Board of Supervisors Regular First Meeting   5/3/2023

Good afternoon everybody and welcome.

I'm pleased to call to order this May 3rd, 2023 1 o'clock p.m.

regular meeting of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors.

The supervisors who are present today are Supervisor Ned Gallaway of the Rio District, Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District, Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna District, Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District, Supervisor Jim Andrews of the Samuel Miller District, and myself, Supervisor Donna Price of the Scottsville District.

A quorum is present.

I would also like to mention that our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, our County Attorney, Mr. Steve Rosenberg, our Clerk for the Board, Ms.

Claudette Borgerson, and our Senior Deputy Clerk, Mr. Travis Morris, are also present.

Let me also welcome and appreciate the presence of our Albemarle County law enforcement officers, Sergeant Angela Jamerson and Officer Dana Reeves.

Thank you for being here today and I will make further reference

At this time, I would ask if you stand as you are able and join in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Thank you.

Board, it's time to move to item number four on the agenda, the adoption of the final agenda.

Before doing so, however, I do have two items to mention.

The first is that for item number ten, there were substantive changes made to attachment B as in Bravo and D as in Delta.

and an administrative correction to attachments C as in Charlie.

The corrected documents were uploaded for the public on May 2nd and the changes will be discussed during the presentation of the materials during agenda item number 10.

The second item is that two of the items on the consent agenda, item 8.3 and item 8.4,

are going to be polled for discussion.

Are there any other proposed amendments to the agenda as published?

So moved.

All right, motion from Supervisor Mallek, a second from Supervisor Andrews.

Ms.

Ms.

Mr. Galloway.

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley.

Aye.

Ms.

Malek.

Moving to item number five, brief announcements by board members.

I would say that I look forward to, I have some questions regarding county veteran services officers that hopefully we can talk about when we do the defense impact discussion later on today.

And I will follow your lead, Madam Chair, about the Senator's visit to Southwood because that was really wonderful.

Over the weekend, the VACO board had its

Legislative wrap-up and online at the VACO website is a legislative summary, all 100 pages, of all the damage done or not done at the legislature.

More than 30 study assignments were made.

to the JLARC and other study groups and study departments by bills in the legislature, all that are coming due before the next session.

So this seems to be the new thing when you don't want to decide something, you just have a study.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes, a couple of things.

I just want to let folks know that tonight

at the Martin Luther King Performing Arts Center at Charlottesville High School, the Golden Apple Awards Celebration is taking place.

That is a recognition of our

local teachers both in Charlottesville, Albemarle, and private schools that have been nominated for their expertise and professionalism in teaching.

And the Nunnally family from Better Living has sponsored that award now for the last 20 years.

I must say, selfishly, I'm sad that I can't attend the recognition tonight, but there will be, I'm sure, an article in the paper and folks can follow the teachers in our locality who are nominated and will be receiving the award, and it does come with

Each recipient receives a $500 grant to use in their classroom, so it's a pretty significant recognition and award.

So that's the Golden Apple Award celebration tonight.

I believe it's six o'clock at Martin Luther King Performing Arts Center.

Additionally, I just wanted to let folks know that the grand opening for the Boys and Girls Club

on the Lambs Lane Campus was Friday night.

There were lots of members from the public there.

It was a great celebratory event.

The Boys and Girls Club on the Lambs Lane Campus will serve 300 students a day from that campus, which is pretty impressive.

Kate Acuff and I attended and Lloyd Snook was there from the city, Mayor of City, which was really great.

The keynote speaker was a gentleman from Northern Virginia, but the Boys and Girls Club, the National Boys and Girls Club, had two attendees that were there, one from Atlanta and then the speaker who was from Northern Virginia.

So it was really a great event and it was fun for everybody to tour the building and see what it was all about.

The other event I wanted to mention, and Donna, maybe I'll, I bet you were going to mention Hatton Ferry.

I'll let you do that since it's in your district.

I was just going to say that we're going to have a great special event on Saturday afternoon, this coming Saturday at 2.30 to celebrate

a donation that the Wright family has given another donation for the Hatton Ferry and we will be recognizing them and celebrating the ferry and the ferry will run from 10 to 2.

So it will be a great event for those folks who want to go to Scottsville and join us at the Hatton Ferry, a special event.

And then the only, and I had a bunch today and I lots of times don't have anything, I'm sorry.

The other thing I wanted to point out was that last Thursday at the Center at Belvedere, there was the American Red Cross Celebration of Local Heroes Award Ceremony.

and Donna was there, I think Jim was there, there were, Bea was there, that's right, there were numerous ones of us, so all of us can talk about this if we want.

But we did have for Malemarle County some awardees.

For the military, local military heroes, Colonel Letty Behan, who we all know and love,

received one of the awards.

And we had a senior firefighter, Titus Castans from Albemarle County Fire and Rescue received the First Responders Hero Award.

And I think I'll stop there because other folks might want to comment on that program as well.

All right.

Thank you.

Well, I know people will want to go to the Hatton Ferry, but on your way there, or on your way back, I'm encouraging people to stop by Batesville Day, which will be going on all day on Saturday, May 6th, and that's a fun event.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Price.

I just want to

offer my word of thanks to the residents of the Rio district who came out for my budget town hall last Tuesday.

I had rescheduled to that date, but I appreciated their attendance and their feedback along with all of the emails and such that I know all of us have been receiving.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I just wanted to say that this Saturday here

and Lane Auditorium, something extremely important.

It's our community salutes.

We'll be having approximately 50 high school seniors who will be taking their oath of enlistment for the military.

So we're very proud of that.

We'd like to go ahead and fill in the auditorium congratulating these seniors.

on what they're about to embark upon.

I think it's the various Army, Navy, Marine, Air Force, which is great.

And I also want to mention that on May 10th, I'll be holding a community meeting on St.

John Road for the community there regarding broadband, so we'll have a lot of

People there who are interested will have all the big players there from Firefly, from Dominion, and from CVEC and also Bright Speed.

Thank you.

All right, thanks.

Well, as you can tell, it's been a very busy time.

Last night, Supervisor Mallek and I attended the Commonwealth Transportation Board meeting at the VDOT Culpeper headquarters.

I was very pleased to hear that they are embargoing $229 million of new construction money to help cover the inflation offset for projects that have already been approved.

Also, Jessica Ballering-Hirsch from county staff was there

and I know she brings back a lot more information than I could.

A couple of weekends ago, Panorama Natural Burial had their grand opening.

It was a rousing success as thunderstorms hit as we were speaking, but we were all able to get out of there.

But it really is a great addition to our area.

Supervisor Malek and I were at the Dogwood Vietnam Memorial 57th Annual Rededication

on the 21st and Supervisor Malek, I think you mentioned that at our last budget meeting.

It was really a very heartwarming event.

Reminds us of the service and the sacrifice.

There are 28 Albemarle County service members who are honored there.

Just the other day, Supervisor McKeel and I were at the grand opening of the Forum Hotel, Kempton, Charlottesville property on Darden

on North Grounds of the campus.

I appreciate Mayor Lloyd Snook notifying the university and the community that the hotel is actually in the county, not in the city.

and we appreciate that, Mayor Snook.

I mentioned when I greeted and welcomed our two Albemarle County police officers being here that I would reference them again.

This week, as happens very frequently, we are reminded of the risks and the sacrifice that those officers place themselves in in the line of duty, in danger, literally every time they walk outside of their home.

This week there was a traffic pursuit for an individual who was wanted on very serious charges And I just want to again express my appreciation for what they do what all our first responders do to help keep us safe

Our supervisors have already mentioned a number of things coming up on the calendar.

So we do have the community salutes that Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley mentioned that will be here in Lane Auditorium on Saturday.

Trauma-informed community network, community picnic is also on Saturday.

The Hatton Ferry event that was mentioned.

The Farm Bureau is having their dinner on Tuesday night.

I'm pleased to be able to go to Richmond on Monday as a representative on the Virginia Council on Women to participate or at least be there as the winners of that council's STEAM-H.

that Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math, and Health essay contest award winners for scholarship money to go to college and that's what I've got up through the middle of next week.

I got carried away and forgot to mention one other thing that people can do this weekend as they're going to Hatton Ferry and Batesville Day, and that is that Saturday and Sunday, 10 to 5, the Crose Arts and Crafts Festival, which has over 130 juried artisans of all different genre and food and entertainment and

beautiful weather, I hope.

This is the main source of funding for operations for the Claudius Crozet Park, which is a community park governed by a community board.

All right, Board, we will now move to item number six, which is proclamations and recognitions.

And for members of our community who are in attendance, we do have several

that we will be calling out today.

And I would ask that you respect other recipients and not leave the auditorium after yours has been called so that other people can also enjoy the honor being given to them when their proclamation is read.

And given present company, I will keep any smart-o-like remarks to myself.

This is a proclamation recognizing May as Older Americans Month, whereas Albemarle County includes a growing number of older Americans, currently 19.7% of the population, who contribute their strength, wisdom, and experience to our community, and whereas our community benefits when people of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds are welcomed

included and supported, and whereas the theme of Older Americans Month is Aging Unbound, recognizing the importance of not limiting our thinking about aging, exploring and combating stereotypes, emphasizing the many positive aspects of aging, inspiring older adults to push past traditional boundaries, and embracing our community's diversity, and whereas Albemarle County recognizes the need to create a community

that offers the services and supports older adults may need to make choices about how they age.

Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, do hereby recognize May 2023 as Older Americans Month and urge everyone to celebrate our older residents, help to create an inclusive society and accept the challenge

of Flexible Thinking Around Aging.

Assigned this third day of May, 2023, Chair Donna Price.

Thank you.

We have a motion by Supervisor Galloway, a second by Supervisor Malek.

Ms.

Ms.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Yes.

All right, thank you, Board.

And Ms.

Marty Keene, I understand that you are here to accept the proclamation.

I would ask if our capable assistant, Ms.

Kilroy, would provide the proclamation to Ms.

Keene.

I just want to take a minute to thank everyone, certainly County Executive Richardson and everyone on the board for always being so supportive of all the services that are provided to older citizens and people with disabilities.

I'm pleased to be here as a representative from Java, but there are so many organizations across our community that we're lucky enough to have

contribute toward seniors.

Thank you, Ms.

Keane.

I do want to give the supervisors each an opportunity if they have remarks they would like to make.

Ms.

Well, that we are so fortunate to have our organizations such as Java to provide wonderful services for our seniors because lots of other counties don't have the benefit of a nonprofit and therefore have to have their own department seniors.

Thank you.

Yes.

Java is just one of a kind in its support for elderly like me.

so aging Americans and we really are lucky in this community that we have many organizations that do that work and Ann rightfully points out

For those people who aren't aware, communities that don't have those organizations have to use their taxpayer dollars from their counties or cities to support those services.

Anytime we have organizations that can band together and work together,

It saves money for everybody, so we really appreciate the work.

Thank you.

Yes, I also want to express my appreciation for Jabba and all of our organizations that serve our seniors.

Well, without any irony or sarcasm or anything, I think it's wonderful and important that we could probably all go through and list a lot of folks who personify unbound aging in our community.

Folks do not need to look past my colleagues on this board who show that when you talk about going past traditional boundaries or what we may think of stereotypically and still providing the energy and enthusiasm to make this community stronger, it's with that that I just have the utmost respect for those I serve with on this board.

Thank you.

I also wanted to join my other colleagues in thanking you for the wonderful job you're doing at Java and helping our seniors, helping those in need.

This is a very caring community and Java proves that and everything we do I think proves that because we do care.

Albemarle is a wonderful place.

And I also want to note that in spite of his youth, Ned Gallaway does actually contribute from time to time.

And he is learning, so that's okay.

He has plenty of time to learn.

But thank you very much for all your services.

Thank you.

Ms.

Keene, it's been such a pleasure working with you these last few years and the service you provide, not just in the Scottsville District, which I have the pleasure to represent, but throughout our community.

And Supervisor McKeel, your words really, there are so many organizations that work together here in our community, in our county, to make it a better place.

And that allows us to have that force multiplier of funds and it also reduces the burden on our taxpayers because they're services that are not required to be provided solely through the county.

So thank you for the work that you and all the other organizations do.

Thank you for being here today.

Board will move next to the proclamation recognizing Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated, Eta Phi Omega Chapter Day.

Yes, and I'm going to read this as a motion.

Proclamation recognizing Eta Phi Omega Chapter Day.

The local Charlottesville area chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated.

Eta Phi Omega Chapter is one of the over a thousand chapters of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated, which is an international service organization founded on the campus of Howard University.

in Washington, D.C.

in 1908 and is the oldest Greek letter organization established by African American college-educated women and which is comprised of more than 355,000 members in graduate and undergraduate chapters in 12 countries, including the United States, the Bahamas, Bermuda, Canada, Dubai, Germany, Japan, Liberia, Nigeria,

South Korea, South Africa, and the U.S.

Virgin Islands, and which is often called America's premier Greek letter organization for African-American women.

Eta Phi Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated was established 60 years ago on February 10, 1963,

by 13 college educated ladies in the local area on the principle of service to all mankind.

And, whereas service to all mankind is critical to building a strong community and engaged citizenship, and it is vital that organizations in our community are focused on issues involving economics,

Education, Human Rights, Social Action, Political Activism, Equity, and the Environment.

And whereas initiatives by the Ada Phi Omega Chapter, including volunteering at Java,

and the Thanksgiving turkey giveaways supporting the local Alzheimer's Association and the American Heart Association, providing snack packs and backpacks for students, organizing coat drives, providing over 2,000 pairs of shoes for the Salvation Army,

supporting the Alumni Burley School Fund and a host of other philanthropic endeavors in the local community.

Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, do hereby recognize Friday, February 10th, 2023 as Eta Phi Omega Chapter Day, which will be celebrated on Saturday, May 6th, and we encourage the citizens of Albemarle County

to acknowledge the contributions of Eta Phi Omega Chapter and celebrate this organization for all it has done for the past 60 years of service to Albemarle County and all mankind.

Thank you.

We have a motion by Supervisor McKeel.

Second.

Second by Supervisor Andrews.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Ms.

Ms.

Mallek?

All right, thank you.

Good afternoon, Ms.

Hello, thank you.

In honor of Older Americans Month, I need my glasses.

Hello, I'm Pam Brown and I have the honor of being president of the A to Phi Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated here in Charlottesville.

First and foremost, I'd like to thank you all for this honor.

We really appreciate the acknowledgement of all that we've been doing for the last 60 years here in the community.

As stated before, 8-5 Omega Chapter was founded on February 10, 1963.

One of our charter members still resides here in Charlottesville and we have numerous members who are members of the Albemarle County community through residence and employment.

Our chapter is 45 dynamic and motivated women strong and we live by our motto of service to all mankind.

and at this time I'd just like for my sisters who were able to get off work and come here today in support of this proclamation to stand.

And once again, we'd really like to thank you for this honor.

It's much appreciated.

We have the original proclamation up here for you.

If you'd like to come around to the side.

And while you're doing that, I know the supervisors will also have comments we would like to make.

Thank you and thank you all for being here today but also for all the work that you do enhancing the lives of all of our community members from small children to old folks like me and thank you.

Please continue.

Thank you.

I agree with Ann.

Thank you so much for all the work.

And I think I have, over the last couple of years, had the pleasure to present some awards alongside you all at Greer Elementary School.

So young people, thank you very much for recognizing not only our

Thank you.

Since we're starting with older Americans, I think I'd just like to recognize the fact that we have a diverse group represented here and that it's a service organization that I think people belong to for life in some sense.

I really appreciate what you do.

Thank you.

Well, I enjoyed, as the proclamation came up, learning about this organization.

I did not know a whole lot about this organization.

And learning about, you know, from your most famous down to the folks who are the most famous here.

All right, thank you.

I'm always in awe of the service organizations that do so much to help everybody.

and that's really inspiring.

I will say that during the reading of the proclamation for the first time in three years, I actually got goosebumps because I was so impressed by what you all do and what's been happening.

So I encourage you to recruit others to continue what you're doing because it really, really makes a difference in our community.

You're the basis of our community.

Thank you.

And I would like to add, 1963 was a pretty significant year in America.

In August of that year is when Martin Luther King gave his very famous I Have a Dream speech.

And what I would say, ladies, is you are living the dream, you are the dream, and you make the dream possible for so many other people.

The Sigma Phi chapter of your sorority was at my university, Mercer University in Macon, Georgia.

Very prominent when I was there many years ago.

And I know they still are.

Proclamation recognizing May 7th through 13th is Public Service Recognition Week.

Thank you very much.

Whereas Americans are served daily by public servants at the federal, state, county, and city levels.

These unsung heroes do the work that keeps our nation working.

And whereas public service is among the most demanding and noble of professions.

Whereas Public Service Recognition Week is observed annually to celebrate and recognize the valuable service that public servants provide to the nation.

Lots of service here.

Whereas over 3,000 Albemarle County local government and schools employees

work tirelessly to serve our residents, businesses, and visitors, providing them with outstanding customer service while maintaining careful stewardship of the resources with which they have been entrusted.

and whereas we appreciate the many accomplishments and contributions made daily by these public servants, now therefore be it resolved that we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, do hereby recognize May 7 through 13, 2023 as Public Service Recognition Week and call upon the citizens of Albemarle County to join their fellow citizens across the county to recognize the significant and important contribution that public employees make to our community.

Thank you.

Second from Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Yes.

All right.

Good afternoon.

And we have so many people.

Thank you for all coming up to the podium.

Thank you.

My name is Elizabeth Latta, brother, and I'm here on behalf of my fellow committee members.

I'd like to thank you all for this proclamation, and I'd like to thank you, each of you personally, for the service that you do every day as public servants and the time and effort that you give to this community.

On behalf of the committee and on behalf of our employees, we appreciate very much indeed the support of the board

for the work that we do every day.

We've had a great group of folks working on this project since March and we are really excited about having the opportunity to recognize the hard work of our employees through a range of activities next week.

We'll have our employee picnic on Friday.

We have the HR Service Awards on Wednesday.

We have a couple of ongoing items.

We're doing peer-to-peer recognitions throughout the week via candy grams and then we will also have Card My Yard signs that will be placed at both of the county office buildings

and at our fire stations throughout the week.

So as you're out and about, you'll probably see those.

So it's going to be fun.

We're excited.

We appreciate you all and thank you for this proclamation.

And we will also appreciate you keeping your fingers crossed for cooperative weather on Friday.

Thank you, Ms.

Ladder-Brother.

Oh, and a treat.

Thank you.

Well, I'm supposed to go first with my comments, so I will do that now.

We always think immediately of our county staff workers, and that's a large number of people, but we also need to think about the people who work for nonprofits who provide services, the people who work for our state and federal agencies.

I'm thinking of the Soil and Water Conservation District and all of the people who provide assistance to residents to get federal and state services, whether they're veterans or

or other people who need to have connection to various levels of government.

And none of us could do any of this work by ourselves.

It takes all of us together pulling the oar in the same direction to make this successful.

So I really appreciate all that you do.

Thank you.

You guys are the unsung heroes.

And I don't think the public really appreciates or understands how hard public servants, federal, state, county, city, local, public employees work on their behalf.

The rhetoric today, it's very easy for that rhetoric to turn nasty and ugly about government.

and we recognize that.

So it's really important that we recognize all the wonderful work that you all do every day, every day of the year for our citizens.

I'm just going to add my thanks.

I had a friend of mine tell me a story this week that he had been talking to one of the county employees and saying how, oh yeah, Supervisor Jim works really hard reading all this material for his meetings and he was reminded by that person, you know, it's because he has a really, really great staff running the county that it makes it all possible and that is so true that we are so fortunate to have

Thank you.

Supervisor Price or Chair Price had mentioned Dr. King and his book, Where Do We Go From Here?

Chaos or Community?

talks about the power of community and Coretta Scott King, who was also a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, did I say that right?

You know, it wasn't just Dr. King's ideas that he was out there orating on, right?

So the fact that when you look to the local chapter, Marta and her work and the folks she brings together, and then this mighty community standing in front of us, when I was researching those who were famous Alpha Kappa Alpha members, Toni Morrison has a quote that says, freedom is choosing your responsibility.

It's not having no responsibilities, it's choosing the ones you want.

and when I think of these communities that are here in our local area choosing the responsibility of public service, I have nothing more to say that I'm in awe of what you do.

So thank you so much from the bottom of my heart.

Thank you.

I've always been thankful for those who choose public service and I will say

going along with what Supervisor Andrews said.

You all make us look good.

You all make us look good.

I can't tell you the number of constituents who've told me.

I've called up the county office, everybody was nice, even if you don't agree with them.

They say everyone was nice, we were well treated.

I have not heard any negative comments because you are here for public service and

Like I said, you make us look good.

So that kind of kindness that comes from you is really, really appreciated by all, not just us, but by everybody in the community.

And as I was driving back from Culpeper last night from the VDOT meeting that Supervisor Mallek and I and county staff member Jessica Hirsch-Ballerin were at, I just was reminded of the number of evenings and weekends where I see county staff at events.

So you don't have banker's hours.

I mean it's not an 8 to 4.30 job that you've got.

This board has heard me say on a number of occasions without ground support there's no air support.

Mr. Richardson the other day mentioned to me that this board had spent over 50 hours in meetings over about a six-week period as we were going through the budget.

When you watch a movie and you love it at the very end, if you take the time to watch as they roll the credits, you see the hundreds of people who are all part of making sure that that movie is a success.

And what y'all do makes us successful up here, as you've heard from the supervisors.

We are so appreciative.

I've spent 44 years working in or with local, state, or federal government.

I would put Albemarle County staff against the best I've ever worked with anywhere else.

You guys are the bomb.

You really are.

You're awesome.

Could I ask the board to please allow this committee to introduce themselves?

Please.

And the department division they work in.

These are folks that are not here every day.

There are a number of people in this auditorium this afternoon that are connected in a very meaningful way to this board on a week-to-week, day-to-day basis.

Thank you very much.

Please.

Hello everyone, my name is Aki Parker and I'm in the communications and public engagement office.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Mitzi Hammer, and I'm in the County Executive Office working with the Performance and Strategic Planning Department.

Thank you.

Thank you all, and thank all your colleagues as well.

All right board, all of our proclamations are important.

This one has a special meaning for me, and I took the privilege of the chair to be able to be the supervisor who will read this proclamation as a motion.

And it's a proclamation our community salutes.

Whereas serving the citizens, community, and the United States of America as a member of military service is one of our country's highest callings.

And whereas serving in the military requires the demonstration of positive attributes such as commitment, integrity, dedication, sacrifice, and patriotism.

and whereas serving in the military enables individuals to learn lifelong professional and personal skills and to develop expertise that is beneficial to the community and society at large and whereas each year young men and women of our community with hopeful reassurance from their families enlist in the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and the respective Reserve and National Guard Forces

Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, celebrate, salute, and support those graduating seniors and other young men and women who have chosen to enter military service.

And be it further proclaimed that we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, express our gratitude to such young recruits for their future service to our great nation.

A motion by Supervisor Price, a second by Supervisor Andrews.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Yes.

All right, thank you.

And Colonel Bien, good afternoon and welcome.

Well, first of all, thank you supervisors.

We're very excited about Saturday's event, 10 a.m.

Be there or be square.

Those of you who do not come, I'll be looking for some push-ups from you.

First of all, I want to recognize all the folks and the organizations that just received proclamations.

I think they're all amazing.

They do also work for veterans and the military that we have here in our county.

And so I would like a round of applause for all of those we've just recognized.

Thank you very much for this proclamation.

I know that Chairman Price will be reading it Saturday at our event, but the county has been just an amazing partner in everything that we've been doing of late with regard to the defense and military sectors here in the county.

We are so proud to have

Thank you.

And I know the supervisors will have comments.

My father's, looking back on his life, one of his regrets was that one of his legs was longer than the other and so he was not allowed to serve, whereas all of his brothers did.

But I'm very thankful to sort of make up for that in a way by having the good fortune of representing so many people who have served, all different combat situations or in peacetime if they were very fortunate, but research all over the world.

It is amazing what they have learned and shared with their neighbors and family and also the experience that they have ingrained that allows them to operate in their civilian world in a very different, very organized, very methodical, very devoted, detail-oriented way, which helps all of us to do our jobs who have not had that extra training.

So I appreciate that work.

The NACo Military and Veterans Affairs Committee is one of the more emotional ones that I serve on because they're always trying to work with Congress to get better service, better funding for VA services and bringing all of that that we can down to the local area.

So I will be working with county staff and your agency as well

to do Operation Greenlight here in Albemarle County in December, which really helps to bring focus to our service members and all that they do for us.

Yes.

Lenny, I want to thank you personally for working with and making this event possible in our community.

I'm also really pleased at our graduations because they also, at the graduations, the principals identify and have the young people that are going into one of our armed services stand up and they're recognized, which is wonderful.

the event Saturday I'm looking forward to and I really do appreciate your work and we will see later on our agenda we have an item that we'll be talking about that really will make it clear how important that Defense Department is to this community but thank you very much.

Yes ma'am.

Add my gratitude.

My father did serve in World War II and he was the first in his family to go to college because after graduating from high school then the G.I.

Bill after serving in World War II.

But the character of the people going into our military is so important and I really appreciate celebrating this event.

Thank you.

It was, Leddy, when you came up today, I remember before you and I met in person, the person that told me that I would have to meet you was saying, you have to meet the Colonel.

I just, that popped into my head today when you were walking up there, the Colonel.

So it's a pleasure to have you here.

I have to say that sometimes friends, family members say, what are some of the perks of being serving on a board or a board of supervisors or an elected office?

And I know that as a former school board member, and the fact that we get to join those on the platform at the graduations every year, and as former school board members, we can call up that chip anytime we want in a future graduation.

which to me is the most phenomenal perk of all because that is one of the, if not the most enjoyable thing I get to do each year.

And I'm always struck by the students who stand up who I know have made the choice to enter armed service, some armed service.

That sense of duty or that sense or that call to duty perhaps without knowing exactly what they could be called on to do is something that is particularly profound.

So that's what I thought of today when this proclamation came in so I'm incredibly grateful for all those who serve but particularly grateful to those young folks who are being called to serve and feel the need to answer that call.

Thank you.

I agree.

I don't think there's any calling that's higher than that which protects our democracy, protects our country.

So I salute you and I've loved knowing you for the last three years and look forward to working with you, continuing to work with you.

You do great things for the community.

And the military, I'm very pro-military.

My dad was in World War II.

I have three brothers.

Navy, two were in the Army, one was in the Navy.

I even have an uncle that fought at Dien Bien Phu, my French uncle.

So everyone's in the military.

And thank you for everything you do.

Well, as the chair, we know the Navy prevails.

Colonel Bien, thank you for being here.

And I look forward to being with you again on Saturday for that event.

My family is a family of immigrants to the United States in the 1800s, from the Civil War through World War I, World War II, where my 96-year-old father is a surviving veteran, combat veteran, one of 150,000 roughly.

out of 12 million who served through Korea, Vietnam, my own 25 years in the Navy, my youngest son's service in the Gulf War with three combat deployments recently selected for promotion to major in the Marine Corps.

We honor the service of all of those, Mr. Henry from his submarine service, others in the room who may be veterans.

We also know that it's not just the service member who serves, it's their family.

Their families serve every bit as much as those who wear the uniform.

Those who work with the military, work as either employees of the federal government or as contractors, provide service.

Again, without ground support, there's no air support.

Thank you for being here and thank you for giving us this opportunity to recognize those who have served our country in this capacity.

All right board at this time we'll move to item number seven and let me also say thank you to those in attendance for remaining so that others could be equally honored when their proclamation was read and not disrupted as people were exiting the auditorium.

At this time we'll move to matters from the public that is matters on the agenda but not listed for public hearing or on matters previously considered by the board

or matters that are pending before the board.

Yes, thank you.

During the time set aside for matters on the agenda but not listed for public hearing, individuals may address the Board of Supervisors concerning matters previously considered by the Board or matters that are pending before the Board other than items listed on the agenda for public hearing.

Individuals are allowed one opportunity to speak up to three minutes at each Board meeting as sign-up sheets managed by the Clerk's Office.

Timekeeping is conducted through a timer and a light system at the podium.

The green light will go on when you begin speaking, which begins your allotted time.

The yellow light indicates you have one minute to finish speaking.

The red light indicates your time has expired and you'll be asked to end your comments.

To give all speakers equal treatment and courtesy, the Board requests that speakers adhere to the following guidelines.

Please, when addressing the Board, state your name and if you live in Albemarle County or Magisterial District.

Address comments directly to the board as a whole.

Any written statements or other supporting material may be given to the clerk.

If representing a group or organization, you may ask others present to raise their hands in recognition.

Speakers may not share any unused time with another speaker.

Back and forth debate is not permitted.

Please do not speak from your seat or out of turn as all comments are live streamed, recorded, and published on the Albemarle County website.

Good afternoon supervisors, staff, and members of the public.

I'm Peter Krebs from the Piedmont Environmental Council.

We protect rural lands and advocate for dense, livable areas that are walkable, bikeable, with everyday access to nature.

I'm excited to share a high priority project that is finally coming into view.

The 5th Street

Trail Hub project will create a shared use path connecting the 5th Street Starbucks, 5th Street Station Parkway at the car wash, 5th Street Station with the large trailhead,

Excuse me, if someone could do something about the ambient pollen, I'd appreciate that.

Besides a major grocery store, the Trailhead will serve an outdoor shop, a gym, and numerous restaurants and retail establishments.

The business community is firmly behind this project, as are we.

All of this will be undertaken in a way that is a shared use path that's appropriate for everybody.

It'll be durable,

and ADA compliant.

In addition to the local connections, this Keystone project will unlock many exciting possibilities, including a separate Albemarle County Trail that will connect to the nearby neighborhoods in Biscuit Run Park, the Morris Creek Greenway, which is now just one parcel away from connecting Azalea Park, Sunset Avenue and Fry Spring,

as well as the continuation of the Morris Creek Greenway northbound toward Jordan Park in downtown.

Furthermore, there's potential for a Gateway Park area along Fifth Street where people can park and ride, park and hike, or park and bike.

This has been in the works for quite some time.

I'll never forget a Sean Tubbs article from back in 2016.

Since then, we've come a long way in prioritizing the urban area and also working closely with the city, UVA, and VDOT.

This project will both be a large local improvement and highly strategic area-wide, which is why it has been prioritized.

There is a public meeting tonight at the 5th Street County Office Building from 5 to 7.

It is important that residents of both Charlottesville and Albemarle show up to support.

You can find more information on the county's and VDOT's websites.

Thank you.

Maisie McGrain, please.

Could you move a little closer to the microphone when you speak please?

So we're seniors from Monticello High School and for our Community Action Project.

We just wanted to come and speak to support and express how much we care about environmental sustainability.

So he informed us of some basic policies that are already in place in Albemarle County but he also informed us of the sustainable landscape policy that's currently being drafted but not yet passed and it's been in a drafting stage across multiple departments in Albemarle County and as young people

In this county it's very important to us to keep the landscape that we enjoy resilient and healthy, especially against climate change and the effects of urbanization.

Additionally, as springtime has began, we noticed how much maintenance goes into mowing the lawns at schools and just thinking about how many schools there are in this district and how much land there is to cover, we thought it might be worth considering implementing no-mow zones in areas on school campuses that are not

needed for recreational activity.

So this would allow natural plants to grow kind of untouched by people.

So that would allow native species and other wildlife to live without being bothered.

And also this would save the county money on fuel for mowing so much area.

So, yeah.

So overall, even though we're going off to college soon, we would love to come back and see that the county is still beautiful.

We think Albemarle County is beautiful as it is, and we should do our best to sustain what we have here.

It really matters to us, especially as younger people who will experience

the more adverse effects of climate change that have yet to happen.

This is just really important to us.

So yeah, we really hope that, thank you for taking the time to listen to us and we hope you consider the suggestions we made today.

Hi, good afternoon.

Thank you for time.

I am so impressed.

Let me get on with my thing, but I really appreciate it.

So I am also, as somebody stated earlier, greatly respectful and thankful for the people in public service such as yourselves.

And I've been combing sources of information about county government.

and I'm so sorry, I realize the magnitude of your own responsibilities is not commensurate with what we're paying you.

We're not paying you enough and I'm all for increase.

Last week I was struck by the information that public education requires 54% of your budget and that even that money is insufficient to keep up with the demands of population growth.

which was one of the factors necessitating the recent substantial increase in real estate assessments.

I share the concerns expressed by these students about keeping Albemarle County beautiful.

One of your considerable responsibilities is creating and maintaining the Albemarle County Code of Ordinances.

And in Chapter 14, Subdivision of Land of those Ordinances, Section 14.101, Purposes, it states that the purpose, provide residential areas with healthy surroundings for family life by assuring that land is divided and developed in a manner that is harmonious with surrounding lands.

Part E, sure all improvements required by this chapter will be designed, constructed, and maintained so as not to become an undue burden on the community.

I'm thinking of schools there.

And F, established standards for lot development that are specific to and are most appropriate for the lands within the development and rural areas of the county, which I would maintain are what makes Albemarle County beautiful.

I'm concerned about how the 2021 Crozet Master Plan future land use typologies may or may not meet the standards of the purposes stated above.

Somewhere there must be policy declaring the circumstances that would necessitate the dramatic density increases listed in that master plan, but we're unable to find them.

Would it be possible for you all to show me where we can find that information?

What would necessitate the increased densities in Crozet, given the school system, given the beauty of Albemarle County?

Oh, well, how could I find you?

Thank you, Ann.

I'll talk to you afterwards.

Thank you so much, Supervisor Mallek.

I'm sorry, not Ann, Supervisor Mallek.

All right, thank you.

Thank you very much.

All right, thank you.

At this time, we will move to adoption of the consent agenda.

As indicated earlier,

Items 8.3 and 8.4 are being pulled.

That is at the request of Supervisor McKeel.

The floor is open for a motion to adopt the consent agenda as amended.

Second.

All right, a motion from Supervisor Malek, a second from Supervisor Andrews.

Ms.

Ms.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

All right, thank you.

So, Supervisor McKeel, I will turn the floor over to you for any comments that you may have.

First, with regard to item number 8.3.

And I hope this will be quick.

I certainly am supportive, so it's not a matter of not being in support of the... So this references the Opioid Abatement Authority grant.

And what I just wanted to make sure was that the public understood that these grants are available and that we're taking advantage of them and how we're going to be using them.

Jeff, could you or Kaki, I see Kaki's, and I think Kaki, you're the appropriate person to just speak briefly about the grants so that the community understands how they're being used.

Certainly.

Kaki Dimick, Director of Social Services.

So this is the work of many months of creating a cooperative agreement with Region 10, Nelson County, Louisa County, and we're hoping City of Charlottesville, a last minute approval to join forces to apply for competitive funding from the Opioid Abatement Authority.

And so as you're aware, the Opioid Abatement Authority was created to funnel

the proceeds of the settlement, the many settlements against pharmaceutical companies around the use and misuse of opioids.

And so the state signed on and the county signed on to the state's recipients pool of these funds to then provide

opioid abatement sort of writ large and so there are very specific grants for responding to opioids both prevention and treatment and also to improve coordination and communication across the entire behavioral health system which is critically important for us and so this particular proposal that we're seeking

your support for is to partner with Region 10 and these other localities to expand community outreach efforts so that there are opportunities to talk to someone who is connected to a behavioral health system before there's a significant crisis, which is I think a really critical and important step forward in our system locally.

And then also to expand their crisis receiving center at

Region 10, which would allow for beds that are 23 hours, expansion of their CTEC service, all of which would be really critically important for our system of care.

So we're very hopeful.

As you are aware, we're receiving direct allocations from the opioid abatement authority, which are right now going to support the HEARTS team and their activities and Narcan training for police and fire.

Yeah, it's really very exciting and certainly we hope we receive those.

It just ties into what our discussions have been so often and I didn't want it to go unrecognized.

And Kaki, I also saw that new permanent supportive housing program at Premier Circle

Yes, so there are services available, of course, connected to Virginia Supportive Housing is the developer and will provide the physical location for folks to live, but the services are not automatically built in.

So just wanted to have an opportunity to talk about these two grants publicly.

We're pretty excited about these, partnering with Region 10, particularly, and Virginia Supportive Housing.

They're both really well-regarded, strong organizations, and they're providing a strong best practice response for opioid abatement, both across the board in terms of direct response to opioid use and misuse, and also around the sort of general improvement of our behavioral health system.

Yeah, I am too.

And of course, when we talk about Region 10,

That is our designated community service board, which we hear a lot about in the community, right?

Yes, and Region 10 is a required component for any cooperative agreement.

And that's all, Donna, that I hope to have.

Alright, let me just go through our order if any other questions.

Thank you.

Just the hours.

All right.

No questions.

I understand from reading the material that the window's opening soon, May 5th, but I don't know how long it goes.

Thank you.

We're submitting tomorrow.

So we'll make it.

Supervisor Galloway?

No questions.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley?

No questions, thank you.

And I have no questions, so the floor is open if Supervisor wants to move to approve item 8.3.

Motion by Supervisor McKeel, second by Supervisor Mallek.

I was just asking the County Executive, do we need a board letter of support to go with your grant before we leave this topic?

Your agreement is the de facto letter of support.

We're actually the ones applying for the money.

We'll serve as fiscal agent for these grants.

Ms.

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Mr. Andrews?

Yes.

Ms.

Ms.

Yes.

All right, thank you.

I asked again to just have a quick discussion in our board packet about item 8.4, which is TJPDC's Regional Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan.

and my thought was, and I see Jeff is leaning forward a little bit, my thought was to just point out for the public, the mitigation plan breaks down the communities.

So it's out, there's a section for each of the TJPDC regional, the areas in the region.

And when I looked at Albemarle County and saw the list, and all the counties have these long lists,

Ms.

McKeel, you're exactly right and I believe that I'll look and read body language, but Mr. Oparandi is here from the Fire Rescue Department.

He can make his way down and talk to us for a couple of minutes about the connectivity when we take three steps back.

and of course Mr. Henry's going to lean in and make sure that if he's got anything to add he can jump in there too.

But let's think back to last fall at North Fork and we talked about the large priorities for this community over the next five years.

Ms.

Shifflett, Ms.

Birch, our OLT and this board along with community members who had provided input talked about

We're our biggest opportunities and we're the areas that we really need to focus on to fill gaps and to lessen liability moving forward.

Our first goal is community safety.

And I was so proud of this board and I was so proud of this community recognizing that while it is a core service,

of Albemarle County Government to be in the works in a big way of providing community safety.

We're doing more than just the mandates.

We're reaching hard

into the area of emergency management with Mr. Oprandi's leadership and a lot of other folks in the organization, key partner agencies, the state, the federal government and you're right, it's ambitious and so we're proud of the fact that we continue to move forward in a number of areas in that focus area and this one is a really important one.

So John, you certainly can take the mic and talk about anything specific regarding this that you want to talk about and then Ms.

And thank you for being here.

No worries, thank you.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak to it.

I'm John O'Prandy, Deputy Chief of Emergency Management with the County Fire Rescue Department and I think Mr. Richardson did a great job of kind of summing it up.

There are so many things that are covered in our hazard mitigation plan and

It covers from the preventative measures that we might be able to take to actual response strategies including staffing our emergency operations center, recovery.

The gamut of the areas of emergency management are all covered in that hazard mitigation plan.

and there are so many folks that were involved in that.

I'm here speaking to it right now but I may make the mistake of leaving people out but I will call out Greg Harper who played a lead role in working with the TJPDC on our engagement on the hazard mitigation plan.

And so you'll notice that the

Rivanna, the Water Authority, the County Service Authority, they're involved in that as well and so there are goals and objectives that are being worked on towards mitigating those hazards that they're involved with as well that we're coordinating with and our schools working together on our active threat and our emergency preparedness and that regard is also reflected in aspects of the hazard mitigation plan

So a lot of work that is going on throughout the community to ready ourselves for that.

I just really appreciate it because it really does tie in with our climate action plan.

with our budget.

There are multiple connections and none of this is going to happen.

This doesn't happen by sprinkling fairy dust.

It takes people, it takes resources, and it takes dollars.

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you.

We will go through our order.

Yes, well it's okay, I don't have a question.

Every time we get a rain like we did four inches on Saturday morning or Friday and then another eight tenths on Sunday, it makes me remember May 29th of 2018 when at our place in Earliesville and also in the sort of western arc through for Union Crozet and Nelson County, 11 inches of rain in like 16 hours and

all of the different state, local, and federal people swarmed to see and make plans for

remediation afterwards but doing all this work helps I think to prevent a lot of the damage to begin with and I will call out the long-time efforts that USDA and our Soil and Water Conservation people and Farm Services Agency people in Louisa do to help establish riparian buffers along all streams because our buffers have been in place for 10 years and

While the fences were four feet underwater, everything stood, the trees survived, everything turned out okay.

It was just very, very muddy.

So I really think this prevention and planning ahead is so, so important to protect lives and property as well.

Thank you.

Again, I just second, this is an extremely important area.

I am very happy that we're supporting this and doing this, but I think that the more we talk about it the better, so I look forward to additional discussions and ways in which we can help further this plan.

Thank you.

Supervisor Galloway.

I'm good, thank you.

Thank you.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley?

No questions, but thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

I don't have any questions.

I do have a couple of comments.

Because this is a document prepared outside of Albemarle County, I didn't initially raise it.

But I would ask if you go back to TJPDC, there are a number of images where they are copied upside down in the book.

Under the H as in Hilo, pages 29, 30, 40, 41, 42, under V as in Victor, number 6.

There may be others before it's actually disseminated.

I think they'd like to make it look a little more professional, but thank you.

Without other questions, the floor is open for a motion with regard to item 8.4.

Hazard Mitigation Plan.

Motion by Supervisor McKeel.

Second by Supervisor Mallek.

Ms.

Ms.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Yes.

Thank you, Supervisors.

Thank you, Board.

We'll now move to item number nine of presentation, the Defense Sector Regional Economic Impact.

Colonel Bien.

Good afternoon.

Mr. Henry, are you teeing it off or are we going straight to Colonel Bien?

Good afternoon Chair Price, members of the board, Trevor Henry, Deputy County Executive.

It is my, we'll try to multitask here as I talk, it is my distinct honor and privilege to introduce Colonel Bien once again.

She was up here just a few minutes ago and spoke about the events on Saturday and I would want to take this opportunity to thank her personally for all the leadership she is putting into making this event happen.

I was able to attend it

the last event prior to the COVID shutting things down and it is a very emotional and thrilling event to support.

So I'm glad to be able to be partaking that again.

But we're here now to talk about some exciting information.

Colonel Bien is our Defense Affairs Committee Program Manager.

She's been in this role since July of 2020.

I think it's 2020, so coming up on three years and she has committed to giving us one more year so we are appreciative of that.

Letty is an attorney and is just a powerhouse of support for all things related to military and veterans in our community and so really have appreciated working with and for Letty over these past several years.

But today she's going to present

In your packet was a comprehensive study that was done and funded through the Defense Affairs Committee of which the county is a primary funder of the position and also was a funder of this study to evaluate the economic impacts of the defense industry in our in our region and it's significant and so Letty will kind of you know skim the surface on this

provide the information to the board, and then be here along with I to answer any questions.

But just as a reminder, the county support of the Defense Affairs Committee falls directly under our project ENABLE, or Economic Development Project, and it's just to retain and grow what is a significant industry in our region.

And Letty will talk a little more about that.

And so if we can get the presentation up on the screen,

Then Luddy will be able to take over.

Good afternoon.

Thank you for having me.

This was a very complex study.

And so I'm going to hit sort of the highlights.

And I'm not going to get into the methodology at this point.

We always can do that at a later date.

This is our beautiful report.

You all have it, I believe, electronically.

And so I guess let's just get started here.

OK, I already made a mistake.

So what was the motivation?

You folks know I've been here for a while and it was very clear to me that the state's numbers were woefully low.

They included us in a region that went all the way up to Manassas and they did not do a deep dive.

It was critical, I felt, that we needed to know exactly what the defense community adds to the bottom line of the county, the county's economic vitality.

And so you see the Quantify the Missing Elements from the Virginia Military Factbook, that was the study that the state had done.

The things I thought are really important is to provide education, outreach, and support from this community.

If you don't know what you have, you don't know what you can lose, and you don't know how it will impact you unless you have the metrics.

And I'm happy to say that we now do in fact have the metrics.

We drilled down a lot deeper than the state did.

And actually, to be honest with you, I still think the number that we're going to present to you today is a little bit low, not by a lot, but there are some things we still were unable to account for, and I'll let you know what those are as we go forward.

First of all, big thanks to the county who funded the majority of this study.

The UVA Foundation, the City of Charlottesville also engaged with us.

The study did cover the City of Charlottesville, Albemarle County, and Greene County because those are the major three municipalities that are engaged with the Defense Affairs Committee at the Chamber.

So we did include Greene County.

They really don't account for a significant amount but they are growing in the defense arena as well, particularly because they have a defense production zone that their entire county now falls into.

So about the study, it's the description within the Albemarle Charlottesville region.

The numbers are for 2021.

And the report also talks about the quality of life issues as the people who are here in the defense industry really add to our quality of life in doing volunteer services, which you can't really quantify or find a metric for.

They coach Little League ball.

They work at the Charlottesville Albemarle

SPCA.

They're engaged in a number of ways.

I'm hoping you've got them on some of your boards and commissions.

And if not, we need to do that.

And so this is pretty much what, again, it does cover Albemarle, Charlottesville, and Greene County.

So what was considered the defense industry for purpose of this study?

Well, clearly Rivanna Station, which as you all know is in the county, I believe that's in Ann's district, correct?

Or is that in Bea's?

There you go.

You're on the other side of the street.

Across the street.

Across the street.

It did include DOD contracts in the region, the Judge Advocate General Legal Center in school, and the University of Virginia and all of those pieces of it.

grants, the contracts, the startups.

We found all these bunch of patents that were DoD funded that UVA now has.

We included Veterans Reserve and National Guard, and then there's some other entities that were small, but we got as best the information as we possibly could.

So this, I think, is very important.

This shows you that 52% of the total defense industry employment is in Albemarle County.

So the direct jobs is just under 4,000 employment jobs.

But when you include the indirect, it goes up to over 7,000, of which 52% of that employment is within the county.

And then you can see the breakdown with regard to contracts that account for 18% of employment and so on and so forth.

So I think my next, no, here we go.

So this is sort of a snapshot of the local engagement.

I think it's really interesting on the first bullet that 100 local companies had 50,000 or more in DoD contracts from 2012 to 2021.

But more importantly, 70 firms received DoD contracts of any value here in the area in just 2021.

70 firms.

and a lot of them have nothing to do with Rivanna Station.

There's quite a few organizations and businesses and nonprofits that have contracts with the Department of Defense and any of its subordinates, Department of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Homeland, Coast Guard, etc., that they're working them here in our area.

and I mean Northrop Grumman is just a perfect example.

They have 480 employees.

They do no work with Rivanna Station.

They are doing the

They work for the Navy and the Coast Guard in the navigational systems that go into ships, of which about 25% of their workforce are veterans.

I think that's kind of important.

You'll see 11 UVA startups and 57 DOD-sponsored patents since 2000 that got its initial funding from Department of Defense.

So now my big reveal.

$1,200,000.

Actually, it's $1,218,000.

Or as my husband likes to say, $1,200,000.

Because it sounds bigger.

So this is the number of our total economic impact for one year.

One year.

And recall that 2021 is pretty much right at the back end of COVID.

So that's not to say that there isn't some significant difference.

This morning I spoke to Booz Allen, Hamilton, who's out at North Fork.

They told me that in 18 months they've grown 75% here and they expect to grow significantly moving into the future.

But their issue is, and this is something we'll of course talk about in the future, their issue is infrastructure and space and whatnot.

So that's a big number and as you see that we now could clearly say that after the University of Virginia that this is the largest economic engine for this area.

It's quiet.

I call it the secret squirrels.

I mean, even the janitor at NJIC won't tell you what he does.

And he probably can't.

So this is a significant number.

And there you have the sort of what we just talked about.

The 1.2 billion output in 2021.

7,300 jobs, labor income, and the value added that goes in there.

And if you add those two, you're not going to get $1.2 billion.

But you can't ask me how that happens because it's a magic that Weldon Cooper Center only knows how it works.

So back to that motivation.

We now have this information and what are we going to do with this information?

Is our goal to maintain, to grow, to expand, to support this sector?

And what would that economic picture look like if we lost it?

Please do not

Think that a 90 million dollar expansion at Rivanna Station guarantees it's staying here.

There's a location in the Midwest that has already offered DoD.

100 free acres for Rivanna Station to move.

Could it happen?

Well, I don't know what gets discussed in the halls of the Pentagon, but I have been in other locations where there's been a significant investment in facilities and infrastructure and upgrade, and they still got moved.

So I think it takes all of us to really sit down and roll up our sleeves and understand

what we need to do and what we can't do.

And that's why I have at the last bullet, what steps should Albemarle County take?

If any, it's a rhetorical question at the moment.

I have no expectations that we've got the answers right here and right now.

But surely it's something that we really need to look at.

We need to support the sector.

I got, shockingly, three pages of an Excel spreadsheet of the companies in our area that are doing DoD work that we had no idea were engaged.

And that's pretty significant.

And like I said, I still think this number is low.

There are some classified programs out at Rivanna Station that were not included in this because they obviously cannot be.

Spousal employment of military folks who are here, that's not included because we have no way of identifying that.

So it's just

The study is just mind-boggling to even me, but very happy that we now have some real numbers that we can leverage the actions that we take in the future.

Thank you, Colonel.

I just would add, I know Colonel asked a rhetorical question, but I think it's just worth noting for the board and the public,

that we have, the county has actively been involved with the Defense Affairs Committee for years.

I would say significantly since 2018.

We provide funding for the Defense Affairs Committee program manager and through Letty's work has I think really has moved the needle and awareness of the military in our region and how we support that.

And then just personally, you know, Mr. Richardson and I have spent a great deal of time building our relationship

with Secretary Crenshaw at the state, and I think we very much are supporting this work.

Secretary Crenshaw has commissioned a listening tour, is what I would call it.

through his office using some consultants that will be visiting our region at the end of this month where they're going throughout the state and meeting with every military function and wanting to hear, you know, how's it going, getting what I would call a mini SWAT analysis so that the state can get that information and

and then as they look for budgeting moving into next year, they're armed with priorities.

So we have work to do, but I think we are on the path of supporting this industry and just the, as Letty said, the study

You know, basically it's 2x of impact that we thought it was through the state's report.

I will tell you that the state was a little surprised too with the results.

All of this is really important and I'm glad to have a little more sort of properly carried out models because the sort of 10,000 jobs contractors included from many years ago it's almost there really and truly that wasn't hyperbole but also I think what's really important to your program effort is how you have helped the daily life of our service members who are at Rivanna Station and their families to get better connected with their community

and that strengthens our whole sort of loyalty approach and the positive experience that they have because the leaders are not going to stay in a place where their workers are miserable.

So I'm really grateful for all the work that we're doing on that.

Thank you.

The importance of this sector cannot be underestimated.

That's what this study really shows.

and no matter where you are in Albemarle County or the city, this sector impacts your life in one way or another, even if you're not connected at all to the Defense Department, right?

I really appreciate the county funding this regional study.

It's always nice if partners go together and fund, but in absence of that, it's really important and I appreciate Albemarle County funding this study.

From my world, coming at this from my experience at the school board level and as an educator, it's always interesting how decisions are made.

and I can remember with the expansion of the DIA and the Defense Department up 29 North, one of the main things in my world as a school board member, they wanted to know was what is the state of your public schools.

We said the first thing that our employees want to know before they're moving into a district is what is the state of the public schools, because they don't necessarily have the money or want to have to send their children to private schools.

What is a public school?

They sent people down to interview, to talk to, to look at, and the school board at that time participated in

We even went to Northern Virginia, talked to all of the folks, so I think people don't always realize the importance of a strong public school educational system in a community.

Having said that, we had someone today under public comment that referenced I think 54% of our budget goes to schools.

I would correct them and say it's 57% of our budget goes to education.

And that 57% of our dollars is well spent.

And this is one of the reasons why.

You can have a healthy community without a strong public school system.

But thank you very much.

I appreciate this study.

And Lenny, I appreciate you kind of synthesizing it down to where it's understandable.

And I will take a look in more detail at the report.

And I'm glad we have it in hard copy.

Thank you.

I do appreciate the hard copy on the education in macroeconomics that I got by trying to understand it.

I very much appreciate it.

I recognize that we have natural advantages here, that location relative to Washington, the presence of the university, the strength of the university, the intellectual capacity that sort of comes with that.

But I also want to second what Supervisor McKeel said, that it's also what we do and how we support our public schools, how we manage the county, how we maintain and protect the natural beauty of the area that will help strengthen the appeal of our area.

But also there are other things, and some of them are intangible, some of them will come to fore.

And I look forward to doing what we can to continue to be the place that people want to be for this sort of activity.

Thank you.

Thank you for the report and the presentation.

To not repeat things, I think this report is an excellent example for folks who want to understand

Why economic development needs to be a top priority for this board and for our county because it explains wonderfully how when you have an employment sector like this, when it got into the direct, the indirect, and the induced ways that those dollars come into your community, that's something we need to understand.

It's nice to have this kind of laser focus on this particular sector, and of course I'm appreciative to have this sector here.

We don't know about it.

I think what you call it, secret squirrels?

That was great.

But when we even talk about doing economic development that brings on 30 folks, or maybe one of the smaller elements that's related to this sector, we have to see that even 30 new jobs has an impact

and ultimately, I'll be making this comment later today for the budget, this is how we relieve some pressure on the real estate property tax because this type of economic activity is what can help bring in revenue in a way that doesn't make always going to property as the driving factor behind how we get our revenues to do the services that we need to provide.

So I would certainly encourage those out there not just interested in this particular defense sector, but in economic development in general to understand just how economic activity impacts us here when it's grown here, it's operating here,

the jobs that are around it.

So this is

This is wonderful analysis.

I even think that our land use applications in my town hall last week, we were talking about, well, yeah, if you have a property that zoned R4 and they're currently paying a certain amount because the property is not yet developed, once it does develop and it gets rezoned up, now we're bringing in a different revenue from that piece of property.

and that helps when that's developed to the same point as the economic activity.

So this type of analysis I think should actually be included in every land use application that comes to us.

How does this impact the revenue rolls if this land gets up zoned?

I think some people get a little nervous about that because then it makes it sound like, oh, well, you're only approving it because it means more money for the county.

I would just simply say, well, hold on.

It's in the development area typically.

And if we don't understand what it means to us revenue-wise, then I guess we're not doing our job to understand this application.

So it's a great example of analysis that I think certainly should be going on with economic development projects, but perhaps other ways that we look at some other things that are in front of us as well.

So thank you.

Thank you very much for the informative update on all of this and look forward also to doubling in even more.

And I agree that this is a vital part of our economic development program for the county.

This makes us healthier.

This strengthens us.

And to have the Rivanna Station and DAC here, extremely beneficial.

So thank you very much.

Thank you.

I've got a couple of comments and I'm going to ask you to go back to slide number nine briefly.

I want to follow up with Supervisor McKeel's comments first.

When I was working in Navy Legislative Affairs, one of my portfolios was all the personnel

We talk about DODS, the Department of Defense school system, and typically we think about that in an overseas location, but we also have locations in the United States

where the federal government owns so much land there's not enough real estate privately owned for real estate taxes and therefore the government will give a pittance, a portion of the funding for those schools.

We will never get that money in Albemarle County because our economic stability

and base is so broad that the federal government will never figure to send money here as they did up to some places for example in Washington State or in California.

So our schools are critical because if we don't have the good schools we're not going to be able to get the people who will come and when I was a personnel officer in the Navy

I knew that people with families did not want to go to places where they did not have schools, myself included, when I declined a set of orders to a state that had horrible schools.

So that is a critical component.

But it is.

It is under.

And the words that really jump out at me are the direct, indirect, and induced.

And you all addressed that in the written report on pages 2 and 18.

And I, you know, commend that to people's readings if they're not sure about that.

The question that I have relates to the $830 million in value added.

And what exactly do we mean by value added?

If we look at that as an industry term,

It's defined as the difference between an industry's gross output and the cost of its intermediate inputs.

So if it costs you $100 of input and you can sell it for $1,000, you're getting $900 of value added.

Well, I'm going to attack that question in what I think is the answer, but I will certainly speak with Terry Repan, Dr. Repan, to ensure that what I give you is correct.

And one other thing is when we talk about growing the defense here, I think it's very important for the public to understand is we're not manufacturing tanks.

We're not doing, you know, weapon systems.

This is mostly intelligence, research and development.

The average salary of the people in this industry is $100,000 and you can own a house with $100,000 in income.

So the way I think the value-added works is if they spend

And I'll do one that I think is kind of interesting.

So it's the second level of dollars.

So for every one dollar that gets spent by the defense sector, it then goes to, say, the hiring of somebody else or the purchase of something else that means that dollar has now grown to like a $1.37.

and I think that and then they take it even as far as to the induced level and I think it's that value added over the over the one dollar that moves that thing forward.

My guess is that Mr. Richardson probably is a better explain explanation for the value added but

All right, thank you.

And what's really significant about that is all of the money initially coming in essentially is federal money coming in in the defense industry.

So it's kind of a parallel to what we do with Project Enable where we want to take local money and keep it here, produce products on the commercial side that are sent elsewhere

purchased and that money comes back here, this gives us the opportunity to take money from another source that comes into our area and grow it here.

And the other thing that I think is significant about this report that was finished in the beginning of February is the timeliness considering Mr. Richardson the conversations that this board has had about Project Enable 2.0.

And so this is critical information for us to take as we look to the broader economic development of the county here.

You know if you, one of the things we're finding, I mean this is a fabulous place to live and raise a family and do all kinds of stuff and we're seeing a lot of people who are retiring out of NJIC, out of the university that are in the RTC departments

They're staying here.

They're staying here.

And they're still doing work.

And you and I, we get a check from the federal government every year, every month, and that money stays here.

I buy, I live, I do everything with that money.

So it's similar to what you're saying, but it's even better when it's coming from an outside source coming in and then we use it.

here.

So just a quick example, Air Force Colonel was the ROTC primary military person at University of Virginia and he now has decided his family wants to stay here.

Donna, I'd just like to add in your right to bring up Project Enable and I'm looking forward to Project Enable 2.0.

Having said that, remember with Project Enable 1.0, the defense industry was one of our targeted markets, one of our targeted industries in Project Enable.

Board, I'm going to offer that we take a brief recess now before we go into our next items.

So if we could take a five minute, let's try to make it five.

Colonel Bien, if you don't mind holding on, I just want to catch you on the way out, while we're on recess.

Alright, thank you.

All right, good afternoon board.

We are back.

At this time, we'll move to item number 10, an action item, adoption of the calendar year 2023 tax rates, fiscal year 24 budget, FY 23 revised and FY 24 pay scales, borrowing resolution, FY 2428 capital improvements plan, and appropriation of the FY 24 budget.

Thank you, Chair Price, for the introduction.

One moment if we could just pull the presentation up.

That is a very long agenda title, but in short, we are here to wrap up the fiscal year 24 budget development process.

In order to do that, there are six actions that the board will be asked to take today.

Today I'm going to provide a little bit of background just to the process as a whole and then one by one we'll walk through these in order with each resolution.

I'll present some background, allow board questions, comments, discussion, and then take action on these one through six.

This budget process really began that day off-site.

The board held their strategic planning retreat back in late August.

That continued with the board's continued work on the strategic plan that was adopted in October with six strategic goals and 23 related objectives.

What we've done in this budget process is really trying to line up in those 23 objectives.

What can we move forward with additional funding?

What do we need to move forward through work plans and using our existing resources to begin to make progress in the first year of a five-year strategic plan?

This slide for background, the board has seen before, is the strategic plan is not the only factor because as we look around the different elements on this,

The board held separate meetings this fall about our financial policies in September, the economic outlook in October.

We had three five-year, five-year financial plan sessions, including one a joint board meeting with the school board in December on the five-year financial plan, for all of these to come together to shape the annual budget.

All that work was in calendar year 22.

In the current calendar year, we see the schedule where the board has spent considerable time in work sessions in their own town halls through public hearings to engage with staff, engage with the public, bringing us today to approve and appropriate the budget.

So for anyone in the public maybe tuning in and understand my comments on the details are rather at a summary level, that is because we have gone through this in very exhaustive detail in these prior sessions.

So this brings us to the first action for the tax rate resolutions.

I'll provide just a couple references of slides that the board has seen before.

Real estate taxes included in the budget are at the current rate of 85.4 cents per $100 of value.

Every penny on the real estate tax rate is equal to about $2.7 million.

So if the board were to adopt a lower rate, there would need to be a corresponding change for every penny of $2.7 million to accommodate that.

Because the board has advertised a rate of 85.4 cents, they are unable to go higher.

It would need to be a rate of that amount or less.

The reassessments in calendar year 23 were an increase of approximately 13.5 percent.

And we discussed last week at the public hearing and in other work sessions, there is a statement called the lowered or effective tax rate under state code.

And what that means, if the same amount of revenue were to be brought in this year based on only the change in reassessments, what amount of rate would need to be having offset to have that impact?

In this case, that would be a rate of $0.75.3, which is approximately $0.10 less than what we have currently.

This rate, we're primarily talking real estate, but this also does apply to public service and mobile homes as well.

Next, to reference on personal property taxes, this is a rate that applies to individual vehicles, motorcycles, as well as business tangible property and machinery and tools.

A little of history, just to recap what we just shared before.

In calendar year 22, a year ago at this time, we were seeing a dramatic increase in car values on average.

At that time, the Board of Supervisors decreased that rate 86 cents, or approximately 20 percent of the rate.

That did not equalize the rate.

There was still some rate there, but it was just recognizing due to that unusual circumstance, the Board made an adjustment to the rate.

This year we are seeing car values fall, not as dramatically as they rose, but they are falling.

The budget does recommend that rate remain at $3.42.

So on average, people would expect to see a decrease in their personal property taxes, knowing that, again, individual situations will differ.

Every penny on this personal property tax rate is about $100,000 in collected tax revenues.

So the action before the board, well discussion then action, the budget is balanced right now on the two rates shown on the slide.

Alright, thank you.

Board, before we go through our questions,

We have six different items that we need to take action on.

I would ask that each supervisor, if making comments, be as brief as possible.

Obviously, if there are things you need to address, address them.

But we spent two and a half months roughly working on this, so I would hope that most of our opinions are known on this.

But I also have another question before we do that.

And I would like to ask the board if your preference would be to go through each of the six in turn or have staff address all six and then do a single round of comments before actually raising each one individually as a motion.

I like the latter better.

All right.

And Supervisor Galloway.

All right, the consensus, the unanimity of the board, Mr. Bowman, is if you would do all six of your presentations and then we'll do one round of comments before we vote on each item separately.

All right.

Thank you.

The second item will be the resolution to approve the annual budget.

This is the total all funds budget that will be before the board.

I shared there was an update to this based on the school board's adoption and some other items I want to walk through in detail, which is why this total all funds budget, that's our general fund, our school fund, our capital funds, our debt funds, all of our grant and special revenue funds, totaling just under $555 million.

To recap, for the public's awareness, since the time of the proposed budget, the board has provided direction at prior meetings.

There was a transit reserve that has been allocated to Jaunt that is about just continuing existing services.

That was done in the March 22 work session.

Back on the April 19th work session, the board provided direction to allocate some funding to increase tax relief, to accelerate the timing of the housing position, and to provide some compensation increases for boards and commissions, not the board of supervisors itself.

This was a catch-up for boards who had not received an adjustment since the year 2000.

And then finally we discussed in the capital budget add in the four-year Darden-Towel parkfield rebuild project.

The first year of that is included in the fiscal year 24 budget.

There are just a couple of county executive recommended adjustments.

I would characterize these as administrative and reporting rather than policy changes.

To walk through these one by one, as part of the budget, we talked as part of our work session on workforce stabilization and customer service.

We talked about our core systems modernization project.

At the time the county executives recommended budget, there were two positions that we had in one amount to really for communication purposes.

This is really to now distribute those to where the departments will take work in Department of Finance and Budget and Information Technology.

as that project moves forward with the continuing the community development system replacement project and then taking on the financial management system project.

So this is not a change in total dollars.

It's just where they would be reported in the final budget and the appropriation.

The second one, also reporting, when we released the recommended budget, we had the Biscuit Run athletic field separate from the rest of the Biscuit Run capital project, anticipating the board may desire some additional discussion on fields which took place.

So there is now the separate Darden Towel athletic field rebuild project.

Staff will recommend for the simplicity in reporting and just in accounting that we would manage the biscuit run athletic fields as part of the total biscuit run capital project with all the other phases of that park.

And the third is a change not mentioned in the packet, so I'm going to just introduce this before I turn it over to the county executive to speak a little bit more.

We've talked a lot in this budget about how the Department of Social Services is transforming to take on more of a department and human and social services function.

So we have updated our budget resolution and other attachments as we need to to appropriate funding.

where we would have an organizational change to really reallocate the funding that exists for the Office of Equity and Inclusion and the broadband affordability and accessibility office.

Rather than have those reported as part of the executive leadership category, instead we would report those as part of the department and human social services category.

Mr. Bowman, thank you very much.

I really don't have a lot to add.

This is just a part of the work that our team has been doing, trying to align the organization

It started back in December when Mr. Walker let me know that he was contemplating retirement into January 16 visits with 16 department heads about 20 hours of work I've talked to this board about this and this is really just about alignment as we move forward and we look at our social services department

recognizing that so much of what that department does is about mandates.

It's about state mandates.

It's about alignment with public services for the population that we serve in Albemarle County.

But as we look more broadly at human service delivery, we've really taken two steps back and asked ourselves,

with not just these functions but also some other things that we're doing as we look at social services, as we look at housing, as we look at affordable housing, as we look at Miss Demick and our team and the connections we have to so much of the social and public human service agencies in this community.

You know that recently the University of Virginia partnered with the city and the county to develop the community safe.

work, the group work.

Ms.

Demick is involved in that in a big way where she's a key contributor not only from the county but also with her connections to our key partner agencies, the nonprofit community.

Again, broadening our focus

as both we are urban and a rural service community, but in the areas of human service delivery, the key partner agency connections and how we deliver our services, our collaboration and our work, we think that as we move forward,

that the broadband services and so much of the work of Mr. Brookings and his team, the connection back to AC44 and all the work we're doing, that we're going to be better served for that to be more administratively aligned under Miss Demick's leadership.

I'll be happy to answer questions the board has.

This again, this does not have budgetary effect, but it's really just broadening

the lens of the county executive's office and how we work with the community.

When I say that this started in December, this also was in my annual review where I talked to you about I've got to be more community-facing as I enter my sixth year here.

and some of the work that we've done and how we've aligned our staff to do their best work.

It's both with internal service delivery improvements but also external service delivery improvements.

And Ms.

All right, thank you.

Board, if it's all right, we'll just hold our questions till the end if there are any questions or comments.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That wraps up the county executive recommended adjustments.

The next update I'll share, because the board's agenda was published on April 26, the school board adopted their budget on April 27, so I've provided by email an update from what that means to the total budget and I'll explain this here.

The total school budget for all their funds is increasing $2.7 million from the proposed budget.

This is really about one-time expenses that are funded through the school's fund balance.

That is allocated $1.5 million to the primary operating fund and $1.2 million into their other special revenue funds.

There are some other very minor adjustments in revenues, but it really is largely about those one-time expenses as part of just a natural part of how the school board works through their budget process.

So I will again come back to the action on the budget resolution.

The third resolution is to approve the county's pay scales.

The board will recall on March 29th we held an in-depth work session with staff from Human Resources and Performance and Strategic Planning to talk about the Gallagher classification and compensation study and the recommendations coming from that and getting direction from the board in terms of their comfort and questions to move forward.

So this resolution, when we come back to action, is really to do two things.

It would revise fiscal year 23.

The board has already provided funding in the current year to implement this in the last part of the year.

And then the fiscal year 24 budget is able to fund those pay scales that were recommended in the study.

I'll note here this was another just a typographical error with all the references to 23 and 24.

There wasn't one date that we've updated and now that is reflected online.

Moving to the fourth resolution we're asked to award.

This is the annual resolution of appropriations.

A budget is just a plan.

Legally under Virginia code, the resolution is what actually grants authority to the county to spend money.

So that's the first bullet.

This is where the plan starts to become action.

Two things I'll highlight in this resolution is that every year it does delegate to the county executive by the board some authority for the county executive to transfer funding in very specific purposes.

For transparency reasons, we report those always out whenever that authority is used on the quarterly financial reports.

And any time we use that, it's really for those items that are more administrative in nature rather than policy decisions that are more appropriate for the board or to be brought before the board.

Also, for anyone who is an external entity or agency who receives county funding, we also set out expectations in terms of how they should be accounted separate from other funds, other reporting requirements that may be applicable during the year to them.

We'll come back for action on Attachment D. Attachment E is a relatively simple one.

This is a very long title, but all it really is is authorizing the county to issue bonds for those projects included in the fiscal year 24 budget.

Those bonds will be issued at a later date.

This is really just putting the administrative work in now so that we have that flexibility to move forward when the time comes to issue those borrowed proceeds for capital projects.

And finally, we have a resolution for the capital improvement plan.

This is another topic we've had a work session on this spring, had a lengthy discussion with the school board in December.

Just a total five-year CIP totals about $319 million.

primarily funded through plan borrow proceeds and cash with one time and ongoing.

Very high level in the expenditure side.

We can see the majority of our CIP is the public schools.

We've discussed not only the ongoing maintenance funding and additional renovation funding, the funding that is planned in the future for the northern and southern elementary schools, as well as the work the schools will be doing in the coming five years to implement the center two funding that is currently appropriated.

We see on the other smaller pieces of the donut, the county government portions.

Community development is the largest and that primarily includes funding for the transportation leveraging program, which is putting local money in to draw down and leverage funding from the state, as well as economic funding in the out years.

Just to clarify, when the CIP is approved, what does this mean?

That consists of the adopted fiscal year 24 capital budget, which by order of appropriations, the board would have approved that budget first.

fiscal year 25 to 28 are what we refer to the out years of the plan.

Every year, we will update that plan for costs, timing of projects.

The board will have flexibility to amend that.

But what this gives us is a very important starting point to make sure as we're targeting potential future borrowings, future staffing needed or operating impacts, we've got a roadmap for how that can be connected.

So for example, last year's CIP was fiscal year 23 to 27.

The entire four years rolled forward and that became the starting point for as we planned this CIP.

So with that, that covers all of my comments.

Alright, thank you.

And that's what we'll do, Board.

We'll go through first once if there are any questions of staff.

and then we'll go through a second time and those questions will be for any of the sixth and then comments for any of the sixth.

I think there's one, just one second.

I think that this was explained during

The extra COVID money, I think it was $11 million that went to the school department, did that become part of their base or was that kept separate and did not impact

Yeah, the county and the schools will be the same for any grant funds where there's lots of restrictions.

We would account for those in what's called a special revenue fund.

All right, so that was what I said, but I want to make sure.

Thank you.

All right, thank you.

Questions?

Thank you.

Supervisor Andrews?

No additional questions, thank you.

Thank you.

Supervisor Galloway?

No questions.

Thank you.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley?

No questions, thank you.

And I have no questions, so that concludes the questions.

Any comments by any supervisors on any of the six motion items?

So this is the time for me to say how I'm going to vote I would assume so I would like to do that very much and let me just I went the wrong way so let me find my page here we go so I am in support of the rate because I'm in support of the budget and the budget yes has increased significantly and certainly since the budget that I thought was big in 2008 when I started this but also our

population has grown 15,000 people in 10 years.

And we are even more quickly becoming more urban than we used to be, which comes with it all of the public services and public safety and emergency and urban services and providing human services to our most vulnerable populations that we have really begun much more seriously since COVID came.

So I think there's a whole new perspective that I have, and I hope that citizens also have, about the work that is being done in local government for their benefit.

So that is those two questions.

And yes, let's see.

Those are all fine.

The only comment I would have about the pay scale is that I think this is really important to retain the best employees we have in a highly competitive market and I support that as well.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you Donna.

I will say first that I am supportive of all six of these budget proposals and recommendations from staff that we have in front of us.

But I also want to take the opportunity to thank all the citizens who have engaged with the budget process this year.

And thank you for the emails, the calls, the public comments, and a big shout out to those residents who have taken the time to follow our deliberations

and to actually review the budget and the supporting documents.

That's very appreciated.

I also want to thank Nilsie, Andy,

the county executive's team, all of our staff because you all have done an outstanding job this year and an outstanding job bringing us through the pandemic and the shock to our finances and our budgets and the economy coming out of the pandemic and I just really want to just express my appreciation.

The supervisors and staff, as we've said several times today, we spent 53 hours of thoughtful, deliberate budget discussions.

We also, in addition, had lots of questions that we sent in that were answered by staff, and those questions were answered back to us by email, and I think they've been shared with the public, their public information.

We held nine budget town halls in the community, and we had several public meetings with the school board, including with the school board, around the CIP.

Our budget is built on six strategic agreed-upon goals, which are really easy to track, and you can track them through all of our planned budget expenditures.

I mean, it's not rocket science.

It's pretty easy to follow.

The increasing property assessments have provided additional revenues, making an increase in the real estate property tax rate unnecessary for the last five years.

Reliance on increasing property assessments is not sustainable.

Thus we have all of our work, which Ned has talked about just today, around economic development and attempting to diversify our tax base.

Last year, and again in this budget, the personal property tax rate was lowered, providing relief to more individuals, businesses, and organizations than just a real estate increase would have provided.

Personally, for me, from 2008 to 2012, I learned a lot about the difficulty of governing and providing services during a recession.

The economic landscape now is not encouraging and I'm not going to be caught short again.

There's no agreed upon federal budget and the proposed compromises that we're hearing would push again many of those services using federal dollars back into our communities to be accounted for.

We don't know if that's going to happen, but we don't even know what the federal budget is going to look like.

And having said that, there's no state budget at this point.

And educational funds are especially at risk right now, I would say.

57% of our budget provides for schools, operation, and CIP debt.

We have provided more tax relief for the elderly and disabled, which I am extremely pleased about, and I know staff worked really hard to bring those options before us, and I appreciate that very much.

We are spending more money for social services and housing, two critical areas for our community.

And the implementation of the salary increases, the salary scales and increases based on the Gallagher compensation study to stabilize our workforce is also critical.

So that's just a short, just some short thoughts that I have about the budget that we're going to be approving today and the process that's gotten us here.

Thank you.

Probably not for the last time.

I will state that I sometimes fear going after people as much as going first because they've said everything so beautifully and I don't know what to add to it.

So thank you.

That was a very very well put summary of exactly how I would view the situation.

I'm supportive of all six.

I'm very appreciative of staff's work on this.

the time we've spent digesting the public's comments on it.

I will note that the comments tend to come in different varieties.

The broad comments may be concerned about the increase in assessments, which I would state in a passive voice is that we did not increase assessments.

Assessments went up.

It's a market that's doing that if we're going to put an actor to it.

Yet, when the public also comes forward and says,

Well, we really are looking at this need and this need and this need and we're trying to meet those needs and I appreciate the difficulty it is to balance those, but I do think that, again, I'm very appreciative of everything that's been done and I support this, all six.

Thank you.

Supervisor Galloway.

Thank you.

Some quick things.

The organizational changes that I'm seeing, the moves that the county executive is making, full support of that.

Very smart to do.

I'm very happy for the compensation and pay scale changes that we'll be making.

Coming into this budget, workforce stabilization was at the top of the list priority-wise, and I am happy this compensation study is now in hand and that we'll be able to enact those changes.

I think for further study and evaluation, which I believe we've all had discussions about, I know that for the tax relief for the elderly and disabled,

that with what we have in place that that will continue to be looked at and we'll have further conversation about that in the coming year as well as in other areas that have come up as priorities this budget time that perhaps we need more information on based on why we set the amounts that we did.

Are those proper and appropriate and do we need to make adjustments in the coming year?

From a standpoint of how I thought about this budget, I went back and looked at and pulled up our five-year financial plan summary from December 5, 2018.

Then it was projecting that in fiscal year 24 our expected expenditures was going to be $348 million.

And we're today at $408 million in expenditures.

Do I have that number right?

That's a $60 million increase from what we expected it to be back in 2018 to what it is in reality today.

and I've been thinking about that in the face of the assessments that have grown, but also what we've done with our tax rate.

When we were looking at this back in 2018, we knew this, and if I'm not mistaken, this was three strategic plans ago.

We hadn't yet done the one that we extended for the pandemic and we just created our current strategic plan.

But back then, we were looking at that $348 million in expenditures

that wasn't going after the strategic initiatives that are now alive and driving the budgets of this board.

And it still went up, $60 million.

So some of that's inflation, some of that are costs that are outside of control.

But then a portion of that is our strategic initiatives as a board of what we have said that we believe the community has said they want and need in terms of services and what we need to provide.

We were able to meet and achieve or pay for those initiatives because the assessments went up, which allowed us to not have to vote on tax rate increases.

So if we had not seen the property assessment values go up, I think it is important for me to say out loud is that I would have needed to vote for tax rate increases to pay for the current strategic plan.

Now, that being said, I'm also understanding that the revenues we have in hand right now, we are certainly at a tipping point where I don't see us adding initiatives beyond what we said we were going to do in the last two strategic plans.

We weren't saying, oh, we're going to get intoxicated on the dollars coming in, so let's do X, Y, and Z, in addition to what we said we were going to do strategically.

And I think that's important.

I also think it's important in this budget

that the county executive is looking to the future year or two and saying the assessment increases are not going to be able to sustain themselves and as they come back down we have to be prepared for that so we're not just going back out to the citizenry and then raising their taxes on them.

I mean after what they've had to bear with the assessments going up in addition to inflation and their own incomes not going up as fast as the assessments to turn around and

not prepare for when the assessments come back down and give them that relief, if you would, or have an appreciation for what they're experiencing would be wrong.

And I think that this budget does set us up that when the assessments start to level out and reverse that we'll be ready to continue to provide the things that our strategic plan says we should based on this particular budget.

I may have further questions the next time we talk finances about if I'm thinking about, you know, understanding more of the costs from five years ago versus now.

But I'll leave that for another day.

I think board though that to say that our revenues are matching what we're attempting to do for our strategic plan means, that is the coming year or two come down just even if it drops, that we have to stay focused now.

We've got our public safety, I feel like, stabilized and keep our eyes on their income, the workforce stabilization.

I'm very happy with the economic development investments that we're putting in play in this budget looking forward.

I'm of course happy with the continued, you know, we're going to be investing in public school infrastructure that is desperately needed, especially in the urban ring.

And I'm excited about what could be coming forward in terms of affordable housing.

And I think this budget gets it done in that regard.

I appreciate and respect our citizens.

I know it is, it has not been without pain.

But I do feel like the revenues we're taking in are addressing the things that I can support as a supervisor.

And then as we move into the coming year and the next year, we'll see what we learn from this budget to the next.

And I'll continue to talk to them.

The final comment I'll make is I really appreciated the samples, Mr. and Mrs. Samples in the Rio district among others who have continued to email about housing prices coming down and I think that's an important conversation.

I don't think values track prices in the same way.

I mean our problem is we have short inventory

and people are paying more than the values for the homes and even if the price is dipped two or three percent doesn't mean the value will, it just means somebody might start paying less for a certain value.

Perhaps we're on the verge of seeing what could be coming in the next year and I'm glad that constituents in my district are paying close attention to that and holding me to account.

and bringing it up.

And I ask that they continue to do so even though the budget will come to conclusion as we continue to see what happens with our properties, housing prices, housing stock and inventory, and then ultimately leading into next year's budget.

Thank you.

Well, I concur with a lot of what Supervisor Galloway has said, actually all of it.

I will say I was very much taken back

When I had my three community meetings regarding the budget, the input from the community and of course everyone was concerned about the assessments, the assessments going up and everyone was, that was a big concern.

When I explained, when we went through it with staff, why this happened and what we were spending our monies on

We didn't have a problem.

That just frankly blew me away.

The fact that we didn't have a problem after that, the community, they understood.

They weren't happy necessarily, but they understood.

And they appreciated what we were spending the monies on.

We mentioned it before, workforce stabilization with our police and fire.

Nobody disagreed with that.

Our compensation, which

Study which was long overdue Really no one can Complain about that because they realize how important workforce stabilization is to get the good people that we currently have and They see that when they call the county when they call the county They get service and that goes hand in hand with getting good people which which we have three new schools

The important thing in our budget was service to the community.

And our continuity of our budget with service is extremely important.

Additional playing fields, our parks, what we're spending our money on is what the community wants.

And I have not heard blowback, like I said, other than the assessments, but they understand, people do understand.

But I do agree that I don't know what's going to happen next year and we do have to be vigilant of where we spend our money, how we spend our money.

But I'm extremely happy and proud, frankly, of the budget that has been developed because of what we're doing.

We are moving forward in a way that services our community and for that I'm very appreciative of.

So thank you very much.

I will also be supportive of all six motions.

We as supervisors are neither ignorant of nor dismissive of the comments that we have received from our community.

This budget is based on past experiences and projections of future economic conditions to meet our current and future needs.

I was especially concerned as I learned more about the impact of the 2007 property tax reduction and the negative impact that has affected the county for the last 15 years.

In this, my fourth year on the board, it's the first year of actually going through a regular budget as a result of the pandemic, and Mr. Richardson, I compliment you, your staff,

Ms.

Birch, especially your financial staff for maintaining this financial stability of our county through that very difficult time.

Project Enable, which is really tied to our budget.

The objectives of Project Enable 2.0 when achieved will further diversify the economic real estate values, which will reduce the impact of real estate property tax rates on our residences.

And that will be the biggest improvement that we're going to be able to make.

We are already looking at diverting funds from operations to the tune of about $16 million to help offset the $38 million cost increase in our CIP plan.

So this budget recognizes that with the funds we have available today, we're able to help cover the shortfall as a result of inflation and supply issues.

When Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley and I first came into office in January of 2020, we were looking at major shortfalls in police, fire, rescue.

We've also seen over the last three years significant personnel departures from CDC, from Department of Human and Social Services, other departments in the county.

So the compensation study

and the actions that this board has taken and will take with the adoption here today will stabilize our workforce which is necessary for us to be able to provide the services that our community needs.

It's also not without note that these tax rates affect each of the six of us equally as they do every other community member.

So we're not only supervisors making the decision, but we're also community members who will pay our fair share of the taxes in order to support this county.

And I do support all six.

I was just laughing when you said that, thinking to myself, and I don't expect everybody to own up to everything, but I can tell you that my property went up 27%.

All right, the floor is open for a motion to adopt the attached resolution to set the calendar year

Alright, we have a motion by Supervisor McKeel, a second from Supervisor Mallek.

Ms.

Ms.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Alright, thank you.

And we'll move to the second one.

Thank you, Mr. Bowman.

A motion to adopt the attached FY24 budget resolution approving the FY24 budget as recommended by the county executive and amended by the Board of Supervisors attachment B. So moved.

Alright, I heard Supervisor McKeel make the motion, Supervisor Mallek make the second.

Ms.

Ms.

Mr. Andrews?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

All right, thank you board.

We'll move to item number three.

The floor is open for a motion to adopt the attached resolution to revise FY 23 and set FY 24 pay scales attachment C. So moved.

Second.

All right, I heard the motion from Supervisor Galloway, a second from Supervisor McKeel.

Ms.

Ms.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Malek?

All right, thank you board.

Moving to item number four.

The floor is open for a motion to adopt the attached annual resolution of appropriations, attachment D. So moved.

Second.

All right, a motion from Supervisor Malek, a second from Supervisor Andrews.

Ms.

Price.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley.

Aye.

Ms.

Malek.

Thank you board.

Moving to item number five.

The floor is open for a motion to adopt the attached resolution of official intent to reimburse expenditures with proceeds of a borrowing.

Motion from Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley, a second from Supervisor Malek.

Ms.

Ms.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

All right.

Thank you, board.

Moving to item number six, a motion to adopt the FY 24 to 28 capital improvement plan attachment F. So moved.

Second.

A motion from Supervisor Mallek, a second from Supervisor McKeel.

Ms.

Price?

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Malek?

All right.

Thank you, Board.