Board of Supervisors Regular First Meeting   3/6/2024

Good afternoon.

I'm going to call to order this, please to call to order this regular meeting of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors on the 6th of March at 1 p.m.

in Lane Auditorium.

I'd like to note at the dais we have Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District, Supervisor Ned Gallaway of the Rio District, Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District, Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna District, Supervisor Mike Pruitt of the Scottsville District, and myself, Jim Andrews, representing the Samuel Miller District.

The Quorum is present.

We're also joined here by our county executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, our county attorney, Mr. Steve Rosenberg, and our clerk, Ms.

Claudette Borgerson and senior deputy clerk, Mr. Travis Morris.

Please also let me welcome Albemarle County police officers present, Lieutenant Angela Jamerson and Officer Matt

Middleton, and we thank you for your service here and across the county every day.

Thank you.

If you would now please join us in a moment of silence.

Board will now move to adoption of the final agenda for today.

I have not heard of any suggested amendments, so if there's a, if not, if there's a motion to adopt the final agenda.

So moved.

Second.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley.

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek.

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel.

Yes.

Mr. Pruitt.

Aye.

Mr. Andrews.

Yes.

Thank you.

Board will now move to brief announcements by board members.

Thank you very much.

Someone else may be going to speak to you, but I know in April there will be the IVMUC Materials Utilization Center will be all sorts of dates for hazardous household waste, appliances, tires, and electronics.

So please consult the revanna.org website to learn about those.

And also, we know that April is the day for plant sales and garden tours, and there'll be more information about that in the first April meeting.

Thank you.

Yes, so I've become the guy who talks about election days every time we go around the horn, so I will say congratulations, Virginia, on your participation in yesterday's Super Tuesday presidential election.

This is not the last primary election that we have this year.

There's another one coming up in June 18th, and of course polls will open for early voting in-person functions exactly the same, except it's much, much easier, 45 days before that.

Get out and vote.

I would just remind everyone that the Citizens Police Academy is taking place over the next three Saturdays.

However, I understand the class is full, which is a good thing, and there will possibly be more classes, additional classes added in the fall.

Thank you.

Just a couple of quick items.

The Charlottesville Area Alliance I'm working for, an age-friendly community, is hosting an event.

They're calling it One Stop Shop for those 50 plus, which certainly includes me.

They are highlighting programs and resources around central Virginia such as care for the caregiver, health care, insurance, safety, social connections, transportation, wills and much more.

You can join the event on April the 27th from 11 o'clock till 2 o'clock in the afternoon at Carver Rec Center.

And I will note that it says refreshments are provided.

Maybe that's because it's for 50 and over, right?

But anyway, that sounds like a great event.

The other item, I just want to take a minute and thank the Albemarle County Police Department.

We have two folks here with us for their efforts at stopping our reckless driving and speeding in this community.

The Albemarle County Police stopped 113 vehicles for speeding and wrote 119 tickets in one day last week, and it's just really, really important that

People drive carefully, obey the laws.

We are really a dangerous community right now for pedestrians and for folks that are driving vehicles.

Supervisor Gallaway.

I don't think I have any announcements today.

Okay, thank you.

I only would second the appreciation for our officers and in terms of traffic enforcement also know that there was a crash on Friday on 64 that involved a stopped patrol car and of course the law is that people should move over if possible when there are stopped patrol cars so fortunate no one was injured in that accident.

I also want to remind people that we're coming up on budget town halls and I believe we have one scheduled for BF Yancy in Samuel Miller District on March 28th and I believe they'll also be one in connection with the Fifth and Avon CAC in March and I'm sure others will have them scheduled as we as we proceed into the month.

Does anyone have anything they'd like to add otherwise?

Thank you, Board.

We have two today.

Thank you very much.

Proclamation Recognizing Women's History Month.

Whereas Women's History Week originated in the United States in 1978, launched in California during the week of International Women's Day, and the movement spread across the country.

And whereas a consortium of women's groups and historians successfully lobbied for national recognition of the week, honoring women's contributions to American history, until the first presidential proclamation was issued by Jimmy Carter in 1980.

And whereas subsequent presidents continue to proclaim a National Women's History Week until Congress passed a law in 1987, designating March of each year as Women's History Month, and authorized each president thereafter to issue an annual proclamation.

Whereas Albemarle County honors all the women past and present from our country, Commonwealth, county, country, so sorry, from our county, Commonwealth and country.

whose invaluable contributions are often not recognized or recorded and whose determination and leadership positively impacts our lives every day.

Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, do hereby acknowledge and commemorate the month of March 2024 as Women's History Month, with special recognition of the women who diligently lead our county to a brighter future for all.

And I believe that's a form of a motion.

Second.

So motion from Supervisor Mallek, second from Supervisor McKeel.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley.

I. Ms.

Mallek.

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel.

Yes.

Mr. Pruitt.

I. Mr. Andrews.

Yes.

And I believe we have someone here to, here to accept the motion.

Bree Reed, Director of the Charlottesville Chapter of the National Organization of Women.

Hello.

Thank you.

Hello, I'm Brejana Reed, and I bring thanks from the Charlottesville chapter of the National Organization for Women for recognizing Women's History Month.

Throughout history, women's leadership and achievements have been unrecognized, unreported, or erased, but their accomplishments often ignored or credited to men.

Studies confirm that women are vastly underrepresented in U.S.

history and social studies classrooms.

The National Women's History Museum analyzed the K-12 social studies standards for each state, reviewing all standards referring to a woman or a topic associated with women.

The report revealed how few women are required reading, just 178 individual women.

That's one woman for every three men in the 2017 standards.

Their analysis of the way women's history is characterized in the standards suggests that women are excluded because of the framework of the standards, preference, male-oriented exceptional leadership while over-emphasizing women's domestic roles.

Often references to women seem an afterthought, an addendum to the main storyline.

Coinciding with the 1960s rights movements, many states add marginalized groups to the history standards, including women as a marginalized group.

This despite the fact that women comprise more than half of the U.S.

population

and approaching all women as a group usually resulted in the experiences of elite white women being showcased as the norm.

The lack of representation and diminished portrayal of women sends powerful messages to our young people about women in history and contemporary society.

From what they're learning in school, students fail to see the broader impacts

Women overall have made in U.S.

history, and they're even less likely to learn about the positive impacts of women of color.

Today, there is an increasing public interest in motivating girls to embrace science, technology, engineering, and math, but learning standards provide few historic examples of women or their achievements in these fields.

The lack of positive images of women leaders and women's inventions, discoveries, contributions, and achievements across every discipline is especially damaging for young girls.

They can't aspire to be what they haven't seen.

We at Seville Now release chances to highlight women's history

We urge all to learn and teach children about the unsung women of Albemarle County, our state and country, and to insist that women be appropriately included in what our children learn at school.

We commend the supervisors of Albemarle for bringing women's history to the attention of the community.

Thank you.

We'll have an opportunity for all the supervisors to speak, but really appreciate that.

Thank you very much.

As a Girl Scout leader in the 80s, I referred with both the troops to a book written during Linda Robb's leadership here in Virginia, Women of Impact, Over 400 Years in Virginia's History.

It stops in 1945, and it definitely needs to be updated.

But it was a great resource and opened a lot of eyes about all the different people at different levels of society who were impactful.

From myself,

from being the descendant of a 13th century female Irish pirate to my grandmother who was an early Robert Rodale convert and argued for environmental protection and chemical pollution stopping at the dinner table every night to my mom and her generation's work on water protection here in Ambrone County and trying to be an inspiring person to my granddaughters and daughters who are definitely eager to take their role.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for being here.

On days where we talk about history, I always try and think about what's the forward-looking element of this and I want to connect just very briefly to what we're doing here today.

I think it's really extraordinary how Morrill County has leadership that is at parity.

We are represented by 50% women.

That's not something that every community in America can say.

That's certainly not what we can say when we look to our national government.

local rural governments in India, Panchayati Raj institutions, the things that are equivalent to us over there, have required gender parity in all their local councils.

And there have been a wealth of studies that have gone into this to show that when you have gender parity,

in local government.

What you see is people investing more in clean water, people investing more in transportation, people investing more in the communities and figuring out how to serve them.

And you also see women in the community, when the leadership resembles them, getting more involved in the political process.

Thank you very much, what an honor for all of us, for you all to be here.

Those of us of a certain age really appreciate the fact that now has done so much work for all women.

And as an educator, that's something I certainly, we certainly made sure that girls, young women,

were all encouraged to do whatever they could.

And you're continuing that.

You've been doing that.

You're continuing that.

And that is something very important for all of us.

Thank you for the comments from my fellow supervisors.

I certainly agree.

And thank you for bringing the presentation forward.

As well as the other supervisors, I want to thank all the women leaders that we have in Elmar County government.

They are doing a great job for us, and we really appreciate their work.

And I see some of them in the audience right now.

Not all of them, but I see some of them in the audience.

And I think because I was married to a bridge engineer, I want to add a name for folks to think about if you're not aware of, Emily Warren Robely.

who was back in the 1800s, she was responsible for guiding construction of the Brooklyn Bridge because her husband became ill, was debilitated and couldn't do the work and she took over as the engineer for that project, ran it out of, ran the design and the work out of her home and could never really admit she was doing it.

because it was the 1800s.

She's worth looking up if some of you have not heard of her.

The Brooklyn Bridge, which was built from 1869 to 1883.

Just to add another name to the list.

Pretty cool.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

I was nervous there.

In past years, when this has come up, I often think of women in my life and what influence they've had.

I've remarked before at previous board meetings that the main influences in my personal life have always been women.

There weren't that many male role models around in my family.

to look to, but my grandmother was who raised me.

But it will be three years this month that my great aunt, Sister Mary Florence Burke, who was a Roman Catholic nun, which happens to be a rather male-dominated organization, passed away.

And in her funeral, she had chosen Corinthians 924 to be read.

And that quote is, do you not know that in a race, all the runners run, but only one receives the prize?

run in such a way that you may seize the prize and make it yours.

She was an educator for years.

And not only did she live her life, and for her it was faith, but she passed on to all her students that same sentiment.

And I've been obviously reflecting on her and her influence and passing along and thinking about that wisdom that she has still sent on even after she was gone for me to reflect on.

So I thought that would be a nice thing to share.

She was what I would call a rock star in the Wheeling Catholic Diocese.

And I still, when I returned to my hometown, had former students of hers, even though they say she was strict in every stereotypical way you could think of a Roman Catholic nunner.

But they came to appreciate beyond that stereotypical or that superficial stuff, what she was teaching them as an educator.

Thank you for being here today.

As a father of two daughters myself, I am certainly enjoying watching my two daughters come into their own and know that they will be doing right by the things to advance and show folks why we shouldn't be worried about men's history or women's history.

It's history and we're all in this together.

Thank you and share the comments of my fellow supervisors.

I actually didn't know my mother, but I knew my mother-in-law.

It was a very strong presence here in Albemarle County.

Jane Hayward was an environmentalist from the get-go and I think I'm inspired to be here because of her.

We have a strong group here of women.

I noticed that Monticello is celebrating Women's History Month with the women of Monticello, but I expect that when history of this era is written, we're going to see some of the people here featured as particularly strong, prominent women of our time.

So thank you for your being here on behalf of now, and I believe Ms.

Mallek has a proclamation to hand to you, so I'm not sure that happens.

Board, we have another proclamation for today.

It's a celebration of March as Red Cross Month.

I do.

Thank you very much, Chair Andrews.

Proclamation recognizing March as Red Cross Month.

Whereas during

American Red Cross Month in March, we recognize the compassion of people in Albemarle County and reaffirm our commitment to care for one another in times of crisis.

And whereas this generous spirit is woven into the fabric of our community and advances the humanitarian legacy of American Red Cross founder Clara Barton, one of the most honored women

in our county's history, who nobly dedicated herself to alleviating suffering, and whereas today kind-hearted individuals in our community exemplify Barton's commitment as they step up through your American Red Cross Central Virginia chapter to promote a beacon of hope for our neighbors in need, and whereas

through their voluntary and selfless contributions, they make a life-saving difference in people's darkest hours.

More than 250 Red Cross volunteers provided 134 central Virginia families with shelter, food, and comfort after a home fire helped collect and process more than

18,000 blood donations for hospital patients, supported hundreds of military families, veterans, and caregivers through the unique challenges of service and help save lives through providing nearly 14,000 residents with first aid, CPR, and other skills training.

Now therefore be it proclaimed that we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, do hereby recognize

the month of March 2024 as Red Cross Month and encourage all residents of Albemarle County to reach out and support their humanitarian mission and be it therefore proclaimed that during this month of March, in honor of all those who lead with their hearts to serve people in need,

We ask everyone to join in this commitment to strengthen our community.

Sign this sixth day of March 2024, Jim Andrews, Chair, Albemarle County Board of Supervisors.

Thank you.

We have a motion from Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley, second from Supervisor McKeel.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley.

Aye.

Ms.

Mallet.

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel.

Yes.

Mr. Pruitt.

Aye.

Mr. Andrews.

Yes.

Thank you.

And I believe we have Mr. Bill Brent here to accept this on behalf as the Executive Director of Red Cross Central Virginia Chapter.

And are you?

Okay.

Welcome.

Thank you.

It's a pleasure to be with you.

Okay, I moved the whole thing here.

It's a pleasure to be with you this afternoon, and it's a special pleasure to be here on Women's History Month and that acknowledgement, and as you heard, our founder, Claire Barton, began this organization out of the humanitarian desire to take care of the wounded on the battlefield over 140 years ago.

and we continue that mission today and our services to the armed forces in all of the other programs, whether it's disaster responses or taking care of our international folks, helping reunite families across the world, being there when someone has a fire the night before.

And that's all part of the mission of the American Red Cross, which is to prevent and alleviate human suffering in the face of emergencies by mobilizing the power of volunteers and the generosity of donors.

Our communities, individuals, 95% of the workforce of the American Red Cross are volunteers.

We can't do it without the support and partnership.

106 years ago, folks like you sat around this room and decided that it was worth investing in the American Red Cross.

We are thankful for the commitment then.

We're thankful for your commitment and support now.

It truly is a partnership and we couldn't do it without you.

Thank you.

And wait there while we each allow comments.

Thank you.

As we were conversing out in the hall, it's been many, many years I took my senior lifesaving in 1965.

So that was a long time ago.

Those football players almost drowned me when we had to haul them along.

But also, I mean, my three grandchildren have also done the same thing within the last five years.

So I appreciate all that aspect of your work as well as all of the supplying blood for the hospitals and emergencies.

Yes, thank you so much for being here.

I think we need to only turn on the television for these last few months to remember the kind of critical role that the Red Cross and its sister organizations play in our world.

And it is not just these flashy

Dyer Conflicts at the Red Cross is providing these vital services.

I deployed with the United States Navy twice and the Red Cross is an essential lifeline for deployed sailors.

That's how we know when people back home, when our families are in trouble, it's not

You've done, as Supervisor Pruitt said, you've helped everybody.

And I would say millions and millions of people since the beginning.

And this is such a small tribute to say thank you.

You're deserving of so much more.

And I do hope that more people will volunteer and will be there for the Red Cross.

And especially not only helping families, but also your blood drive.

that saves lives every single time.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

We really appreciate the work from the Red Cross as a retired nurse from UVA.

I had lots of experience with working with the Red Cross and calling you all and whether it was an event for staff, a training for staff, or blood donations.

So again, thank you so much in this time of

Climate Change Events.

Thank you.

Thank you for being with us today.

I remain in absolute awe of everything the American Red Cross has done, and in particular, the symbology.

I mean, that symbol, when people see it, commands a respect

and so on.

You've got a heck of a young volunteer organization going that I didn't really know about.

And in kind of learning about that, the first statement on your website says in 1884, six children put on a play that raised $50 that they donated to the then three-year-old American Red Cross.

Red Cross founder Clara Barton used that money to aid a family affected by severe Midwestern floods.

So reading that about children, even within the first few years of the organization, and then what it has turned into, that's been fascinating for me to read and learn about.

So just wanted to share that with you today as well.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

And I just want to add my gratitude for all that the Red Cross does, and I hope that everyone will recognize the needs and support them, whether it's giving money, time, or blood.

I was just going to say, Ned, that was a lot of money back then.

Thank you, Board.

That brings us to Item 7 from Public Matters on the Agenda, but not listed for public hearing.

Are matters previously considered by the Board or matters that are pending before the Board?

We do not.

All right.

So, board, that takes us to item eight, the consent agenda.

Is there any item that anyone would like to pull or change on the consent agenda?

If not, do we have a motion to adopt the consent agenda?

So moved.

Second.

We're figuring it out.

It works.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley.

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek.

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel.

Yes.

Mr. Pruitt.

Aye.

Mr. Andrews.

Yes.

Mr. Gallaway.

Yes.

Oh, okay.

Great.

All in person, I think is what she's saying.

They're all in person.

Yes.

Okay.

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

Individuals are allowed one opportunity of up to three minutes to speak at each Board meeting during matters from the public.

A sign-up sheet is managed by the clerk's office.

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

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

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

The red light indicates your time has expired.

and you will be asked to end your comments.

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

When addressing the board, state your name and if you live in Albemarle County, your Magisterial District.

Address comments directly to the board as a whole.

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

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

Speakers may not share any unused time with another speaker.

back-and-forth debate is not permitted.

Do not speak from your seat or out of turn.

All comments are live streamed, recorded and published on the Albemarle County website.

There you go.

Okay.

Thank you.

Chairman Andrews, Honorable Board of Supervisors, my name is George Stevens, Samuel Miller District.

I have been the Chief of the North Garden Volunteer Fire Company for 23 years.

Out of the 42, I've been a volunteer firefighter.

I stand before you today deeply concerned about the safety of our community.

The North Garden Volunteer Fire Company, which has served Albemarle County for over 53 years, is facing a critical staffing shortage, and we need county support to continue to serve effectively to keep our community safe.

As you know, the county has recently denied our request for 24-7 career staffing of the North Garden Fire Station.

As a background, the North Garden Fire Station

responds to over 800 calls per

of appropriately staffing and covering those calls with shrinking and aging volunteer base.

Our membership voted unanimously in June of 2023 to request 24-7 career staffing.

We made the tough decision that best serves our community, swallowing any pride that was required to take that step.

Knowing this is a multi-year process, just as it was when we requested our initial weekday staffing, reflecting on the long time

to long lead time to implement an increased career staffing due to funding, training, and deployment.

The request was submitted to Chief Eggleston on July of 2023 with the hope that staffing could be in place sometime in 2025.

We recognize that the requested 24-7 staffing of three may, in many cases, still need volunteer augmentation.

Our community deserves a stable minimum level of emergency services.

Residents of the North Garden area should not get lesser response in other areas because of the shrinkage and aging volunteer base and being the first volunteer department in the county to admit its limitations of services going forward.

We formally request the Board of Supervisors, one, determine the financial impact of our request so the Board can evaluate the public safety matter and weigh against other funds.

Two, request ACFR to evaluate the impact of meeting our

Staffing Request with the current recommended FY25 FTE count by redistributing of resources if necessary.

Three, inquire from staff what the deployment plan is with or without our request provided coverage of Albemarle residents assuming we are not able to cover our calls and in particular increase 24-7

Staffing of Station 17, which is anticipated to respond outside of Albemarle County, given its non-central location.

Four, given our volume of centrally located and membership.

I appreciate this, but if you have comments to give, you can head to the clerk and we'll have them.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Board at this time we will move into our budget work session.

Item 9, County Executives 2025 recommended budget operating capital budget will be let off by I think believe Mr. Andy Bowman, Assistant Chief Financial Officer with Mr. Sumner, Jacob Sumner as Chief Financial Officer to start.

Good afternoon and thank you, Chair Andrews, for the introduction.

While I'm pulling up the presentation, I just want to take a moment and recognize while I'll be doing the first half of today's presentation.

just publicly recognize the team at OMB and particularly the analysts in our department who do so much of this 300-page document, the presentation materials, all of the Q&A that comes back to the board.

They are here today on the far end of the auditorium, Thomas Unsworth, Lauren Zant, Tia Mitchell, Robert Wilson, and certainly our deputy chief, Ryan Davidson, and the other staff and finance budget who support this work.

So with that said, I'm going to take a look at today's agenda.

I'm really looking ahead first for the months ahead and the remainder of the budget process.

I'd like to start with this ahead.

I want to clarify, during today's board meeting, there is no action that is planned.

This is just the first introduction for discussion and dialogue in the recommended budget.

There is one item towards the end of the meeting in public works on the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority where we're going to ask for some board consensus that would then come back to a later date.

That will not be final action.

That'll just be consensus.

I'll note that that's going to be the tender of the first few work sessions we have scheduled, but I want to point out a very important milestone on March 25th.

On that day, the Board of Supervisors will be asked to take action to propose a budget for public hearing and to propose tax rates for advertisement.

That date is important because when the Board of Supervisors advertises a tax rate, the Board will only be able to adopt tax rates that amount advertised or less.

So this theoretically puts a cap on the amount at that point in time of what the revenues may be in the upcoming fiscal year.

Looking ahead at how these work sessions are intended to work, this is really building upon the feedback we received from the Board in the past, where we want to present a summary level of information.

It'll be more detailed than the County Executive's presentation, but it will be not as detailed as the budget document.

We're going to have many breaks for Board discussion, given this is a work session, and we want to help facilitate as much dialogue as we can.

During these breaks, really after every chapter, staff will be available for any general information questions the board may have.

Anything we can't answer on the spot, we will take as a follow-up.

We will send that to the board and post on the website so we have all those responses out there for public transparency.

The second item that we'll be listening for is any item that we'll kind of informally refer to as the list, which is really any potential adjustments the board may desire.

One of the items that staff has a follow-up that will be coming to the board and posted on the website tomorrow is a list of what is not included in the budget.

This was something the board asked for at the very first presentation.

So staff is going to prepare a list of those items that were really strongly considered but unable to be included as part of budget balancing, and that's going to be organized by a strategic goal.

So we'll send that full list out tomorrow morning and really the intent of the staff's comments today is about what is in the budget and how does that align to the strategic plan?

But certainly if there's any items for adjustment, the Board at any point can raise those.

Our approach was to work well in the past if a discussion were to come up for an eventual amendment to the budget is not to resolve it at that moment in the work session but begin to collect all of these potential adjustments and bring that back to the Board to look at as one package and what the Board may want to consider.

So, one more comment of process.

Here is the agenda of what we were planning to cover today.

We begin with a overview of the budget in total, and then we'll spend some time going through general fund revenues.

We will then talk about general fund expenditures at a summary.

And then from there, that would be a good time to take a break on the agenda if the Board desires to.

will then continue through general fund expenditures.

We have, from the original agenda, we have swapped public works and public safety because there is that one item in public works and Rivanna saw the waste authority that we want to ensure we get board directional.

We certainly want to cover as much of this material as we can, but we also want to make sure that we give the board the time they need to work through this.

So if there's anything we do not cover today, because I know there's a hard stop at 445 on the agenda, we can continue that on Monday after we hear from the school board.

I will just look to the board to see if anyone has anything at this time.

I think we can proceed.

Thank you.

So I'm going to start at really the 30,000-foot level of how we put together the total budget.

This is the strategic plan that the Board of Supervisors approved in the fall of 2022.

The Board spent time focusing on the goals and the objectives of that strategic plan.

And then staff followed up with what are the work plans and projects that will achieve the outcomes of those six goals.

A year ago in fiscal year 24, a lot of the work the Board had was about really aligning our resources in the county to move forward with these objectives.

Fiscal year 25 is going to be out continuing to build the momentum of what the Board has set in motion continuing into the following fiscal year.

The strategic plan is a critical piece, but it's not the only one that we look at when balancing.

The Board of Supervisors has a strong commitment to financial planning and financial stewardship.

There have actually been ten occasions that the Department of Finance and Budget has been before the Board since the adoption of the last budget, whether that be the economic outlook report looking at our long-term revenues, whether it be the bond issuances that was completed last fall, or a normal five-year financial planning process where we look at our

Revenue projections are available or obligations available revenues and begin to put together.

So all these examples on the slide are woven together through these three goals and this will be actually get into some of the content of budget now.

Here's our total all funds budget.

This represents but the general fund which is our largest primary fund as well as the capital program, our county's debt service, any other grant funding and of course the public schools operating fund.

This total all funds budget is an increase of about 74 million or 13%.

I want to walk through the math of why that is the way it is.

So this is a little narrative to these charts on page 50 and 51.

The county executive in his initial comments talked about when we look at the total budget, one of the biggest variables is the capital budget.

By nature, capital projects will stop and start and change year to year based on what may be programmed.

And so that is one of the reasons when we look at the total all funds budget, we have a lot of revenue and expenditure growth in that area.

But to walk through the math behind that concept, if we look at our county's local revenues,

Those are primarily tax revenues and primarily received into the general fund and then they fund other funds from there.

Those are about $19 million or 5%.

And that is really based on the changes in the overall local economy.

When we look at other fund drivers, we have an increase of 62 million or more than 260%.

That is really what is happening in the capital program where next year's budget

We have the construction of the Southern Theater patterned elementary.

We have other project cost increases that were not part of the budget because they were not being constructed at that time.

Year to year, when we look at the total budget, this is a common trend where what's happening in the capital can skew where that number goes based on the projects being constructed in that year.

The final notable change is really where we are in state revenues, decreasing $6 million.

That is largely due to the impact in the public schools draft budget.

Their revenue numbers actually down around $8 million based on the Governor's budget, and they are continuing to monitor that as that works through the General Assembly.

So if anyone is following along doing some quick math, the 19 million plus 62 minus 6 gives us to a $75 million increase.

Any other change there is really due to rounding or small changes in other revenues.

So this is a slide I wanted to walk through because certainly it is very notable to have that dollar change, but it really doesn't tell the whole story of what is happening in ongoing day-to-day operations versus what is happening in the capital budget.

Yeah, we're still at the first over.

So I do want to go through the orders.

I don't believe I have any questions right now.

Supervisor LePisto-Kirtley.

Not at this time.

Supervisor McKeel.

Supervisor Gallaway.

And I have no questions at this point.

So we can proceed.

Thank you.

I should say to manage expectations, we're going to provide a lot of breaks, but this portion of the presentation will be the longest from staff.

So that's why I wanted to take that extra pause just in case.

So revenues, of course, are half the equation of the balanced budget.

And our expenditures need to be grounded in what revenues are available.

So again, after this chapter, I'll walk through any questions the board has.

The rest of the content today is going to be focused on the county's general fund.

We focus on the general fund rather than the total county budget for three reasons.

First, that is essentially where all local tax revenues are received.

Second, it is the primary funding source for school operations, the capital program, and the county's debt service applications.

and third, this is the fund where the Board of Supervisors has the maximum amount of policy discretion.

Two things at a high level I'd like to point out is first, general property taxes continue to make up the primary source of general fund revenues at about two-thirds.

That is primarily real estate and personal property and we'll take a closer look at those in just a moment.

The other item that I'd like to just point out is it surprises someone.

I'm in community meetings.

People's reaction to this is that state and federal revenue only makes up 9% of the general fund.

That's certainly an important part of our funding, but it is relatively small sometimes to what people expect.

So just to share that.

So taking a look at the budget is balanced on the current tax rates of real property, personal property, food and beverage, and transit occupancy.

We'll point out that food and beverage is at the statutory cap at 6%.

The county does not have enabling authority to increase that one further.

As we take a look to our revenue projection, the board hears every fall from an economic outlook report where county staff contact us with a team of academics, practitioners, and economists at Virginia Tech.

to really take a look at Albemarle's economy, how that compares to the national, state, and global trends to really understand not only what's happening locally, but how does that connect overall.

So really the conclusions from that presentation are that we know that our economy is overall healthy and strong, and we know that we follow state and national trends.

What was also foreshadowed and shown on the quote on the slide is that it was prudent for us to anticipate a slowdown compared to where we have been in the last few years, emerging from the bounce back and revenues from the pandemic.

So this slide is a good summary of where we've actually ended up.

What the advice we got in the fall has tracked pretty closely, but illustrated a kind of long-term historical comparison.

I want to show you all what this looks like.

and this wall should be the busiest slide that I talk about today, though it's one the board has seen before.

Really to go back over the last 16 years and how have the county's revenues changed to give us a ground in and where are we today versus where have we been?

So this slide shows on the blue bars, what has the county's actual general fund revenue changed from year to year from fiscal year seven to the present?

Fiscal year seven is a starting point because that is when the county began annual real estate reassessments prior to then the history gets a little choppier.

So looking left to right, we can see there's a few trends that go above and below that long-term average in orange.

We see starting to the left, prior to the Great Recession, there was some very strong revenue growth.

We can then see beginning in fiscal year nine to fiscal year 14, that growth was much more muted.

We actually had a decline in revenues one year in fiscal year 10, and for the most part, those were at 2% or below, approximately.

We then entered a period in the post-initial recovery from the Great Recession to the pandemic where revenues were really at or above that long-term average.

We can see the average of that period in yellow.

And that was leading all the way up into Fiscal Year 20, really in particular the fourth quarter of Fiscal Year 20 with the onset of the pandemic, where the county and really the nation experienced another recession.

It was very deep and very brief in terms of the impact of the initial pandemic.

What happened then was another different trend where we can see in fiscal year 21 to 23 we saw a very strong rebound in real estate and commercial activity and business activity across the board.

What we have seen then what was already adopted in fiscal year 24 was still strong revenue growth very close to the average.

and as a matter of fact, if we look at the second quarter financial report that went to the board in February, the current projection in our 24 revenues is just about a percent or so above what has been appropriated.

So if you looked at government financial forecasting standards, that's well within the margin of good work and so we are really tracking.

So this is not to say a slowdown is coming.

That slowdown is where it's already here and that's a slowdown compared to historic growth over the last few years.

So we see in fiscal year 25 that continuing there is a healthy revenue growth, but this is something we're watching very closely.

Because as we heard in the economic outlook report, there are mixed signals in the economy, but to date it has been resilient overall.

So with framing that at a high level, let's look at a couple of the large revenues in depth.

The first of which is real estate tax revenue, which is the majority of county revenues.

The recommended budget is calculated at the current date rate of 85.4 cents per 100 to the assessed value.

If the Board of Supervisors desired a change in that rate, whether it be plus or minus, the impact would be 2.9 million to the budget.

Based on the funding formula in the Board of Supervisors' financial management policies, that would be allocated as follows on the screen based on the 10 percent, 54 percent, and 36 percent allocation.

Last two bullets I want to point out are important because they're going to be part of the tax rate ad.

The board heard before from our county assessor in January that we had a real estate assessment of just over 4% for calendar year 2023.

It's part of the legal advertisement that there is a term in the Virginia Code called the lowered or effective tax rate.

What this tax rate is essentially to say that if the Board were to adopt a tax rate that essentially offset that growth of 4.07% reassessments, what would that tax rate be?

In this case, that is 82.1 cents per $100 of assessed value.

So next, moving into the second largest tax revenue we have, those are personal property taxes.

This applies to vehicles, motorcycles, boats, airplanes, and so on, as well as machinery and tools and other personal property.

This rate is also at $3.42, and every penny on that personal property tax rate is about $100,000.

A little more history on this one because there's been a lot of unusual changes in the car market in recent years.

In calendar year 22, car values increased very significantly in excess of 20%.

At that time, not to fully offset, but to partially offset that very unique change, the Board of Supervisors decreased that rate 86 cents from 428 down to the current rate of 342.

in calendar year 23, as car values fell, that rate remained at 342.

And in calendar year 24, we are projecting another decline in those values, where budget to budget from fiscal year 24 adopted to the 25 recommended, there's a drop of 1.2 million.

So as a reference, just as we talked about kind of the effective or rate, if that change was offset by a change in the rate,

and Personal Property, there would need to be an increase of 13 cents up to 355 for 100 valuation where you would have revenues that would be equivalent to what was adopted last year.

So moving beyond property taxes, I want to take a moment on other local taxes highlighting really the major ones.

Our category of local taxes, which is again the second largest category, these four revenues make up 80% of that category.

So just a few words about how this reflects an economic cooling.

I'll talk about the first two, sales tax and proven beverage together.

If we were to look a year to 24 months ago, we would see something very historic happening, where every month we would look at year-over-year changes and it would be a double-digit percentage change.

Very high, very unusual.

What we have seen that has taken place in this year is those revenues are growing, but it's a much more closer to average that historical is growing.

I'll say this is one as we've looked at other communities, we watched the state, we watched other economic trends.

This is not unique to Albemarle County.

This is something that we are seeing elsewhere.

So the fiscal year 25 budget expects that really the trend we're in right now is going to continue into fiscal year 25.

Not to slow down into recession, not a rebound, really just kind of staying where we are.

The third revenue, not as sizable, but still significant in terms of how it's impacted by consumer activity, is the transit to occupancy tax.

That one is growing very dramatically.

We have 18% growth forecast for next year.

Much of that growth is actually what is currently taking place in the current year.

This is a revenue that was probably the most impacted during the pandemic recession, and it was the slowest one to come back following sales, real estate, food and beverage, and others.

So, based on looking at economic trends, looking at the data with rates, occupancy, availability, everything else locally, staff's projection is that this revenue will also begin to moderate in the coming year and not keep up the historic base, just because that is what we've seen in our other consumer taxes.

And then finally, we have our business professional and occupational licenses, also known as BPOL.

that forecast to grow about 1.5%.

What we've done studying this revenue, thanks with our analysts and our team and revenue administration, is this typically trail sales tax in its growth, which is why we had that a little bit less than sales tax.

While a lot of these taxes above come in on a monthly basis, BPOL is a little bit differently where it's based on the prior year gross receipts for business, rather than one that comes in every month and we're able to track.

So with that, there are two more categories of revenues that I'm going to refer to.

And as I do so, I want to hit this slide, which is a cleaned up version of what's on page 61 in the budget, just to make it a little easier to follow, about revenue diversification.

This is really showing what are the results of what the Board's action was two years ago to

in part when the transient occupancy tax, the food and beverage tax, and the cigarette tax was implemented.

Part of the strategy was to fund board priorities.

Part of that was also to diversify, along with the board's economic development effort, diversify that tax base, so we're not as reliant on that.

We can see, going back 20 years in history, the blue line on the top, property taxes have been increasingly part of the budget, and those first few lines are in five-year increments.

The last ones are our last three annual.

What we have seen for the last three budgets is that strategy is working where we have not decreased reliance, but it has certainly flattened out over the last three years in that approximately 66 to 67 percent range.

And then we can see some of the other changes have happened over time in the other sources, just noting that 20 some years ago, state and federal was a larger part of the budget, and that is what it is today.

So with that segue, moving into the state budget, this is something that totals $30 million and is 7% of our budget.

Just like we have every year, the General Assembly has not finalized a budget and we continue to watch this very closely.

But I want to walk through this to give the board some comfort and what our risk profile may look like.

About half of this revenue comes in from the personal property tax relief program.

There was discussion from the governor about potentially doing something different with personal property taxes, but nothing is included in anyone's budget at this time to do so.

So that $15 million has come in at a fixed amount for the last 15 years.

We're watching, but we feel confident in that.

The next largest category is money that is reimbursed for programs from the Department of Human and Social Services.

That is money that is then spent and reimbursed by the state.

There is 3.2 million in public safety support.

The public may hear this commonly referred to as House Bill 599 funding support in the police department.

We have included what's included in the governor's budget and we'll continue to watch that.

There's a telecommunications tax that continues to decline.

That's not about the state.

That's about consumer trends and telecommunications.

We also have support from the Compensation Board for our elected constitutional officers and the registrar, and then about another million in other sources, which is mostly our vehicle rental tax that flows through the state.

So the main takeaway is here of kind of what makes up this, and staff will continue to watch this as we do with the General Assembly, and should anything change.

Finally, in my revenue presentation, I want to touch on the county's use of general fund and fund balance.

This is, if you were looking at the audit or if you were looking to our adopted budget, you would see at the end of fiscal year 23, there is an unassigned fund balance of $91.3 million.

To give a breakdown of what that funding is, most of that balance is committed in fiscal year 24 based on the Board's financial management policies.

First and most notably, we have a 10% unassigned fund balance policy that really exists to

It's sure the county's cash flow, it's sure our county's operations, and to give us some resiliency in the case if there was a disruption to that.

Some people talk about a rainy day fund.

I think of that 10% more of a hurricane fund if something truly catastrophic happened, so the county does not need to engage in any short-term borrowing to make our ends meet.

And that is a metric that is in the Board's financial management policies, and we review annually as part of our AAA bond rating.

We also have a 2% budget stabilization reserve that is a little more flexible and the Board has some guardrails around that in our policies.

There's a 2% reserve in education that totals $9.1 million.

And then there's also $15.6 million for funding that ESA was included in the adopted budget or was appropriated from last year to this year in continued projects that cross fiscal years.

So after those buckets, there's about 8.8 million program for one-time expenses.

1.3 is going to be a transfer to the health fund, and I'll talk about that more later in today's presentation.

There's also a $2 million one-time transfer to the housing fund to support the board's efforts and the housing and almoral plan.

We have some other one-time costs in the general fund that I won't speak through in detail, but I can certainly go to if there are board questions.

Thank you.

We'll go through our order.

Well, thank you.

I'm appreciative, on slide 15, of you going back to the fiscal year 2007, because that perspective is so important when people think back to the recession in 2009, and there was no federal intervention, which is why that monster dip happened, as compared to the most recent one where the ARPA funds and the CARES funds came in and helped us.

to not have a repeat in 2022 and 2023.

So I always appreciate some stability, and this seems to have gotten it there, but this is a really informative sign, and I appreciate it.

And then I will hold off on everything else.

Thank you.

Yes, I have a few questions.

Do we have any

That is not something that staff has researched really in the last two years, but we could do some research to see what happened to people's rates and everywhere.

Yeah, I just shared from the TJ PDC what was shared from those member jurisdictions.

Green County ended up giving a rebate back in lieu of what we did.

Most localities actually looked to what we did and said they wished they had done it that way.

There were some that I think did, and if I don't know the exacts, but there were some others that I think did lower it.

They may have delayed past our action.

To just continue to kind of make sure I'm teasing out and understanding where we are with personal property.

Do we have any data available on

I'll ask this question back.

This is something we'll bring back to the board.

But I think in the, really, if we were to look over just a longer period of time of how car values have changed in the same way where we see that real estate trend that we would see a reader.

I know the, for a few reasons, personal property is a little more complicated, but we can put something together that will show that trend of just, you know, car values, how that's fluctuated over time.

If that's responsive to your question.

That's what I was thinking of.

So this chart really reflects all activity.

It's both the reassessments that happened, any tax rate decisions the board made, any new taxes the board put in place, and he revenues the state took away.

Now, I will clarify, this is general fund revenue only, so it does not include CARES and ARPA funding, but certainly there's a benefit there that is theirs.

Now I have one question that makes me sound, I think, much dumber than the others, which is I would really like some help understanding the unassigned fund balance and how it differs.

I know I've talked to you about this before, and I just struggle with this and how that differs from our reserve fund, because I know the reserve fund is what we've recently increased allocation to, but not the

not the unassigned fund.

If I'm correct, is that correct?

So I guess I'm, is this like a an operating slush fund for like overruns and unexpected that we have in a given year?

Like how should I interpret what this is doing?

Is it carried over year to year?

It really is a kind of a one-time bucket of funding.

So if it were to be used, the expectation of the financial management policy is that it would be replenished immediately.

and so on.

trying to think of an example right now.

Maybe an opportunity comes up until the small term and we just managed that throughout the year.

Since it's been put in place, which I believe was in 2017, that budget stabilization reserve has not been needed to use.

But the examples we have, if you don't mind one second while I pull this up in the budget document.

So the conditions the Board spoke to was that it's intended to be among the strategies available in a difficult budget year or unanticipated situation.

This reserve may be used from time to time as necessary to meet unanticipated one-time emergencies and unanticipated expenditures required to pay costs necessary to maintain the quality of level of current services or smooth offset revenue fluctuations occurring within a fiscal year.

It's not to be an ongoing source of funding and balances should be replenished as quickly as reasonably possible.

I've left out a few words as to the general essence of what it is.

So I would say, you know, should there be a desired use of that of the Board of Supervisors, it would really be the Board's policy interpretation in that situation and staff can offer recommendation if needed.

How does this fit into the context of where we are?

I also just want to make sure I'm not unfairly articulating this point, but it looks like we have a full 14% of our budget that we have set aside to not engage with.

Sure, I would like to add a little bit of context also to the unassigned fund balance and what it's there and how our credit rating agencies view that.

As you all know, the county is a triple AAA rating county and this is one of the key metrics the rating agencies and the financial markets look at to see what is our stability, our fiscal stability.

The dollar amount that you see there is an accumulation

over years and years and years and years of solid budget planning and fiscal stewardship.

And so that is not materialized in just one year.

It is accumulation of years.

But that is a hallmark metric that our rating agencies in the market looks at when they're looking for security and borrowings and debt issuers.

So for us as a locality to maintain and focus

Thank you.

I do appreciate that.

I am, and again, going to peer localities.

So in this case, peer localities being other AAAA, which I realize is a very finite universe, and I want to appreciate that and the work that's gone into making that true.

We were previously doing this with 13%.

I imagine there are other localities that have done this with 10%.

I am curious if we look at what other localities are able to accomplish with their various reserve funds and also what the credit agencies actually look for.

If we need to be as cautious as we are with how we're leveraging public funding.

I've said this in confidence by things worth saying out loud.

I do think the purpose of government and government money is to react to needs that are before us.

And while I appreciate that,

Stability and fiscal stability and proper planning are important considerations and things.

I don't think it is a guiding goal of government.

A goal of government is to deliver on citizen needs and stability is a side constraint on that.

And I do worry if the size of this is consistent and consonant with our needs and our goals, or if we have let a side constraint become a principal goal.

that's the end of my questions.

I will suggest as a follow-up we can take some of our triple AAA peers as few as they may be and we'll take a look at their financial policies and how ours compared to that if that would be responsive to what you all are looking for.

Thank you very much and thank you Andy for the Mr. Bowman for the presentation.

I did want to just

Point of Clarification.

Our state revenues have decreased $6 million.

I'm looking at page 10, or slide 10.

And that's largely due to state budget and the impacts to public schools.

Do we have any

Yeah, I will ask on Monday when the public schools are here to present their budget, they'll be able to give a more thorough update of where they are, and I'll give them a heads up.

Okay, that would be helpful.

Thank you very much.

Let's hope that that turns out to be something positive for our schools.

I do understand Supervisor Pruitt's questions regarding on the previous slide.

In my understanding, and this is the point of clarification for me, is that the 10 million there, that helps us with our AAAA.

The 2 million is in fact there if something happens and we can use that 2 million for

various emergencies without going into the 10 million if necessary.

That is correct.

And I did want to ask, I thought you said that the food and beverage tax couldn't, we can't increase that anymore.

I'm not saying to increase it, but I thought you said that you can't

That is correct.

At 6% tax, we are at the maximum allowed by the state right now for Albemarle County.

Okay, and that's what I thought I heard you say.

Okay.

.

Unless there's been a change in state law, my understanding is we do have the ability to increase that one.

Yes, and I understand that the City of Charlottesville may be perhaps raising their rates.

I think it was brought up but not voted on yet.

That's all my questions for now.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for the presentation.

I appreciate it.

I really appreciate Slide 19.

I think Ann mentioned this one as well, but I'm looking at the state and federal revenues and it is

It really, and all I'm bringing out here is because I think it's important for our public to understand that particular graph shows, and correct me if I'm wrong now, Andy, if I say something wrong.

But having said that, this looks like to me, in O3 we were receiving our revenues were about 17.6% from the state.

And we know the federal has just always been tiny.

So the largest percent would probably be for the state.

And then when you look at where we are right now, we're looking at 9.2%.

That is a tremendous drop.

It's just one of the challenges that we've been facing, I would say, over the last

Decades, and it's just good for the public to remember that we've not been level funded for those people who aren't paying attention to what's going on in the General Assembly or keeping up with it.

It's a pretty dramatic drop for our while our bills are going up.

That is, and I'll give one example if it helps the Board or the public who may be listening.

I believe it was about fiscal year 2020 or 2021.

The county used to receive every year about $600,000 in a portion of the recordation tax that was collected by the state.

The General Assembly made a change where that funding was redirected for transportation needs in the Hampton Roads area.

That's not a comment on the worthiness of that cause, but that was revenue that was available to fund county operations that was no longer available.

at the time of the pandemic.

And I just think it's easy as we go through the years for the public to not understand that decrease.

The other thing that I would like, again, if you will just go over one more time, because I think this is really important.

I think we understand it, to be honest with you, but I think it's really important for everybody to understand, including the school division, each penny on the tax rate.

Yes, so we have a funding formula that is really set in our financial management policies that are approved by the Board that is really a starting point.

Now the Board may choose to change that if they want to, but it's really been our guidepost over the many, many years in how we allocate our funding.

So it's a calculation that we show in full, but the idea is that every penny or every growth in revenues

We would allocate 10% of that growth and dedicate that toward the capital program and our debt service.

Of that remaining 90%, we would split that 60-40, which, you know, that went into the math exactly.

It's 54-36 for the public school operations and county government operations.

And I just wanted to recognize the fact, and I'm not suggesting this,

That's all.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And would you put the pages on me again?

What pages are we dealing with right now?

Like right now what I'm asking questions on, can you just?

Page 74, is that where?

I did all my questions based on page numbers and the budget numbers.

I don't want to start asking questions on the wrong page numbers.

I am following the long.

That is correct.

Company leaves and they take there.

Yes.

Got it.

Since used car values came up, it was put out at the start of this year that

at March of 2022, the spike that happened was about 63%.

Since then, about half of that has been recovered.

So the decline has only been about half.

So values are still up.

They're just not up as far as the initial hit or the peak.

And this year, the turnover from year to year, you usually would see a decline, and it was stable prices and wholesale values.

But that's probably an inventory situation.

and so on.

and this isn't a question that you don't necessarily have to answer right now, but I'm interested in what is it prior, like what's the gross versus the net?

Yeah, thank you.

On 67 and 68, you've got under revenue for the use of money and property and under miscellaneous sale of surplus property primarily due to or listed as rationale for

you know, what's changing.

Is there two different categories of surplus property that merits them being in two categories or why are they in both categories?

As a ration now.

I'm following along in case we use the wrong word.

I'll share that surplus property because I received another question that will be in the next round.

That is not referring to real property.

That would be examples where if we have vehicles that reach the end of their useful life, we would then sell those.

Revenue from the Use of Money and Property is earned by the county from the investment of funds, the sale of surplus property and the rental of county facilities.

Then on page 68 under miscellaneous, it says adopted budget primarily due to the sale of surplus property.

Thank you.

I'm going to flag this now, but I'll bring it back up.

We're going to go through judicial today as a department.

So the decline in the clerk of court fees, is that connected to the same clerk fees that's in the judicial department or those two different areas?

I just flagged judicial there but then there was a rationale given I'll bring it up in judicial Andy because that'll make more sense there and then remind me on page it is actually page 74 the salary and benefits reserve

So I got ahead of that page number.

The gross sales receipts taxed, so this, I think this was coming under BPOL.

What's the history of the rate that's changed there or what that rate has been over the years?

I don't know that I've asked that before.

But this is a set, you know, I know in being in the car business that this gets passed along to the consumer and then it gets paid to the county.

Thank you.

I'll just make some commentary since the, I mean, the 10% versus the 2% stabilization.

Supervisor Pruitt made some commentary there.

The 2% stabilization reserve isn't so much a requirement as a choice this board made, and I support that choice.

I think the pandemic is probably the closest lesson we got, and we were able to maneuver that.

Thank you to Mr. Richardson's leadership and the staff of getting through that without having to touch the 10%.

But that 10% is exactly what that was there for.

The 2%, and correct me if I'm wrong, but one rationale could have been in that very real situation.

Before we knew ARPA money was coming, we locked away money for cash needs that we did not know we would need.

But then once the ARPA became that we were going to get, we could start spending some money out of that stabilization reserve without taking away from other places.

Then when the ARPA money funds came in, we could replenish the stabilization reserve.

So that would be an example of how that could actually play out in real time.

I'm happy to have the information, but I'm not unless the board wants to have a separate conversation about the purpose and rationale behind that as a policy.

It is a choice and it's one that I will continue to support as a choice.

And then I had asked this in the past.

I don't know if this was sent out.

I apologize if I missed it.

We last raised our tax rate for the 2019 year, correct?

Looking back up right now is what I'm going to state.

It's on one of these pages.

I didn't flag the page number.

But back then, I forget when I asked this question.

It might have been around when we had the economics report.

We would have had a five-year plan, which

The First Step was raising the rate in 2019 and back then I know it theorized raising taxes over the next five years.

Then we hit the pandemic and things have changed, but we have not changed.

the tax rate since then.

What I'm interested in though still knowing is back then, and I couldn't find it and I didn't spend a ton of time, did it say what the revenues?

63, that's where the chart of the tax rate is.

Yes, we're preparing a response right now to look at where are we?

I'll say this back to make sure we're being responsive.

At really the fiscal year 20, we had a five-year plan right before the pandemic that anticipated some amount of revenue in fiscal year 25.

We now actually know where we are.

What is the difference and why?

And I know the values went up.

We didn't need to raise the rate.

But what I'm looking to compare is what we were thinking we needed.

Now we are there and we're looking at a different we think we need.

And I'm interested in that as a

as an analysis to look and see what we're doing.

Thank you.

I also want to express my support for the 10%, the 2% that we have adopted.

And I want to say that I see this not as, you know, we're suddenly grabbing this money and saying we're putting it aside.

We put it aside a long time ago, most of it.

I mean, we're just putting it aside a little bit more each time because it's a percentage.

But the point is that this is a piece of the budget we keep in reserve for stabilization.

It rolls over.

for each year.

So when people look at the end of the year and say, well, what did you do with all that money?

Well, that money has been there and will be there as that hurricane fund, as you said.

And I think that's really prudent.

I don't want to get ahead of myself here, but there was a mention of the possibility that our neighbors might change their TOT.

and I think that was on the order of one percent or something like that, one cent.

I would like to know at some point what that, if we were to go along with that, what revenue impact that would have.

I believe that we get about 4.4 million off of the whole thing, so I'm sorry, I guess from that, but I thought that would be something that would be good for us to look at as we understand what our options are going forward.

McKeel.

Supervisor Gallaway also looked at the table of assessed values, and I think I've made this sort of point every year is that we have our increase in assessments, but we also have the activity and things that cause the total assessed value of property in the

and the county to grow up separate apart from just based on building activity.

But I think that it would help sometimes to get some sort of a benchmark so people could understand that when the board might approve a project that would by being built increase the valuation of a property not by just market forces but because of this construction

and so on and so forth.

and a $10 million building somewhere in the county.

Right.

That is correct.

Just clarify, the increase in real estate taxes is 5.6%.

So back in the envelope, about a percent and a half is the difference in new construction, new land divisions, or just any other changes that may happen in terms of people that may go in and out of the land use program.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I didn't have any other questions.

This one last one, though, that I'll bring up just because I'm not trying to make a point just, but I wanted to understand it on page 69 of the budget book.

The payment in lieu of taxes, which is charges incurred by the University of Virginia in lieu of property taxes, it's a whopping $133,000, but it's dropped by 33%.

and I was curious as to how that amount gets determined and estimated.

Thank you.

I have no other questions.

Yes, I just have one question point of clarification actually on page slide 17, pardon me, that if the

The personal property tax was to increase, then it's at 13 cents.

Okay, sure.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Supervisor McKeel.

Just one thing to piggyback onto what Jim said.

I do know that the city has been having some discussion is very interested in the payments in lieu of taxes as far as the University of Virginia.

Just making that comment, it might be something that

We would like to investigate further.

I don't know if that's an item for our joint meeting or what, but just throwing that out there.

The other thing I do want to say is that I agree with our, I do agree with the rationale.

We talked about our hurricane fund.

I would add that we're putting aside, we might call that the earthquake fund because I can remember, I've been around long enough that when we had a small earthquake here, we had a school that had serious damage and had to have a

Complete Front Wall Replace.

And I'm saying that was in the school division, but these things happen.

And while it could be a hurricane, it could be an earthquake.

There are lots of natural disasters, including pandemics that can happen.

Yes, piling on the earthquake fund.

Louisa County, I mean, that earthquake a number of years ago on the fault demolished, yes, at elementary school, 50 million bucks, and they had to really struggle.

So that's, oh, whenever anybody starts to talk about the unassigned fund balance, I say, yes, and when this kind of terrible thing happens, we will not have to go to the short-term market to stay alive here.

Ray Jones, who was our county treasurer for decades,

when I first joined the board, he was in his 90s and he summoned me to his kitchen and he said, okay, here's some things you need to know and never forget them, never ever borrow money to make payroll.

I remember when that Greer wall was damaged by that

I'll say one thing, we'll get the exact amount, but just to clarify, one of Mr. Andrews' questions, the total transient occupancy tax that comes in the general fund of $4.4 million, that is 5% of the 8% tax, so every 1% on that TOT is about $800,000 to $900,000, but we'll get the exact amount as part of the follow-ups.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Alright, so this is just a transition slide.

We're going to talk about general fund expenditures in summary.

We'll, after this chapter, we'll go through some of the the department and the connections to treat your plan in detail.

This is going to be just a high-level overview of some items.

We can see our general fund expenditures are balanced at 432 million with our revenues.

So I'll say what the board understands well is that any adjustment to expenditures is going to require a corresponding change into the budget, either to another expenditure that we need to be removed or added depending on the change made or on the revenue side.

We can see that the general fund expenditures, the largest expense, is the transfer to the schools.

The second largest expense is public safety, which is common in many communities, as well as followed by our transfer to the capital and debt program.

This slide, really just on one page, really summarizes what the budget does in terms of where all the counties revenues go to.

I want to focus my comments next on the upper right in terms of workforce stabilization and a lot of that $9.3 million.

What are some of the cost drivers and what that looks like?

Because this is one category that impacts every department and looks at everything.

And this is also an item that is part of the board's strategic plan and where the board has spent considerable time in recent years.

So again, this is part of our goal six and the strategic plan.

What's included in the budget?

I'll start with salaries and related benefits.

There's a total full year cost of $4.3 million for the full year implementation of the classification and compensation study that the Board approved mid-year this year, as well as the 2% cost of living increase that was approved mid-year this year as well.

And I'll speak a little more of that in detail in a second.

The other item we've included is part of the public safety pay plan.

As public safety officers and staff move through that pay plan, with every year experience, they would go up a level.

that is funded in this budget.

That's an impact of about $600,000.

We have included mid-year a potential for a market review and consideration of what happens with compensation.

That is included in the budget to Supervisor Gallaway's point a few slides ago.

We've also included $400,000.

This is a mandated requirement as the county is a member of the Virginia retirement system.

Every two years, they make adjustments to their rates.

A few rates change with the net result of that this year is a $400,000 increase in our expenditures.

And that is above and beyond.

I should clarify that $4.3 million.

That includes the benefits.

That's not just salaries, because as those rises, certainly FICA retirement and those connected are tied to that.

Looking at the health fund, back on December 6, the board heard an update about where we are with the school board.

We are a self-insured fund and we looked at where we stood because we had seen some experience of higher than typical claims in recent years.

We've had some experience, what we call stop loss coverage.

And so to really meet our health fund obligations and keep that planned sound, we would have a 1.5 million increase in the general fund for the employer contribution.

This is a health fund as many partners such as the public schools and our partner agencies.

All of those partners will also be paying for their shares of their employer contributions as well.

That is an one-goin cost.

We also talked about the Board on December 6th that is included in the budget.

We would actually make these transfers in fiscal year 24, our two one-time infusions.

The first one is an infusion to ensure that we're meeting our minimum reserve fund balance to just have a, as the Board may understand, health care is a very volatile cost.

We are self-insured and so this helps us keep that minimum standing for where we are.

Secondarily, one thing we've been looking at as part of our efforts in goal six is an employee startup clinic.

I'm sorry, the startup cost for an employee clinic.

This is about looking at for a cost that is, you know, medical inflation is common to grow in the eight to ten percent range, much higher than the normal rate of inflation.

We look at our experience.

We look at access.

We look at all the areas there.

This is an opportunity to take a part of our budget that is very volatile.

Look how we can do something differently, support our workforce, and help manage those costs.

And so that is the intent of that one-time infusion that, again, the partners will be having their shares of as well.

So I want to take a closer look at where we've been on salaries.

I have a few slides to not only where we've been, but look at some preliminary results of what the board has.

We've seen from the board's support to implement these programs.

So this is a slide that takes a look at the classified employee scale.

I'll have one separate for the public safety plan next.

And this shows for the past several years as we emerged from the pandemic, the county has been providing regular salary adjustments through the budget process.

The Board approved a few years ago and we have implemented and completed a little over a year ago a classification and compensation study.

That was then implemented in two phases in calendar year 23, sorry, May 2023 and then completed in January 2024.

The intent of that, noted on the slide, is to move all employees to market, I'm sorry, the midpoint of market, and also to mitigate compression where that may happen.

Compression is where you may have two employees with very different experience, and if you're not adjusting there, you may find they are very close together in the scale, which can create some recruitment and retention challenges.

So we're able to address that in both phases, and we can see some of the funding that has gone into that and some of the impact.

and that really where we got to in January 2024, we can say that we had met that goal.

We really closed the implementation of the Conversation of Classification Study.

I think the one thing I'll point out too is that 2% fiscal year 24, that was another one that we were able to front load in the budget to make sure we were keeping pace with the county's competitive market instead of waiting into the fiscal year 25 budget.

And that is also part of the rationale of taking a look at mid-year as we begin to understand where the market has moved.

Very similar slide for the public safety program.

Because this is a different pay scale, some of the percentages are different, some of the timing is different.

And also as we implemented class and compensation, this pay scale was prioritized first and it was implemented fully and it had some phases, but fully implemented by January 2023.

So that's sort of the history of where we've been in the funding slide.

Let's take a moment and look at the actual results of where we are.

So this is really talking about both employee recruitment and employee retention.

The employee retention really speaks to the turnover rate data.

Where we look at fiscal year 23, the turnover rate was 13.4%.

based on our partnership with HR, our staff in performance and strategic planning.

Tracking where we are, we'd have a turnover rate from the seven months of the fiscal year we know we project.

We would have a decrease in that of 11.3%.

Again, that's speaking to where we are and that's very positive news because we see is the impact of the full year of the public safety pay scale and just the now only two to three months of being in the new pay plan for where we are.

That's really about the retention side.

When we look at the recruitment measure, that's really looking at where our total vacancies were.

We had 80 vacancies at the peak in fiscal year 23.

That number is 35 today.

And we could, you know, just talking with other staff in the organization, there's a lot of organizational wins where we've had positions that we were unable to fill, have since been filled.

And anecdotally, people have shared with me, you know, just an increased satisfaction with a job applicant pool.

So those are just some anecdotal stories around just kind of some of the data on the slide that looks both on the recruitment and the retention side.

So this is one, again, we've just implemented the class and conference pool this year.

We'll track this and just see where we are, as well as the other, just any other data that may track how are we performing based on the investments that the board has made to date.

So with that, I have one more slide to cover general fund expenditures, and this really speaks to all of the changes that have taken place from the fiscal year 24 revised to the fiscal year 25 recommended budget.

I will discuss the specifics about these positions and what they do, but this is just very high-level observations.

You know, we look in total, there's only 6.6 FTEs that are being added into the 25 recommended budget.

3 of those are cost-neutral.

To explain what cost-neutral means, these are opportunities mainly in our public safety departments but also in our Office of Equity and Inclusion.

where we've taken a look at the contract services, temporary wages, and said, you know, we can provide that service at essentially the same cost and better if we turn that into a full-time employee.

This has been a strategy that the county has engaged in recent years and continues in this budget.

The other changes we have are the CIP Operating Impact and then just a compliance-related position to the State Mandated Program for the Children's Services Act.

So this is 6.6 FTEs, which is a pretty significant departure from where we were.

I have a couple of references here.

We're on fiscal year 20 to 24.

They're an average of 31 FTEs that are added annually.

that is for a whole host of reasons in terms of increasing service levels, responding to demands.

But this is one where a lot of the funding has gone into getting caught up to market, meeting other obligations.

We have just a very different budget in our more constrained revenue growth this year compared to where we've been in recent years.

The final point on the slide was among the balancing strategies we had to take a look at, among the hard choices was looking at some unfunded FTEs and remaining unfunded in fiscal year 25.

I'll say every one of those and we can provide this as part of the list in terms of what's not in the budget, what those are, they all have their own story.

That was one of the balancing strategy where it was not, it was really taking a look at not only just positions may have just become vacant,

and so on.

But somewhere, perhaps we had an opportunity to do something differently or perhaps there had been a while where we were looking to fill that.

But more to come on that and the information that we share with the board.

Thank you.

We'll go through order.

I'm jumping ahead to page 85.

Is that in this chunk or not?

Because I'm a little confused.

I think I'm still in expenditures.

Can you talk a little bit about the change, the PDC person?

This is the change from the, sorry, Soil and Water Conservation District into CDD.

That is strictly a bookkeeping thing.

That is correct.

We had a really unique situation where there was a actual county employee who worked at that agency.

and so we worked through with the soil and water conservation district to say that, you know, we're not going to impact the services, we're not going to impact the employee, but we're going to transition to be a state employee and the county will continue to fund its share for those same services.

Great, because they have five million dollars to get out the door this year and we want to make sure they have the staff to be able to get that money into people's hands here in the county.

That's the only question I have in this chapter, I think.

Thank you very much.

Yes, thank you.

If you go to slide 25, the only question I have, and I brought this up before, is regarding the employee clinic's

The Startup Costs, but are we also involving either UVA or Martha Jefferson to partner with us on this employee clinic?

I would like to answer that question.

We are currently in the middle of the RFP process to procure the services for the employee clinic.

So I can't speak to any specifics about who may or may not have applied as a response to that RFP, but we are in the middle of that process.

Okay, so I guess if we have the clinic here, it's a lot less expensive than for whatever entity to come in and provide those services because we have something here.

So the employee health clinic is focused on two things.

One is there's a cost-saving measures that have an employee clinic that we can help save costs to the health care fund.

So for instance, it gives access to folks who may go to the emergency room out of convenience.

What we're trying to do is also provide access to a clinic setting that would be

less costly than an emergency room visit, particularly to the employee, but also to the healthcare fund.

The clinic also is a way to provide access to health care for employees.

and next question I just have a commendation on slide 28 is that we've gone from 80 vacancies to down to 35 vacancies and I think that's, I just want to say thank you to frankly the staff, the board, everybody because I think that's phenomenal.

and at this time when a lot of places cannot get enough employees, then we're reducing the amount we needed because I think of our policies really showed that.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Just to tag on what Bea said, I am really excited about the employee clinic and not only is this a way to reduce our

Health Care costs possibly, and I think it really will, but it's also something that would make us an employer of choice, which is really a great thing for our employees, both on the school and government side.

And we'll be hearing more about that, I hope, in the near future.

Sure, so right now the RFP has closed, and we've gone through the process of reviewing those that have applied.

and we've also have completed the oral interviews of those top candidates.

So now we're moving towards our negotiation phase and that could take a month or two, depending on how we progress in the negotiation phase.

Yeah, that's great.

We're moving that.

That's perfect.

I appreciate the timeline.

Thank you.

I would just like to make sure that when we say the public safety pay plan, just want to make sure that everybody that's watching this or looking at this document

knows exactly who is included in the public safety plan.

So that's police, fire and rescue, ECC, sheriffs.

That is correct and it is not all of those employees.

If there are either non-sworn or civilian or some of their other staff they would be

So that's great.

I just wanted to make sure everybody understood that.

Help me, and the only real question I guess I had was, I just want to understand better on slide 29, I think,

the CIP Operating Impact General District Court Operational Staffing three months and that's two FTEs.

Sure.

So this will be opening an additional facility and so with the increase in square footage, these are staff who are in the office of facilities and environmental services.

So it's been a part of the plan and the courts to just keep all of the extra square footage moving, the systems are working, all the other things that come with the expanded square footage, those are part of that.

OK, so this is really just until it's operational.

It's really when it becomes operational.

Oh, it's three months after.

I got you.

That makes sense now.

Now I understand.

I was twisting myself too much around that.

Thank you, Supervisor Gallaway.

Thank you.

I think I've asked and you've answered this before.

What's the actual amount if it was a 1% COLA increase?

It's approximately $916,000.

Thank you.

And I actually have no additional questions at this time, which is just a warning because I put them all into the different categories as we proceed into the next level of detail.

Are there more questions at this point?

And so I propose that we take a schedule for this 15-minute recess and come back and work on pages 87 and forward.

Welcome back.

We will continue with our work session on the Budget, Operating and Capital Budget.

Thanks, Andy.

Good afternoon, Board.

As Chair Andrews said, I'm Ryan Davidson, the Deputy Chief of Budget.

Mr. Bowman discussed with the Board some of the expenditure items that had more of an organization-wide focus.

And I'm going to start walking you all through the general fund expenditures at a more departmental and functional area level of focus.

We're going to start with administration, which begins on page 87 of the FY25 recommended document.

and as you can see, this area represents approximately 28.5 million in the FY25 recommended budget.

I want to take just one minute to explain this slide.

As we walk through each section of the budget, we'll start off with these two charts that are shown here.

The chart on the left illustrates what percentage of the total general fund budget we are talking about for each area.

So as you can see here, administration, for this case, represents approximately 7% of the overall general fund budget.

The chart on the right-hand side shows how much of that percentage is dedicated to each of the individual areas within this larger functional area.

So as you can see, finance and budget makes up approximately 34% of the administration budget.

Information technology, 30%, human resources, 7%, and so on.

Back when we discussed the five-year plan with the Board in November, we highlighted those areas within the plan that were included that it had new or additional funding and also those areas where it was more about the continuation of the efforts we had started in previous fiscal years and more about continuing those work plans and not necessarily the new funding.

As we move through the functional areas of the budget and the departmental budgets, we'll take some time

and that same approach and highlight those areas where additional funding is being included, but also point out where we're continuing with those ongoing efforts and where it's more about the work plans and the continuing of the efforts that we had put in place previously.

Looking more closely at administration, we'll start walking through the boxes on this slide.

Voter registrar, the FY25 recommended budget fully funds the voter registration and elections request.

Development and Training.

I wanted to point this out.

This is one of those areas where this is not noting new funding, but doing things slightly differently.

There was a reallocation of a portion of the departmental training budgets to an organizational training pool within our performance and strategic planning budget in the administration area.

This reallocation was for those more organizational wide training efforts such as management training.

There's still training dollars in the specific departmental budget to address their specific required training needs and certifications that are required for each individual department and each individual position as that we move through.

But this reallocation represents a coordinated organization wide effort to approach certain types of training slightly differently and more in cohesion.

Corps Systems Modernization, which includes the 432 in additional funding for the new Enterprise Permitting and Licensing System.

And these funds were part of the planned CIP operating expenses.

You'll hear more about CSM on the following slide by Mr. Sumner.

And so we'll go on to the board meeting minutes, which is an additional $16,000 for additional support to help for the preparation of the board meeting minutes.

Thank you.

We're going to take just a minute to talk about the core systems modernization.

The core systems modernization strategy was established to balance the needs of many system modernization efforts and to support our business operating principles such as maximizing integration and alignment, consideration of lifecycle resource needs for new business systems, to provide training, tools, communication, and change management support.

We also have launched a new program to collect and evaluate performance measures.

We affectionately call this SPIR.

This is our strategic plan execution analysis and reporting.

In order to provide this level of process improvement and adoption of new efficiencies, it requires expertise and capacity from performance and strategic planning, information technology, and the sponsoring departments.

These projects are far more than launching a new technology.

They require staff to retool and rethink current processes

and look for efficiencies while remaining compliant to our local, state and federal policies.

All the related departments must dedicate subject matter experts to fulfill the roles on the project.

Our organization has improved our end understanding of services we provide through this work and often can remove duplication and provide clarity to our customers and our staff.

The community development system will launch in fiscal year 25.

after months of process mapping and re-engineering to ensure we're leveraging the new system's capabilities.

This builds on the success of the digital application system that was launched last year and will allow application tracking in real time and on demand for applicants.

We expect this to reduce calls and emails to the front desk and to create smoother handoffs as plans are reviewed by external partners.

We'll go into much more detail on the community development system at the next work session when we talk about the community development functional area.

The financial management system replacement, which will be developed and configured throughout fiscal year 25, will put near real-time information as steps, fingertips on budgets, procurement, and various accounting transactions.

It will substantially streamline the annual audit process, which currently requires staff time over an extended period.

The financial system and the community development system and projects are about providing better customer service with modern interfaces, more transparency in the status of items, and streamlining processes.

But it's also about having data that we can use to drive process improvements, decision making, and resource management.

So that was just a brief update of where we're focusing our efforts this year in fiscal year 25 on our core systems modernization.

As mentioned, we have focusing on the community development system, and then also we are kicking off the project for the financial management system.

So this wraps up the slides that we have for the administration section of the budget document.

Thank you.

We'll go through our order.

Supervisor Mallek.

No questions.

Thank you.

Are we reviewing questions on the entire administrative section of the budget currently?

Yes.

I do take note that the office of voter registration elections does fall within administration.

And I know there has been some interest amongst members of the board over a possible transition toward adopting ranked choice voting in the future.

I also know that the next applicable time that could be would be next election, as in next year's election cycle, not current year.

I am not noticing any outlays that would be necessary for doing voter education.

So I would say the biggest budgetary impact on that would be the capital components, so the technology that would be required to do rink choice voting.

That is part of our capital improvement project, our capital improvement plan, excuse me.

And so the funding to replace our voting machines is currently in the first year of the CIP, excuse me.

Thank you.

I was tracking on the capital improvement piece.

That was something that we discussed at a recent meeting of

Concerned Advocates.

I'm just thinking there's a much small, admittedly a much smaller expense.

I think it's something like typically a dollar to voter piece that normally goes into things like mailer community engagement, that kind of thing.

Maybe that could be folded into the CATE budget, but it is something that raises a red flag to me that if we're saying that a major component of this has to be

Voter Education.

I'm not sure we budgeted to do that actually in time for the election cycle, although perhaps that could be done with existing resources and just how we allocate staff hours.

I just wanted to raise that here.

I also do recognize that this comes up occasionally, and this is, I know for many people, a third rail, but I'm just going to say it because I've already touched one third rail, so let's get a fourth rail, right?

I'm the youngest member of the board.

I also have probably significantly less personal wealth than most members of the board, and I don't mean to start naming names, but it's true, right?

I'm young.

I've worked for less time.

I've not had any inheritance that has accumulated to me because everyone in my immediate family is still alive.

We pay our board remarkably little, in my opinion.

I have significantly more personal wealth than another 32-year-old on average would.

I am uniquely able, amongst people in my age range, to take on this job because of that.

I think we should recognize that that is not a typical situation, and there are significantly, there are significant portions of our community that do not have the ability to step into this position.

And I apologize for this taking not the shape of a question, but I do just want to note, you know,

One of the single largest neighborhoods in my jurisdiction that is not represented on the board is going to be Southwood, right?

We've talked about Southwood a lot recently because they came to speak to us.

We cannot have members of the board from Southwood functionally because the salary of the board alone would barely cover their heating and cooling costs per year as we have learned recently.

and so on.

I am able to serve on this board because of my personal financial situation.

I plan for it.

I have the savings that are necessary for it.

But that is not a common thing.

And I would hope that we would recognize that moving forward, perhaps with changes in how we do board compensation.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

Yes.

Thank you very much.

Supervisor Pruitt's discussion of ranked choice voting.

We have nothing in the budget for that yet.

We need to educate our community.

I'm wondering whether or not the board would want to start that process vis-a-vis our CACs.

is basically the eyes and ears of our community.

They advise us, but maybe that is a way of introducing it.

If people are interested, frankly, that would be through the CACs, and that wouldn't cost anything.

The other thing is one of my little pet peeves.

is, since we're doing core systems modernization, would that include an update?

I think I've mentioned this many times before regarding our web page on a phone to be able to access things on our phone vis-a-vis, or website vis-a-vis the phone.

I think we can do it better on a computer.

But on the phone, this does not

We don't navigate very well on the phone to find things.

I've tried it recently, it doesn't work, and that's something I would like to see because I think most people do use their phone for many things.

So I'm just putting that out there and you can throw it right back at me.

Supervisor McKeel.

Yes, thank you, thank you all for this as well.

I'm really pleased to see the highlight for administration and the reason I say that is that I have heard occasionally, while I've been a supervisor, but certainly a lot more when I was on the school board, that

administration was bloated and heavy.

And so it's good to show people exactly what is included in that number of 7% for administration, as well as I would just make the comment that most businesses would die for an administration overhead of 7%.

I'm just saying that is very, very lame.

And I'll be asking the school board, making sure that the school board clarifies their administration.

as well, because that is usually where we get a lot of the pushback is that the school systems administration is bloated and which it is not.

Having said that, I appreciate this slide very much.

I also appreciate the discussion about ranked choice voting.

Help me with, because I didn't realize, help me a little bit with the CIP piece that you were telling me.

might just say that for me again.

So part of our regular replacement cycle for the election machines and the technology is due for replacement in this upcoming fiscal year.

And so the technology that is out there and available now that we would be replacing the voting machines with would provide a platform for that.

And so this is not that it's an additional request, but this is part of our normal replacement cycle for our voting machines.

Yeah.

Okay.

So that's a start.

All right.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

And I don't think I have any other.

Oh, board compensation.

Yes.

You are exactly right.

I will say, though, this board has had that discussion numerous times.

And how we get at it is

Challenging, but I'd agree if we expect people other than wealthy or retired folks to sit at the diets, we're going to have to increase our compensation.

And I would be amenable to somehow or another thinking about how we

just some suggestions on how we get at that.

I don't know what that exactly means, a study or whatever, but I don't want to take us down into a hole right here this afternoon, but I do agree with you.

We need diversity on this board, and I say that as a retired white lady, but you are exactly right.

Thank you.

Supervisor Gallaway.

I'm just thrilled to know I'm going to be walking out of here wealthy and retired today.

If this was noted and I missed it earlier, I apologize, but I want to commend the efficiency behind getting Andy a new title, not just on your

I'm sure that comes with other things, but you just have a shorter title to say, Andy, and I just caught that.

Assistant Chief Financial Officer, that's a much more efficient thing to say.

So congrats on that.

Page 93, I just want to make sure I'm trying, and I think I caught it, because my initial question, this was under fiscal year 24 projected, was the reappropriation of the 3.7 million

to Performance and Strategic Planning.

And I couldn't track it in the table, but is that the 1.9 under operating and then the 1.7 under the BPO reserve?

Oh, I see a head nod now there.

That's it.

All right.

I caught that as you guys were presenting.

And then the money that's in the recommended is the, did I, somewhere it said reappropriate, it's over here.

or any monies left over would be reappropriated.

Is that spelled out?

I'm just trying to track it on the document.

It looks like the 1.7 is done.

None of that's being reappropriated.

There's a big drop from the

That is correct.

And to follow along, under the fiscal year 24 projected, the last statement in there and last bullet point is the balances at the end of fiscal year 24 are recommended.

A lot of what those expenses are is to Mr. Sumner's comments when it comes to implementing these systems, there's a lot of expenses that are not appropriate for the capital budget.

So a lot of the process improvement, the other things we were doing there are appropriate to be paid for the operating budget and the performance and strategic planning offices.

Got it.

Let me tie this together.

Page.

So on page 94 and again on page 100 we've got the

I'm seeing an operating increase under K software subscriptions.

Okay, I get that.

And then under the Performance Strategic Planning Budget, an operating increase... Nope, I think I'm on the wrong page.

Oh, I cited the wrong page numbers, I'm sorry.

Page 100.

We've got the net decrease of 121 grand, another operating cost due to primarily to a reduction in contract services, internal audit, grant writing support, and lock box services.

Yes, sir.

So that's a combination of a couple things.

So some of it is efficiencies that are within the Department of Finance and Budget that we particularly have noticed within the lock box services, as an example.

And the other items that are related to some million contract services the past couple of years, we've had some transition in our personnel that helped support the financial staff.

And so now we have

Is that the grant writing support?

Is that just the contract?

Is the grant writing support, that's because we've got grant monies in?

No, that's correct.

Let me clarify, please.

The grant writing services, there is funding in the recommended budget.

There was just a lower amount of funding in the recommended for 25 versus what was in there for 24.

And then on 102, under Department of Information and Technology, it has removes funding for two vacant positions.

but then those functions are filled through specialized contract services and recommended the same to continue into fiscal year 25.

The next bullet point then states that there's an increase due to software maintenance constancy with the new enterprise permitting licensing system, cybersecurity, et cetera.

But these are not necessarily connected, right?

We're not funding two positions because we're finding those through another means, which I'm assuming is more affordable.

but then that we're not seeing that as an increase under that 653,000 amount.

To clarify, that $600,000 in operating increases is a separate from those two vacant positions.

That $650,000 is a combination of what we have for the community development system coming online as well as the other costs that we have in just our regular IT operations.

The approach on those two vacant positions, because IT is such a critical part of all of our core systems modernization projects, as in fiscal year 25, the funding and performance and strategic planning that would be reappropriated, a portion of that 1.7 million or balance would be funding those two positions in fiscal year 25.

Okay.

Thank you for that.

updating community development system, re-engineering, replacement of financial management systems.

Then we look for ways to explain to the public how this has saved time, increased efficiencies, and saved us money.

It would be great to see that.

Thank you.

Okay, so moving on to judicial, before we get into this, as you can see, judicial is about 2% of the total general fund budget.

The bulk of the funding is for our constitutional officers between the sheriff, commonwealth's attorney, and clerk of the circuit court.

The other court functions making up about 6% of the judicial area.

Before we move forward, I did want to recognize a couple of our constitutional officers that are

in the audience today, Sheriff Chan Bryant and our Commonwealth Attorney, Jim Hingeley, who have come to support and answer questions should they be needed.

I want to make sure I've pointed them out since they're here today.

So moving into the specifics, this area of the FY25 recommended budget fully funds the operational requests of the Commonwealth Attorney and the clerk of the Circuit Court.

as for the public defender, we have a $61,000 increase related to pay adjustments.

This recommendation is contingent upon an updated memorandum of understanding with the public defender's office, which is required due to the previous public defender's retirement at the end of calendar year 2023.

The intent of this update is to continue the Board of Supervisors' previous direction on creating pay equity for the employees in that office and to streamline the administration of that agreement.

Staff has had their initial conversations with the public defender and this work will soon be underway.

for the office of the county sheriff.

The majority of the request was funded, but there were a couple of items that were not included or recommended for funding in the FY25 budget, which included six deputy positions for courthouse security, once the newly renovated courts complex is fully opened and operational.

This item was adjusted due to the timing of when these buildings would come online and when they would be fully occupied by both the city and the county as we open up that facility fully.

Also not included were 4.5 FTEs to help with the temporary detention orders.

Additional information on both of these requests from the sheriff will be provided to the board with dollar amounts and more specifics on the request.

We can bring these back to you at a future work session for further discussion of the Board's desires.

Board, we'll go through our order.

Thank you.

So in other categories, we've talked about planning ahead for bringing the courts online the three months, whatever.

So how are we addressing the extra staff that's going to be required for an extra court set, which we don't have in operation right now?

When the courts open?

We looked at the timing of when these courts are going to be coming online and it would not be

Currently, we would be moving from one building to another building and not opening a second building right now, so there would still be just one building in operation while we move to renovate the second building after the first one is kind of moving from one place to another.

And so once that second building comes online, we're looking at future, this is as we always look at our capital improvement program, our future operating impacts.

But that's beyond fiscal year 25, which is a postponement rather than a denial in a way.

Yes, we understand it's got to come.

We can't go from one to three without having more people to keep everybody safe there.

And I will look forward to learning more about the TDOs because that is a concern across the Commonwealth of how do people

Thank you, Supervisor Pruitt.

I know there's at least one bill making its way through the General Assembly that would impact fines and fees that courts are able to collect against defendants.

I'm thinking specifically on one that I was involved in before I served on this board that is poised to abolish fines and fees facing juveniles in JDR.

I have kind of two tailed questions on this.

would that gap even accumulate to us, or is that going to fall on the executive secretary at the state level to fill that funding gap created by the lack of collections on fines and fees?

I recognize that this may be better suited for our clerk of court, but I recognize he's the one constitutional officer we're missing.

Kind of with that RFI then I would also be curious if it does accumulate to us which I suspect it does rather than the Office of the Executive Secretary although I'm not sure.

if it does accumulate to us, I am curious if that is actually poised to take effect and be relevant within this budget here, in which case it would be potentially unaccounted for as a unexpected just revenue drop that we get through fees extorted from children.

We do have operating impacts.

We'll be discussing that when we get to the public safety section, as when we talk about our jails and our regional partners.

I would have thought that would have fallen under sheriff.

Okay, sorry.

Okay, interesting.

That's all I have.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

Thank you.

I think I am okay right now, although I am looking forward to the additional discussions that my fellow supervisors mentioned.

Yeah, I think those are important discussions.

So with that, I can just let it go.

I don't have any specific questions right now.

So Supervisor Pruitt's comments about clerk at court's fees makes me realize maybe I don't.

quite understand what these are.

So on page 68, in the overview, Charges for Services, it mentions decrease in judicial for the clerk of court's fees to align with current trends.

Then on the department, level 109, it says excess fees.

Noting that Mr. Zugg is not in attendance, that maybe that's just a follow-up.

So I understand, I'm assuming, I don't know if excess fees and fees are the same thing.

We can follow up with specifics on exactly what are included in those fees, but it is the general licensing and fees for everything that comes through the clerk reports and it really was just looking at the trends on what we were seeing come through.

Some of that is related to

Thank you for that because I thought fees were along those lines, things that they had stuff walking through the door and there were fees they needed to pay to get whatever they walked through the door to receive.

Then my question I had was that well operating expenses are up, I'm assuming that the

Well, I'm not assuming.

It looks like that's mainly because of the salary increase to keep pace with the salaries.

But if the operating goes up and the fees aren't keeping pace with whatever we've tried historically for those to offset, then I guess I'd be looking at fee structure if it were under my control.

But maybe I just need to see it and learn a little bit more about it before I ask any more.

and I appreciate Mr. Hindley being here.

I don't think it's such a small amount that I don't know, well I don't know where it, oh yeah, the overall is a small amount.

There's a civil forfeiture piece in there where there's a decrease and the 9337 or 1% increase in related revenues including a decrease in transfers from civil forfeiture.

and an increase in funding from the State Compensation Board.

I was just curious if the decrease in transfers from civil forfeiture was just there down, or we have a difference in approach to property that's been, maybe I don't know what this is either.

He's coming.

I can admit that I was wealthy and retired initially as approaching.

And I'm sorry for so much there, but obviously

Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here and answer questions.

I'm happy to answer that question.

The civil forfeitures is a very small item in comparison to the entire Commonwealth's attorney's budget.

But there has been a significant change in the civil forfeiture law.

Previously, civil forfeitures were allowed in cases

where charges were made that fit the requirements for civil forfeitures without having to have a conviction.

The law was changed, which I think was an appropriate change in the law to require that civil forfeitures only can be obtained if a person is convicted.

So that accounts, I think, I haven't tracked everything specifically, but I think in a general sense you can see how that would affect

the decline in the revenues from civil forfeitures, a decline which I expect to be, you know, ongoing.

Now, while I have the floor, if I could just take one more minute to outline a point relating to revenues, and it's the line above the forfeiture line, and that's the state,

and you will see in fiscal 23, 731, fiscal 24, 753, fiscal 25, 799.

So unlike what Supervisor McKeel mentioned earlier in this presentation today, the overall trend for state support of local functions has been under decline.

in respect to the Commonwealth Attorney's Office, we have seen some increases in state support, which I think is notable, and I think it's obviously very helpful to the county to receive more rather than less support from the state for the Commonwealth Attorney's function.

And then just in conclusion,

I have been working this year with other prosecutors across the state to try to increase even further the amount of state support that our localities will be getting from the state compensation board, which is the agency that administers the state funds that go to support constitutional officers, and in particular in the Commonwealth's attorneys.

offices.

We have concluded a staffing and workload standards study that was funded by the legislature.

I'm mildly optimistic that they might pay attention to it.

And so this is an ongoing effort to increase the amount of support coming to the state for your local Commonwealth Attorneys Office.

Was that last couple years?

It's been, I think, two years.

But changes like that take a little while to get into the system because cases that were pending prior to that change are still going forward.

It's a transition period.

But I think we're seeing now the effects of that that will be ongoing, which is basically a reduced collection of civil forfeitures.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate that.

And I don't have any additional questions or comments on this section.

If there aren't any additional questions, then we can, I think, move on to public works next.

Supervisor Gallaway's safety, understand we're jumping ahead.

The page is 129, 136.

And we'll come back to public safety.

Thank you.

Got it.

Thank you.

So yes, we're going to move on to the public works area and functions of that 5.25 recommended budget.

As you can see, this represents about 11.9 million or roughly 3% of the general fund budget.

This area mainly consists of the Department of Facilities and Environmental Services, as well as some of our other regional partners.

Court Operations.

This was discussed earlier.

The facilities environmental services budget does include roughly $96,000 in operational costs related to the new general district court facility, the first of the two buildings being renovated, which is anticipated to open for operations in the last quarter of FY25, so the last two to three months of FY25.

The funding includes some utility and maintenance costs as well as partial yield funding for the two FTEs that Mr. Bowman discussed earlier.

Climate action.

This is another one of those areas where there's no newer additional operational funding, but it's rather more about executing the work plan and using the existing resources to accomplish and advance those goals.

But we wanted to continue to say that we're using those current resources to continue to push forward with those goals.

Within that, this continues the funding for the operations of the Street Sweeper and the Roadway Management Program, which so far, and I will admit my numbers are dated, had resulted in over 170 tons of debris being picked up in the roadways.

And so this continues that operations for both of that and the Roadway Management Program.

And along those same lines of the other two areas I just spoke of, we have the roadway litter pickup.

In FY25, we're going to direct the plastic bag tax funds, which are estimated to be at over $100,000 for this FY25, to contract services for a keep Albemarle beautiful roadway litter cleanup campaign.

We believe this could impact more than 60 roadway miles on a regular pickup cycle.

And while this is not general fund dollars, we wanted to point out this new initiative anticipated to begin within the fiscal year as a place of where we looked at the resources available to us and looked at how we can do things differently and how we can use those resources to advance our goals.

So I want to take a few minutes to focus on an item related to one of our regional public works partners, the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority.

Before I turn this over to their executive director, Bill Moyer, I wanted to make sure that I provided some clarity on why we're bringing this item before you today and exactly what we're asking of the board today as we go through this item.

Prior to Rivanna Solid Waste Authority raising any fees,

The agreement we have with them states that RSWA has to get approval from the Board of Supervisors first.

We're not asking for any formal action being requested of the Board today.

We're simply bringing this before you to provide a general awareness of the ask to allow for questions the Board may have of RSWA or staff on this item and to get a general consensus on the fee increases that Mr. Moyer is going to discuss here in just a moment so that what we will do is we'll then bring this item back to the Board

as a consent agenda item, excuse me, on March 20th.

And that's where we'll take the formal action to move forward with this.

Yes, sir.

So, thank you for a few minutes.

A quick summary.

The services that Rivanna saw the Waste Authority provides to county residents includes our transfer station, where we transfer refuse out of the county.

Currently it goes to a landfill in Henrico County at our contractor's option.

Last year we transferred about 92 million pounds of refuse

from through our transfer station, and this is a station that this board asked Rivanna to construct in 2018, and we did, and that's the agreement that Mr. Davidson referred to, that we need to come back to you if we want to change any of the fees for the transfer operation.

We also managed the recycling program for residents of Albemarle through the McIntyre Recycling Center, the new Southern Albemarle

County,

and vegetative debris, a disposal, and we turn it into mulch and make that available to residents.

Last year we recycled 20 million pounds of product through our recycling and reuse program, so we're real pleased with that.

But today we wanted to propose that we increase the vegetative yard waste tip fee from $50 to $54 per ton, and also the domestic waste and construction debris fee from $54 to $58.

We came last year with a similar request and we increased both of these fees $2 and we told you then we were trying to find the sweet spot of what the market would bear and what we could collect for these fees

and vegetative waste, even though we raised the fee $2 from $48 to $50, we've gotten 17% more waste this year and on the MSW CDD we've gotten 22% more than last year.

So apparently the $2 did not make a significant impact.

In fact, our increase continues in tonnage, continues to grow.

When we completed the transfer station in 2018, we received about 40,000 tons per day.

Now we receive 212 tons.

Tons Per Day, not 1,000.

We received 40 tons per day.

Now we receive 212 tons per day, five times increase.

So the Board's initiative to build a new transfer station and the use of that facility increase has certainly worked.

So we've looked at our surrounding counties.

Green has a fee of $60, Fluvana $60, Louisa has $54, Nelson $55.

So we believe that this is a fee increase that the market can bear.

And if the board is supportive of that, we would propose that to our board of directors later this month.

that revenue would increase the revenue that we take in, about $290,000, which decreases the allocation from this board for the services we provide, because our transfer and recycling services both

do not fund themselves.

We estimated that we had a deficit of about $16 per ton on refuse disposal last year and about $600 per ton on recycling.

So the county and the city support us where our revenues do not meet our expenses.

So this just reflects the proposed change of the vegetation yard waste fee being increased $4 as well, the domestic and the construction debris fees.

So in summary, we've had inflation that has affected us through the years.

The yard waste, as I said, was raised $2 last year.

It was 2011.

when it was raised last before that time.

Any questions?

Should we go through our order at this point, at this issue, anything?

Thank you, and thank you Bill.

So I remember

Before the new facility went, our tonnage was so low and these charges were 60-something a rather than- 66.

We were pricing ourselves out of the market.

Yes, ma'am.

No, ma'am.

Is it close?

Close.

Well, as I said, we lost, we had a deficit of about $16 a ton last year and our contract with the contract hauler, he provides the truck and we push the trash in the hole of the transfer station, goes down in his truck and he takes it away and disposes of it.

are $53 a ton right now.

We collect $54.

So we have $1 there to support our staff who works in there.

And his costs are going to go up about $1.60 in the coming year.

It's indexed to a CPI, so he gets an increase.

So his fees are going to be about $55.

And if it's anything like mysodus that I buy, which went up 30% this time, I mean I feel your pain.

So anyway, that's

the information I needed

used to offset that deficit.

That's right.

And or you may have on your list still about increasing the frequency of the HHW, amnesty days, all that stuff.

Yes, ma'am.

Because they're wildly popular and twice a year is certainly better than once a year, but so would be sometimes.

Yes, ma'am.

More services or reduced allocation.

Right.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

This is an area that I'm still trying to get spun up on, so my apologies if my questions are a little fundamental.

I want to first make sure I'm correctly understanding just how the tip fees are realized and who is at the end of the day paying the bill.

I think my guess would be this is primarily private collection services who then deposit through you, which means the bill is either being taken from there

Yes, sir.

75% of the debris that we received are received from two firms, Waste Management and GFL.

And it would be prudent.

It would be

Thank you.

I am still very broadly supportive of your proposal.

I just want to say that up front, lest my comments be misconstrued.

Additionally, I did have a question we talked at some length about a very impactful source of revenue for y'all, but I do know that you also take in probably a pretty de minimis revenue at the new convenience center out in Keen for the, I think it's $2 attack.

McGrace.

I don't have that number.

I can get it for you of what the revenue is for the $2 tickets that we sell at the Green Top Store.

I don't know that number, but you're right.

Sure.

I bring this up because I'm just

I'm very excited that we have this service down in Southern Albemarle, and I also recognize that we have pockets of really extreme poverty in that same region, where frankly a $2 tag is just an extra inconvenience on something that's already inconvenient.

Thank you.

I understand that.

I'm just saying, like, if it turns out it's, you know, we got $20,000 from it this year, I might wonder if the board might be able to be in a position to step in and fill that in order to alleviate some of those burdens that are facing.

I'll get that information for you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Bill, and I'm really looking forward to the Northern Convenience Center when that comes in.

I just have one question regarding paint, and this has nothing to do with the budget, but is that collected year-round?

Every day we're open, we will collect paint.

And that's at the IV?

Yes, ma'am, just at the IV facility.

Okay.

That's it.

Spill.

If I could just ask for a quick, the Northern Convenience Center, did I see that that had been postponed?

We still have the design funding in fiscal year 25.

However, we've moved the construction funding out to fiscal year 27.

I had a conversation with Mr. Stewart earlier about potentially what that could mean.

And I'm sorry to take us down into this, but I just, when we were talking about convenience centers, I just remembered seeing that it had been postponed.

Hello, everybody.

Lance Stewart, Director of Facilities Environmental Services.

I can say I've got questions about this myself and not answers entirely yet.

I think the way that we have executed projects with Rivanna in the past is that we reimbursed them for expenses they incurred, so it could perhaps not result in an effective delay.