Board of Supervisors Joint Work Session with the School Board   12/6/2023

County School Board joining us.

It's a great day to be here.

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

and our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, our County Attorney, Mr. Steve Rosenberg, and the Clerk for the Board, Claudette Borgerson.

While we normally stop there, I do want to also recognize we have our Deputy County Executive, Trevor Henry, and our new Deputy County Executive, Ann Wall here.

So for those of you who have not yet met Ms.

Wall,

I'm Jonno Alcarra, I'm the At-Large Representative.

We're here today for a work session and so I would, the floor is open if a supervisor desires to make a motion to adopt the work session agenda.

So moved.

Second.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Andrews?

Yes.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

At this time we can turn it over to Mr. Andy Bowman, the interim assistant chief financial officer for policy and partnerships with his just-in-time delivery of the presentation this afternoon.

Thank you for the introduction and good afternoon to the board of supervisors and the school board.

I appreciate all of the time these boards spend in long-term financial planning.

I'm aware that this is the second of three board meetings this week so that is certainly a commitment and the school board themselves has been making a commitment over the last several months going from all the development from their long-range space planning committee to the school board's engagement with the capital plan and watching that from afar so it's great that we could all be here in one room to provide an opportunity for both boards to really understand where we are in our capital improvements planning process for the school board to tell the story of the hard work that they've been doing and for the board of supervisors to be engaged in that.

I also do need to thank Ms.

Maya Kumizawa, my counterpart, in planning for this.

So much of not just this meeting, but throughout the year in terms of strategic thinking, the technical aptitude, and the partnership.

It makes the budget not easy, but it makes it a lot easier when you've got a good partner.

So, thank you.

So, to start today off, I'm going to frame this.

I'm going to advance the slide.

There we go.

I really frame this as often due in the context of the Board of Supervisors adopted strategic plan.

This is the plan that the board adopted last fall with six goals and today I'm drawing our attention to goal five on education and learning.

which has the two objectives shown on the screen on this.

Back on November 15th, we spent some time with the board of supervisors and the five-year financial plan discussing some of the other five goals in more detail in the operating budget.

Today is really about goal five.

I'll acknowledge the school board also has their strategic plan.

They're a little further into their strategic plan because it was adopted in the summer of 2021.

So to set the stage for today, there are four desired outcomes that staff has proposed.

The first are really about attaining that shared understanding.

We're going to hear, while most of the discussion today is going to be around the CIP, we'll hear first an update from our interim CFO, Mr. Jacob Sumner, on the health fund and some strategies around that.

And then we'll take a pause for discussion and questions.

Next, I will be presenting some information of how we got to in our present CIP and then we'll also pause for board discussion and questions.

At that point, we'll turn it over to the bulk of our presentation where Ms.

Kumazawa will present the school board's request and again allow for that board dialogue.

And then I'll come back at the end for some strategies and next steps again trying to allow as much time for discussion.

So I'll share, we do have a number of slides.

Staff intends to move through at a fairly good pace.

Well, Mr. Bowman's pulling up the next slide.

For the school board members, all of the slides are numbered, so if you have questions, if you make an annotation, it'd be easy to pull back up to that slide later.

Thanks Andy.

Good afternoon.

It's a pleasure to be here today.

My name is Jacob Sumner.

I'm the interim chief financial officer for the county.

And I'm going to have the next few slides.

and to really talk about a fund that we don't talk about and with both boards too often.

That is our healthcare fund.

And we're gonna start with this really just to have an understanding of where are the two entities and two bodies interact.

Really with the structure of our self insurance and our medical plan.

What you see on the screen is an overview and a high-level illustration of how our healthcare fund works.

We are a self-insured healthcare fund, which means that we are paying for the claims as they come through the fund for our healthcare costs.

Being self-insured saves us jointly a tremendous amount of funds as if we were fully insured.

We are taking on the risk of the volatility of health care claims by being self-insured.

And by doing that, we can offer more competitive breaks for our health care plan and more attractive benefits from a plan design standpoint.

This slide is designed to be more like an equation, you know, the revenue expenditure side of the healthcare fund.

On the left-hand side is the revenue component of the healthcare fund.

That is a culmination of our employee premiums that they pay for their healthcare coverage, and it's also the employer contributions.

and these contributions collectively help pay for our medical and our pharmacy claims, help pay for our administrative fees and our overhead costs associated with managing the plan.

It also helps pay for things like our wellness program as well as funding a strategic reserve to help make sure that we have enough funding to handle the changing healthcare costs and the healthcare landscape.

I will draw attention to the employer contribution slide.

There's a multitude or several entities that are listed here.

So this is a pooled fund, this is a joint fund.

You'll see the local government here, public schools are here, as well as several of our partner entities also engage with us and contribute to the healthcare fund.

So let's take a moment just to talk about the current state of our healthcare fund.

This chart shows the past four plan years, or class three, including a projection for the current plan year.

And just to set the stage, the plan year is January through December, which is a little bit different and opposite of our fiscal year, which runs July through June.

Our plan year is from 20 to 23.

You'll see a steady increase in both the revenues and the expenditure.

The green bars on the slide are the revenues.

Those are the premiums from employees as well as the contributions from the employers.

And the light blue bars are the actual costs to administer the plan.

As all the claims have been processed, the overhead costs, the wellness components of our plan.

And you'll see a steady increase in those blue bars.

And what I want to

particularly draw your attention to is how quickly those bars are increasing, particularly the light blue bars.

That's a combination of a couple things.

One, we've seen significant inflation in our healthcare costs, just the cost for pharmacy, specialty pharmacy costs have increased, as well as doctor visits, provider visits, specialist visits.

There's also been a rebound effect coming out of the pandemic where

where everyone did not have access to go and see your doctor on a regular basis.

Just from the restrictions and ability to be as mobile and to engage in those healthcare services, there's been a rebound effect coming back to those services.

So there's some compounding there of the increased healthcare cost and the desire for more services.

What I want to draw also your attention to is the dark blue shading in the back.

That is our fund balance.

That's essentially the reserves that we have in place to help ensure we can manage the ebbs and flows of our claims as they're coming in, offset against the revenues that we're collecting for the healthcare fund.

It is an industry best practice to maintain about two to four months

of the United States.

but also those have exceeded the revenues we've been collecting.

So we've been dipping into that fund balance to help pay for those claims.

As we're starting to project into 23, we're getting close to being outside of that target range that we're trying to maintain with our fund balance.

So one thing that we're looking at, looking at strategizing on is as we come out of fiscal year 23, which we're working through the end of the fiscal year and the audit on that,

Do we have an opportunity to infuse some cash into the healthcare fund to bring that balance up just a little bit, to try to keep it in that target range so that we can help offset any larger potential future increases from the employer or employee contributions for the fund.

But those are some strategies we're looking at in the current fiscal year to help maintain best practices for the health of this fund.

So that's our current state.

We do have some other health care strategies that we're looking at that are underway.

So healthcare covers a wide range of topics.

I mentioned our pharmacy, I mentioned wellness, I mentioned just claims in general.

We have opportunities to help manage those claims.

One of those is to look at our dependents that are on our plan.

And we just completed a dependent eligibility review, making sure that those that have access to the plan are on the plan,

are eligible.

They meet the criteria for being on the plan.

And through this effort and through this review, we were able to verify nearly 3,000 dependents.

And we also identified about 130 that needed to be removed.

So there were about 130 dependents that had access to our medical coverage who really didn't have, didn't qualify.

Through that effort, this is in the first year, should save us about $700,000 in claims.

So it was a tremendous effort on staff and the work that we undertook along with some of our consultants to do this project.

But hopefully we'll see some good results in this first year.

currently working on is an employee health clinic.

So right now, we've issued a request for proposal and RFP is on the street to receive proposals on an employee health clinic.

The idea for this clinic is to provide primary and urgent care services to our employees to help us focus on disease and condition management.

We're also looking to provide lab services

Pharmacy services.

We're looking at mental health components where we can wrap some mental health services into this employee clinic.

And we're also looking at how can we engage in our occupational health.

So that side of the workforce is return to work or reviews with a physician.

That is pre-employment screenings.

That is annual physicals that some of our staff needs to undergo on a regular basis.

That is look that we're trying to package all that into an employee health clinic to address those needs.

One of the key components about the healthcare clinic is really about access.

How do we make sure that our employees have access to healthcare coverage?

We saw the pent up demand in the chart earlier where folks couldn't access care back during the pandemic.

With our population and the number of providers in the area, we are looking at providing another access point for our employees and their families to be able to access

these primary and urgent care services.

The next item that we're looking at from a strategy standpoint is a multi-year wellness strategic plan.

This is looking at a roadmap for how we'll engage with wellness, wellness for our employees, and how that looks to have long-term impacts, positive impacts for our employees.

And through this strategic plan, hopefully looking at different wellness programs, maybe potentially different wellness incentives, incentivizing our employees to make good

choices, healthy choices, investing in their healthcare, and so that is on the horizon as well.

The fourth bullet up here is our competitive market design.

This is really looking at how is our healthcare plan designed.

Is it competitive amongst our market?

Is the level of our deductible competitive with those that we are competing with for personnel, for people?

Is it designed in a way that's going to be attractive and provides the type of benefit that our employees need from a healthcare standpoint, whether that's on the pharmacy side, whether that's on the covered side.

We are looking at making sure we are remaining competitive in our planned design efforts.

And lastly, we're getting rates entered into the rate planning side of our health care fund.

So this is a long-range planning work session, but this is one step in our health care coverage review, is what is the rates that we would be setting for our employees that they would pay in the premiums, and what the employers would need to contribute as part of their contribution to the fund.

So that is the next steps that we'll be working on.

You should see as we work through our transition from long-range planning into our budget sessions with both boards conversations about our health care and our health care costs so that I would expect that would be your next engagement with with our health care.

So those are all the slides I have.

Thank you, Mr. Sumner.

We'll go through our order first.

Supervisor Galloway, any questions?

That seems like an awful lot of money for 130 dependents.

I couldn't articulate whether it was a normal ratio, but based on the historical claims we've seen, removing about 130 would translate to about $700,000 in cost.

Yes, thank you.

Just a couple of thoughts.

Well, I appreciate the fact that our health care costs have been going up.

Historically, I can remember when they were 14%, 15%.

So thank goodness we're not in that realm.

I want to really, in my head, tie that to a real effort over the last decade or so towards wellness and what we've been doing with our employees for opportunities to a wellness program.

And I'm sort of looking at the employee health clinic and tying that

to the wellness strategic plan and using that as an opportunity to even make the wellness program better.

Absolutely.

A component of having a clinic

is being able to have a vehicle and a platform to support some of those wellness programs, whether it's annual assessment, annual risk assessments, annual health assessments, helping being part of the wellness strategic plan if it's tied into any incentives, and encouraging our employees to engage in their health.

work that has been done on understanding the preventative nature and wellness goes to the preventative nature of health care.

Even though we have a cost now, it saves on what would be a longer term cost or a more costly expenditure later on if not caught early.

which gets to perhaps a facility and we'll have to, I guess, that's in the works as to what that would look like.

And I understand that.

This was really great.

I appreciate it a lot.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Supervisor Mallek?

I am remembering past times when there were adjustments made in the reserves.

So the only question for today, because I know you'll bring back more of this later, amongst the agencies listed on the participants,

No, so we've looked at the collective entities that are part of this pool as sharing in the support as well, all together.

Thank you.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley?

That is a component of our plan

they are also working and have access.

They are not allowed to participate in our plan if they can get coverage somewhere else.

Second question regarding the health clinics, are you thinking of

partnering with something like Med Alert or UVA because a lot of them have these little satellite clinics.

We're really excited to see what type of responses we get from the RFP.

So our hope is to have more of a turnkey type of operation where we would partner with another entity or someone that does these clinics where they would provide the facility or facilities and also the staffing and then we can help with the access and the programming of what is the

Thank you.

I guess I'm trying to understand.

I guess I'm thinking those numbers are a little higher than... Right, and it may look not quite to scale when you're looking at 20 and 21 and 22.

The two to four months is really on the 23 time horizon, so the scale may look a little bit off.

But we target a range for flexibility because we don't know exactly the amount of claims that are coming in on a weekly, on a monthly basis.

Okay, I'll follow up with you on that.

So, let's see.

Two other quick follow-ups.

I also was fascinated by the 133,000 dependents.

You mentioned setting up a program to find these people.

Is this something that needs to be, that there are other

That's a great question.

This was the the first year so there is an ongoing maintenance to that as well.

It won't be as intense as it was in this first year to go review all the participants in the plan and their dependents but really is we're looking for as an ongoing basis the new employees that are coming onto the plan as well as working through

I'm going to say those that may have life events, whether you're adding a child or, for instance, a child that is aged out of being dependent on the plant.

Great.

And this is just a sort of philosophical last question, I guess.

As you look at ways to come up with the funds for these

It has, and it's a combination of things.

One, it's the premium and the affordability to the employee in comparison to the value they're receiving in the plan.

We do have two types of plans, a PPO plan and a high deductible plan, and so having even those options gives our employees the ability to make the decision that is best for them, and obviously those

Those plans are designed differently and those have different premium costs as well.

Thank you.

I'll follow up on two areas.

One is the back to the audit.

If it was 130 out of 3,000, that's a 4.33% of the pool that has been determined to not actually be eligible for coverage.

Which, first off, I want to commend you and your staff for recognizing this is an area that needs to be looked at and taking action to bring that back to what I would call acceptable levels, because I don't think that's acceptable.

And a follow-up to that is, will there be an automation of the determination of eligibility in order to reduce the frequency need for an actual audit?

Sure, so that's work that'll be

happening in our HR teams with the benefit teams as well.

Some of that will be looking through onboarding as our employees are signing up for healthcare coverage, making sure that there's the proper documentation.

But also there will need to be regular

We have the opportunity to work with the same provider that helped us with this effort, who has the expertise in how to look for opportunities to spot check our employees and the population along the way, make sure that we do have the folks that are eligible still on the plan.

And I can also say it's one thing if we on the county made mistakes and allowed someone to continue receiving care, it would be a totally different thing if an employee has in any manner falsified the representation of their eligibility and I think that's something that should also be looked at.

The second area, and you don't need to go to it, but on slide five when you were talking about the overview of the health fund and you mentioned being self-insured,

My question there is, and I'll use an analogy first and then ask the specific question, you have automobile insurance comprehensive and you've got a certain limit of liability coverage and many people will get an umbrella policy that covers beyond that because it's a little less expensive for the umbrella than it

So under being self-insured, is there something comparable to an umbrella policy that the county has a policy of?

If not, should we consider that?

Because with 3,000 beneficiaries,

We do, actually.

It's our stop loss premium.

So stop loss is reinsurance or insurance for the plan itself.

Thank you.

All right, I have no further questions.

Sure, that's a great question.

The RFP is on the street.

It is due back.

We're looking to close the RFP at the end of December.

So at the end of the calendar year, we're hoping to have gathered all the responses on vendors that would like to engage in the competition for that.

Our goal, and this is just a goal, would be to have something in place a year from there.

That is entirely dependent on the responses we receive to the RFP, because there's a lot of complications as far as the sites, whether those that are responding already have sites available and potentially built out sites already, or if they are starting from scratch and are looking to procure the sites.

I'm assuming you've done due diligence and looked to see other employers that have done this.

I'm quite frankly skeptical that a full-scale health clinic makes economic sense.

Right now we have two tiers of employees.

We have those who are on the high deductible.

and we have those who are paying premium to have the choice of providers.

Why would they go to one of our clinics?

I have zero idea.

They would go to their own doctors rather than go to the clinics.

So the overarching rationale for it is, I'm assuming, cost control to some degree, either through lowering utilization

or attracting some of those who are already paying higher premiums for PPOs.

Otherwise, I don't know what the incentives are for employees to go to our own clinics.

I know several years ago, maybe six or eight, we started looking into developing our own pharmacy plan because that was the highest element of healthcare costs in terms of growth.

and we didn't completely follow through on that.

But I'm just wondering why we went from having nothing, whether you considered a pharmacy plan, prescription drug plan to try to tamp down costs.

One of the things with the clinic is also to provide access.

So not as much from the cost savings perspective, but also access.

And really an access from when providers are open.

So the hours of operation are going to be critical to the clinic and the locations.

We are a geographically dispersed county, but making sure that those locations are near where a lot of our employees live and work.

So that is one of the goals of the clinic.

For pharmacy, pharmacy is absolutely looked at as part of our healthcare plan.

When we look and engage with Anthem, who is our provider for our network, we're all looking at the network for the doctors, but also the pharmacy formularies that they have access to.

So one of the components of the clinic project is communication to our employees, making sure that they understand what the services the clinic provides.

And part of that communication is making sure that they have an understanding of what it is and what it isn't.

And that convenience leads to maybe getting a physical that then turns into, hey, you've got an issue and then you have to receive your real doctor that would have taken you three months to get in to see my doctor, just to get that physical and then schedule it and develop the physical.

So there's some access things there that I think, from that convenience standpoint, regardless of the plan you're on, just the pragmatic schedules of people's lives, it will

I'm just throwing it off the cuff of behavioral.

I just got to say that I really appreciated your answers, Mr. Sumner.

Every single thing that I had written down, somebody else has asked, and you have great answers to it.

Oh, actually, I have one more question.

Sure.

Off of Bea's question, so the rule that the spouse with access to other plans cannot be covered under ours, is that going to be analyzed under the competitive market plan design assessment?

because I wonder if that's something that our employees would be interested in.

So I want to make sure I understood your question correctly.

If our current plans, if our spouse has coverage elsewhere, they're not eligible to display in our plan.

Does that make us less competitive?

So as we look at our marketplace and particularly the healthcare coverages of similar employers, particularly in this geographical area, they have a very similar plan design from Access and who is eligible for plans.

So as we're looking at our competitive marketplace, we're looking for

not just the cost but also who's eligible on those plans and so we're trying to make sure that we are maintaining competitiveness within our market.

So yes, absolutely.

I want to say this as politely as possible.

That part of it feels like a race of the blind.

Like just because someone else

It's like a race to the bottom of it, like saying, oh, because no one else is really offering coverage to spouses who have access to another plan that we don't have to.

And I don't know.

You've done all the numbers.

You're doing all the numbers.

I don't know what it means for our help fund.

I would agree with Chair Lee.

Well, I believe it was the race to the bottom started back 15, 14, when they did that change, or even before then, and the previous electeds.

We're looking at rising costs by the last year.

Thank you so much.

I will now turn it back over to Mr. Bowman and he'll continue with the CIP portion of our comments.

Thank you.

I'm going to speak together of these next two parts of the agenda.

We'll be looking back at where we've been historically in the CIP to the present and then the initial preview looking ahead to the coming five-year period.

So in financial presentations, I'd like to start with a very kind of historical look back over a long frame of time to get a sense of where we've been.

So this is a busy slide, and I'll take a moment to explain it, though it's been a while, the board and school board have seen this before during the budget process.

This takes a look at the annual capital budget for the last 20 years and then looking ahead to the CIP.

So to kind of tell the story of what this looks like, and I'll say it first, because capital projects will stop and start in different years, it's very common to see up and down trends year to year.

But when we begin to look at this in chunks of time, we can begin to see some themes that have arisen.

First in blue, we see prior to the Great Recession of what the annual capital budgets looked like during that period.

We can then see an orange during the Great Recession and initial recovery.

based on the overall economy and the decisions that were made at that time, those capital budgets were much smaller and relatively flat year to year.

We then see a period in green starting from fiscal year 15 up through the present that takes us through a number of different economies through the pandemic.

We've seen a steady upward trend with larger, more ambitious CIP or capital budgets that have been imposed.

You will note in fiscal year 21 there is a kind of a data blip that was really right at the start of the pandemic where there was a pause in the capital program to take some time to understand the financial impact and then you can see some of that bounce back in fiscal year 22 and fiscal year 23.

Finally, that brings us to the adopted CIP in kind of that yellowish-brown color on the far right of the slide.

And we're obviously already in fiscal year 24, and those spikes in fiscal year 25 and fiscal year 28 contemplate the construction of two elementary schools.

So moving from where we've been historically, taking a closer look at the present and that five-year CIP, what are the components that make that up?

First, the CIP totals just over $319 million.

This is the first look at the funding sources.

What you can see in the largest piece of this donut chart in red is planned borrowed proceeds, where as part of planning out capital projects, because these are long-term generational investments, the county will issue bonds to fund those projects.

The county will then pay back the principal and the interest in those bonds, generally on a 20-year time frame.

Beyond the bar of proceeds, the largest revenue that comes into the CIP is in local revenue in green in the upper left portion of that donut.

This is comprised primarily of the formula transfer from tax revenue that comes in the general fund and the descents of the capital budget.

It also includes a portion of any other one-time funding that the Board of Supervisors or the school board commits into the CIP to help move projects forward.

and these are projects that are not borrowed for because of the nature of them, they would not be eligible or good candidates for that.

I'm gonna skip the details on the other pieces because they are much smaller, but the main takeaway there is they tend to be associated with particular projects.

So for example, if there is a state revenue for a school bus program, that is not discretionary revenue that can be applied to another project.

If there are profits for a parks project, those couldn't simply be picked up to a project and moved somewhere else necessarily.

Now we have a five year balanced CIP to look at the expenditure side at a high level.

We can see by the functional areas where we report to the state, we can see public schools is the majority of that at 61%.

Ms.

Kumazawa will speak later to those projects and I will speak in just a moment about some of the projects that are currently in the CIP that make up the county government portion.

So moving from kind of this high-level picture, we've seen that dramatic change of where we've been in recent years to just more ambitious CIPs that are moving the strategic plan forward.

And there hasn't been one single strategy that has enacted that change.

It's really been a multi-pronged approach that I want to cover on the next slide just to kind of ground us at where we've been in recent years.

So first is really just acknowledgement of, you know, kind of humbly acknowledge in corporate finance and budget, we have really taken a fresh look at a lot of the way we do our work.

Are our structures correct in terms of our offices and roles and responsibilities?

Do we have the right financial policies in place to protect the county's financial foundation?

If we don't, bringing those back to the Board of Supervisors to strengthen those further.

Also taking a fresh look at all of our assumptions and our borrowing models and what's the appropriate blend of cash and debt and so on.

We have been through the last three years two bond issuances and two refinancings shown on the slide in the top line and through those the county has continued to main its triple AAA bond rating through that.

Certainly I speak to a lot of the work our team in the Department of Finance and Budget has done but much credit is owed to the Board of Supervisors for their support to allow us the opportunity to look at how we can work it differently to get better results with the investments we have in place.

The second category is a credit to both board supervisors and the school board about how one-time funding has been invested into the CIP.

Both boards and a portion of their pandemic relief funding, whether it be CARES or ARPA, where the indoor air quality projects or other infrastructures have funneled one-time money into the capital projects that have allowed them to move forward even in the face of rising construction costs.

In addition, during the budget process, beyond the normal formula contribution that goes into the CIP, the boards have invested one-time money.

This was most notable in fiscal year 24, where there were $16.7 million that the board allocated to the CIP above the formula policy and that transfer is.

To give an example of one of the meaningful ways in how the boards have thought about really balancing the operating budget and the capital budget together.

There was a $5 million that make up that $16.7 million, where the Board of Supervisors recognized there was a need for one-time cash in the CIP.

And in the operating budget, the strong revenue growth that we had received in recent years was unlikely to sustain itself at the same level in recent years.

So the Board of Supervisors approved a strategy in fiscal year 24 to take some ongoing funding and send that one time into the capital improvements program.

That is then going to position both boards in fiscal year 25 as revenues are projected to not be quite as strong, but they will grow.

That will allow a running head start for the board of supervisors in the financial plan knowing that that one-time money is now available to fund ongoing sources because it was used for a one-time purpose in the capital budget.

Finally, continuing the theme of legislative decisions by the Board of Supervisors.

In fiscal year 23, the board sought to diversify the county's revenues, capitalizing on authority granted by the state to increase the county's food and beverage, transit occupancy, and cigarette taxes.

That was the amount of funding at the time that was equivalent to 3.3 cents on the tax rate.

Those revenues were shared for the funding formula and with capital receiving its portion.

And finally, every year, as the Board of Supervisors knows well and said on a tax rate, they will consider both what the actual change in the annual reassessment is, the needs of the budget, and then what is the legal term as the effective rate increase.

So when assessments rise and the tax rates remain the same, the average tax bill will increase.

The Board of Supervisors approved a rate, an effective rate of 10.1 cents increase in calendar year 23, where we are right now.

So that has been another example of the board committing those revenues to putting projects that will move forward the strategic plan across all of the board's six goals.

So at this point, I would kind of like to turn the page of where we've been in the past, where we've been really in the last year or so, and now begin to contemplate what will the CIP begin to look like.

So as staff is working together in county government and public schools, we have a four-step plan that we are working through and really these are not necessarily in sequence, some of them are having concurrently.

To prepare this, a recommended CIP that would be presented by the county executive in February with the recommended budget and then the board and school board would then continue that dialogue through budget work sessions.

So the very first thing is our starting point is the balance of fiscal year 24 to 28 adopted CIP.

Our intent is not to really recreate a CIP from scratch.

There are a lot of projects with phases already underway that the board's endorsed and we would look to continue those projects.

So to take a moment to talk through those as I prepare for this meeting, I got some feedback that the school board would really like to take a little time to understand what are some of those county government projects that are out there currently in the CIP.

So the board has seen these before, and so I want to be brief.

We can go into projects if there's more discussion.

But just to highlight, what are those projects in that county government portion of the $319 million?

Now in these slides, I'm not going to really talk about maintenance and replacement projects.

So we'll be replacing fire engine ambulances.

We'll be replacing HVAC systems.

But this is really about those projects.

When we think of what are the items that move forward in strategic plans, these are some of those.

So I'm starting first and to orient you all on the left is the six goals of the strategic plan.

I've got these color-coded that looks a little bit off on this screen in the laptop of course construction which really ties into the strategic goal of safety and well-being.

This has been a project that has been many, many years in the works and now we can see in the picture in the upper right is really making progress.

where in downtown Charlottesville, we've begun a scope of work that will construct a huge general district courthouse at the Levy site.

If it helps you orient that picture in the upper right, this would be if you were on East High Street, looking at the downtown mall would be the other row of buildings at the top.

We then see at the bottom right, the future, a rendering of what that would look like once constructed for that general district courthouse.

Moving next I'm skipping over goal two because a lot of those efforts are more apparent in the operating budget versus capital budget.

So in goal three we have the transportation leveraging program and

This totals $29 million over the next five years.

What this is, is a strategy for the Board of Supervisors to put local money into a program where it can then leverage and draw down state funding to complete transportation projects.

Transportation projects don't only include just your roads.

They are often multimodal as shown on the sidewalk on Riah Road.

It was a revenue sheet, transportation leveraging program, a project that has been recently completed.

Moving on next into the infrastructure and placemaking, we have two projects in here for the Baylor facility in the Northern Convenience Center.

These are projects done in partnership with the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority, where they are really the regional entity whose mission is charged to deliver this.

The Baylor facility is really to construct a new facility to make sure that we have the baling and recycling needs that we have for our region.

and the image on the right for the Northern Convenience Center is actually an initial rendering of the Southern Convenience Center which opened up earlier in Albemarle County this calendar year.

It's contemplated that in fiscal year 25 and fiscal year 26 that we would go through a design and construction for a site in the northern end of Albemarle County.

And don't have my book in front of me, so I'll get back to you with the full breakdown of what those costs are because I'm going to misquote that one if I speak out loud.

Moving next into Quality of Life, we have the Biscuit Run and Darden Towel projects.

Biscuit Run has been a project that's been in development and will be breaking a lot of dirt moving in the coming year to create a new park entrance and trailhead on Route 20 to develop the trails inside of the park and also to make connections to the surrounding areas.

In the out years we also have the planned construction of two grass athletic fields.

And then on the right we have, with the board approved this spring, a gradual rebuild of four grass fields, grass athletic fields at Darden Tow Park.

There will be one a year of those four fields done for the next four years.

The next project I want to talk about is a related to quality of life for economic development in the Rivanna Futures project.

In the adopted CIP, the Board of Supervisors included funding every year for public-private partnerships.

As the Board's work in economic development has evolved in the recent year, that funding is now planned to be used for the acquisition of land that is adjacent to Rivanna Station in order to end Albemarle County.

The County has not finalized that.

It's currently in a phase of performing its due diligence on that property.

For a little more information on this project, the Board of Supervisors received a report from Weldon Cooper Center earlier this year which really identified that the defense industry was the second largest economic driver in our region.

Really the heart of that occurs at a Rivanna station where there's such a combination of multiple agencies and other partners where that work takes place that has been in operation since 1997.

Getting control of the property around that station allows long-term security that that function will remain.

It also can be really a kind of a keystone or an anchor to take it to be a catalyst for our region where there's a lot of research and development capability.

There is a strong economy, strong entrepreneurial interest, and with our relation to Washington, D.C.

and the overall network, it can really provide a long-term investment both in the nation's defense but also in our local economy and community.

Finally, moving on to Goal 6, there are two projects related to workforce and customer service.

Often when we think of workforce stabilization or that goal, we think of compensation in that area, but we know the compensation goes much beyond that when the objectives to this goal speak to that.

First, there are renovations planned at the county office building where we are today as well as the one at Fifth Street in the coming years.

and finally the Core Systems Modernization Project which is really to provide our community employees with contemporary digital government solutions to replace our archaic systems.

We are currently, we have updated the human resources system.

We are in the middle of updating our community development system and are in the early stages of embarking upon the replacement of our financial system.

So that gives just a recap of what is really the starting point for our CIP now.

But moving to the next thing I want to talk about.

Staff will do our work with the public schools to update all of our financial assumptions.

We'll take a fresh look at financial costs for projects.

We'll look at our interest rates for borrowing, project time, other CIP revenues, really to get that fresh look every year to make sure we're working with the best information.

Those updates will continue from today but I will say that when I was speaking with the board a year ago we were seeing a very dramatic fundamental shift in both project and borrowing costs where a lot of the additional revenues that I talked about earlier that went into the CIP were really to maintain the current plan where there were tens of millions of dollars needed just to maintain just the overall construction environment we were in at the time.

At this point we are not seeing a dramatic fundamental shift like we did a year ago.

There may be certain projects where we're seeing that individual risk and that analysis underway with our facilities teams and our budget teams as we update in anticipation of the February recommended CIP.

The one thing I did want to take a moment to discuss is some information that I shared with the Board of Supervisors in November about what is our revenue outlook for the five years look like.

and how that may shape that.

So as I transition to the next slide, I'll caution this will be the busiest slide I showed her today.

So I'm going to take a moment and I'm going to talk through it and walk us through.

So this is the history of our general fund revenue growth for the last 16 years and the projection going forward.

So bear with me one moment while I talk about this one piece at a time.

What we see in these blue charts is the annual actual percentage change in county general fund revenues year to year.

So we can see strong revenues in fiscal year 7 and 8 on the far left.

We see the impact of the Great Recession and then continuing onward to the present in fiscal year 23, which has been recently closed.

We begin, when we look at this line, trying to make sense of this history.

Let's take some different periods and give us reference points, which are the horizontal lines we see in some of the bright, warmer colors on this line.

The first thing we asked ourselves is if we just took the annual average in the long term through all of these different economies, the pre-Great Recession boom, the Great Recession, the recovery, the pandemic, and the bounce back from the pandemic, you would have an average of about 4.5% growth every year.

But as we know, that's a little bit misleading because we know there are some very different ranges of activity that happened at that time.

We can see in the first in orange from fiscal year 9 to 14 that average growth was closer to 1%.

We can see in the years that followed from fiscal year 15 through fiscal year 19, we can see the average was more in the 5.5% range.

And then just the very fast unusual changes that happened with the onset of the pandemic in the last quarter of fiscal year 20 and then how that has rebounded in the subsequent years.

So that's kind of looking back at our history.

And I'll say I picked fiscal year seven because that is the year that the county began to complete revalidations of real estate on an annual basis.

The data prior to then is just not as apples to apples.

So our work is not only to look inward where we've been, it's also to look forward.

And so the county has engaged the last couple of years with an outside academic team to take a look at all of the indicators at the nation, the state, the local level and try to paint a picture of where might we be going.

So what we have seen is that our local economy is strong and it does follow the national and state trends.

So while that is happening and there are certainly mixed indicators right now,

We are projecting a slower rate of growth in the next couple of years, though not as impactful as either the pandemic or the Great Recession, to returning to what would be in the long term a more normal level or average level of revenue growth.

I want to highlight in fiscal year 24 that is a projection that certainly is much less than last year but we're actually slightly ahead of our projection in fiscal year 24.

Based on the budget the board adopted, staff presented a first quarter financial report last month of the board that showed that we were tracking just under 1% of revenue growth.

So actually as part of a requested action of the Board of Supervisors this evening will be a request to appropriate that revenue update.

According to the funding formula with the school operations, county government operations,

and the capital debt program.

So that will be the conversation this evening where the board will be requested to take action on that.

So this is kind of staff's current thinking of the revenues that influence what that CIP may look like, but this is one we will continue to evaluate as we get new information in January with the real estate reassessment and then extending beyond that.

So with that, that really wraps up my comments for this portion of the presentation, but I want to highlight as I turn it off to Ms.

Kumazawa that we'll hear from the school board a $340 million needs-based request.

I want to clarify, that is not $330 million above the current CIP.

We took the first four years of the CIP as adopted, and we assumed that at a minimum we would fund the maintenance and replacement projects of the school in the history of 29.

That would cover $190 million.

So there's a gap there that has not been yet funded or intended to be figured out at this time.

This is just to provide some perspective on where we have been.

After the scumazale's presentation and board discussion, I'll come back at the end about what the next steps may look like in the coming months in the budget process.

The sides 15 through 20 was at least, and I would say well over $150 million for the projects.

The $58 million that the county is committing to purchase the $462 million

acres.

Rivanna Station is 537 acres.

Right across the street is North Fork 500 acres and just north of that is 500 acres in Greene County that's all been set aside towards high-tech industrial economic development.

The defense industry is 1.2 billion dollars of economic contribution in Albemarle County.

Rivanna Station is half of that, 600 million.

You know, five percent of the economic impact of the defense industry, we have the opportunity to not just protect the 75 acres because it is at risk prior to this action by the board.

It was at risk of being lost because of physical site security, but expanding it in an area where the tide will lift all boats right there by the airport on this corridor up there.

So that's really critical, we thought, for economic development.

and then on slide number 22, I just wanted to add that the board, the county has been

We just received an initial report and we're receiving quarterly updates from Dr. Bailey at Virginia Tech who's helping us to maintain real currency on what the economic forecast is for not just the county but the region and that's what really gives us a lot of confidence in some of these numbers and projections.

Mr. Bowman, thank you for your presentation.

Thank you for the opportunity to present on behalf of the school board.

I'm Maya Kumazawa, Director of Weather and Planning.

The request that you see here was originally submitted by the Long Range Planning Advisory Committee back in October and the school board has since then approved a revised version which you see here.

The ongoing programs total about 104 million dollars over five years and the projects total about 226 million.

The projects listed here

and at the bottom you will see our CNA capital needs assessment projects or those projects that go beyond the five-year horizon.

Before we get into the projects I wanted to take a moment to review the long-term student enrollment projections for our K-12 students.

Our peak enrollment as you see on the solid blue line was 14,032 students in the fall of 2019.

Our current enrollment this fall is 13,459.

We do anticipate to grow about 2.8% over the next five years or add 376 students.

Over 10 years we expect to grow about 8% or 1,082 students.

The range of possible projections is shown in orange and our projections do align those with the ones that the Walden Cooper Center conducted for us that they developed independently.

So you all should have the 2023 Long Range Planning Report in front of you.

Let me know if you don't.

And rather than a ranked order, this slide kind of shuffles the projects around to show the three major categories that we'll be talking about today, which is capacity, renovations, and other.

The page references are for both to the projects as well as supporting data as related to the projects.

For example if you want to see the details behind Southern feeder pattern elementary school under capacity projects you can turn to page 8 of the report and then down below that in the same column that's where you'll see the supporting data.

I won't be going over every single one of these projects today as you have the details in the report but rather I'm just going to highlight some in each area.

So I'll first start with the capacity projects.

The numbers that you see here are the ranked priority numbers.

This table summarizes the timeline of current and requested capacity project recommendations.

At the elementary level, the Mountain View expansion is a currently funded project that is ongoing during the school year.

and then also this year we are in the design phase of the construction of a Southern feeder pattern elementary school and that's scheduled to open in the 2026 to 27 school year.

It is a busy year for us as we are also in the midst of a redistricting study to address overcrowding at Baker Beller Elementary School in the Northern feeder pattern.

So the plan is to begin the design of a second elementary school in

26-27 for the new school to be open in 29-30.

That's the Northern Peter Pattern School.

Moving down the table, Center 2 is a currently funded project that will address overcrowding at the high school level.

But knowing that Center 2 will not solve our long-term capacity conflicts at the high school level, we do recommend a strategy for a future high school project beginning in year 5 of the upcoming CIP.

While High School Center 2 is a current project and not part of the overall request as you have in your reports, it is a capacity project that we have an update on.

The space is programmed to be a 61,500 square foot facility and it's intended to serve 400 students per day.

The current budget appropriation for this is about $36 million, but as part of this evening's budget amendments, we are requesting additional funding due to some scope changes and inflationary increases.

Currently, we're in the design phase and construction will happen from 2024 to 2026 and the centers plan to be open to students for the 26 to 27 school year.

This is an overview of our two planned new elementary schools.

As I mentioned, in the southern feeder pattern, the recommendation to construct an elementary school in the Mountain View district is based on the recommendation of the Mountain View master plan study.

The project will reduce overcrowding at Mountain View and then both buildings, once the new one is built, will have additional capacity to address long-term growth as well as adequate playgrounds, parking, and parent drop-offs.

Design for the Southern feeder pattern elementary school is underway and construction will begin next year.

The school will be open to students for the 26-27 school year.

Over to the right, in the northern feeder pattern, Baker Butler Elementary School is also currently overcrowded and the student population is continued, is projected to continue growing.

The student yield analysis from new development shows the Baker Butler and Hollymeade districts as having the highest impact of 956 potential students.

It's recommended that the school be constructed to benefit Baker Butler as well as the other schools in the northern feeder pattern.

A redistricting study is currently underway for that area in alignment with a phased approach.

The implementation of the first phase will be next school year to address current overcrowding and then the second phase which will be the full implementation of the study will occur in the 29-30 school year when the new school is open for students.

The middle school facilities plan is underway also, and the preliminary recommendations are listed here in four phases.

The recommendations address both long-term capacity conflicts at the middle school level, as well as renovations to the comprehensive middle schools and our community lab school.

The final report is not yet complete, but a lot of resources, including the presentation from the recent gallery walk, are available on the building services webpage.

So I'm going to move on to renovation projects.

While the division consistently and adequately funds ongoing maintenance, our buildings are due for more comprehensive renovations that will more efficiently and holistically bring our buildings up to date.

Renovation projects support the ACPS strategic goal of promoting equity for all students across the county.

This is a visual that you all have seen before.

It shows the age of our school buildings.

General renovation projects continue to be underfunded and our school facilities continue to age.

As you can see from the chart, most of our school buildings are over 40 years old.

And we haven't constructed a new building since Baker Butler over 20 years ago now.

We have updated this information with the weighted age of buildings, which is at the bottom.

This is a formula that takes into account additions that impact the age of a school, the effective age of a school when you add in new spaces.

So we have done some work shifting the ages to be a bit on the younger side, but the core building spaces remain their original ages.

So with renovations, we'll begin at the high school level.

As you're aware, ACPS completed the Albemarle High School, Western Albemarle High School Master Plan.

And this plan is the basis for this recommended project.

The study focused on improvements to align with the division's design imperatives, such as transparency, sustainability, flexibility, and spaces built for student learning.

Feedback from stakeholder groups, including students,

This project also now includes elevator additions at each of the high schools to meet the division's goals of providing equitable services to all of our students and to ensure safety and security in our facilities.

While this component is new to the project itself, the elevator additions request

has been recommended since the 2019 and 2021 reports.

The Elementary School Improvements Project aims to provide funding to renovate schools that historically had stable or declining enrollment and thus represent the oldest schools by age and by weighted age.

Additionally, elementary school, a elementary school facility assessment tool was just recently developed

by ACPS building services staff to objectively evaluate our school facilities utilizing a comprehensive list of criteria.

To ensure that scores and rankings maintain consistent standards, each criteria is assigned a score based on a defined five point attribute scale.

Criteria are grouped into three broad categories, interior spaces, exterior spaces, and structure and systems.

And those can be weighted and

to reflect priorities and dynamically adjust these scores.

But by both raw score and weighted score, these five schools at the bottom of the list resulted in the lowest facility assessment scores.

Those are the ones that you see are recommended for renovations in the five-year CIP.

These are some of the improvements that are recommended in those schools.

Interior improvements include auxiliary spaces and bathrooms.

Exterior improvements include parking and bus loops.

You can see from these photos that these are much needed improvements for which we can now attach a quantitative metric.

And there is a detailed list by school and what we measure for this assessment in the appendix of the report as well.

The special education department is currently spread across several permanent and temporary facilities.

The goal of the department is to house programs such as the intensive support center, early childhood special education, and itinerant staff in a permanent and centralized location.

In addition, our post high building has exceeded its capacity for enrolled students as well as the services it's able to provide for the current needs of the students.

A significant addition and renovation would be needed to ensure a high level of safety and security, capacity, and instructional learning opportunities.

Currently, the school division owns the Ivy Creek building located on the Lambs Lane campus and leases it to the Piedmont Regional Education Program for PREP.

The lease agreement ends in 2025 and that provides us an opportunity to renovate and use the permanently owned space for our special education services.

rather than to continue to seek temporary spaces scattered across the county.

So the last group of projects we will talk about are our new recommendations.

So I'll go through all three of these beginning with the Lambs Lane Master Plan.

In 2022, the Lamsley Master Plan Study was completed with the goals of improving security and safety, identity and sense of place, optimal use, equity, environment, and wayfinding on the campus that serves Albemarle High School, Journey Middle School, Greer Elementary School, Ivy Creek School, and the Boys and Girls Club.

As a result of the study, the school board recommends full funding to construct phase one of the loop road in FY 25, or year one,

to gain cost efficiencies by combining the project with the High School Center II project.

Because the campus serves nearly 25% of our students enrolled in ACPS, and it is centrally located in the county, it's widely agreed that improvements to the overall campus would be beneficial to students, staff, and the community.

Analysis of GIS census tract data reveals that the neighborhoods closest to this campus are the most densely populated,

and are home to the greatest number of low-income residents.

English is not the first language for many of the families living nearby and the same neighborhoods welcome many of the refugee families who find a haven in the county along with many foreign graduate students and their families.

The children of these families attend the schools on the campus as I listed before.

So as a result, Career, Journey, and AHS enjoy great diversity and serve the greatest percentage of English learners and students who qualify for free and reduced lunch in the division.

While the entire master code extends well beyond the five-year CIP,

The proposed improvements are thoughtfully sequenced to ensure that the most immediate needs are addressed first and that taxpayer dollars are spent wisely.

The study identified traffic congestion as the biggest issue with the existing campus.

As a result, a proposed loop road, as you see here on the slide, that would provide a second means of access between Lambs Lane to Ryar Road was identified as the most urgent need.

In addition to alleviating traffic congestion,

This proposed main loop road would provide a secondary route for emergency response vehicles.

Additionally, the loop connector road will provide facilities and access ways for pedestrian and bike traffic, landscaping and green space, and improved stormwater management.

I won't spend that much time on every project.

School walk zones.

So ACPS began implementing walk zones in 2021 in response to the national bus driver shortage.

There are 12 schools now with approved walk zones for the current school year.

School walk zones are subject to unusual safety hazards which could include railroad crossings, lack of safe crosswalk infrastructure, and topography of road curvature prevents cars from seeing walkers.

This project requests funding for the maintenance and improvements of ACPS school walk zones.

And then finally, funding is currently budgeted in our maintenance program to replace the HVA system at Monticello High School.

The amount that is currently budgeted is for an in-kind replacement.

An in-kind replacement will deliver increased energy efficiency but is not aligned with the county's climate action goals.

This project aims to add a geothermal well field to the HVA system to allow for greater energy efficiency and less reliance on natural gas.

This is a recommendation from the Advisory Committee on Environmental Sustainability and staff are continuing to study the alternative for the most accurate cost estimate.

So I'm going to switch over now, a quick overview of our ongoing programs.

This is a summary of the five programs and the corresponding five-year funding.

I'll only cover one of these in detail as a significant change, which is the school bus replacement program.

This has increased over previous years and we are introducing a new program called Electric School Buses.

So this program provides funding for the replacement of school buses based on a needs-based fleet size.

and we have replacement guidelines as in their outline in our school board policy.

The program has been included in the CIP since FY 2014 and it historically has funded 10 to 20 replacements per year.

As our fleet ages and run more miles on our buses each year, we're requesting to increase this program beginning next year to replace approximately 28 buses per year for the next five years.

Reasons that have resulted in this increased need are listed here.

So we currently have a backlog of 65 buses that are either 16 years old or have more than 200,000 miles on them.

Without changes to this, our number of road calls will continue to rise and our repair costs may increase significantly.

This also impacts driver morale.

We wanted to provide drivers with quality equipment for them to do their jobs well.

And recruiting more drivers into an aging fleet would be more challenging.

So the proposed replacement cycle would catch us up in a five year period and after that we could return to more average levels after the five years.

This is a new program,

To align with the county's climate action goals, four EV units have been introduced to the fleet using alternative funding methods.

This project proposes a plan for two additional units per year based on infrastructure availability, and it also includes the purchase of ancillary EV equipment.

We're assuming that grant funding would remain available to cover the additional costs above the regular costs of a diesel unit.

The reason we're requesting this as a separate project from the school bus replacement program is so that we can have a separate planning process for EV grants that can be coordinated outside of the diesel bus replacement rotation and so that we can monitor any increases in EV funding and potential future reductions in diesel bus funding based on available infrastructure and utilization changes.

So that's it.

This is, again, the summary of the CRP request that includes both the 11 projects as well as our current ongoing programs.

That's not where I'm going with this, but I mean, has it been theorized what the operational cost would be for like re- I mean, you'd have the maintenance facilities and those who are training to work on and do the maintenance on electric vehicles is different than what you've had in the past.

The short answer, yes.

I think that's part of the strategy of bringing this on.

Two at a time is to learn some of those.

Our technicians have received training and are learning how to maintain that bus and so I think it's part of the analysis and why we're bringing it on almost in a phased approach.

I'm less concerned about the staffing side of it.

It's more the infrastructure, right?

The $10 million on the loop road on the Lambs Lane campus piece.

If this is a, we can get into it later because the details aren't there.

I just want to make sure, the overarching concern is that that $10.3 million is being looked at in conjunction with the intersection of hydraulic and Lambs Lane, which we're looking at as a study.

Those two projects combined would probably make more sense from a funding standpoint than separate.

And I know Jessica caught me checking to see if she was in the room.

But we just need to be on top of that.

We can't be working as like that's a separate project from that intersection.

Frankly, the intersection doesn't work without the loop road.

and the loop road probably doesn't work well without the intersection changes.

So there could probably be some savings or at least this is a project that I think would be well suited for a smart scale application or revenue sharing, different options to make that happen that could serve not just the internal

I'm just emphasizing that that cost estimate versus the intersection, that should be a combined effort so that we can see what the total cost would be because that number could be, I mean it doesn't really go away, but the way that you can shuffle the shelves as to where the funding comes from could get creative.

And then outside of that, I guess, looking at Supervisor McKeel, maybe I'll wait until she has a chance to talk about the Lambs Lane Campus, but I was a little surprised that that wasn't considered under as a capacity project in the way that you're categorizing it.

Just in terms of some of the others that maybe I don't know the master plan as well, but some of the facility changes that could come off of that site and what that would do here.

I think the more supervisors have talked in our world about how we need to combine as many of our capital projects together to save money when they are a natural fit, right?

And that gets to what?

Ned was just saying, and I would simply add that when we're talking about electric vehicles in an antiquated, at some point, antiquated bus facility, mechanical facility, and bus storage, that looking at

how you can possibly relocate a car wash, a bus station, and a mechanical bus depot that eventually will be antiquated because of the electric buses that we're bringing on and to be perfectly honest with you is outdated and not really

not really sufficient at this point, right?

So how does that play into moving that facility to another location, of which you possibly have another location, but that's in the discussion.

And then that plays into freeing up more property and more land on Landsland Campus for

expansion of high school capacity, as well as looking at your trajectory towards electric buses and coming into a more modern look at school buses.

So how that all plays together is going to be really important.

And it may be that you can save some real money in looking at that together.

Was that too many words?

I think I see some nodding heads, so I think you all are getting at what I'm saying.

And I certainly agree with Ned that looking at hydraulic road, which is a huge problem right now in center two, and the loop road and getting that worked out together is going to be critical as well.

And we're happy to be partners, I think, in that work.

I'm seeing a lot of events on this side of the table.

Can I just clarify the reason why the 10 million was requested in 25 was simply due to timing because all these compounds and all the opportunities that the master plan provides in order to begin this is sort of a critical piece to begin implementing that master plan so this request is sort of taking into consideration

I think we are open to that as well.

The report is just reflecting timing.

Moore, land on the Lambs Lane campus for expansion, looking at 180 million, 140 million, whatever it might be, for another high school.

I think I heard something about five years.

Maybe I misunderstood that, because in my

I'm really pleased to hear about Post High.

and the Ivy Creek facility.

I think that makes a lot of sense, especially in that location, except I'm a little worried about my red flag goes up because post high, it's always been critical to have post high on a transit loop.

because those students need transit.

That's part of what we teach those children to do at post high is to use transit, right?

So that they can get around because many of them cannot do it.

So just thinking about how to connect our work around transit with your changes from Prep to Post High in a location right now that is not transit centric.

We can make that happen, but again, we have to not be in silos.

We need to be working together around what we're doing with transit.

Just an offset, right, for that.

Oh, I just wanted to understand better.

It's slide 37, but I don't know that you need to actually go back to it.

It was the rankings by raw score.

And I wanted to make sure that I understood the rankings better, because what I think I heard you say was that the higher the score,

Yeah, you are pulling it up.

I guess you do need it.

So 37?

Yeah.

The higher the score, the better the school.

I'm trying to think of this like our CIP, right?

The higher, the lower, the more money, the less money, right?

So the higher the score, the better the school is proportionally.

So that the five schools at the bottom were the ones in the most need, with the lower score, were the ones in most need.

Okay, sounds good.

And I guess those scores, the rankings in those scores, maybe we have that in our... It's okay, we don't have to go into a lot of details.

But I'm sure you look at multiple factors.

Is that described somewhere?

Page and something, I could probably go back and read it.

I must admit I haven't looked at that as of now, but I'm just curious.

Okay, so I'm understanding that right.

The more the school, the more we need to address those schools.

Let me just see if I had any notes here.

I'm sorry to be kind of slow on this, but you gave us so much material.

And I do just want to stop and say we have come such a long ways in our ability to share information and work together and this is probably one of the best reports I remember seeing in our CIP discussions from the school board and I really appreciate it because this information is detailed enough that I've got to do a lot more homework

But the presentation today and the work and how our teams are working together, I just really, really appreciate it.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And I do have a few scribbles in the corners that I would like to follow up on if I could.

I'm really grateful to hear that you're following the VIL federal funds and those kinds of

You had mentioned a building services somewhere appendix for more homework.

Is it possible someone could send a link to all of us to that?

And then are there state funds that are going to be applied to these renovation projects, which are on your slide 34?

Or is that something that is all for those ongoing?

We have applied for competitive construction grants that we typically don't qualify for based on our LCI.

And then most recently we have been given one-time construction funds that have provided funding for our current renovation projects.

All right.

So, slide 39, where does PREP go?

If they're being replaced, they're building that they didn't for as long as I can remember.

They are currently looking for a new location.

They basically have been told, you're out, and so go find something that says, wow.

And the walk zones.

I was especially intrigued in doing the homework

because this has become a real crisis in Crozet, around Crozet Elementary and the combination, and I'm so grateful also with all the work you've accomplished on the drivers to get more people, more buses available and I don't know how you're going to manage to get the kids back onto the buses.

because every single school I pass by during the day, especially at 8 to 9 and 2 to 4, there are so many parents who still are taking their kids to school and dropping them off.

And that is creating traffic problems in these older neighborhoods.

And the walk zone issue is exacerbated by the fact that those older neighborhoods around Crozet Elementary have no sidewalks.

and so they were not on the walk to school list even though their geography is literally 100 yards away.

So hopefully this particular category will be able to get some of those things moving along and make a big difference for communities as a whole.

I think we're all in favor of electric buses, but the amount we're looking at for diesel, which is 28, which is a pretty substantial size, and knowing what Supervisor McKeel said about possibly switching everything

at Lambs Lane, the bus gas station facilities to another location.

Have you considered CNG or LNG as a transitional phase?

Because diesel is the worst, but CNG, LNG is certainly a lot better.

And we are transferring everything.

Just posing that, not asking for an answer now, but something that might be a transition to electric because electric is very expensive and you have to have the infrastructure, the training, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And they do use a lot of miles, and so you don't want something breaking down also.

So I'm just posing that question.

And I wanted to know, because you're

We're talking about building two new elementary schools, but about 500 each, which is, I think in your terms, you know, maximum large, but it's really not that big of a school for private students.

But when you do construct a school, is it land, lack of land availability that eliminates you from designing a school that could be added on to in the future?

instead of building another school because, for example, Holly Maid and Baker Butler.

I was going to say the geothermal at Monticello, we don't have a price tag on it.

We are similar to the EV program.

We're looking at alternative funding to help kind of offset because we know it's going to be more expensive.

Yes, and I noticed on slide 37 we had everything listed.

There were two in red and one of them, the study point had a score of

large score of 97 so they're an only double digit school there.

So we, the request is to address by the lowest rank and order priority so we would renovate one school at a time based on the

I guess only one overall comment that sort of fits in with some of the talk about geothermal and electric buses but also many of the school renovation projects and improvements is it would be helpful to me to understand sort of the operational benefits and operational costs associated

Appreciate the operational costs of the projects that you're proposing.

And so that's really, that's it.

I think most of it's been covered.

I would add a question about solar on schools as well.

It's something I know that has been discussed, and I'll leave that for nobody else.

Thank you.

And not to belabor in a couple of points, but I really appreciate slide 43, the school walk zones.

I think what y'all are proposing there ties in really well with what we're trying to get.

with the increased use of speed zone cameras around the schools and everything, which really puts the safety first.

So I appreciate that.

And with slide 32, which several people have talked about with regard to the Southern and Northern Peter Patter Elementary School cost differential, after 45 years as a lawyer, not a lot shocks me.

But I'm still surprised a lot when I see in three years how the same size school goes up 25% estimated cost.

If you increase it from 500 to 600 students, it goes up 33% in the cost, simply in three years.

And that's not anything with regard to what y'all have done.

I appreciate the work you've done, but I think our public needs to understand the reality of the costs that we are facing as we move forward with these construction.

But I really appreciate all the work that y'all have done in the presentation.

I know that there's been in the past discussions about elementary schools and steps and floors and looking maybe going forward as to how to build schools on smaller pieces of property because they're so expensive and going up rather than out is a different way to look at things, but it is something to consider.

But I want to loop back

to very much Center 2 and thinking about if we're looking forward and perhaps thinking about building Center 2 with another level that is simply empty.

University of Virginia.

We built the Emily Couric Cancer Center with a whole floor that was empty for years, but it allowed for expansion as we needed it.

And to think about looking futuristically, it's cheaper to build an empty floor and let it sit empty for five, six, seven years.

and to come back and try and retrofit or add an addition or anything like that.

So just to suggest that thinking in that school is a great opportunity to look at doing that.

Because it's going to outgrow its population at some point.

So that is one thing I just wanted to mention.

And I really just hate to leave the discussion about

Prep and Ivy Creek where it was left, which was that the school system sort of, it sounded almost as if Albemarle County Public Schools had kicked Prep out and they were going to have to find another space.

And I don't want to leave it there because I don't think that's accurate.

Can we come back and correct that if the school system didn't mind?

Yeah, sure.

So Prep was already looking for another location for its school because

The population that they're serving at Ivy Creek has diminished significantly over the past several years.

We, in fact, are allocated 29 slots each year that we have prepaid for the agreement that we have.

We typically don't have half that number attend there.

We will be able to serve all of our students that normally would have attended

The Ivy Creek School in the facility that we're going to maintain on the Lambs Lane campus.

So those students will be served.

And as I said, PREP was already looking for another facility and they've got other locations that they're looking at right now that I don't think we would talk about in public because it will be part of their negotiations.

In addition to that, we are currently leasing properties

to serve our highest needed students.

So we're leasing a facility that we own out to an outside entity, and then we are then leasing other spaces for our own students.

And I think we would all agree that that doesn't make sense.

So we will be moving forward with the facility.

PREP will continue to

implement their program at another site and we will no longer use the traditional services we receive from Ivory Creek.

Thank you.

I just didn't want to leave it as everybody thinking that they've just been kicked out and it was good.

The police was coming up.

They were already looking.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate the clarity.

The biggest fan show in the country today.

The most difficult place in the world.

What happened?

I don't think so.

Well, you didn't do my message.

Part of that was funny because I saw like four people.

I was a little angry when I said that.

Grace, we're working on that.

I just got five more slides and then we'll see where it goes.

This is the bad news part of the end.

I got to get to our cloud.

I just have a few slides before again continuing the remaining meeting for any board questions, commentary, and discussion where the board would like to go.

This is really the slide where we left off just about a little over an hour ago of kind of this four-step plan of the CIP.

Starting with the adopted CIP, updating our new staff work to update revenue assumptions, project costs, timing, anything out there.

I'm really engaging with the school board and then really where to go from here because as we look at the CIP, we want to make sure that whatever comes next in the strategic plan, whether that be fiscal year 29 or any other changes in the first four years, that we're picking those projects that will best move forward on all of these guys' strategic goals and objectives.

So to give some framework about how staff will think about considering that recommendation, I'm going to show the next slide, which is actually my last chart of the day.

And this is, if we took the CIP right now as a draft of today, we took the first four years with kind of our updates to date, and for fiscal year 29, we just made an assumption, we're not done, but we said we know we want to prioritize based on passport's direction of just our maintenance, replacement, and obligation projects in the CIP.

If we programmed that in there, what would our expenditure line look like in the related debt service that we would have?

What we did is we looked at our county's adopted financial management policies that the board most recently updated back in September of 22 to get a sense of where would that headroom be in our financial policies as we consider our triple AAA bond rating.

And so there's two policies, but I only have one of them up on the screen.

And what this looks at, and I'll say the reason I only have one on the screen, because this is where we would have the tightest amount of headroom, is that red line is a

A target ratio to say 2% of the total real estate tax base in the county.

That blue line is the total outstanding debt that the county has in a given fiscal year.

Not the annual debt service payment on that debt, but the total amount of debt that we would hold.

What we would see across those years in fiscal year 28 is where we'd have the tightest amount of headroom being about 1.7, you know, going out some decimals percent in that headroom.

That equates to about 72 million dollars of what the county could issue with that in debt and be within its financial policies.

Now I should say from this illustration that just as a financial best practice, staff would not recommend going all the way up to $72 million because if there were to be a situation in this where if there was a drop in assessed values, you could find yourself above this financial policy.

and then potentially impact your bond rating agency that gets you the best possible rate for your 20-year repayments.

But that is a ceiling.

I won't kind of, you know, there's not really a number to recommend because when we get to the recommended budget, as we learn what the real estate validation will be on January 17th, as we, you know, begin to refine our models, we had a better sense of what that would be.

That would be just the absolute theoretical maximum based on what we know today.

That really speaks to debt capacity.

Our other key debt ratio is looking at our total general fund revenues that come in every year and how much is the annual payment of debt service.

And we have, again, a little more headroom on that one, which is why it's not shown.

So this speaks to capacity, but we also need to consider affordability, which is what we look at on the next slide.

So if we were to add projects for any portion of that $72 million, staff would begin to ask ourselves the following questions as we would look to prepare a balanced CIP.

First, which we've already answered, do we have debt capacity?

Yes, there is, up to a point, based on what we know today.

The second question, do we have the related funding needed for that debt capacity?

There's really two components we need to think to.

We would need one-time funding for the project and then on-point funding to pay the debt service on that project for the next 20 years.

So what we call for that one-time portion is what's often referred to as pay-as-you-go funding, which is a rule of thumb equal to 5% of our projects.

So if the board were to go all the way to $72 million, we would need $3.6 of that money up front to execute on the project.

And then once the bonds are issued to support that, there would be bonds issued in the annual debt service payment on that amount of funding.

would be $5.7 million annually for 20 years for lease revenue bonds.

Or if the boards were to elect to hold a general obligation bond, that allows the county to get a slightly better rate of about a quarter percentage point.

Annual debt service payment on that would be $5.6 million a year.

The funding source of that is not noted this time.

That would have to be a consideration in the fiscal year 25 budget process.

Just for perspective as one reference, in the current fiscal year, the value of one penny on the real estate tax rate is about $2.7 million.

That number will also get updated after January, but that just gives some framework in terms of how that might equate into how pennies and capacity and debt service may tie together.

So certainly this is the financial piece of capacity.

We would also need to consider what is that impact of that future flexibility because once that debt is issued, it becomes an obligation that has to be paid off, that capacity would be spoken for for some time.

We would certainly need to look at some of the board's questions earlier.

What are the operating costs of that project?

If we're going to construct a new park, are we able to hire the folks and have all of the operations needed to support that on a basis?

We need to make sure in our long range planning we're looking at our capital funds and our operating funds together.

And then finally, taking a look at our county's ability to execute.

This is not a comment about anyone's expertise or ability.

This is just recognizing the landscape of our projects, or are we operationally aligned to be able to see through those and the structures we have around to execute those positions.

So with those considerations, I would expect in today's discussion to only hear we have 72 million capacity, it would feel like a little bit of a disappointment, but the process is not over.

That really goes to where are we going to go from today's meeting until the adoption of the CIP in the annual budget in May.

We will be proceeding to staff based on some of the assumptions and the work we've done today to work through and update as of today's plan.

Looking forward to those kind of four components I've talked about, really to ask ourselves both in the operating budget and the capital budget, what are those things that we need to be doing to move forward all the goals and objectives in the strategic plan?

Some of those may appear in the capital budget, some of those may appear in the operating budget.

Some of those just may be seen through the projects that we already have appropriated in place and trying to find that right balance to move all forward.

In March through May, the board and the school board will have times to re-engage again with the CIP and of course the operating budgets as well.

During that time, there are options out there to increase CIP revenues if that is the desire at that time.

A few kind of levers that could be pulled in this are listed on the slide.

First, we'll know in January the impact of the calendar year 24 reassessments.

As I spoke to earlier, the Board of Supervisors will need to weigh those annual reassessments.

What does the total financial picture look like in the budget?

Where does that moving forward?

And they'll adopt a tax rate that considers all of those factors.

that will have an impact of the blend of the reassessments and the rate to determine what our revenues will be.

Those are annual legislative processes and the board supervisors through the budget process.

The next item to really highlight is that investment of one-time funding that I spoke to earlier.

Where we talked last year, there was a total of almost $17 million of one-time funding that both boards came together and put into the CID.

That really helped projects move forward and stay on track in the face of high project costs and increased borrowing costs.

So as both board looks at any end of year positive variances from fiscal year 23, any other one-time funding that maybe have available, applying that into capital will be an opportunity to continue to move projects forward.

And then finally, the second one of the investment of one-time funding is the opportunity to exist every year as we look at that balance between the operating budget and the capital

to ask ourselves, as the board did last year, would we in a particular year be better off changing how we send funding to capital?

This being the $5 million of money that was sent one time to capital intended to be available for school and county government operations in fiscal year 25.

Those would be the choices they have.

Those are part of the conversations of why we have long-range financial planning to understand the decisions we're making today and how that may include us tomorrow.

The final example I mentioned is very timely because the Board of Supervisors will be meeting tomorrow with the state representatives around this item of mutual interest for general assembly authority for state enabling legislation to have a local sales tax that could be used for school construction projects.

For perspective, the 1% sales tax the county receives now in the general fund is approximately $23 to $24 million.

of just ongoing cash.

And so if that authority would be there, if that were to be enacted, that would certainly be a major change in the landscape of what the CIP looks like.

So this is really just kind of, not to say these are the only things that would be considered, but just giving some framework into where staff's mind is now and reflecting on board sessions that have happened in the past and board things that may be considered at this time.

There is no more staff content where you're prepared for at this time really to leave this open-ended for any board questions and comments.

At this point, this discussion has really been kind of board to staff for questions or clarification.

I've intentionally not put any slides in here because really the remainder of our time is the boards and I wanted to use that in the best way I can.

But if I can help shape a discussion or anything else, I'll be interested in that.

I doubt this would be manageable by tomorrow, but the fact that you'll have two former school board members who are now going to be local delegates, they should have their head wrapped around what our local CIP issues are and how the passing of the 1% sales tax could impact our local CIP in the actual context of what we saw today

In addition to having a re-elected senator whose primary case for re-election was his seniority and ability to get things done, I mean that should definitely not be lost in the conversation.

Unfortunately I won't be able to be here tomorrow to make my own case for that.

but if two former school board members don't go after this like rabid dogs and I don't understand why they got elected to be delegates.

So I'd say that myself to them if I were sitting here tomorrow.

But anything you could do as a helpful bit of information to them to make that case, I think we have an opportunity from a former Charlottesville school board member and up until what, a few months ago, a former Albemarle County school board

I think the other thing I would say, the complexity, and CIP is just a part of it, of the county's strategic plan and some of the things that are shifting and how we get after stuff relative to what we can afford in the CIP, it's important to just make a few comments on.

SmartScale and how we get transportation projects funded in this state is going through a major transformation this year.

and we have an excellent team that has done very well under the former SmartScale scoring and I suspect that they will do, will be just as expert at it moving forward.

But it could mean that that transportation leveraging dollars that we put into the CIP becomes even more critical and vital which obviously puts more pool on local funding and local resources.

That being said,

In the scoring of smart scale, economic development is going to have a bigger piece in play into it.

So everybody's understanding of the importance of economic development, not just to our own local economy and help to diversify where we're pulling our revenue in from, but also how it impacts how we just move around the area.

It's important to realize.

So the transportation leveraging piece of the CIP is going to have to remain there if not even grow in the future.

And then just as a tidbit to throw into the complexity of it, we just had a major conversation about developer incentives for affordable housing this past Monday.

And affordable housing impacts all of us in a way that hits so many different layers and buckets that it's hard for me to keep my brain wrapped around it all.

Our employees, our ability to recruit and retain folks, not to mention to just have folks that are employed can live in the same county that we're in.

But all of that, when we start thinking of developer incentives, and the biggest thing that they requested, or the consensus, was tax abatements, that's foregoing revenue down the road.

We all need to be ready to say, I think, that affordable housing is an important enough issue that we should be pursuing that, which this board said they were supportive of.

but that's going to have revenue impacts for us down the road and then that ultimately impacts CIP as well.

Just offering that out there again is my comment.

Thank you, Chair Price.

I appreciate Ned's comments and effort to keep my comments down and ditto what he just said.

I just want for clarity to make sure the Board of Supervisors and the school board have both put into our legislative packet the importance of the 1% sales tax for CIP.

For clarity, though, that that is my referendum is my understanding.

That would come about

would have the opportunity by referendum to vote on that 1%.

Is that accurate?

I just want to make sure, because I'm already getting some emails from constituents saying, how dare you even suggest a 1% sales tax?

And my response is, you have the opportunity.

You will have the opportunity to vote on that by referendum.

I mean, that's my understanding.

That's just for the public.

So we're talking about that today.

And I'm in favor of it, but I just think that the details are important for the public to understand.

And the only other thing that I wanted to mention, Andy, I would just love for you to give just a quick couple of comments about the importance of our triple AAA bond rating, because we are one of the few in the country, counties of our size,

to have a triple-triple binder.

And why that's important, I know the school board knows why it's important.

But there are a lot of people in the public that are going to pull this up and listen to this discussion.

I think there are two things that come to mind.

The first of which is when the county is borrowing funding, it positions us to get the best possible rate, almost as if you had a perfect credit score.

So the county just completed its largest bond issuance in history.

And I believe on one of those issuances, there's two parts, but I think we had up to nine bidders, I believe, correctly.

So if you are not in that case, you may not have as many bidders and may not get the best possible rate.

So when that happens, the annual interest on tens upon tens of millions of dollars becomes a very significant impact into your budget.

And that really goes to the second benefit.

When we look at our county general fund, debt service is really, we talk about it constantly in the context of the capital budget because those projects are tied together, but it really speaks to the flexibility that the board has.

And when we have manageable debt service payments, that gives the board as much flexibility as they can on a year-to-year basis to meet whatever the strategic objectives may be.

That's a great summary.

Having the triple AAA rating is also indicative of strong fiscal management.

And that's over our operating funds, general funds, our strategic planning, and our capital improvements fund.

Great, I really appreciate that.

And the only other thing that I would add is that I think it is really important on page 7, and you don't have to go back to it, but to remember that when we increase the food and beverage, transient occupancy, cigarette tax, those increases were equivalent to 3.3 cents from the real estate tax.

and the rising property assessment values were the equivalent of, just say, 10 cents for our constituents.

And those are numbers that are important to remember as well.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And I would agree that the complexity of all of this is going to be all consuming for that, for the next six months, for all of our perspectives to do the homework and try to understand

these different things from the financial headroom to the spaces and that kind of thing.

And it is regarding what Ms.

McKeel just mentioned about the noted increases in the budget that we have had over the last year.

We should be able to, we are doing a lot with that and we need to make sure that we're using

So it's hard to predict whether the population numbers will be accurate, whether the housing numbers will be accurate, whether the values will be accurate.

And we just have to do the very best we can to get as close as we can in all of these different levels.

And also, in my mind, I have to just take it a little bit at a time and not just leap to, oh, well, if it's going to be 30%,

We're actually going in that direction and the intermediate data that comes along will be able to ground truth all of these projections as we go.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you very much.

Mr. Brolin, a point of clarification.

Exactly, exactly.

Thank you, thank you.

That makes it extremely important to make sure that we

Help our legislators pass this because that's going to be crucial, I think, for all the school districts, all the counties and cities because I think Charlottesville is also very simple about this, I do believe, yes.

So that's extremely important.

Other than that, I just thought it was a wonderful presentation and I look forward to continuing to see what the numbers will come out after January 17th.

The legislature is important not just in terms of the 1% sales tax but also recognizing the funding formulas for schools and how the schools are supported by the state and changes that have

and in fact things like Northern Fever where it's a close proximity to Rivanna and Atlanta and Northport so there are a lot of things that have to be figured back as we go and it's good to be flexible.

When the lottery was approved, it was sold under the all of the money is going to go to schools.

And then basically, they said, oh, now we've got this money.

So the schools got cut in other ways.

And it really was kind of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

It's really a bait and switch, I think, in a lot of ways.

At least anecdotally, that's the way I've observed.

So one of the things that's going to be really important is that if we were able to get the 1% sales tax to go to school funding, that we're able to document and demonstrate to the public

that we are not otherwise reducing funding for schools and this actually is going on top of that.

And so that's part of what we have to be able to demonstrate.

Could you go to slide number 52?

And then I'll ask to go to 53 after that.

So as I look at 52, and particularly the red circle there, that's getting within 0.3%, if I understand the estimate, of the outstanding debt as a percentage of assessed value of taxable property, which would give us up to that $72 million.

But that would be based upon A, that there is no decline in the assessed value of real estate.

So if there was a great recession or declining values, that cuts into that.

Additionally, if interest rates, the cost of borrowing goes up,

then that makes it more expensive as well to borrow the money.

And if on the next slide if I understand correctly that if we did want to use that 72 million which by the way I would be absolutely totally opposed to getting anywhere near that amount we'd have to have 3.6 million to start with and then depending on whether it's a lease revenue or general obligation 5.6 million in funding, debt funding per year on that and if it's of each penny currently

is of increase to the real estate tax rate is 2.7 million that you have to increase the real estate tax rate by more than two cents to come up with at least that 5.6 to 5.7 million, which again, if the property values go down or the interest debt goes up, then that makes it even more expensive to expend it.

So I would not in any fashion be encouraged to look to get any closer

We don't really have that full 72 million to play with because there are too many variables out there that could cause us to have more significant financial consequences as a result of whatever may happen with the economy going forward.

Thank you, Mr. Bowman, for your presentation.

One of the things that caught my attention was you said that the equivalent of real estate taxes of 13 cents came from appreciation in property value and one other thing that I've forgotten right now.

And I think it's great that there was that additional revenue available because in this county

There's no end of projects that need to be doing and I know that the board of Mr. Richardson and the teams involved are spending them wisely.

A couple of other things.

Mr. Galloway said about affordable housing.

I was at Woodbrook Elementary School this morning as well as Stony Point.

And I learned that in the last week, three families of students have been evicted from their homes in the last week.

And there is a real need for affordable housing

in this county.

And I think anybody who would like to talk to the principal about that would get a lot of good information.

One of the things that I want to bring up has to do with the renovations.

I'm putting in my pitch for money for the renovations.

Because if we look at the summary on page 7

from 50 million last year.

And if you add the 35.7 million to that, you end up right about 98.9%.

The improvements for the middle schools are TBD.

And so if I just use what it was last year,

I'm just going to be conservative and say $20 million, which is what it was last year.

So, and thank you, by the way, for the $2.8 million that went into improvements.

That ends up being $119 million in need for renovations compared to $106 million last year.

When we're putting in 2.8, and again, thank you for the money.

I mean, it did a lot of good things this year.

That's kind of like paying a credit card with minimum payments.

It's going to take forever to do this through.

And generations of students are going to go through unless we act wholly on it.

And so as long as I'm going to act boldly on it, if you're just looking for something to do with the $72 million, that would be of real value to our students, to our teachers, to the families involved.

At $10 million a year,

you can get it wiped out in probably 13 years.

Otherwise it's going to take generation after generation after generation after generation.

So I'm just talking about acting boldly on it.

One other thing I'm really thrilled that there's going to be is that the conversation about the one cent sales tax is alive again.

It seems like it's been on again, off again, on again, off again.

One of the things that Mrs. Mallek, Dr. Acuff, and I, and Mr. Randolph when he was on the board, and Cal Morris, and I think

Bruce Dodson.

In the last real meeting of the CIP oversight committee, we had recommended a five penny increase, one penny a year for five years.

And that one didn't see the light of day.

And then the pandemic happened.

And so all bets were off, understandably.

I would ask you all to consider again having our own, and I totally understand the political nature of it but I've been doing business budget planning for 43 years and when you know that there's going to be an expense coming up year after year after year after year you start to plan for it in your budgeting

and so to add on a penny a year for x number of, with that five pennies, if it had been there right now, and again, the pandemic did that, we'd be getting about $10 million a year.

and coming in, that would pay for the renovations and for the next several years get it wiped out.

Okay I have maybe something I guess just for personal clarification.

In slides 15 through 20 I think the county was showing some of the projects that would be important for the county.

And then slide 49 showed projects that were really important for the school board and they were prioritized.

And so I guess my main point of clarification first would be

How do we decide, at any point, will there be like a priority list of all of those things combined?

And if so, who will be deciding that?

15 to 20, I believe, have already been approved in the CIP.

And now this?

Yes.

Yes.

OK.

They're already approved underway.

So they're not future projects.

Okay well that makes sense I guess then for this year but still maybe moving forward in the future how because I think John mentioned like the CIP committee that at one time had existed and that no longer exists so how now projects for the CIP considered

Well, I think it's just a different format of providing the same information from the schools and from the county that then goes into the process that is then proposed and voted on eventually by the Board of Supervisors.

It's just a different mechanism, but it's still, it's like this, the sharing of information to what we get from the schools, what we get from the county,

The idea was to include everybody, not just a select few.

Does that make sense?

The board of supervisors and the school board in discussions.

It will be 25 years from the time he was born.

Baker Butler opened a year before he was born.

He will be graduated from college by the time we as a community build another school.

when the doors open at our southern school.

25 years and I understand all the politics right I understand all of the revenue issues but I think sometimes it's important to bring that student perspective right and so 25 years we haven't made it we have not been able to make an investment in a new school

and then when I think about the capital improvements and you know understandably because of the great recession and when we could not make any investments in our schools you know when I look at the difference between two schools that sit in my jurisdiction if I look at Broadus Wood and I compare it to Crozet it is night and day and we are all about equity and I'm not

However, when you sit in at Crozet Elementary and you see the beautiful bright windows and the light coming in and the constructive the learning spaces the modular learning spaces that those students have and then when I sit in Broadus Wood and I have the principal come to me and say we've been struggling with this drop like a basic we're not even talking about learning we're talking about health and safety we've been struggling with this drop-off circle for the last 15 years

and then I look at the list of projections and even if we're able to make this commitment, which it sounds like we're not, we won't be able to have those renovations completed to Broadus Wood to 28, which means someone enters as a kindergartner, graduates from their fifth grade, and they won't have had changes made.

and I know we're all we all are aware of this but Jenna with you kind of we need to be bold I want it I really want us jointly to take that together and think about how we can take that out to the community and to our general assembly and say like to really transition this community and continue to grow and to meet the equity needs of our students we've got to be bold

otherwise my children will be sitting at this meeting when they are hopefully housing owners 25 years from now and saying okay we still need to make these improvements.

Thank you, Dr. Berlin.

I think it's also important to note that it was the then existing Board of Supervisors in 2010 that reduced the real estate tax rate by six cents.

And that's why we haven't built a school in decades.

We'll just say amen to my colleague on several of these elements.

I'm wondering what a difference of the space makes, new space versus 50 year old space.

Go to Gosei Elementary, go to Stony Point, or go to Stone.

Some of these schools are narrow halls, poor lighting.

You know, eight years ago I think the Long Range Planning Committee

identified 89 out of 900 classrooms without any natural light.

I mean, they were closets.

And we've been trying to break through walls or putting in whatever these, they're not called skylights.

Lindsay, help me.

Solar tubes.

Solar tubes, which go through two stories.

You have a glimmering that there's an outside.

But they're not conducive.

There's enormous differences.

And if you want to be wonky, the literature shows there's big differences in children's

attachment to school in bright and inviting spaces.

Broadly, we are also meeting with the legislators on the 18th, so any take-home lessons you all have, and if the handouts aren't ready for tomorrow, we get a second bite at the apple, and we're gonna be advocating for changes in a lot of things, but including the sales tax dedicated to construction.

And broadly, there were a few comments when we were talking about our facilities, about electric buses, or solar panels, or geothermal.

Broadly we have, run by Lindsay Snoddy and Matt Wirtman, the Advisory Committee on Environmental Sustainability.

with one of our missions being to conform with the county's climate action plan.

So to conform with energy efficiency, there may be some costs attached and we are doing our absolute best to get grants for the electric buses, the electric charging stations,

We stopped applying right now until there's a broader plan for the county and what we're going to do with the transportation department.

But we're going to go forward with that.

But we're also, there was at Crozet a marginal difference, and I'll have to look up what marginal means, that's what I was told when I asked.

between when they added the 35,000 square foot addition and they needed to replace the boiler or whatever the furnace was.

They did geothermal instead and it was a little bit more expensive but it's going to be a long-term benefit not only in terms of energy use but in terms of education.

that the community knows that this can happen, that we are serious about environmental issues.

But they're all costs.

They're in cost.

I mean, even just to come up to what your endorsed plan is, there are costs associated with being energy efficient.

And we are being very careful about that.

We've applied for grants also for geothermal.

Could I just say one quick thing to Ms.

McKeel when you were talking about the referendum and I believe that's right you know in terms of what the process would have to be.

Back when we did the referendum in 2016 Dr. Yacuff and I were talking to a lot of people and we're trying to communicate that price becomes an issue in the absence of value and we were trying to impress on our constituents

that there was real value to the community.

Every school was touched in terms of maintenance, as well as Woodbrooke, as well as other projects that took place then.

And it passed 7426.

So I think

I'm not going to beat her anymore.

And I made that point not because I'm against it, you understand.

But because it behooves all of us to remember that we're going to have to work towards that.

And we have a very education-centric community.

which the last referendum showed.

As we meet with our delegation

Well now they are talking about a 10% cut for every department, right?

I mean it makes no sense.

So anything further?

And I adjourn this school board meeting.

We're still in session.

Do you have a motion to go into a closed meeting?

I do.

I move that the Board of Supervisors convene a closed meeting pursuant to Section 2.2-3711A of the Code of Virginia under subsection 1 to discuss and consider appointments to various boards and commissions including without limitation

A second from Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley, a second from Supervisor Andrews.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Andrews?

Yes.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Alright, thank you.

All right, call the board back to order.