be number one lightning is generally it and then secondly is just to walk those fields and make sure they're safe make sure you're not having any any seams come apart or something to that effect you want to make sure that that the fields stay in good shape otherwise they can be used hour after hour

As far as lighting goes, additional hours of play outside the daylight hours can easily be accomplished with the addition of the sports lighting, pushing that field utilization into the night.

Next slide.

The synthetic turf playing field system generally includes three basic parts.

The compacted subgrade, the drainage system, and the synthetic turf surface itself.

The fact that the subgrade serves as basically the field foundation for the synthetic turf system.

That's the subgrade.

Basically, your contractor comes in, makes sure that's at a compaction rate that won't move.

Everything's built upon that.

If that's not done right, you compromise the whole system above that.

The drainage system includes the rock and the perforated pipe that are shown in the lower right.

This system captures the stormwater and directs it downward where it can dissipate back into the soil or be directed into the nearest holding pond or body of water.

The synthetic surface itself provides the athletes with a safe and level playing field surface free of mud and or worn or bare spots, right?

These worn and bare spots or mud can easily

lead to initial injury.

That's what we're trying to avoid.

While we're here, let's talk about synthetic turf fiber itself.

On the slide there to the lower left, there is slip film on the far left, model filament in the center, and then the combination thereof on the right.

Slip film fibers are widely used for applications where durability is a priority.

These fibers themselves have a honeycomb effect that basically hold the infill.

The slip film fiber, with its durability and cost, can make it for a great value.

So slip film is by far the most durable and the cheaper fiber itself.

Modern filament, shown there in the center, are used to make the fiber look more natural.

So the way these are

Where this fiber is extruded, this monofilament fiber is extruded in one tape or one thread, if you will.

There's many different fiber shapes that can come in, in lightning, diamond, all kinds of shapes like that to kind of give it a backbone, if you will, to keep that fiber standing up.

Hybrid fibers, or the blend shown in the far right, contain both the slip film fiber and the monofilament.

These blends can give the field the desired look while still achieving the durability you're looking for with a slip dome.

Next slide, please.

So shown here are some synthetic drift infills.

So there's several looking at infills you can choose from.

Probably the most common is the crumb rubber and with combination of sand shown at the top.

Here's an option for coated rubber, synthetic turf rubber, I'm sorry, EPDM, TPE, and organics, right?

So let's talk about, let's first start with SBR rubber.

So SBR rubber is styrene butadiene rubber, if we really needed to know that, right?

It's basically rubber that's extruded from car tires and tennis shoes.

So SBR rubber for playing fields is manufactured

basically in one of two ways.

There's a cheap way and a little bit more expensive way.

And that's cryogenic or ambient manufacturing of the rubber.

Cryogenic is the cleanest and the highest grade of rubber granule.

It's composed of ground up recycled tires that are cryogenically frozen, then shattered into small, smooth edged particles.

They use this process basically to eliminate fine particles of rubber and dust.

The second type is ambient manufactured rubber.

Ambient manufactured rubber is a lot more cost efficient, being cheaper.

It is a durable solution, however, that's really what stood the test of time.

This rubber is processed basically through a rubber cracker mill at ambient temperature

The result of this is more of a jagged rubber granule than the cryogenic manufactured rubber, but it creates a little looser infill on the synthetic turf surface.

And this loose infill can create some air pockets within that synthetic turf surface that can cause the static you sometimes see on some fields, and that static obviously gives that

And sometimes you hear about that, that it sticks to shoes or socks or whatever.

So that generally comes from the ambient rubber static.

I want to go on down to the organics.

I'm going to skip over the coated rubber and the EPDM and the TPE a little bit, just due to the fact that what we're currently seeing in the industry is either using

SBR rubber is your cheaper option or going straight to the organics, spending a little more money and going straight to the organics as they provide some qualities that will reduce that heat and give you better footing as compared to the crumb rubber.

The other good thing with those qualities for the organics is

The organics are cheaper than the TPE and the EPDF, basically.

So I'm going to skip on down to the organic infill.

So organic, such as the cork, organic infills offer more environmentally sound and sustainable solution than the SBR rubber.

These infills feel very good underfoot and can create much less heat, general experience, than the SBR.

They do have some drawbacks, however.

They generally require basically a shock pad underneath the turf carpet itself.

So how these synthetic turf surfaces work is a synthetic turf surface with chrome rubber, that shock attenuation is above the turf carpet.

And that shock attenuation is made up with the SBR rubber.

So if an athlete were to fall down or come into contact with the turf, that

that shock attenuation is taken out by the rubber itself.

When you use an organic, you don't have that shock attenuation.

So you put a fuel pad underneath the turf carpet itself.

So you get that, you still get that same effect.

Let's see.

Let's see here.

Brockville, we want to go through Brockville real quick.

Brockville is another organic that's kind of new to the market in the last three, four years.

It's a manufactured wood product made from southern pine.

It's also 100% organic, but it's heavier than your coconut and your cork both.

Like the other organics, though, it does require the shock pad below the synthetic turf carpet.

This material does carry a 10-year warning and can reduce field temperatures from 20 to 40 degrees when compared to the SBR overfields.

Next slide.

So player safety, player health and safety.

A high quality playing field surface will be firm enough to provide good footing, but soft enough to prevent injuries.

Monitoring your synthetic turf field throughout its life is the key to ensuring that it performs the way it should.

both for playability and the protection of your athletes.

One component of field monitoring is conducting a GMax test by a turf professional.

The GMax test measures the shock attenuation that I mentioned earlier, which is the ability of a playing field surface to absorb that shock or that kinetic injury from a collision, such as a player falling to the surface.

The lower the GMax rating, the more energy is absorbed by the surface.

Alternatively, the higher the GMax rating, the less energy is absorbed by the surface, meaning the more energy is returned to the player.

So the lower the GMax rating, the softer the surface, the higher the GMax rating, the higher the part of the surface heat gain.

We spoke about this subject earlier in the presentation in relation to the synthetic trip infill, right?

A field of SBR rubber has been known to reach temperatures of 40 degrees hotter than the ambient temperature.

So if we have a 95 degree day, the temperature 18 inches above the surface may be 135 to 140 degrees.

Alternate infills or organic infills can battle this problem.

Rock fill, we mentioned on the last slide, for example,

than chrome rubber and does not require water.

Each rock fill particle is naturally hydrophilic, basically, so that it absorbs natural rainwater and or condensation into its core, not just on the surface.

Moisture is then released from that core of that particle to slowly extend cooling times.

Plus, rock fill is weighs more than

then Cork and Coconut Husks.

So it won't float or mitigate or move around like some of the lighter organics will.

Risk management.

A recent report by Sports Labs, as we see here, indicates that 90% of your synthetic turf fields are not maintained properly, some if at all.

Routine and proper maintenance of your synthetic turf field will greatly reduce your potential for injury.

To further reduce county liability, a representative on your maintenance staff should walk these fields daily, reporting variations in infill depth and torn or loose seams.

An accurate record of these conditions and remedies should be kept along with total hours of play per day.

This information can be vital if someone were to experience an injury.

It also protects the county should a claim against the product warranty need to be executed.

Next slide.

Life cycle and long-term maintenance.

A smartly designed and well-maintained playing field surface should perform well past its warranty period.

Some of those design decisions may include product selection, stormwater design, and most generally the layout of the fields.

There's your field design,

include a shock pad, and how would the inclusion of a shock pad affect the life cycle of your trip?

While a shock pad's primary purpose is to provide shock attenuation for the athlete, the secondary advantage is that the shock pad provides a buffer between the turf carpet and the drainage stone.

This buffer basically eliminates any friction that the turf carpet may experience on top of your playing field stone.

that can basically speed up any type of wear and tear on the backside of that trip club.

So maintenance.

First and foremost would be the quick repair of any damage to any turf, as well as to keep the surface clean and free of debris on a daily or weekly basis.

Equally as important can be the semi-annual or annual professional inspection

and Dean Cleaning of your synthetic turf.

Turf manufacturers offer this service program as an additional layer of protection for their customers.

By using a machine called a SportChamp, the synthetic turf is basically vacuumed of all fine dirt, dust and any other fine debris that may be present on your turf surface.

As a part of this service, the synthetic turf will be thoroughly inspected by the manufacturer for any flaws or tears in the turf permit.

It will also

Review your staff maintenance log and procedures.

Make sure the recommendations keep your turf in top condition in alignment with your warning.

Next slide, please.

Environmental impacts.

Let's focus on the proximity of the fields to the Rivanna River for a moment.

In looking at ways this site lays out, the elevation of these fields as compared to the stream elevation, I'm not too concerned with these fields flooding or washing any type of material into the river system as far as overdoing flow.

The water released from the subgrange system that we place underneath these fields will produce water that is clean or cleaner than any stormwater resulting from the parks adjacent parking areas.

Let's see here.

We went through heat gain, how that's battled with your infill selection.

Infill mitigation, same thing can be said with that.

Next slide.

So going over recycling, this covers the end of life after

10, 12, 14 years that if when you need your synthetic turf to be replaced, what are options?

We don't want this material to land in a landfill at all, right?

So there is a company called Rematch.

They're currently have a couple of facilities in Europe.

They're able to come in and recycle 99% of all the synthetic turf infill

and carpet itself.

They've got a facility that's planned to be built in Pennsylvania here in the near future.

The second way is there is artificial grass recyclers or reusers, right?

They pull the synthetic turf out that's being replaced and they'll use that in other locations, basically reuse it for playgrounds or

and other uses in that way.

It's not my favorite because generally once it's done with its life cycle there, something's got to happen to it next, you know, and it can end up in a landfill there.

Another option that I do like has been around for like the last year.

That's put out there by Shaw Sports Turf.

That's Next Play.

That is their ability to come in.

Shaw Sports Turf will come in and they will recycle their own turf carpet and infill and recycle that into a turf shock pad that can be used underneath the turf carpet.

So that's relatively new technology.

I think if we could just hold on for a couple more minutes, promised Lance can finish this up quickly so we can get this turned back over to the board.

Thank you, Jason.

That was great.

It's remarkable how much has changed from what were new and emerging products to ones that are really lasting and once developed in just the last two years.

I'm just going to handle a couple of other sort of new developments since the study was first drafted.

And some of these are really local.

concerns and some are really more global concerns.

But I'll talk about plastics in general and some of the information that's emerged in recent years into our consciousness that wasn't there before.

Similar element of light pollution concerns that have been expressed.

sort of take Jason's comments about the prevalence of certain products and expand on that a little bit to talk about those and how those might look if the board were to decide at some point to move forward with a project like this just to give you a ballpark feel for what a system might look like and what a cost might be.

Next slide, please.

So I know that our Board of Supervisors members have heard a lot in the last few weeks about PFAS.

For my own sake, PFAS was new to me until Mr. Bill Moyer of the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority brought it to our attention.

as an emerging issue for water quality.

So we've done some research on that.

PFAS is a group of synthetic fluorine containing chemicals.

It's used for roofing products, paints, coatings, sealants, caulks, adhesives, carpets.

It's really primarily used for weatherproofing.

but also for products that can corrode for metal corrosion.

So it's not just limited to plastics but it certainly is in many plastics and so examples include containers for personal care items or food packaging.

and Synthetic Turf, what's on the market right now in terms of the carpet itself, as far as I'm aware, it's likely to have PFAS, but thankfully not all of the infill alternatives.

So I'll say, you know, this is, PFAS is considered potentially harmful to human and animal life.

It's a big

It's a big family, not every different type of chemical that falls into that family is known to cause any problems and this is still a relatively new concern from a science perspective.

So the EPA is doing a lot of work on this.

Last year, they issued a strategic roadmap to deal with the PFAS issue.

That includes a lot of studies and some anticipated actions, including updates to the Drinking Water Standards Act and Toxic Chemicals Act.

So this is something that at this point I think we can consider the mitigation strategies, at least for the carpet itself, seem to be pretty limited.

But I think more broadly speaking that the choice of an infill product can greatly mitigate environmental concerns that would be associated with rubber.

with the heavy metals that it has and with the other types of products, the TPE and so on that are coded that would have PFAS.

Next slide, please.

So

Light pollution is another concern.

Of course, dark skies ordinance is very strong in Albemarle County.

There have been some developments in recent years in terms of the design of the fixtures themselves and new technology and LEDs.

Jason can expand on this if I don't explain this well, but the

The new LED lights can be extremely tightly focused in the

to avoid spillover light outside of that area.

The fixture heads, dark sky design has really gotten to be quite excellent.

So I think this picture from a field complex in Harrisonburg is really telling compared to the Friday night lights scenario in my own hometown in West Texas where you could see a football stadium from 10 miles away.

Next slide, please.

There are new environmental concerns at the same time that certainly were discussed several years ago but have come at least to my attention and I know to the attention of the

Ward, and that's not just about whether there's light spill, but also about the impacts of LED lights.

The higher wattage lights that have to light a larger area tend to be on the blue end of the spectrum, similar to a lot of LED lights in cars.

So there's emerging science there that may impact flora and fauna directly and in part because all plants and animals have circadian clocks.

They respond to the times of day and night and there are concerns that this could impact migratory patterns and other health issues that really aren't well researched at this time.

The advocacy groups who are sort of pulling this science together and making recommendations are suggesting that the LED lights remain outside of that blue spectrum.

It's measured in kelvins, and the lower the kelvins, it becomes more of a red part of the spectrum, which is actually what occurs in nature with

is my understanding with the moon and the stars.

So they believe it's less impactful.

Based on input we've received, and this is pretty recent, we asked the question of a major lighting manufacturer that 4,000 Kelvin, which is

Less than standard for athletic fields, but that would be considered the minimum standard to maintain player safety.

There may be some ways to design around that by having more lower poles so that you can get the same number of lumens without as large of a fixture.

But that would be something if we were asked to move forward that we would need to look at really carefully.

Next slide, please.

So Jason walked you through Brockville earlier.

Again, it seems to be a really advantageous product.

It is also cradle-to-cradle certified.

You can use it after it's removed.

You can use it in your garden.

as mulch, if you like.

It's a very pure product.

It's also surprisingly cost-effective, especially now.

The cost of crumb rubber has increased significantly as all petroleum-based products have a cost of increase during COVID and the recent fuel crisis.

So it's actually a more cost-effective solution now than

than the crumb rubber option that we would have considered.

So next slide, oh excuse me I forgot the last bullet here, the Shaw brand of recyclable turf would be something I think that we would strongly consider.

So the next slide

walks through with the assumptions if we were to construct a field today with updated cost estimates for construction.

Like rubber, it's been heavily impacted by the pandemic and developments within the industry.

with backlog of products, generally trucks, labor market increases, fuel increases.

So if we were to do the four fields at Darden Tow with the same size fields that we had looked at two years ago, assuming a thorough design process wherein we would come

To the board for you know to review to make sure that you're comfortable with the decisions and then bidding very cautiously and in terms of due diligence on manufacturers products and contractors our estimated cost for that system today for four turf fields at Darden Tower would be around five million dollars.

And I'll note that Mr. Ever mentioned that the city shares costs for investments in this facility and had agreed to pay, but that was two years ago or three years ago at three years ago's price.

So we would need to have a discussion with the city to get their understanding of their ability to move forward with this project if we were to revive it.

Thanks Lance, really appreciate you bringing that home.

The last slide really was a hypothetical to just show the board order of magnitude.

The cost of the infill really was the one that would move based on decisions on that type of product.

That's why it was bolted.

The actual picture that was to the bottom left was a collegiate.

Smith, synthetic turf field down in Richmond, which uses this technology, the Brockville infill technology.

Research has, I believe, has seven or eight of those fields in the state.

There's also other fields of different infill types.

Ned mentioned to me yesterday that, I guess it was Tuesday night, Albemarle played, I think, soccer at a field that had, that was corn husk, or not corn husk, coconut husk infill.

And so if the board is interested, we could provide information around what is out there in the state with the different technologies.

This is the last slide.

It's been a lot of information.

I really haven't been part of a board work session that we've tried to cover.

such content at a high level kind of big picture, you know, starting with parks, and then dive into some really, really technical details.

And three hours isn't feeling like it's enough time certainly to work through all the questions I'm sure the board has.

But I appreciate your patience.

And I know you all have been taking notes.

What this slide really reflects are the, you know, the factors that need to be considered and how we move forward with meeting our recreational

Field needs, our active recreation needs in the community.

There's the strategy around play and utilization and optimization.

There's an environmental and safety concern around decisions certainly with synthetic turf, but also with grass and what that brings.

And then finally, costs.

There's the capital side of the house, and then there's a recurring cost.

And so this isn't a matrix of costs and all that, but it's really what is the consideration for direction.

And again, we have a lot of staff here to answer questions.

I'll turn it over to Chair Price.

Board members, you may have a question specific to Bob or to Lance or to me or to Jason, or if you just have a question in general, ask it.

and I'll try to direct who's best on our team to answer it.

Mr. Henry, thank you and thank everybody for your part in the very informative presentation.

I'm sure we do have a lot of questions.

I hope that we'll be allowed to go around more than once.

Monopolize, and I'm not sure I'll be able to get to everything, and I'd like to hear other people's thoughts.

I've got a lot of notes, so forgive me.

I'm going to sort of start back.

There was a slide early on that talked about $180,000 to $300,000 to renovate

existing fields.

And that would obviously be grass.

No one ever really told me, I don't think, whether the new fields, I should know the new fields at Biscuit Rana grass, so what those costs per field and how that compares, so we just have a sort of sense of the cost of grass fields.

But of course, you know, I'm very mindful of the need to rest fields.

So I'm hoping kind of all options are on the table because the more fields we have, the more possibilities there are to control the fields in a way that enables them to be used effectively without being completely taken offline.

I will say I went to Dardan Tau prior to this and walked through those fields and understand the concerns with the fields over time.

So, sticking just to the idea of synthetic fields for the moment and what we've seen.

Infills, just for a moment.

The PFAS discussion, I will say right up front,

like we really don't know what's going to happen.

And it's a little bit nerve-wracking to think that there's a study out there that's pointing out concerns about this in the grass itself and in the material making up the surface.

But the infill, we obviously have some options that we can consider.

And the question I have about rock fill, as an organic material, does it need chemical treatment to prevent things from growing?

and the surface since it's made out of wood.

I mean, my mulch doesn't work perfectly for my garden.

Things grow.

Before you answer the question, board, we will take the amount of time that we need.

We do have about 40 minutes left in our scheduled three hours.

And I would ask that we all try to be as concise as possible in our

and somewhat within that time period.

But again, we'll take the time the board wants.

Mr. Andrews, I think Jason would probably be best served.

I'd like to answer your first question, though.

What we have programmed in our CIP related to the construction costs of the four fields at Biscuit Run is approximately $650,000 a field.

but remember it's not an apples to apples comparison in that that includes all the grading and the stormwater infrastructure you know and so we that we could probably break that down to try to do better apples to apples but for construction alone we've programmed in around 650k a field at Biscuit Run and Jason I'll turn it over to your question specifically on treatment of the Brockville.

Yeah, so a very good question on the Brockville.

They do not treat Brockville at all with any chemicals.

They run it through a manufacturing process, basically, that almost reminds you of petrified wood.

But yeah, it doesn't break down, and it doesn't create mold.

or even in place it doesn't need to be treated after a few years.

They've got a lot of fields out there now over the last three years and they've been testing it since I think 2014, something like that, so for quite a while.

You know, it's really holding up over the test of time, and it does carry a 10-year warranty on it, guaranteed not to break down and not to create any mold.

And again, no chemicals are used in keeping it that way at all.

In fact, one of the things they do tout is over time, that material does become that little particle

can become almost like filed down a bit.

So it becomes a little more round.

So it actually, over time, it plays a little better underfoot.

And I've been on older fields, and I've been on new fields.

And it's just like stepping onto a brand new natural turf field.

It feels that good underfoot.

And it is cool.

And a related question about infill.

Generally, no.

Generally, no.

So if we're talking SBR rubber, basically when I talked about the long-term maintenance, they'll come out there, what you can do is you can

You can get your manufacturer that produces your turf and you can have them come out for a fee either every six months or every year and they'll run that machine over it and it'll basically pick up that infill and wash that infill, vacuum that infill, get all the dirt and any dust that might be in there.

They'll also run a magnet in there to pick up any, you know, like an earring or something to that effect that might be in your infill.

And they will, so it'll be cleaned and laid right back down.

That rubber, SBR rubber, if you go that route, all stays put.

You know, they're not going to pull that rubber out and put new rubber in, right?

Now, as far as a Brockville, same thing applies.

You're not going to pull that Brockville off and then put a new layer of Brockville on.

Now, over time, you may lose a little bit of material, a lot less Brockville than you would SBR rubber, right?

So you would have a supersack or something like that at Brockville should you find you're consistently low in one area of infill, where you can add just a little bit in an area here or there.

But it's not a significant amount.

The main thing is, as I was talking, when you're

When your maintenance guy were to walk these fields, they're going to look for tears in your synthetic turf, and they're also going to look, you know, make sure that all the any and all trash is on the field is gone and picked up.

The other thing they're going to do is they'll have a little gauge that's going to check the infill depth in various places around on the field.

And we're talking millimeters, right?

So it's not, you're not seeing, you know, this much infill in one place and that much in another.

If you're off, if you start getting off and you're seeing a variation, then that's when you can bring your field groomer out and you groom that field and get that infill exactly level across that whole field.

Thank you.

I've got other questions I may come back to on recycling and experience in recycling,

Let's go to the next supervisor.

Yes, thank you.

And this was really a great presentation.

I want to thank Jason and Trevor and Lance, everybody that had a part of this.

Comparing, I thought we did a lot of work years ago before we put the turf down at the high schools.

And this is just a really great opportunity to learn.

I just have a couple of takeaways and then I have a couple of questions.

It does seem like to me that this is a great example of how products change over time.

And the product that we even have right now at our high schools is one of the original products and very different from anything we would put down now.

Amazing.

If it's anything like my TV, maybe we should wait a while and the cost will keep going down, right?

And the other takeaway I have is that you really get what you pay for.

And so far, I haven't heard numbers that really leave me running out the door screaming because we're talking about comparison unseen numbers that are equivalent to some of our sidewalk projects, right?

So to be honest with you, I have to say that.

But I do think you get what you pay for, and it's important to get really good quality and pay for environmentally sound products.

The other thing, Jason, or Trevor or somebody, Lance, it does seem like to me, and this is just a high-level comment, that these products will cost us more upfront, but save us money in the long run from maintenance.

I'll respond to that, Supervisor McKeel.

I would say that's a possibility.

We would need to do the analysis on it, depending on the infill type.

and some of the maintenance requirements.

And kind of what Mr. Andrews was asking, you know, do you need to water with other organics?

You might have to water, you might have to do pesticides to keep, you know, mold away.

And so I would ask, you know, if there's interest in the board at the end, you know, one of the things we could do is go back and kind of run the tail of the tape and look at

not just the capital one-time costs that Lance proposed, but we could look at certain assumptions and what would the recurring costs look like.

The data from the schools is really helpful, too, on their maintenance.

But that, again, is the crumb rubber methodology.

So we'd have to make sure we understand what equipment's different and what the best practices are related to that.

So I don't think we could answer that emphatically today.

What you would get a benefit from is

Obviously greater playtime than that first bullet, which is a utilization of fields.

Thank you, Trevor.

And that's kind of where I was going with this.

I would love at some point to see some comparisons because 62% of the United States right now is in extreme drought.

and I would like the idea of something that we don't have to irrigate and water and we can actually keep the water in our watershed and our reservoirs and not spend it on watering yards and grass and lawns.

Just a quick question.

Let me just do a quick show of hands by the board if anyone wants the presentation kept up and we'll be referring back to it.

And that's fine.

That does remind me though, I would love to have the presentation and you'll be sending that out to us I hope, right?

Yeah, so I guess my point was, Trevor, that I'd like to see some real comparisons, water irrigation use versus not having, you know, all of those, and I won't belabor all of that right now.

I really, I was just trying to think, I'm like Jim, I have so many notes, I'm kind of getting lost here in what I wanted to ask questions about.

Oh, I know, I have it in big letters here, Economic Development.

We hear a lot from our community about how the turf fields at Darden Tow

If we put turf at Dartmouth Hill, we could use those as an economic development driver, which leads me to think that we could use that money to help pay for them, right, and to help maintain the upkeep or to help put the fields in themselves.

Steve, could you advance to slide 44, please?

Maybe 44.

It's 44 in my presentation.

We have a backup slide, Supervisor McKeel.

It's not a study, but it is really a kind of order of magnitude estimate working with our economic development department on what a two-day tournament utilizing the four fields.

And this is not what I would call a large-scale tournament.

what those of us that have participated in these kinds of events, I'd call more regionally based.

These are just some, I'll call them a rule of thumb estimate that could be direct impact to the community as far as spending.

And then assuming that we would move forward with a rental rate that is the same as the schools, there would be a direct revenue to park to the county.

And so there's a community economic impact

and then a director of a new benefit.

Again, this isn't a study.

These are just working through some base assumptions around a two-day tournament, utilizing the four fields.

And it's probably a pretty conservative number, quite frankly.

And I know from experience, a lot of the tournaments now have gone where

When you travel, you have to stay at hotels that are identified at a rate that is established.

Yeah, we do hear that a lot, but at the same time, that's money for our hotels and our restaurants, and it does bring in revenue that could help offset the cost of this.

And somebody's hand is up.

Is that Blake?

I don't know.

I guess I'll ignore that.

Keep going.

Yes it was.

I apologize for interrupting.

I just wanted to add a little information.

what is now referred to as the sports tourism industry which has become a big driver for localities in regard to capital investment.

I did some comparisons recently and I think one that could be compared to you know the potential for us here if we were to add on fields for example a biscuit run and

you know have a little increase in the number of fields is Harford County, Maryland and they have a similar number of fields that we do and they've tracked over 2016 to 2018 three or four tournaments a year, soccer only.

and it generated a direct spending of about $3.1 million a year was the average.

And they looked at it as an average of 27,900 attendees per year were coming into their county, which resulted in somewhere between 800 and 1,000 hotel room nights.

And that's only with three tournaments.

There's a lot of localities, particularly the Gulfport, Mississippi is one that

that generates 15 to 17 million a year, but they have a lot more fields than we do.

And also our reliance on our real estate tax as well.

Just a comment.

Thank you.

I was in that world years ago with my daughter who ran cross country, but it certainly has really grown and I know there's a lot more

a lot more of these teams and traveling with sports these days than there used to be.

I do have a quick question because we used to hear all the time, and I still had a few emails over this last round, and I do want to thank everybody for their emails and their correspondences, but they talk about having to

spray down the fields to make sure there's no bacteria on the fields.

And I know we certainly have neighborhoods now that folks in the neighborhoods are putting in these fields in their backyard, you know, turf backyards so that they can have a putting green in their backyard or a dog park.

So I'm just trying to put all of these pieces together in the safety piece of

How they perform for soaps.

Well, just somebody can speak to that for me.

Not having to clean them to keep the bacteria off, or if you do, what is that like?

Quite honestly, rain is your best

Avenue to clean the turf, right?

Just like with grass.

Right, just like with grass.

There are some different cleaning products that you can use, and you get into situations where you want to use some stuff.

First one is you can use a mild soap, like a mild laundry detergent.

If you've got something that has stained

Stay in Your Turf, and it's about, I think you do five ounces per gallon, something like that.

And, you know, it removes stains like coffee, tea, soft drinks, you know, ketchup, mustard, you know, those types of things that you might, somebody might spill on the turf.

But once you use that little solution, then you water, you basically hit it with a lot of water, you dilute the heck out of it, right?

So, you know, that amount of

And you're just talking about spotting it for to catch spots that might appear, not to keep some kind of horrible bacteria down or anything like that.

Because I've seen actually turf fields used for dog parks these days, right?

I mean, they're cleaning theirs.

Yeah, okay.

And I don't want to keep on.

I have a lot of other questions.

I will comment, just make a comment, that I was quite taken back

After we voted on these turf fields at Garden Town to find that all of a sudden the decision about Biscuit Run suddenly moved the goalpost.

And it seems like to me that I will agree that it would be nice to have some grass fields and turf fields

But I in no way see Biscuit Run at this point as a replacement or substitute for the work we were talking about doing at Darden Hall.

There are different locations, there are different applications, so I think at some point we're going to have to get back to that.

But I'm going to let that go for right now and I thank you very much for this great information.

Thank you.

Hello.

I am feeling overwhelmed because of the length of my notes and trying to understand how I'm going to ask questions and not ramble all over the place.

So hold on, I've lost my piece of paper.

Just one second.

Yes, that's what I want.

OK.

I am so grateful for today because this is the beginning of what the due diligence to me really means is that we're beginning to learn

details more than just what a sales perspective has and be able to ask questions.

And I hope that we are already planning for more after today, because I would love the opportunity to go home and reorganize all my questions and be able to present this in a more effective manner than I'm going to try to start right now.

I'm certainly not going to do all of them.

I agree completely that I think we need much more detail about costs and the true comparisons and the long-term cost-effectiveness of the different systems

because we have received lots of information from some of our local committees and others about misinformation from universities and institutes all over the place.

So there is a lot of information to be done.

One question I do have related to one of the slides near the end that talked about the costs

of the new turf.

There we go.

Okay.

It said four turf fields, $5 million a piece.

Not a piece, but that was the total project.

What was the original amount that we thought that was going to be, Trevor, please?

The original CIP was either 2.7 or 2.9 million dollars.

The total project cost was 2.762800.

just over $263,000.

I'm sorry $2,763,000 was total project cost.

The city would have contributed about 31% or just under $1,000,000 towards that.

And what sizes of fields was that for?

Because I'm looking at the map that we all considered.

those are two tournament fields and four practice fields or four little kid fields going crossways so I want to make sure when we talk about this next time that we're making sure that we're and I did the math it's like 78,000 square feet there it is 78,200 square feet um would be

the two 230 by 340 fields and so I just want to make sure we don't go down a rabbit hole with the wrong information or the wrong assumptions that then cause us to make a mistake in the math because I'm trying to

keep that straight.

Just as a comment, I was very, very heartened to hear right at the very beginning of the process today the talking about complete renovation of the garden-tow fields because I think that process can also be used when we build well-drained, rain-out proof

Fields for Biscuit Run because I think that it's really important to have more fields and if the costs are lower if that's what we turn out to be fine then that would allow us to build more for the same amount of money and that would be terrific.

When we talked about

The total renovation, did this include the drainage base, the numbers that you were giving, up to 600,000 or something.

I would love to get in the future more specifics about what that included.

Was that the same sort of drainage base that is put under these, what they call rain out, where the people have said you can play on them after a deluge because they have the proper drainage under them and they're natural grass and so they're easy to

Let me go down.

I have some questions for Jason and I know that the

A sideline question because I've been trying to find in my materials and I don't expect this right now.

There was an updated fee process for the fields, all the different organizations that was contemplated before the 2018 needs assessment was finished and was then suggested in the means assessment and I thought that it had been done but I can't find

any record of it.

So I would love to get a link sent to all of us about what that's all about, what those responses were.

I know Amy Smith from Parks had provided the board information previously that I believe were those questions directly

Thank you.

The question for Jason, I'm on my way down to his list here.

Oh, don't it?

I'll come back to that.

OK, so what happened now?

Jason, can you describe what the drainage system is under these natural grass rainout fields?

So to make sure that OK, I'm unmuted.

So natural grass.

with a drainage system underneath.

So there's three different styles of natural turf fields you can build, basically.

One is a sand cap, where you come in and you grade your subgrade to mirror your finished grade.

of your playing field and then you come in with a, you know, from a four to a six inch sand cap and you're growing your sod in that sand cap and as it rains that water will pass through that sod into that sand cap and basically move its way out to the edge of the field where there would be a perimeter collector that could carry that away.

That's one way to do it.

You can also use your existing topsoil

Should you have some good topsoil in the area and add sand to that?

Those are generally not as successful as being rain-proof, right?

But they will grow a very nice field.

It's cost that comes into play, right?

When you're at, say, four bucks a square foot, you're basically tilling in

Your sand, that was some of the costs you saw earlier in the presentation.

The $182,000 to $300,000 number, that's the $4 to $4.50, something like that, for a $3 to $5 range, if you will.

Sand cap is going to be at $6, $6.50, something like that.

And then at the top of the food chain, as far as natural turf fields, would be a what we call a sand-based root zone over

A stone base, so you would have your subgrade at the bottom, four inches of stone, and then a root zone of anywhere from six to ten inches deep that your grass grows in.

Those fields are rain-out proof, right, for sure.

Now, those are the types of fields that we designed for Sporting KC or St.

Louis MLS.

nine to ten dollars a square foot, right?

So when you're at that level you may as well go synthetic turf.

Now what I want to warn with this is this, if you do the, where you till in the sand at the cheapest natural turf or the sand based root zone or even the high end USGA sand based root zone, if those fields are overused they have to be rested

And that's where you start talking about the conversation of how many hours can be played on natural turf and how many hours can be played on synthetic turf.

I understand.

Very good.

Thank you.

And then you talked about the various constituents of the infills, but what are the grass fibers made of?

because there's been a lot of information out recently about those as being primary source of the fluorines.

So the information that's out there as far as the fiber itself, the fiber is made of polypropylene and it's extruded, it's an extruded thread if you will of polypropylene.

Now where the PFOS came into play when they looked at

Some older fiber, that was the lower density fiber.

And it's not in the polypropylene itself.

It is something that they use during the extrusion process so that the thread does not stick to the sheen.

And since those studies have come out on the fluorines in the PFAS,

The manufacturers that I'm talking to are looking into that.

They're going with a higher grade polypropylene that can withstand that, that's not going to need those chlorines anymore.

So they're understanding that process, if you will, and trying to come up with a solution to eliminate that altogether.

I will say that

I think three of the four manufacturers that I talked to about that exact process where they extrude that fiber, that polypropylene fiber, have said that yes, it is a detectable one, but it's at the level, the EPA has agreed that it's at a level that it's at or below the level that

kids or adults would experience basically just in the open environment anyway.

Not that it makes it okay, but it's just at an extremely low level, like 20 parts per trillion.

So they're still looking at it though, because it's a very extreme subject.

Absolutely.

Polypropylene is one of the highest impacting climate change when it degrades.

So that is a concern right there.

That's really not something that I have to

So you mentioned about the manufacturers going back to do annual some things.

Is that a service contract type thing that the county should budget for to get this taken care of?

And the second part of that was you also mentioned, or somebody mentioned about the technician walking the fields on a regular basis and looking for scene cracks and that kind of thing.

So how often is that?

Yes.

So the first one, let's talk about the maintenance of a person being in charge of the fields.

So the frequency with which that would happen will have a direct reflection on, you know, the number of hours of play.

So if you're, if you have the fields

Occupied say three hours a night Monday through Friday.

That's 15 hours during the week And then say 10 hours on Saturday and Sunday that's 20 hours on the weekend so 35 hours for that week Basically what can happen is they can walk those fields Say Monday before all those practices start and then I would probably have them walk them Saturday morning before a game starts

and for two reasons.

They don't really need to walk them after that many hours of play.

You probably get up to 60 hours actually, Ann.

But what I like to see is after 20 hours of play on the weekend, those are all games, right?

So you have a lot of traffic very quickly in two days.

So after that, I would want to see my guy out there walk them really fast, make sure all the trash is taken care of.

make sure there's anything that might cause an injury or anything like that or anything that we need to know about prior to practices starting for, you know, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, right?

So before Monday's practices start, I would want to walk them and basically they're going to have a record and say, I walked the fields this time on this day.

and here's what I saw.

They're going to record everything.

If there's anything to be repaired, they're going to repair it right then or as quickly as possible and that's going to be documented as well.

That all relates back to requirements of your warranty, right?

That's a big requirement of warranty.

If you don't have that, then that gives that synthetic manufacturers, should something come up, that gives them kind of a, some elbow room to

You know, try to get out of paying or something, if you will.

So it's specifically in the warranty.

So those practices during the week, even though there's only 15 hours, most practices are very repetitive on certain pieces and parts of that turf where they're doing drills or certain things that are repetitive on one area, right?

So that one area might

You might have some infield that's pushed aside or something like that that needs to be, you know, needs a little attention before you go to play a game.

So I would want Monday morning for them to walk them and I would want them Saturday morning to walk them and basically anything they see or anything that needs to be adjusted before play starts, they can do that so that when your games start on Saturday morning, everything is good to go.

So twice a week, you can lower it to once a week, but

If they're my fields, if I'm on the board, I would want to be twice a week just for safety.

It's a liability thing.

I think it's just a good idea.

Well, it sounded like a service contract where somebody would come in once a year.

I understand from our athletic director that they run their rumor every week to make sure that the infill is properly flat.

So you don't trip over that either.

Well, it's basically a machine called a sport champ now.

It's been developed over the last, I don't know, eight or 10 years, something like that, that they can come out there with.

and running across the field, they can do it semi-annually or annually.

And, you know, a lot of that is related back to, again, hours of play.

Um, so as part of your, you can purchase that as part of your package when you buy the Synthetic Chirp.

It is a service contract with four fields.

I think they do it for like, for one field is like four grand around, around, uh, in the Midwest.

multiple fields, it would be less.

So you could probably have it done for $10,000 to $12,000, something like that.

But it's very good to do in that they basically run that infill through that process to get rid of any dirt or dust or any earrings that I mentioned about earlier.

Runs it through that process to make sure everything's clean.

So you'll have a representative from the manufacturer on site to see the condition of the turf,

Thank you very much.

Yes, thank you very much.

And Jason, while I've got you right there, first of all, I'd like to also thank everybody for an outstanding presentation and a lot of information.

I'm really, I do like the brock field because that is the wood particles.

So that would address a lot of the concerns I have regarding, I think,

what should be in the infill.

But that still gets me back to the actual turf.

Now I know someone had mentioned the corn husks, that's something relatively new, but in reading the 28 page

A report that we received, I understand that that can also, and I think someone else brought that up, I think it was Supervisor Andrews, but things can grow in that, and so it would have to be sprayed with some kind of a

Pesticide in order because things do, or fungicide because things do grow there with that.

And I understand it also has problems in the winter if it freezes, that that kind of makes it not so good.

Yeah, so instead of corn, it's coconut.

I can't hear you.

Sorry.

Instead of corn husk, it's coconut husk, right?

Coconut, okay.

And or cork.

The coconut has had some of those issues like you're talking about.

And for that reason, I stay away from that material.

I also stay away from cork.

So prior to Brockville coming out, I generally stayed away from the organics altogether just due to

those issues that you bring up.

Another issue that they have is on big rain events, cork as we know floats, right?

So they can move if you get too much water on a field, right?

So I don't like that.

The key to both cork and the coconut is you have to keep it at an optimal moisture level and

So what some designers and manufacturers have done is they've added an irrigation system just to keep that material at the right moisture level.

I don't stand behind that.

I see that as going backwards, if you will.

So when Rockville came online, I basically went and really investigated that material.

I really like that material.

It's really where the industry is going.

So the polypropylene is the fiber itself, and it basically, it

The word is that the fluorine or the PFAS can be detected from that.

Okay yes and so those are not really good but I do know you mentioned there was a company in Pennsylvania Rematch that would recycle but I have heard and perhaps you could confirm or say no it's not true but they they don't have a they want to build a plant but they don't in Pennsylvania but they don't have a recycling

Plant, yet and that they haven't issued a notice of violation from the department of, of Pennsylvania Department of Environment for improper storage and waste disposal.

So, they currently do not have a recycling center yet.

The rematch facility

In fact, there's not a recycling center yet in the United States.

It's for the rematch facility.

Now, everything that I've read to that, I think it's Lancaster County, is that they're planning to build that facility in Lancaster County.

They do have one or two in Europe.

Right, in Denmark.

Yes, and there's a tennis play recycling over there.

Now, I didn't see

the citations or whatever for improper storage, but it doesn't surprise me.

Well, I do know that there is places in California and warehouses that

that have roles and roles of this stuff, they don't know what to do with it, right?

That's the issue is we've got to have a good solution at the end of this life cycle.

So if Rematch will put one of their manufacturing recyclers over here, which all indications are they are, I think that's a great alternative.

And the other alternative that I really do like is

The fact that Shaw Sports Turf is stepping up and are willing to take their turf back and recycle that material into a synthetic turf pad, I do like that.

OK.

Yeah.

OK.

I would recommend the Shaw carpet.

It's a very good carpet.

They're one of the top manufacturers of synthetic turf.

And that next turf pad, I think, is

Okay.

And another question regarding the actual turf, the PFAS, if we're using the brock fill, then that's not going to go into the water because I know using crumble rubber that that will go into the water and you have to have a drainage system.

falls through that infill and through that turf carpet and down into that stone base that's underneath that turf carpet.

Then it's collected into a sub drainage system that basically direct that water either to a pond or to the river or to a water quality pond.

So it can go to any of those different facilities.

I will say that

Rainwater that filters through that and is kicked out the end is cleaner than any rainwater that would fall onto your parking lots right next door to the river or anywhere else.

So on the slide we have in front, that shows the turf surface and then the stone base.

So all of that water is going to filter through that and then be kicked out of that sub drainage lateral at the end, basically.

Does that kind of help?

So the crumb rubber is held on top of the turf carpet, so it does not work its way through the turf carpet, through the rock into the perforated lateral.

It stays up on the carpet itself.

Thank you.

So as we stand now, we have three synthetic turf fields at our high schools with lights that are usable for the public.

There are 48 grass fields, I understand.

And for the cost of doing this at Darden Town for over $5 million, if my numbers are correct,

For about $6.4 million, you could actually do, you could renovate, you could do at the higher level for the Darden Tow, you know, $300,000 per field, you could actually redo those via the grass fields, and you could actually then put in eight grass fields at Biscuit Run.

That would be about $6.4.

I guess what I'm doing is I'm kind of addressing the elephant in the room, which is what, do I believe in a sports venue?

Absolutely.

Do I believe it helps economic development?

Absolutely.

Do I think Darden Cowell is the right place for that?

No.

It's a smaller park.

It's only a little over 300 acres as opposed to Biscuit Run, which is about 1,200 acres.

It's right across the street from a development of the parks, the fields, a garden tower right across the street from a development.

I'm very much against any kind of lights there.

That's something I would not approve, have lights that are a garden towel.

I do believe that Biscuit Run, frankly, is the way to go for a sports venue.

I know the Soka people would very much like a

They were like a sports venue and I think that's an economic engine there and I do believe that that's something that would work very well for the for the county to have to have that there and actually that was uh brought up first of all by our chair, Chair Price, who brought up uh talked about a sports venue that they have in Virginia Beach and we should have something

that quality also and I believe Vista Run is the place for it and whether or not even if we have you know one or two fields or a couple fields that are synthetic to try it out especially I'm excited about the Brockville the infill

I would be willing to try that.

You don't have as many residents.

You could do some lighting, depending on the location of where you put the fields and such.

You have a lot more room, a lot more space, and it's a lot closer to 64.

Trying to make Darden Towers sports venue is going to be a traffic nightmare in that area and along Pantops.

and I've heard over and over from the constituents in that area, that's not what they want.

Chair Price, I have a lot of questions and it sounds like some people have been getting into some commentary, which I also have a lot of.

but I myself could probably take us past 7 p.m.

What's exactly our game plan here?

Well, let me thank you, Supervisor Galloway.

Mr. Henry, what exactly are you looking for at the end of today?

Is it questions?

Chair Price or maybe Chair Price, Steve, go to the

Let's go back to the objective slide.

So the one preceding that.

So a lot of content, a lot of engineering depth.

The hope was to at least create a common understanding of our overall needs.

in the community for recreational fields and then to get through the strategies about how we might meet them.

So our expectation out of this is to work through the board's questions in a way that the board feels comfortable that they can provide guidance to staff moving forward with the current CIP request or there is direction to do something different than what is currently in front of the board.

So I will say that I think all the board members need to be heard from.

I know several of them said they had more questions and they weren't going to ask them all.

I mean, I'll ask Mr. Richardson to step in on this one too.

We could work through a round of questions to make sure everyone is heard.

and then we could, through our facilities office, collect written questions and looking at the size and the scope of those questions, define a time that we could come back and address them in another work session.

There might be another three hour work session, I don't know.

What's on the table from a CIP request is getting us into design in 23.

So construction of any field wouldn't be until 24.

And I would also want to remind, you know, part of the information around Biscuit Run is what was proposed and approved as a master plan are grass fields non-lit.

If we're going to do anything different from that, there would be action that we would have to do, one, with the state to make sure that we could propose something differently, and then we would have to go through a process to amend a master plan.

Staff can come back and deliver information and analysis and plans and recommendations for any one of these, but we need to have clarity from a majority of the board on what that is.

I don't think that I need to say much more.

I appreciate the question, Ned, and two issues.

What do you want to accomplish tonight?

How much longer do you want to stay at it tonight?

Thank you.

Supervise Galloway, I would propose or offer that you ask the questions that you have.

We can save commentary for later and supervisors will stay as long as you like, but my thoughts would be if you have additional questions, submit them in writing and then we can look to see whether and when we need to schedule another work session if there are additional questions that people have at that point.

So y'all think about that if you will.

Thank you for clarifying.

I mean this obviously has a lot of high public interest as we're all learning through our inbox.

So I think how we're going to work through this issue is important for everybody to understand so that they know how to track our conversations on this item.

So there was a slide that said we had 43 grass fields

Can you go to that slide that just outlines the inventory?

And then it said 23 high quality game fields.

I don't know what slide number it was, I'm sorry.

So I think it was a different slide.

I remember 23 high quality game fields.

Slide eight, Steve.

Sorry, Supervisor Gallaway.

Thank you.

OK, so the 43, that's what I couldn't remember looking at my notes.

So the 43 is park and school.

I'll try to answer that.

The only four, I would say the 19 will be at the schools.

The county only has actually four athletic fields.