Board of Supervisors Budget Work Session #3   3/13/2024

on the 13th of March, 3 p.m.

in Room 241 of Macular-Gilbert.

Like note, that supervisor present include the supervisor, Ann Mallek, so White Hall District Supervisor, Ned Gallaway, Rivanna District Supervisor, Diantha McKeel, the Jack Jouett District Supervisor, Bea LaPisto-Kirtley, Rivanna District, and Supervisor Mike Pruitt of the Scottsville District, myself, Jim Andrews, representing the Samuel Miller District, the form is present.

We're also joined here by our County Executive, Mr. Jack Richardson and County Attorney,

and Mr. Steve Rosenberg and our clerk, Ms.

Claudette Borgerson.

Obviously, we also have many staff to deliver this as we go.

I believe that we also welcome the Albemarle County police officers present, serving Lieutenant Angela Jamerson and Master Police Officer Dana Reeves.

We thank you for your service.

and that's safe.

And before I begin, before we begin, let me remind people to staff and guests to please introduce yourselves prior to speaking and to let everyone know that smart phones are in the ceiling, so speak up literally.

Thank you to the chair for the introduction and good afternoon to the board.

Today is budget work session number three on the county executive's recommended fiscal year 25 budget.

We will continue today with some items in general fund and then start the CIT and vet chapters.

Anything we're not able to finish today, we'll pick up on Monday or I'm sorry, Monday, the 25th.

And then the work session on the 27th is when the board will be asked to take action to propose a budget and tax rates or advertisements.

Let's take a closer look at the agenda today.

The Board of Supervisors has requested some additional time to discuss the Sheriff's Office request.

I'm going to follow that up to finish the non-departmental chapters if we were not able to get to on Monday, including some discussion around the tax relief and the elderly and the safety programs.

That's a discussion that really started on December 13th and will continue today leading to eventual board action and the public hearing on that item.

We'll then continue with a discussion on the fire rescue system.

Deputy Chief David Bucket here will walk through some data and that's what the maps are related to that item.

And then we'll come back to kind of recap the general fund.

That may be a good time for the break if the board desires and then we'll come back and start on the CIP.

But certainly that break depending on the timing of how things are adjusted, we can move that.

So I am going to kick off things very briefly when the sheriff's office item, Sheriff Bryant, is here today and we'll be doing a bulk of this presentation.

But just to provide a recap for the board, there were two unfunded requests that were not included in the county executive's recommended budget.

The court's complex security, this was a request initially submitted by the sheriff and this is not about the merit of the request, it's just about the timing of the request.

There's a sequencing of events that will happen as the courthouse opens and we expect these positions will be needed just not in fiscal year 25, so we would expect those will come back at another time.

The second request was a 4.5 FTEs for temporary detention orders.

These are the amounts not included in the fiscal year 25 recommended budget.

There's an abortion at one time for the vehicles and the other outfits, outfitting of those officers.

And then the ongoing abortion we can see in fiscal year 25 and 26 in the total.

So at this point, I will turn it over to Sheriff Bryant for her presentation.

I'll say, Sheriff Bryant, you're welcome to either stand or join us at the seat next to us, and I do have a clicker for you in the slides, or if you want to give me a sign, that works too.

Yes, they're in the presentation.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, board members, for giving me the opportunity to come to present our request for positions for TDO and to answer any questions that you have.

So the very first thing, in case so many of you are new to the board, you might not know what we do at the Sheriff's Office.

So the first thing I want to bring your attention to is actually the Code of Virginia.

That actually is the transport of TDO patients rely on the primary law enforcement agency, which is the County PD.

We are in an MOU with the county PD that we provide those transport forms to keep their police officers in the county to anti-causal service.

And that's the same for juveniles and adults.

So what I did for the last three years is I collected data from

our actual transports that we performed over the last three years.

We admitted 19 and 20 before the COVID and the numbers weren't realistic because everybody's shutting down and staying at home.

and the return time, the location of where we started and where we ended up at the hospital throughout the Congo of the Virginia and the cost of mileage and the depth of cost.

So each transport requires two deputies to respond to take a mental patient from the hospital to the receiving facility.

So on all that data collected over the last three years, this is the breakdown of TDOs that happened during the day or during the day of the week.

So you can see the breakdown of the percentages.

The majority of the TDOs happened during the weekday and during our operation time, Monday through Friday.

And that's just a little short to show you when the most come in.

Tuesdays for some reason is a high call volume for TDOs to be transported as well as Fridays.

So the low numbers are Saturday and Sundays.

And this is the actual time that we actually begin our transports to arrive at the hospital and take patients and arrive at the facility.

And as you can see, our operation hours are from eight to four, and the majority of these transports fall within those hours of time.

Let me know if I'm going too fast.

I know y'all are strapped on time.

So with that being said, 88% of the TDOs affect my operation staff, and that could be in that they are being transported during the eight to four hours, or they are being transported before that at two, three o'clock in the morning, or

and carry out through our operational day to the fact that they can't be at work, that they're being tied up on a TDO transport and can't perform the operations of the duties of our office.

and this is our transport time.

So the time that we arrive to the hospital to take these patients and the amount of time we're spending to deliver them to the facility, as you can see, most of our transports, it's taken us four to eight hours to arrive at the facility where we're going to.

and the zero to two, the majority of those transports are to Western state and the eight to 12 hours are the ones going very far out close to the state lines of Virginia.

So this is our frequency of where we go the most.

As you can see, Western State is high.

And the County PD has, in the last year and a half, has been transporting some of the patients to Western State for us.

But the others are being transported out of the area.

And this is miles one way.

I know it's kind of hard to see, but it was kind of hard to put all that data on one sheet.

This is the mileage that we are accumulating on our vehicles per month, just doing nothing but TDOs.

You can see the chart by years, 2022's in blue, 23's in orange, and so far 24's in yellow.

So we're racking up a lot of miles on the vehicles, just doing transport and mental health patients.

And in case people don't know where Russell County is or any other town, I know there might be some questions.

So we did a heat map.

So the bright white areas are where are we doing a majority of our transports?

So we're going anywhere throughout this vicinity of Albemarle County to transport people throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia to deliver them to the accepting mental health hospital.

and that's alarming to look at it actually on a mountain of how far people are leaving Albemarle County to seek treatment.

This is cost per deputy of how much it's costing our office to handle these transports per month.

So we're averaging anywhere from 3,000 to 6,000 a month just on TDO transports.

And I think a lot of questions coming out of the county exec's office is dealing with alternative transportation and the heart program.

So I wanted to spend a little bit of time on that.

The heart program is an excellent program in our county.

We utilized it this morning in court.

One of our court providers was experiencing some suicidal issues.

We contacted the heart people.

They came and responded and transported them to Region 10, which ended up, he is now at UVA, waiting transport to a mental health facility.

So the heart program is great.

I just wanted to show the impact on our transport from the existence of the heart program.

So, and as you can see, there's not much change in the RTO transports in relation to the heart program being established.

I think it varies by one person.

So even though the heart program is doing wonders for the citizens of Albemarle County, the ones that still need hospital treatment are still having to be transported to the hospital.

So another concern of the county exec's office is alternative transportation.

So the Department of Health has entered into a pilot program with Allied Universal which started last Monday.

And this program also started in Southwest Virginia in 2015 and 2016 initially to alter alternatives to law enforcement during these transports.

That program ran out of funding in 2019 and is not being funded.

At the moment, this program is started and it encompasses five CSBs out of Region 1.

So this is a chart of the five CSBs.

So not only is it covering our Region 10, it's covering these other CSBs.

And as you can see, there are Winchester, Harrisonburg, Rockingham, Rappahannock, Falkier, Spotsvania, a lot of cities and counties, which actually is 24 of you counties.

and a little bit about alternative transport.

It's a company that bought out G4S that started the contract with the state in 2015.

They have entered into this agreement with Department of Behavioral Health, where during this pilot program, they are providing

to three two-person teams and providing three vehicles to encompass 24 cities and counties.

With somebody that has been involved in the Sheriff's Office since 95 and the Amor County Sheriff's Office has been doing TDOs before I even started for the police department.

So we've been doing them for a long time.

So back to this.

So these three vehicles are based out of Front Royal.

So they get a call.

They are responding from Front Royal to Albemarle County to transport these patients.

And it's new to the program.

And I will go over a little bit so far what that program has accomplished.

from references.

I know y'all got the PowerPoint, but just two different references that's talked about alternative transports.

So for the figures of March so far, we have conducted five TDOs so far this month.

Four of them have come after March 4th, when alternative transportation has been established.

The first one was on March 8th to Virginia Beach.

The second one was on March 10th, the Western State.

The third one was March 12th till Williamsburg.

And the one this morning was, the deputies were called at three o'clock in the morning, and all these alternative transportation was not available.

So the deputies were called at three o'clock this morning to transport mental health patients to Bristol.

So my deputies haven't gone all day long.

When they arrived back at work at 1.30, I had to send them home.

We're in the middle of doing a murder jury trial and they are not able to be utilized to do sheriff's office duties.

So my request is because TDOs are now affecting the ability for me to do the duties that are dictated by the code of Virginia for me to do.

and I guess the most important slide is we haven't had many added positions since 2005.

We have actually had four positions that have been added since 2005.

Two of those were part-time positions that were working full-time that were upgraded because they were working full-time hours and only receiving part-time benefits.

and if you can look at it compared to other agencies on the public safety pay scale and I actually threw in the Commonwealth's attorneys numbers too and they have received 10 positions so we don't ask for a lot but when we ask for it it's because we need it and we have been asking and haven't been receiving so

That is the end of my poll.

I'll be willing to answer any questions that you might have.

I know it's a lot.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And we'll go through our usual order for questions from our members.

So you might be number one.

OK.

It was very interesting to see the wide range of facilities where they are throughout the Commonwealth.

I don't know if this is a question for you or not, but do we know of any other treatment centers that will be built or is UVA considering such a facility?

No, so what happened for the hospitals to expand as after Senator Nates

went through his experience.

The state created a list that you have to go down to the list for accepting hospitals.

And that's a problem.

Do we know if

So they have to go by the list that they have.

They can't randomly call people.

Okay, so we don't have that list.

I mean, you have the list?

Oh, okay.

Yeah, I guess I'm just trying to get a hold of it.

and I did it.

It looked south like we need additional facilities that are definitely closer and we do have hospitals around here.

Five East is only so many limited beds available for somebody to go upstairs from UVAER to Five East.

And the fact that we are

making the original jail and proving that and, you know, the second floor for mental health patients.

And those are just for people who have been incarcerated.

Judge and incarcerated has nothing to do with this.

No.

OK, that's what I thought.

Yeah, that's what I thought.

OK, I didn't know that if that could be.

Yeah, got it.

I'm more county police department.

Okay.

Well, that's the only place they go to western state.

That is correct.

All right.

Those are all the questions I have now.

Supervisor McKeel.

So you have just a couple of questions, I think, here.

And we can ask questions of anybody.

I mean, this is rare game, right?

So I'm just trying to figure out on the map, I think this is 21, not now, but the slide 21, trying to figure out when the HEARTS program started.

September 23.

July 1st.

Oh, so actually, no.

OK.

All right.

And I guess I did notice that the high usage of, or the TDOs was, or is, I guess I should say, during the times when the hard team is available, and I'm not sure how relevant that is, hacking what I'm saying about that is,

The Hearts team is available Monday through Friday.

And the videos are highest Monday through Friday.

And then I was looking at the times, and you quoted eight to four, and those are the same times that the Heart team is

There's been a 23% increase in the number of behavioral health calls in the last year over year.

So it's not surprising that the number of TDOs would be roughly the same.

The percentage of the calls is actually going down.

It doesn't size this year.

Office operations, but in terms of heart's impact, there's something to infer there.

So if you feel like it's early, it's because the hearts team has not really been in existence very long.

So just from your experience or your educated, I need to say yes.

We really felt like the first full year of operations would give us some indication.

And then a year or two, that's why we sort of identified the initial period of the pilot is something like 18 to 24 months.

so that we can look at some data to see its impact.

We notice already that there's significant impact on well-being for the community.

The system impacts are yet to necessarily be realized.

However, with the 23% increase in calls for service for behavioral health, the idea that TDOs have actually stayed relatively level might suggest that we're actually having some impact.

there are a number of five or six different things happening in this community around the behavioral health context that I think individually sort of by themselves might have a big impact on these numbers but layered together they would and that includes Region 10's expansion of their C-TAC program so that folks who are not appropriate necessarily to drive away from but may voluntarily go to Region 10 for a more fulsome evaluation

Hill.

Have a soft landing.

Might de-escalate further there and not necessitate a TDO.

There's sort of an interim step now with that CTAC, and they're expanding all the time with staff and hours.

The 988 sort of call center diverts folks experiencing suicidal thoughts and feelings.

That certainly the Alternative Transport Program hasn't had a lot of time to sort of

for us to be able to measure that impact.

UVA is creating a mobile crisis unit, which will respond to students, faculty, and staff.

And it will obviously affect us in some way or bump into us a little bit.

Say that again, I'm sorry.

I don't know what they're going to call it.

This shorthand has been UVA Mobile Crisis Unit.

They'll respond much the same way that a heart does to folks experiencing UVA health crisis anywhere at anyone who is a student, faculty, or staff.

Just to make sure.

That's wonderful to hear.

And then finally, the ECC is an urinary sort of early sort of calculation about potentially embedding a clinician in the ECC center.

And each one of these things sort of layered together, promised to have a pretty significant impact on the number of folks who show up at the emergency room or in general into a behavioral health crisis.

There's data that just came out of the first national data around this kind of layered approach around this level that 87% of calls can be diverted.

It's amazing.

87% of calls can be diverted.

The national data suggests that if you have somebody who's doing those screening and diverting at that layer, that you can only 3% of the time you just dispatch a mobile crisis unit.

And then even with a mobile crisis unit, which is the catch-all for co-responding units and other kinds of units, that of those only 9% results in a TDO.

So these are all things sort of actively in development.

They don't certainly haven't been in development to impact this data, but we hope will be very impactful in the next 12, 18, 24 months that we can start to see some of that layering effect, both in terms of well-being and in terms of our sort of system impacts.

The fact of the matter is when you do have a TDO,

are available beds are far away.

That is a statewide fact.

We must go to the first available bed regardless of what location it's in.

The two are.

Well, some of it was really great to hear because I didn't know some of it.

And you're just a wealth of information.

Thank you.

Jim, so let's get back to the question for you.

I wrote confused, so I'm confused.

On the slide 22, help me understand a little bit more about the pilot program, the alternative trends

Okay.

Oh, okay.

Region 1 of the state.

Right.

Because that's the Albemarle.

These are all the cities and counties that's involved in the pilot program and this pilot program, I think I forgot to mention, is ending in September.

So they're seeking additional funding to continue with this pilot program after September.

Okay.

All right.

Yes, it talks about what this company is providing to these five CSBs.

are what they're guaranteed to provide.

They're providing three vehicles, two people per vehicle to respond to TDOs.

That means they have been issued by the magistrate to all of those counties.

For every county or city on that list, three vehicles.

For 24 hours a day, seven days a week, three vehicles for all of them.

Yeah.

And I really appreciate you walking me through it again.

I got a little confused and lost it in the data.

Thank you, Supervisor Gallaway.

Thank you, Sheriff.

I missed something on the 8 to 4 points.

You're serving outside of 8.

Your court, but when you're for your TV that's operating outside the 24 so so what your point just so I make sure I understand because I was missing the point the point is you called for transportation at 3 a.m.

got back at 1.30.

They've been out since 3 o'clock in the morning.

And they can't be utilized.

They've been on the road driving to Bristol from 3 o'clock in the morning and back.

Then kind of in the weeds question, do you

I don't know how you staff for this.

You've got a certain idea of what your load volume is for PDOs and then obviously your court operations.

So for after hours, we have a TDL call-out.

So they show up to work every day at eight o'clock.

If the TDO comes in between the hours of eight to four, we have to say who's available and pull somebody from civil process to go on a TDO because everybody else is tied up in court.

So we pull somebody from certain papers, pull two people because we require two deputies on the transport.

to go on the TDO.

If it happens outside of the four o'clock, then the on-call deputy for TDO's response to handle that.

So really, ahead of time, staffing is just simply that on-call person after four or the rest of it.

You're kind of managing as it comes in.

Yeah, we have staff selected.

There are certain staff selected for general district court.

And each court has their own staffing.

And then civil process is permanently assigned to each area in the county to serve papers.

So they're pulled, like this week, we're in the middle of a murder trial.

So we pull people from civil process to help out, because there are some heated debates between victim and suspects family.

So we have to add more people to court.

For the call where

where it's appropriate.

This provides an alternative to a police officer moving towards hospital or jail so they can spend all day if they need to.

They can spend the time connecting somebody who's in a behavioral health crisis.

to their current caregiver, as opposed to sort of moving forward with the deep end outcome rapidly as has happened in the past.

So in other communities where they have these kinds of co-responder teams, they see a decrease in the number of TBOs, a decrease in the number of transports to the ER, decrease in the number of transports to jail.

And so that is a predicted outcome for this kind of work, in addition to the well-being benefits to our community.

but the reality is very different at the moment and we'll have to wait to see what happens.

Thank you, thank you all.

It depends.

We used to have a hot number of applicants.

Our last job posting, we had four.

So, and it depends on whether they're certified or not certified.

If they're not certified, we have to send them to the Academy.

And we send all our deputies to fully certified law enforcement officers, except for one.

And the previous sheriff allowed that.

And they go through law enforcement.

certification, and then they have to go to courtroom security to a process certification.

So it depends on how long it takes us to hire and whether they're certified or not.

So, a while.

So six months to a year, I'm guessing.

And the crisis spends at region 10.

I think there were 16.

I understood those were mostly full all the time.

But are they designed for and have clinicians available to help the kinds of people who you are taking, transporting?

So they are.

They're taking to Region 10 to be evaluated, like the one we had today.

Staying there.

So they left court with part.

and went to CTAC, spent time over there.

Now they have been transported to UVA hospital for additional care.

And then we're waiting to see if that turns into a TDO.

I think so.

Correct.

I want to begin by just noting that this is, I think, a very, just a conversation that nearly every jurisdiction in this state is having.

I know I just attended two days ago, the Wharton session, footage of town of Scottsville and the

of Washington, New Deputy.

And also, it speaks to what Supervisor Mallek was talking about and asking about, because they are not able to advertise the competitive pay rate in Scottsville, which means they're necessary to spend a year lag time together with the officers and so on.

So I acknowledge the equity of this problem.

Sheriff, can you help me understand?

We have had on numerous times to pull people and work under stress.

to make up for the people that we didn't have on our TDO.

And we used to have 60 volunteers, but everybody knows in the county from public safety about the volunteers.

We are down to 18.

Um, I know a lot of us are trying to get that underlying

and so on.

I know the state has previously been relying really heavily on contracting with private hospitals and service providers to fill, like, bank shortage areas, and that was their solution for a few years.

I don't know that.

I know the C-TAC expansions statewide are kind of a new initiative.

I don't know how long hours have been online or if there's additional funding and additional space that's going to become available in the future.

The C-TAC started off slow only as a partnership with Albemarle PD.

only so far can we see that can folks come from Alma in the process of expanding to the entire Region 10 district and has recently received within partnership with Alma of Stony funding from the Oak View Debates and Authority to be an expansion of the receiving center so that it operates more along the lines of what I hope.

And is that able to help us?

It's like a second step.

So if we respond in the community with somebody who is disfondent and having trouble sort of regulating, we spend a couple of hours with them, they may be okay.

But we may spend a couple of hours or connect them to a service and we may not be 100% ready to drive away from that scene.

And so we may say we'd like very much to, you know, with your, for you to voluntarily come with us to the crisis intervention

Center, and then get a more sort of full-sum evaluation.

It's not an evaluation.

Sometimes this year, Bryant was describing about what happened this morning, mainly to actually for UVAs.

I mean, for people trying to say it's unique, we need this to go to UVA.

But often it can be, we've got 23 hours that you can stay in this bed with some sort of de-escalation, crisis intervention, clinical support.

and then if you need more of that, you might actually end up coming to the Wellness Center at Region 10 for a longer stay or to return home connected to the natural supports you already have.

On the subject of one response to crisis

I don't recall where that effort left, but I know this was a big thing.

but I don't know the status of that reform.

I'm just throwing that out there, because I know it's something of interest and it would potentially significantly help the TV above.

We talked a bit about mobile crisis centers and I know that those have been very swung.

Are we actually being served by one of the states funded mobile crisis centers?

Stetva also promises full implementation by the end of this year, which seems unlike.

I think it's the definition of full implementation.

One team that's sort of available for everybody, but it's not functional coverage.

The Marcus Alert will eventually apply to all of us, but a very slow rollout becomes the requirements.

And so I don't think it's until 2026 that we're required to even start creating local mobile health for Legion 10.

Thank you.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around this and I'm alarmed, but let me just answer a few questions.

The folks that I've talked to are pretty confident they're going to get the funding, but the impact is certainly not yet been felt in this community.

And it's not a sufficient response in the community's words.

And I certainly don't see us as hitting a handle.

If we look at the slide that shows the number of falls each month for two plus years, it's certainly not going down, but it has been a problem for some time now.

I don't know when it was first identified, but it literally looks like it's ongoing.

and this is part of the MOU with the Albemarle County Police Department which I assume is open-ended with respect to EDOs, whatever is needed.

The actual request for the ongoing as well as one-time funding and the one-time funding as soon as for vehicles associated with four-and-a-half positions, so depending upon how that we go, that's about four vehicles, that's correct.

I mean that I'm aware of.

suggested legislation about expanding the number of treatment beds, making it mandatory that you receive mental health treatment within a sort of certain radius of your community, which is a best practice.

Maybe something we consider in our legislative priorities is pretty important.

Our representatives, I think, they very opinionative.

Are there other questions?

Couple with you and Chair Andrews mentioned this regarding allied, you'll probably get additional funding.

Do you think that funding will be expanded?

In other words, will they get the same amount do we know or hopefully expanded and?

I don't know.

Certainly everybody doesn't know about that.

All right.

I know we have all these things that are in the process of going forward and

We don't know.

I mean, I certainly agree with Chair Andrews that maybe this should be one of our legislative priorities for next year because I'm not sure the legislature is aware of this.

They are.

They're very accurate.

The only legislation that I know that is pending is House Bill 832, which addresses the amount of time that it's going to take or they're given alternative transport to get to the hospital and transport to somebody.

And I think that's moving through the House.

Well, if they increase the budget, that would be nice.

And the HEART program takes your

the people to other facilities, not necessarily the TDO that you go, you transport people to medical hospitals.

Under a TDO.

Under a TDO.

The hardest program, they can go to home, they can go to hospital, they can go to region 10, they can go, okay.

And they still may end up with a TDO.

Yes, okay.

Just to add to the conversation of what we've been, the state is famous for requesting JLARC studies and then putting the JLARC study report on the shelf and employing them.

There was last year a JLARC study about the community service boards

and I read it carefully and I do think we ought to at part of our legislative packet this year.

We really ought to jump on that.

The two big takeaways from that Jay Lark study said that the community service boards are underfunded, underpaid and under-trained.

You can read the whole report yourself.

I have a copy and I'm happy to share it, but those are the three takeaways as with many things in the state of Virginia.

We could probably talk about a lot of things that are underfunded, underpaid and under-trained.

Having said that, I do think it would be worthy of us having a discussion about this with our legislative packet and our legislators.

I really appreciate your report and your request and understanding what the numbers are in.

I mean, I think we all do.

I'm not just speaking for myself.

I think we all do.

And I don't have any other questions.

I just wanted to make the comment that there is a JLARC study out there that was really good and had some great

So based on what I think I misheard or something, Supervisor Andrews was asking a question.

So included in the budget are an increase in operations for like vehicle replacement fee, vehicle movement fuel type things.

But if the four and a half fifties for temporary detention orders was filled,

And if that's in here, then I don't see that that was not funded or if that was included in the unfunded list, I haven't looked for

I don't know if that's the same as the place to buy it.

on page 113.

There is the third, the last bullet in White, not filled in, of 918,000 for the Ford, half FTEs.

Oh, wait, are the vehicles in the 918?

Yeah, the reference, do any increase in other costs?

So the 918 is the

Steph, there we are.

One going, one time.

Well, I guess this is a question for staff from the board.

We often have, as we go through the budget and the discussions, we often have sort of a parking lot that we create and issues that we don't come back to.

And we haven't really talked about parking lot up until now.

So I guess I'm just putting it on the table.

Starting now, I'm going to party a lot.

Because I'd be interested in having a brief discussion.

Correct.

I hope this is an indication that you are too.

I'm very concerned about this.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'll say it later today, we were able to read this to the staff, some of those other parking lot items, and we're here, but we're now, we'll look at them forward.

All right, we're going to move to the last functional area in the general fund that we have not covered yet, which is non-departmental.

This is one we're going to cover briefly, because it is largely made up of the transfer to the public schools that we talked about on Monday.

It includes our transfers to capital and debt with the Lema formula, and it includes revenue sharing, payment to the City of Charlottesville, Albemarle.

There are other items in this, but I want to spend most of the time in this chapter continuing the discussion on tax relief for the elderly and disabled.

I will have a link to your presentation on that.

I don't know if we'll go through our order or just look around.

I mean, just look at it.

So this topic is to really consider and continue a conversation the Board held on December 13.

Over the last two years and continuing this year for the third consecutive year, the Board is looking to refine the criteria and expand their leave in this program.

Back on December 13, the Board at the time achieved consensus on four items.

The first of which is that there is a income criteria in this program that is currently benchmarked at 80% of the area median income for a family of four.

The board endorsed continuing with that criteria.

The second item was to revise the net financial worth criteria.

That amount used to be $200,000 until two years ago.

Last year, that was increased to $205,000.

It is now proposed to go up to $305,000.

And that is benchmarked with the inflation adjusted value of $200,000 in 2007.

That may seem like a random reference point.

That is the last time the state kind of had that cap and then removed that.

So that is where that number comes from.

The third item we had consensus on is the board discussed potential joining a program-wide cap of funding, where the total amount of the funding would be capped at a certain level.

After discussion, the board was not interested in pursuing that at this time.

And the fourth item was the board just desired further discussion on a property-specific cap.

And so that is the conversation today.

And to look at just a few options, I want to set the stage for what this timeline will look like.

Today, the board is not asked to take any action, but we are looking for some direction on a preferred option so that staff can come back on March 25th on a consent agenda at this work session to advertise a public hearing that will set the stage for future board action in public input.

That action, it would be scheduled for April 17th, and that is important because we really need to have that action done at that time in order for the current program participants and everyone else to be factored in before the

That's bills are sent out in May and then due in June.

So that is the rationale of the timing working backward from April 17th to March 25th and today.

I'll say that action on the 25th is not to approve anything other than just do suggest a public hearing.

So just want to delay that out for the process.

So before we look at options, just want to share a reminder of how this program works.

In order to be eligible in this program, you would need to be 65 years old.

or totally and permanently disabled is determined medically.

You need to be the title holder of the property.

That property cannot be used as a difference and it would need to meet the net income, I'm sorry, the income and financial net worth criteria that are shown on the slide.

These are amounts are what is proposed based on the board's consensus from December 13th.

And it shows also that based on your income level, there is an appropriation where if your income is 44,400 or less, you can receive 100% relief and that is staggered as we work through that.

The other important thing on net worth is that excludes the subject dwelling in 10 acres.

So the example in the slide, if you had a residence of 15 acres, the first 10 acres would be in that residence would be exempt from that calculation.

So the other recap, because it's been a while, is taking a look at the data in the program and who are those who are benefiting from the program already.

One thing we know when the board expanded the criteria in 2023, we saw an increase in the success rate of people applying.

It was 89% in 2022.

It was increased to 94% in 2023.

The average income of the applicants was $32,000, and the average net worth was $48,000.

This suggests to us that when we look at this program, this is not serving people who are just below their thresholds.

They are among the most economically vulnerable people in our county.

Another way to really reinforce that is the table below, where of the people who qualify in the program, 73% of them are getting 100% relief.

So kind of go back to the previous slide, that is that net income of $44,400 or less, or $305,000 net worth.

Now there are still another roughly a quarter in that middle category and then 5% who are in that income of $66,000 to $88,000.

So another way to look at this graphically is to take a look at the, for those who are in the program at 23, what was the relief they were receiving?

Because most of the people in the program are receiving 100% relief, this is just a chart of those in the program for 23, and we rounded this to the nearest $1,000.

So we can see the most common relief tends to be between $1,000 and $3,000.

And we can see the kind of this picture mountain that slopes pretty gradually on the left side to zero and on the right side it does, but there's a tail that extends all the way out to $8,000.

The orange line on this chart is the countywide average tax bill on the recommended tax rate for calendar year 24.

So that signals to us that typically the financial wellbeing or I should say the financial situation

of the folks averaging the program is well within the criteria on average.

And most of the people who are receiving the benefits of this are having a relief that is less than the average tax bill for 2024.

So a program can always be improved, but this was a good check to us working with our revenue administrations to staff about who the program is serving in terms of getting a landscape of them.

So moving into new information, these are the options staff has prepared for some further board discussion and direction.

We've prepared three, the first of which would be to continue the program without a cap, just as it is right now.

We would force factor in the board's December 13th direction, and then the program would remain as it is until the board revisited it.

Option B, it would be to institute a property specific cap, but it would be setting that cap high so that no one currently in the program is being impacted.

and we'll walk through what that looks like.

The third item would be if the board would like to put in a property-specific cap.

We would have set a basis of that and that would be different because it would, in fact, exist in recipients.

Now, I know the board's desire from December was not to reduce relief.

So the idea there is we would increase some relief thresholds to kind of redistribute some terms of how that funding for the relief was provided.

So I'm gonna walk through on the next slides, just some analysis about, you know,

to what extent each criteria expands relief and how understandable it is, how is it grounded in the budget, and what is the impact program recipients?

Today, this is the most straightforward one because it's really continuing the status quo.

Based on the Board's action in December, or really direction in December, this will expand relief by about $120,000 in the upcoming budget.

In total, this program is going to increase just under $270,000 or 15%.

That is a combination of the $120,000 of new relief plus the historically trend, the growth we see in this program year over year of about 8%.

The basis of that is understandable because, again, where it's the current program, nothing new needs to be communicated, nothing new needs to be understood.

This is able to be funded in the fiscal year 25 recommended budget and there is no pact to current RAM participants assuming they remain eligible based on the criteria.

It's always possible someone's circumstances may change individually.

So option B is where we begin to start looking at some differences by introducing the property specific cap which is a fundamental change in the program.

So the board still in this is providing that increased relief just like option A of 120,000.

This is an updated basis that we would need to communicate to staff to ensure it's understood by everyone applying for the program.

But the important thing here is if there's a cap that is set where it doesn't impact anyone, which would be relatively high, that's going to be a future impact people need to consider.

So no one is going to be impacted in the program right now, but they would need to know in their financial planning, should their financial situation change, where their relief would go above that cap, there would only be a certain amount of relief they would be able to receive.

this option is also able to be funded in the recommended budget and the program participants here there is you know really no impact to current recipients because we're not impacting anyone but we're also not able to expand relief because we would be setting the cap so high that any additional applicants if we were increased there would require additional funding in the budget.

So to give some perception of what a maximum cap could look like, the highest amount of relief provided in calendar year 23 was just over $8,000.

From there, there's a pretty steep drop off to about $6,400.

And I'll go back to the slide just to reference, you can see that very small dot added 8,000, a slightly bigger part of the tail at 6,000 as we then worked from right to left, where more people are getting relief.

Third option for the board's consideration, sorry, my slides are right, is instituting a cap, but we would have a really an objective basis for what that cap is.

And this would be impacting people who are currently in the program coupled with relief.

So this does provide, again, that 120,000 expanded threshold.

The board is continuing to do that.

It's a very big difference here is this is going to have immediate impact to people who are in the program right now.

There are people who are, as we've seen, of limited financial means who are not used to getting a bill because they get 100% relief.

For some of those people, they'll not be in a situation where the board could take, if they took this route, would take action.

And I'll get, I'm sorry, in April, bills would go out in May, they would be due in June, and people would need to manage within their limited financial means to plan for them.

So that'll be one thing that the Board would need to consider as part of this process of just the difference in the immediate versus the future impact should they consider.

This is also where it will be funded in the budget.

Let's walk through in a little more detail what this looks like for those individuals.

So the first thing we need to determine is what could a cap look like?

Staff, just for illustrative purposes, a different cap could be picked.

But to have something that is really objective, tied to a metric, it could be updated annually, staff said, what if we used a cap based on the average tax bill on calendar year 24?

So that's that 3869, the orange line that we saw on the slide, just a few slides ago.

So if you imagine this, if you're to the left of that orange line, you would still receive 100% relief.

If you were to the right of that line, you'll start to get a tax bill where before you did.

So for example, if your tax bill is $38.69 or less, you continue to have no tax bill.

If your tax bill was $48.69 and you're used to having no tax bill, you'll now get a tax bill of $1,000.

So looking at the group of the recipients and the program to the right, there would be 45 current recipients who would have their relief reduced in total by a combined $35,000.

That would be, everyone's individual experience is going to be very different based on what that amount is.

It's not really an average, but there are 45 people in the program who would be impacted.

The one thing that staff did next is to get a sense of, you know, who are those people in that 45?

Are they people who are typical of the program or are they people really just the fringes of qualification?

I want to thank our revenue administration team again for this analysis to say that if you look at those 45 folks, average income and average net worth is very close to the average of the overall program.

We can see 26,000 average income that's compared to below.

Average income for every one of the program is 32,000.

Their average net worth is $57,000.

That's a little more than the average net worth of 48,000.

So again, this is, you know, these collectively on average, every again, in a group of 45, you'll have some individual differences, but they're pretty typical of the average recipient.

and again, when we look at those averages, those are still well within the 100% relief qualifications.

So, to think of next is because again, it's not about reducing relief in total, it's about if a cap went into place, how would the board make further changes to modify that program?

So we would assume at a minimum, by taking $35,000, that provides at least nine people could be eligible for the full cap.

And that number could be more depending on what the actual circumstances could be.

So in considering how to change those criteria, staff said there's

The 100% AMI has a pretty good basis, or 80% of AMI.

I'm sorry, Ms.

Boone.

Lots of percentages and data and financial terms here.

80% of AMI is a pretty standard metric that we said we're not going to change that one.

Net worth based on the inflation adjusted to 2007 is a little more fungible in terms of what could be a reasonable basis.

So we said, if we were to increase that net worth, what would that look like for that $35,000?

First thing I need to make very clear is we have very limited data because we only know who applies what their net worth is.

We do know there were three applicants who didn't qualify in calendar year 23 and they had a net worth of over $500,000 at a minimum.

So we cannot raise the net worth to $500,000 or greater without additional revenue in the budget.

We did think, looking through this, that if you were to increase the net worth from $305,000 to $350,000, that would probably be able to be accommodated in this budget, or it would be so close where we could manage that as a budget issue.

Because again, we don't have the data, but we have a little bit of the impact of how this has changed over time.

So in option C, you really go from that version of capping that relief to the average.

Those 45 folks will begin to receive bills and they'll need to come up with that by June in their financial picture.

That does provide the board to provide more relief because it would be nine plus if we receive those applications for and we'd be able to open the portal of eligibility up to 350,000 rather than 305.

That is a lot of data, so I think it's really the question of the board and the trade-offs in terms of, you know, what is the best design of a program in terms of, you know, who benefits with thresholds, the consideration.

I'll be happy to go through any of this in detail, but these are really the three options staff has put out there for the board's consideration.

And again, I'll turn it over to the chair for discussion.

Thank you, board.

I think we've got a good question, but we also start to weigh in on where we are, which is going to be efficient.

Thank you very much, Mr. Bowman, for your presentation.

You go to slide 35, optionally.

I just wanted to know, OK, so that does expand the program.

Exactly.

How many people have, you had mentioned later, option C, 45 people, nine people not being serviced, all right?

How many people do we actually have, did we this past year have serviced?

How many people did not receive

Paxfields.

So I can still answer your question of really how many people are made up to the left of that orange line?

Yes.

I guess my concern is because when you went to option C, there was a lot of work that would need to be done and people would be getting tax bills.

I think in option B and C, they'd be getting tax bills for as they did before.

I'm more of a simplistic mode of operation thinking that if option A seems unreasonable,

Sure.

Jennifer Matheny, Chief of Revenue Administration.

Good afternoon.

So it is a three-year cycle.

So they have to complete a full application to qualify the program.

And then for the next two years, they do a recertification, a testing that nothing has changed.

And on the third year, they have to go through a full application again.

Thank you.

And you said, for option C, that if we went from 305,000 to 350,000, that would be able to be absorbed if we chose

Yes, and that would be accommodating.

Yes, that is correct, but it would be a combination of instituting a cap and increasing net worth.

OK, so if we go back to option A, which seems I'm fixated on and like,

The total program is about 2.1 million, and that amount is a 15% increase from the prior year.

That's about 120,000 due to the board's expanded criteria that they gave consensus on in December.

and then the remainder of that about 140,000 is what we experienced about just year-to-year growth as additional people become eligible, property values may rise, just other people coming in and out of the program.

To me, what you're proposing in A, that does increase the amount, that does allow more people.

It simplifies it in that same people who are in the cycle won't be getting the tax bill, which I can see if you get a tax bill and you haven't been getting a tax bill, that can be pretty confusing.

And I certainly don't want them to throw it away.

And then the panel, I'm utilized and everything.

So I guess Mike, that answers my questions.

Thank you very much.

At this point, I support option A. I think for this program to keep it as simple as possible for folks is important because more competently we make it, we lose people in the application process and they just don't want to do it.

The other thing, and maybe I'm looking at it this wrong, but coming out of the pandemic, we really had

I'm inflation.

We had a lot of challenges with the budget.

Things are settling down now.

Inflation's coming down.

I would support option A with the caveat that we're going to look at this again next year.

We'll have more data next year on what the folks have done.

Yeah, so I, without the labor in it, I'm at option A. So President Gallo, the really option A is just kind of option B and C. Let me reverse that.

So option A just leaves it open that morning.

I don't remember the conversation in December, other in

What I'm remembering from December was that the property caps were being brought up from folks who were concerned about

just open it to blind checks, putting some sort of cap on what we're expending this year.

Is that, am I remembering the right rationale for the property cap?

Or maybe whoever was speaking to that, and we haven't done something yet.

So, I'm calling out whoever was saying that, just remind me of the rationale, but my understanding is that it was putting a cap on, we're saying there's an incentive available, but it doesn't go beyond this.

and Option B is basically taking everybody that's in it and anybody comes in later over eight grand and they get the tax bill.

Option C is doing grand fobbing.

Is that right?

All right, I got it.

Thank you.

Thank you for all the progress on

this, Jacob and Jennifer and Andy.

So I do have some confusion.

So please help me out.

Let's see.

I'm starting at the beginning here.

Someone might be able to conjure up.

If this is on slide 30, there was just a question about if we went to 350,000, how much more would we need to go?

So that someone might come up with some time.

and I do understand why I think some citizens had tried to figure out ways to cap individual benefit in order to exclude those who needed it the least and expand more money or at least get some changes for people who needed the most, which I think we've done some significant improvement over the last couple of years, which is great.

All right, so let me go back here.

All right, so now we're looking here at option, I understand option A and that's based on the 305 and higher income.

Okay, then option B would basically freeze the people who are in now.

And if you were a future applicant at any level, you would be home to the new

You will also impact the current recipients only if their value goes over $8,000.

So they're not frozen forever.

I would say if your relief value is $1,000, you'll probably be OK for a long time when you get to $8,000.

but not knowing everyone's financial circumstances and how they may change.

And so that's not to say anyone in the program is locked in forever.

It's just that that limit would be pretty high for them to get there.

Okay, so I guess I'm having a hard time imagining how the net worth and the income levels are where they are and yet someone would still have a tax bill of $8,000.

So I'm guessing

is this an old family house that the elders live there now and it's large and its assessment has monstrously gone up.

Not knowing that exact circumstances, it must be something like that where that person

I mean, they have a high assessment for some reason and their financial net worth and their income, just that actual circumstances.

But that is the base of the tax bill.

Does it seems counter to it, except when you think about people living well into their 90s, as many of my constituents are on the same place where they were born.

So I understand that.

Is there a way to stagger

the beginning because I was horrified at the thought of getting an announcement in April that you have to come up with $200 by June 10.

I'll think of this a couple of ways.

I don't think the county has the ability to, or they don't, to either kind of forgive or extend those deadlines for any groups of folks.

I guess an approach the board could take if they wanted to start a cap high and then be visited in future years.

We can't say that.

I will take that as a follow-up.

I think it's a question I would ask with the attorney's office, because I know we do have questions where legislation goes to affect to a certain date.

But I will leave that.

So.

I guess that is all of my questions and as I said I very much appreciate the effort to keep increasing.

I'm a little worried about losing the 2007 increase because that's really where we lost 20 years worth of

taking that $200,000 and adjusting that for inflation.

Right.

Well, $250 was a two-year step-in into that.

Because of the unknown financial impact, we did a partial step-in to $250.

Now we're recommending to go to $305.

Uh-huh.

I misunderstood.

That was good.

OK.

All right.

If you have one, and if you want to hear everybody's words, that's mine.

I'll come back with my inclinations after everybody else's at a term.

Super much.

Thank you.

And I recognize that's the tail exempt, which we only have

Okay, I can think of ways that could happen.

I think what leaps out to me as someone who

has, in recent memory, taken his property and trusts class, right?

Because it seems very realistic that if someone really wanted to,

Cap, a property cap.

I'll let any lawyers in the room correct me, but I think that's appropriate, right?

Like, it would not be an asset that's in my name, so it wouldn't flag referring asset caps.

And if it isn't a property cap, so my multi-dollar estate wouldn't disqualify.

I don't have an income other than the disbursements I'm getting from myself or pay me my own property tax,

10 to $20,000 to pay my taxes.

I just say that because it is not, that's not happening based on your data.

But it very much could.

So I'm uncomfortable with Option A. I think a property cap is really scrutiny, and I think Bea seems abundantly prudent to actually curb that kind of future.

Maybe I just gave a citizen somewhere a terrible idea.

Just to clarify, I don't know if this would help in terms of how the network is calculated to fix assets.

And Ms.

Pathini, I'm not sure if you heard the full question of how that was calculated.

Well, they have to provide a supporting documentation.

So that includes tax returns if they've had capital gains.

We typically can identify with the group that usually applies situations like that.

Yes.

So we get all that documentation.

This statement does not cover everyone to the right, but there are situations where someone inherits a family property

and it's not a property they would have been able to afford themselves.

Sure.

While we're talking about what counts and what doesn't, I've seen different ways that people have different states have determined what income is.

Are you including

We do take all that into account.

And we also look at bank statements and sometimes we identify what is the source of this or there are a lot of things that we can find through the bank statements as well.

So you said there's a three-year application, three-year recertification process.

Is everyone done at once or is that a rolling research?

Okay, thank you.

Slides 38 with 45 current recipients but have relief reduced by a combined 35,000.

I could do the average, but I was more interested in the median, sort of where

where that amount, 35,000, came from among the 45 because I suspect that distribution isn't very uniform.

He's already answered one question on the spot, so we'll see how he does.

I guess I feel that I don't think we would lose people in the application process by doing option C because they're already applying.

It's just a question of when they apply, they'll recognize at some point that they don't necessarily qualify for 100% belief, so they still would get a tax bill.

That first time, if we were to implement something as significant as the average tax bill, that would be a shocker.

for a few people.

I don't know how many because I don't know how this distribution plays out.

Obviously, it's going to be a shocker to 45 people, but it may be 45 people, many of whom get a few dollars tax bill and a few of whom get thousands of dollars in additional taxes.

Well, obviously, we know it's capped at 8,000, so it'd be one or two that might have pretty large additions and a few more that have moderate additions to their tax

and in part because of my interest in recognizing that I think the cap is still low on that worth and part of that as I've explained in the past, some people do choose in their retirement to have their retirement come to them in an invectable portion that they still own but they could only live off of that investment from the rest of their lives and so enabling the cap to be live entire would serve those people who choose that.

which is why I lean towards C, not necessarily capping at the average tax bill but capping somewhere where we look at that long tail and we say, wait a minute, that's not what this is intended to do.

That said, this data on this slide is different than what I might have expected and so I recognize that this is highly impactful for some people.

I don't know how many because of the fact that they have such large tax bills

due to the value of their property, but it will lead to even though they have very little in terms of income or net worth.

Does that not mean a person?

Because that seems like that would have removed some of the consideration about trusts and stuff.

But still, it's the person who would get the benefit.

What I was suggesting is that it could be possible for a very clever, very wealthy person to hide their assets the way that they're not there.

They're not hiding their home, they're hiding their other assets.

Absolutely.

So that's hard.

Okay, let me just, I guess that was the only extra question that came up.

I'm still struggling, frankly, and I would love to hear, and I don't know how to achieve this with the timeline that we have,

from some people about what the real-life circumstances would be.

The way that I understand how these have been presented, in December we made some brief comments about people attempting to gain it, but the process is such that they'd have to be really committed just because the steps they have to go through to qualify for the program

is probably precluding some people that actually need the program, not alone somebody trying to gain the program.

But I'm satisfied with the controls in there.

Option A and option B to me are very similar.

Option B is saying that in the future, you may have a tax bill that goes up.

But at this point, if we're going to revisit it next year, I'd be fine with option A. That increases the piece for the inflation.

It gives us another year of data before deciding if the cap is necessary based on budgetary concerns or liability down the road.

I also do just want to slightly make a note on what I was saying.

I felt that B was a necessity, but I actually think as a policy issue, I would err slightly towards C for some of the reasons that Chair Andrew, it seems like it actually allows for a greater

Acommodation of the things that people who are struggling actually need to survive rather than at the cost of potentially ruling out that they're creating some tax liability on some of the most expensive estates.

So I do think it seems to allow for just a little bit more of what we're actually trying to accomplish with the program.

I would go Bea because my first choice is, and A is fine.

So I'm hearing a consensus for A with some interest in B, but that's something that could be revisited.

will be revisioned when we look at the balance sheets on the anchor another year.

And that's where we are at this point, I believe.

Now, today you were, I'm sorry to ask this, but today we're asking just for some direction when I'm having a final call.

Yeah, so its test approach can be to prepare a draft ordinance, say it's going to A. We will take the follow-ups.

We can provide it to the board in the meantime.

It'll be meeting the 25th, and that's the way it's the majority of the board.

They can publish a, you know, they can take action on A or B. But this is really near the universe of things that we consider.

Thank you.

I just wanted to ask, regarding what Supervisor Pruitt said, do we have mechanisms in place so someone has, there aren't an estate that they inherited, maybe worth, I don't know, $10, $20 million, but they're doing what Supervisor Pruitt said.

Do we have any mechanism?

Because obviously we're going to realize where you live,

That's obviously not a $150,000 place.

It's a $10 million place.

That is, I believe, option B, in a sense.

We already know that the highest person, the highest beneficiary is an $8,000 or roughly a million dollar

Max, assessed value.

That's what, yeah, my second question is, has this been an issue?

Currently, we have the data there.

I don't have the data readily available for historically what that has been.

Now, I will say that this program has grown pretty steadily about 8% a year until the board began expanding their relief in the two or three years, which suggests to me there wasn't someone who came in with a, you know, ends of thousands of dollars tax relief bill, because that probably would have jumped out in the data space.

Thank you.

Just to answer one question, that was actually the very first one from Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

There would be 45 people to the right at Orange Line.

There are 550 to the left of the Orange Line who are currently receiving.

Andy, before you go, the board had some good conversation on this.

Jennifer, do you have anything to add?

I'm not putting you on the spot, but you're in this every day.

Do you have anything to add that you didn't get a chance to say today because you're not in front of the board very often and today was an important day for the board.

I would just

went there to be, we have to make additional consideration in going with B and C. Because if you remember, we have those income thresholds there and where people land, that impacts the percentage of their relief.

So it's not just the conversation about B and C in terms of the caps, it's also a conversation about what percentage of relief are they getting to begin with.

Because not everyone is getting 100%.

And so some of the questions that you posed, as I was looking at them with Robert, we just need a little time to think that through because we are kind of, we're changing that dynamic.

And so the landscape of this will be modified and we've got to think through how that impacts because not everybody is just getting 100%.

I think sometimes we think that, but there's a lot of people in those other two, 50, that's 75% bracket.

Thank you for clarifying that.

And having to show the data, because of all those three choices of people, or that 100%, it's the easiest to get your head around.

Right.

And when you're looking, I'm sorry.

When you're looking at the line and you're thinking everybody to the right, not all of them are getting 100%.

Yes, that's correct.

So you just can't lose sight of that.

Thank you.

It's good.

Thank you to the board and thank you, Ms.

Bettini and Mr. Wilson for here.

As he gets ready, Mr. Chair, I'm not suggesting you take a break.

Let's go either way.

Good afternoon, board.

I'm David Puckett, Deputy Chief of Fire Rescue.

First, I'll provide a brief overview of how fire rescue services are provided.

Then we'll review the two unfunded requests that the board had traditional information on.

And I'll turn it back over to the board for discussion.

Fire Rescue divides the county into 11 districts based off our facility locations.

While we look at community risk and performance by district, I want to stress that all districts contribute to the overall success of the system.

No one station can address the needs, all emergencies in their district.

We have a total of 14 stations.

The six represented in blue on this map have 24-hour career staffing.

The six in green are volunteer stations for career staffing Monday from Friday, 6 a.m.

to 6 p.m.

And the two in orange are volunteer stations with no career staff.

Our performance evaluation is based on what's called a standard to cover.

It's one of the components required for accreditation is considered a best practice.

A third-party consultant completed our standards to cover and provided recommendations in 2018.

This resulted in the board adopting response time objectives for the county, an available area that's eight minutes to 90% of the time, and rural areas 21 minutes, 90% of the time.

Since 2018, we continue to use the various metrics included in the standards of cover to evaluate our performance and inform our five-year planning process.

The first request we'll discuss is the addition of a second 24-hour ambulance in the Route 29-Rio area.

The area red is what we call a Seminole District and is served by the Seminole Trail Volunteer Fire Department and ACFR's Burke Mar station.

This area includes route 29 from Forest Lakes to the city, east and West Ryall roads, and some adjacent areas such as portions of Barracks and Earleysville Road.

There are over 28,000 residents in this 21 square miles making it the most densely populated area we serve at over 1,300 people per square mile.

This area also includes over 7,500 people that are above the age of 65 along the high concentration of nursing homes, meaning many of the people over 65 have complicated medical conditions and require more frequent care.

The area continues to grow with large developments like Stonefield and Brook Hillsdale being built down.

On the left is a heat map of all the calls for service in the county.

Heat maps are useful to illustrate the relative call density with the hottest or busiest areas illustrated in yellow.

For reference, the Central District is circled in white.

Looking at that district specifically, there were over 5,000 calls for service in 2023, which counts for 29% of the county's call volume.

Currently, that area's staff have won ALS Amulance 24 hours a day.

The standards of cover recommended that a second Amulance be added to the area in 2018.

Now, let's dive a little deeper and look specifically at the Amulance demand in that area.

There were over 4,500 requests for an Amulance in 2023.

The Amulance assigned to that area ran over 3,000 calls, almost 1,000 more than the next business to Amulance.

The chart on the right shows the call volume of urban rain ambulances for comparison.

Due to the high demand, seminal ambulance was not available for 35% of their calls in their area.

So the board may be asking themselves who answered those additional 1600 calls.

Amulances from neighboring districts have to respond when the seminal ambulance is not available.

On the right are those same urban ambulances.

The red portion of the bar is how many times each of them responded to the seminal district.

while the blue portion is how many times they respond to calls in their own district.

As you can see, Holly Mead and Ivy are the most impacted with Ivy responding to almost as many calls and seminal as they did in their district.

Meanwhile, those two Amens were not available for 20% of the calls in their own district.

I should also point out that Amens outside the urban range also respond to seminal district, including occasionally Western Hamel Rescue Squad in Scottsville.

An area that is over capacity has a ripple effect across the rest of the system by pulling more and more resources into it.

So it's a very simple example.

Seminal ambulance gets a call shortly thereafter and another call is received in that area.

The IV ambulance responds into it and then a call is received in the IV area and Western Albemarle or Monticello has to respond to that area.

Before I review the information on this slide, I just want to note that all the multi-year charts I share with the board this afternoon use a 12-month rolling average.

So this removes a lot of the volatility or noise associated with monthly demand and provides a more accurate trend line for your consideration.

I'd also like to just briefly thank Brandon Ockhardt, our fire rescue analyst for helping pull this commission together.

This chart represents the monthly call demand for ambulance over the last four fiscal years.

It includes all incidents in the seminal district that require an ambulance regardless of where it came from.

As you can see, there's been an increase of approximately 100 calls a month since 2019, or a 29% increase.

I should also note that the Standards of Cover recommended a second ambulance based off the call demand in 2019.

If we compare response time performance to call demand, you'll see that response times represented by the balloon line have increased from 10 minutes to just over 11 minutes and correlate with the increasing demand.

Although it's difficult to predict future performance, I think it's safe to assume demand in this district will continue to increase along with population, and response times will follow if additional resources aren't available.

I would also expect to be in seeing response times increase in neighboring districts as those ambulance is compensated for the increasing demand.

It's equally difficult to predict the exact impact of adding a resource to an area, but to provide some insight for the board, we looked at the performance of the primary ambulance in that district.

This chart is very similar to what we just looked at, but it only includes calls that were answered by the ambulance station on Burt-Mart Drive.

As you can see, that unit has continued to absorb some of the growing demand, but it's beginning to flatten out.

The standards of cover suggest that 250 calls per month is approaching max capacity.

We were to add a second ambulance to that district.

It's reasonable to assume that they would split the 400 calls a month, each running approximately 200 calls.

So we project performance improvements in the Central District to be in this range, while increasing ambulance capacity in neighboring districts.

So this request includes nine FTEs and based off our hiring timeline would have a half-year impact in fiscal year 25.

We can use an existing ambulance so the one-time calls are limited to items such as turnout gear.

I also want to note that since these positions aren't specifically for prior suppression, they are not eligible for FEMA-safe or grant funding.

As we transition to the North Garden with the Board's permission, I'd like to take just a moment and recognize North Garden Volunteer Fire Company.

The Board has heard from Chief Stevens last week, and he's in the audience with us tonight.

I've had the pleasure of working with him and his team for a number of years.

They are some of the most community-minded people that I've ever met.

I want to acknowledge how difficult it can be for a volunteer fire department to be serving their community for over 50 years to put their hand up and say we need help.

The fact that their membership voted unanimously to request 24-hour staffing is a testament to their commitment to the community above all else.

I also want to apply their intentional planning efforts to meet the needs of the community.

A few years ago, with the Board's support, they completed a building renovation and expansion.

As part of that process, they ensured that when the community needed 24-hour staffing, they would have the facilities to support it.

As a result of that planning, no additional capital funds required for this request.

This request for staffing North Garden is a very different story than Seminole Ambulance, but I believe the board will find it compelling as well.

The area in red is North Garden District, includes the communities of North Garden, Cozoo, and Baseville, as well as 15 miles of route 29 South.

There are approximately 4,800 residents in this 111 square mile area.

In 2022, the board provided career staffing for North Garden money through Friday, 6 a.m.

to 6 p.m.

utilizing FEMA's safer grants, and then crawl staff to fire engine ambulance.

Volunteers are responsible for staffing nights and weekends, but don't provide ambulance services to staffing.

There were 695 calls in the North Garden District in 2023, although I want to note that units from North Garden Station responded to an additional 200 calls in other districts to support the overall system.

of the 695 calls in North Garden, 364 were during nights and weekend time frame, and the highest concentration calls were in the Route 29 Plank Road area.

The area is somewhat isolated with the next closest stations to the majority of that area coming from Ivey or Montchill.

This is the call-demand for the North Guard District.

The orange line at the top represents the total monthly call volume within the district, and then it's broken out by the applicable staffing periods below that.

There's a blue line representing Monday through Friday, 6, 6, and a brown line representing nights and weekends.

There's been a modest increase in call volume with the majority of that taking place during the Monday through Friday portion.

North Garden submitted a formal request to expand their career stack into 24 hours a day in July of 2023.

They expressed urgency around the request.

We do the two-year period to hire trained deployed firefighters, the decreasing membership, and the increasing age of their existing members.

There's also a desire to make the amends available to community nights and weekends.

In 2021, as North Garden saw a decrease in membership, they partnered with ACFR and CATE to conduct a targeted recruitment drive to North Garden area.

Improvement efforts included increased advertising, yard signs, flyers, mailers, but they saw a limited success.

During the market research, they learned there were only 1,500 people in the entire district, between the ages of 20 and 49.

I mean, there's a relatively small pool to come from.

This chart shows North Garden's membership activity.

Each operational member is listed along the bottom, with a bar indicating the number of calls they respond to in 2023.

Multiple members may have responded to the same call for service.

So for example, the bar on the far left represents member number one, who responded to 568 of the 842 incidents in Charlottes dispatch two.

As you can see, North Garden had a total of 21 operational members that ran at least one call on 2023, but a small number of members accounted for a disproportionate number of responses.

Top three members account for 53% of the responses, but the top five account for 70% of all responses.

Losing just one or two of these members could have a significant impact on the agency's ability to respond to emergencies in the community.

Now, if we look at member responses by age, you'll notice that the vast majority of responses come from those that are between the ages of 70 and 79.

And 63% of all responses are from members that are over 60 years old.

As the board considers this information, I would ask that you recall that it takes approximately two years from the time the budget is approved to tire training and avoid fire fighters.

Finally, I'd like to share with the board performance data in the North Garden District.

This chart is in minutes, with the blue line representing performance Monday through Friday, 6 a.m.

to 6 p.m., and the brown line representing nights and weekends.

The first area I'll draw the board's attention to is the right side of the chart.

In October of 2022, we had a career staff at UC at the corresponding reduction in response times.

This was largely driven by the addition of an ambulance in that area.

As we start to think about what impact this request will have on performance, it's easy to assume that we would see the same impact we saw when career staff was added, which reduced response times by approximately three minutes.

But that represents the best case scenario and assumes that nights and weekends performance remains the same.

Based on membership information I just shared, I think it's important to consider what performance might look like to membership declines.

Again, it's hard to predict how and when membership activity would decline, but in this case, we're going to get some historical performance to gain insight.

This area of increased response time was a result of two of North Guard's most active members having serious medical conditions at the same time.

Due to their inability to respond, response times increased dramatically.

I think it's safe to assume that this represents what performance in the area could look like if North Guard's membership declines.

So if we use that as a baseline, funding this request has a potential to improve response times about eight minutes.

This request includes seven FTEs, and based off our hiring timeline, again, we'll have a half-year impact on Fiscal Year 25.

These positions are eligible for FEMA's Safe Revenue Funding.

I'm showing the potential offsets for FEMA funding, but that would be dependent on being awarded the grant.

The application window is open now, and we typically receive notification in September.

Both of these require or request support goals of one in six of the board's strategic plan, and if funded in Fiscal Year 25, personnel will be deployed in the spring of 2026.

The board wants to consider a fourth safer grant.

We'll need to prepare and submit our application in the next few weeks.

However, the application does not commit the board.

If we're successful, you'll have the opportunity to accept or decline the grant at that time.

I've also included the combined budget impacts of these two requests with and without safer funding.

Thank you.

And that would be for someone else?

That's correct.

Yeah, Safer Grant is specifically for firefighters that are on suppression apparatus.

So yes, they are all cross-trained.

As an example, and when we added staffing in North Garden, that was FEMA-eligible.

Even though they crawl staff in ambulance and engine, those positions are at least 50% on a suppression piece.

Since we are asking for staff, 100% related to an ambulance, it wouldn't qualify.

even though they're firefighters.

That is correct.

Oh boy.

And then for North Garden, you're asking for seven FTEs.

Seven FTEs.

Yes.

I think it depends.

I think it would have almost an immediate impact of three minutes.

Our MOU with Charlottesville is limited to fire apparatus.

It does not include ambulances.

So the ambulances are specific or limited to mutual aid.

and I know that because I know they responded out where I was there, Charlottesville.

Yeah.

Anyway, I've done it for all my questions.

Well, we have a real conundrum.

Yes, ma'am.

And we've seen this coming for years.

It really is.

Unfortunately.

I guess my first question, because I think Bea Cover made it clear, so the semi-old piece is not eligible for filigrants.

North Garden is.

Is there a way you can quantify or help me understand if we, I guess we can go after the FEMA grants fairly inexpensively.

until we have to pick them up to put it simply, right?

So we can apply for those FEMA grants, recognizing that at some point we have to pick them up, but we have the ability to find that.

But if we did that, how would that actually impact Seminole?

Because I know

It's like the rolling dominance.

So help me understand bad earth.

So we could feel some impact in the Seminole District in the sense that nights and weekends, the Ivy Ambulance is the primary aimless down 29th and south into North Barton.

And so if a North Barton Ambulance was handling that call volume, it would increase some availability for that Ivy Ambulance that didn't respond into the Seminole District.

Yeah, but it would be small.

I think we'll write now.

I mean, I'm going to do some comparisons here that I don't think are exactly fair, but I just need to ask, and I think both these items, I can

So if it came to the point where we had to pick one over the other, it's like, well, then how do you prioritize?

So my line of questioning is kind of getting at that, but recognizing that I don't necessarily think these are fair ways to compare.

When you look at these two areas and what you're doing in contingency to serve them, so you had your contingency plan and Seminole, they get called out,

They're out on a call, another call from that place, and then the dominoes fall to serve the rest as calls come in.

Are you at greater concern that that contingency plan can fall apart or the contingency plan that's in place for North Garden as you backfill when you either don't have volunteers or you understand what I'm asking?

You guys have got contingency planning in place because of your current staffing and equipment issues at both areas.

That's a great question.

If you look at it strictly from a staffing perspective, the career staff that we have in place and there's amens around the urban ring, that's consistent and stable.

It's not going to go anywhere.

It's about whether you're outpacing demand.

I think what I'm hearing from North Garden

is a declining and aging membership is more of a question mark and how long they can sustain that level of response.

So I think that's more unpredictable.

And as you point out, sort of the, but there's a lower demand in that area than it is at some point.

Now, granted that I got your point on the call time and you had the two volunteers that were hired

High Responders to events, and that jumped them up.

If you could go to that slide, actually, just to show it.

I forget the number.

In the urban ring, in that call for service, the target response goals, eight minutes, we've never achieved it.

And even with adding in the ambulance and the staff, you're still shooting between nine and nine and a half and being a minute and a half over the response time.

Here, in the last few years, we've been under the response time.

Granted, it only takes a couple of volunteers to jump us up into where we're above the 21 minutes.

This is where I really think it's an unfair comparison, but those response time goals were put in place for a very specific reason.

And if we don't do the seminal, then we're basically saying that we're living with much higher response times while helping a place that is currently meeting the response time.

How am I really unfairly comparing that?

I mean, one's ambulance, the other is fire.

The only thing I add is the North Garden, Knights and Weekends currently has fire coverage.

The volunteer staff, the engines and tankers, but they don't staff the ambulance.

The blue line to the right of that hash line is when we had a career staff and an ambulance went into the station.

And so having an ambulance is largely what drove down that collective response time.

I mean, I say this, I don't, again, just dull it here, but I mean, I think three minutes in the rural area,

It seems to me to be, you know, how do you compare one minute in an urban ring to three minutes in the rural area?

It seems like three minutes in the rural area almost has a bigger impact than a minute in the urban area, but this probably even parts this to try to determine which one is where your dollars have better impact.

I mean, at the end of the day, if we're going to put resources here, we have to determine where we get the best impact from.

So this is what this data is here.

We don't have, we have the data here to inform us, but how the hell is it important to make that a part of our agency?

So I'm not, I've not arrived at that decision yet, but I'm still trying to understand if resources are available, where we put it, and how, how you all, are there other things in the line of thinking that I'm going that you would also consider?

I mean, I'm thinking a contingency plan,

I don't know how Seminole and the onboarding of Seminole helped because it was just a fire truck at Seminole that was supposed to help calls for area through the whole Urban Ring.

And those calls are specific to ambulances.

In Sentinel Trail, they don't provide transport service.

So it didn't really impact this particular piece.

Well, I'm really concerned about the Irving's calls in this

this when McCall goes out and other places having to go.

Because there's only so many, there's only so many occurrences you can respond to before you're in a dire place and you don't have anybody respond.

So what happens in that?

Is that when the mutual aid

Yes, it could be a number of things.

As you mentioned, it's entirely possible that a number of units in the urban ring could all be committed to halls at the same time.

And so if we see a spike in call volume, the battalion chiefs can move units closer to the urban ring.

Perhaps they move a roll unit closer.

There's been very few occurrences where we have requested an ambulance from Charlottesville.

probably, they probably requested more of us than we have them, but it's not infrequent that we've either moved units up closer to the urban area.

Occasionally, we have taken engine staffing in a station and dropped them over onto a reserve aimless at the station and surged up an ambulance to meet a specific demand.

And again, sometimes you can have very high census that you might go in for an hour and then it'll return back to a normal level.

Thank you.

I think that's all I have right now.

Thank you.

So I just want to put in a plug for, because I met last night with Chief Richardson and President Lawson, and they've said that many, many times the station for ambulance or fire engine is also coming in to Seminole, which means that

I agree with everything that everybody has said about the demand.

The raceway in North Garden is terrifying, and I think that's a very high-risk raceway for them and keeps them as busy, even though they may not have as many reds in their map.

There's still lots of deaths that go on right there in that particular intersection, so I guess the need that they have as well.

But this is, the dominoes is a perfect

metaphor to use here.

Because if one station isn't equipped or loses its volunteers, then it can't back fit.

As before 12 came along, the earliest fuel station was running more than 800 volts a day all by themselves a year.

So I've written some things out of order.

Sorry.

Somewhere in the legislative process, beginning of this year was

Funding, Study, JLARC, something about capacity for buyer rescue across the Commonwealth.

Is that live?

Are you hearing anything about that?

I heard some bills early on.

I don't know if anybody even made it out of the year thing.

I don't know if anybody else is aware.

I was hoping you had.

All right.

So that's another reason to be recognizing that for sure.

and that's it.

Are we supposed to?

Okay, good.

Okay, good.

Yeah, because I think the interrelation, interrelatedness of business is incredibly

really, really wonderful.

And just, I guess, the overall philosophy is keeping every element as strong as it can be.

It's, I guess, the lead-in.

And I know we're not doing CIP right now, so I'm not going to believe in this.

But what we're discussing for the operational people right now is the whole reason why I would be back when we get to CIP to talk about an $800,000 county commitment to imagine $800,000.

already existing bank account for the volunteers have raised.

In order to keep two full every night, they can run an ambulance and an engine or a tanker and a sample brush truck and an ambulance, all with the number of volunteers that they have now.

And they've worked for years and years and years to build this momentum and to have now, this is the third cohort of volunteers that are really strong and all released and ready to go and they place this in.

That's the reason I will be coming back again with this to try to accelerate this edition, the third, fourth edition over the many years for their company.

Thank you.

This is going to speak a lot to my own ignorance about how this works, but I know that there exist private ambulances in the world, and I'm not sure how they get integrated into this response kind of configuration.

Yeah, so there are a number of private ambulance services.

They do not participate in the 911 service outside of, say, mass casualty type stuff where we would activate those plans.

They have limited capacity as well, and I think we see that in some cases as the skilled nursing facilities have demands.

They can't get a, they don't work on a ready to respond

They work on a program where they schedule stuff.

And so they want to keep people busy as much time as they can.

That's how they are able to make money.

Meaning when you call them, they can't respond immediately.

They can schedule you three hours from now, four hours from now.

And so it's hard to fold them directly into the 911 system.

I actually appreciate you mentioning that as a casualty, because that was my next question.

I imagine you have specific, when you train and prepare a casualty response, you have specific interest areas that you train or

Yeah, so just to clarify, mass casualty is any time the number of patients overwhelms available resources.

And so that could, most people think of hundreds of patients, it could be 10 patients and that could overwhelm your resources pretty quickly.

And so

that could certainly take place with too many vans on Route 29 in an accident and require a lot of resources in that one area.

Additionally, we talked a good bit about the response times and the comparative response times between some urban fire rescues and specifically the North Garden fire rescue.

I'm curious if North Garden's performance, which is really impressive with their current staffing, is something that we also see in our other rural fire rescues and rescue squads.

Are we consistently meeting this 21-minute goal?

The response times in the rural area generally meet the response time goals.

Thank you.

If we could just look at slide 61 again.

I guess sort of the question point that I want to make is that it does seem to me that Seminole's ambulance service needs have been increasing steadily unless it's what this is about.

Whereas North Carolina

in that it's not a question of a significant increase in the calls, but it is a recognition that the volunteer system has a serious potential flaw that needs to be addressed.

And I just want to keep that in mind when we try to compare these, because they're kind of apples and oranges because of that.

They're both asking for, I think, really important.

for certain important needs.

I will ask about the safer grant capabilities.

We've been very successful.

Is there a sense of the strength of the application that we would be putting in, in this case, as compared to the strength of previous applications that have been successful?

How does that look?

Yeah, so we feel like it's a pretty compelling story.

It's hard to predict exactly all the criteria and how you would you would meet those.

The one thing I'll say is in past years we have packaged a couple items together to try to make sure we got as much as many points as we could as many areas.

But the justification we use for north garden staffing money through Friday daylight

is the same thing for nights and weekends.

We can certainly fold in some of this additional information about membership availability and age, and I think that will strengthen it further.

So there is room for this on the application?

Yes, yes, yes.

But my understanding is you're saying that Charlottesville probably asked us more than we asked them.

We haven't really, in this particular case, it's not an immediate obvious call.

It's whether it's agreed to.

Not really.

I'm just going to call out the elephant in the room, and that is that our volunteer force is declining.

I don't know if it's going to be five, 10, 15, 20, 30 years, but that is defining.

That's something that is a board, if you promise future boards to me, think about this is sooner or later it's going to be an all career fire department.

Hopefully that won't take place for a long time and who knows, maybe it never will.

But I do believe Chair

Andrews mentioned about the Safer Grant, and I do believe that's very compelling when you see nothing, any of us are between the 1779 age group, but I do believe that that is an issue.

But I do believe that's very compelling because that's very compelling.

And then you've got the 80 plus.

So anyway, I just think that's very

I'll just make one quick comment about this slide as well.

In addition to what it means from a workforce standpoint, again, I'll go back to the commitment to the community.

You've got a number of people that are 60 and plus and still very, very active in the community and running calls.

Thank you.

I wanted to make sure before we move on, that I'd call out the heroes.

But I just think that's compelling for the safer brand.

But certainly, you know, people in their 80s are very active.

It's a hard decision.

I did want to ask one other thing regarding seminal trail.

That would be the nine FTEs would be for 24-7.

Is that correct?

and the predominant number of calls take place when?

I did not include that in the slide.

I do have that information to the board though.

In 2023, the Monday through Friday call line was 183 per month on average.

The nights and weekends was 202.

So it's pretty close to 50-50.

So not saying what to do or anything, but I mean, your heaviness calls would necessitate four and a half.

So I think to answer your question, yes, we could scale this and do a Monday through Friday peak unit to relieve pressure during those periods.

but you would allocate that staff toward the peak.

The peak, I'm thinking, I don't want to do it, I can't do it.

So just for clarity, we're not making a decision today.

No, we're not.

And I guess my thought is this is another parking lot issue that we'll need to come back to, right?

No, I think I'll take a second on that question, Supervisor McKeel, to really explain that the topics that you've talked about today this for are topics that I would consider are significantly budget-impact.

whether it's four and a half FTEs for TDO or trying to look at a solution or a step-in solution or a step-up solution for Sentinel Trail or thirdly the North Garden which as you as you've heard today the staff is able during this application period I think that is over April 12th to make application now we're successful on three

and there are some costs associated with going after that application.

There's costs associated to FY25 and then costs associated with FY26, but it's certainly not anywhere close to what we would incur without that safer grant.

What we hope happens today before we run out of time would be to get some indication from the board on anything that you've heard today that you'd like for staff to work on between now and the 25th.

because we're going to come back on the 25th and you're going to sit your ceiling for your tax rate on the 27th.

But if there's an interest from the board to explore any of the items that we've talked about today as it relates to budget ramifications.

So to give some guidance, Mr. McKeel is talking about the list.

And Mr. Bowman is going to keep a list of things that the board is interested in.

So if you've got some initial guidance today on things you want us to look at, or if you say, no, not really.

We want to think about it until the 25th.

We understand that.

But as we move through the budget process, just to understand that it's a tight budget.

and the board knows that with six pages of unfunded issues that we were not able to fit into the budget.

And so the more leave time we've got to work on scenarios in 12 days between now and the 25th, it helps us to be able to think through this, even if it's just general direction and general interest.

So I hope that's not clouded your thinking about where we are.

I hope it's helpful.

And I'll look to the board members, but I do sense that there is another

to find and determine what the impact would be, to address some of these, whether that means shuffling other priorities or whether it requires changing the factory.

Even using a step up that you mentioned, if we do this,

Right.

And yeah, and to just piggyback on that, I would need to know what the, what would we need to do, yeah, because I think we're all looking at the, being the safety brand is great.

Well, then that leaves another hole at Seminole.

So what would we need to do in the way of, is there something we could cut that wouldn't create yet another hole in another place?

Or what would it look like if we were going to raise tax?

I mean, I don't know what it would take like taxes.

I haven't liked it.

or even if I can just jump in here, then maybe some things that could be deferred.

No, no, I hear you, I hear you.

I guess I'm looking for any and all options.

Is it appropriate to say that we would encourage staff to work on the safer grant?

I guess I would.

Don't wait on that.

That's kind of the wrong story.

We've got that definitely support.

Yeah, that's a helpful direction.

And thank you to the county executive for taking up the discussion very well.

It's actually the very next slide that we have as we prepare for March 25th and 27th.

Staff has got some time before the 25th and plan out what scenarios look like.

and I'm going to expect the board to share everything with their mind, but if there are other options out there, for example, a staff has to put a scenario together for North Guard and the sheriff, what else might there be out there that we need to think through those options?

And so the board is at this point, we've gone through our review of the general fund, including a really in-depth dive with a lot of data on a few topics today.

Board has gotten a lot of good direction for us.

We have had Q&A with the board, the unfunded list.

So this is just kind of a checkpoint, either before we take a break or start up capital, that any direction we can get now will help staff help the board on March 25th and then lead into the action on the 27th.

So I was kind of asked this question more or more simply with all that kind of text.

So I would like to do that.

I think that I've said everything.

And I would like to see available options.

Frankly, all available options.

Tour, fire, rescue, right?

That's more of my main interest.

Yes, correctly.

It's time to think about it.

for what we've heard just in the last couple of hours.

I would be very interested in the FEMA SAFE grant.

and what it would take, do we have the funding for that application or where we could get that money pretty quickly now because that seems like to me it's a no-brainer.

Just to say this back, I think staff's direction would be how do we identify what was not covered by the grant for that?

What do we look like in terms of options for Burk Mar, whether that be a phase in or a full approach?

What are the other impacts on the budget?

I think that's... May I just talk on something related to your question?

If the board comes to consensus right now regarding the safer grant, can we give that to you so that you don't have to come back on March 25th and say you want a safer grant?

I mean, if we feel strongly enough,

Yeah, so I think there's two actions.

One is, I think we are hearing from the board, you know, go forward with the grant.

That's great to hear.

I mean, I want to see it all about the, you know, at some point I have, we have to start making the decision of what does this cost and where does it come from.

So I'm not ready to limit hearing the fire options.

I mean, I get it, the safer grant, I hear phrases like no grain or all of that go, but eventually it costs us something.

It's just going after the safer stuff to the expense of things that we don't have that grant for that we're just putting it on.

getting to those positions that can't be used by the grant.

In some ways, it's like using one-time money in a lot of ways.

You've got to take the operational hit at some point.

So I'm not ready to go there yet.

I want to think on it a little bit after what I've seen today and then start looking at numbers and how we can get creative in it.

the safer grant amount for 100 grand doesn't get us very far with anything else.

But if we're going to step up and have to add revenue somewhere, then there may be a way once we look at what those dollars are, it could maybe get somewhere to both of them.

I don't know yet.

I mean, there are still things that I haven't talked about that are on our six pages of lists that we haven't had extra.

I don't need extra sessions on the fact that we're not adding a police position.

And I'm concerned about the DSS not getting some of those positions.

In the years past, it's up to me to come in and go, I think we need to do this and that 100 grand needs to come from here.

So I don't need your all's help to prep for that.

But these are bigger options that are more than just 100,000 or 200,000 piece.

So at that level, yeah, I still need to see the share of stuff up there.

I still need to see all the fire elements up there because that's to me is not moving money around.

If you had money to move around, you would have, for a million dollars, you would have had that in there already.

You know, the smaller items that are 100,000, 50,000, those, I know there's some flexibility that doesn't have huge consequences elsewhere.

But these big chunks, I think they all need to be on the table so that we can look at them.

just reminding myself because I couldn't find a note.

I know what a penny on the tax rate means for revenue.

That is a total of $2.9 million for one penny of the real estate tax revenue.

And then the question was asked and I couldn't find the answer for the

and

Yeah, because you got a question that will come in the next follow-up to the board.

Okay, so that's the history of what that fee's been, and then I'd be looking at that in the same way that I just asked about the other taxes, what kind of income that could bring in if that was not there.

That's all I have.

I think quite a few questions have been asked about the hearts team, perhaps expanding the hours of the day when that might be available.

So that's something that you may have already just on there.

And if there's a way to help us understand how we balance operational investments that are going to be annual to capital investments of the same amount, I mean, that's one of my versions forever, basically.

So that will help me.

Thank you.

Just to add, as part of our scenario to expand hearts, there were some questions with DSS.

Kind of to continue on Superdetic Analyst's point, I do just want to, we talk about what a pain on different tax rates are, but I feel like it's

and so on.

I'll say we'll take the follow-up on what the peak was a few years ago.

But at the board, we would take a step to go back from just where we are to the revenue from the prior, the adopted budget from last year.

Yes, and that would be split.

To go back a little bit further, it would be greater than those 13 cents.

And you may have information available

and Concernabout, and I think are impactful toward my community, towards the issues that I'm focusing on.

But I do just want to make sure those are sincerely stated.

They're not as big of boulders as what we're talking about today, but I am just as far as you're doing as far as budget scenario planning.

I am curious about the trail technician, whether or not that pushes back in a significant way the opening of sections of this

and so on.

I've said several times that I think the emergency aid fund is a deeply impactful for dollars spent, and I think the increase that was proposed, plus the additional FDE to administer it, is an incredibly modest cost for the kind of value that delivers.

I believe there's only a 40,000 that was unfunded in the requests for that.

And lastly, I know this is a moving target and something that our

and so on, but we know that there's a significant request for an acceleration of funds dispersed to Southwood to keep them solvent while they're convenient to roll their inventory.

That makes it very, and there's potentially increasing construction costs and sewage mitigation costs if they do not stay on schedule.

And I know that's probably going to come from the helving fund, but

It is not clear to me yet whether or not through reprioritizing it, it will be able to be met given additional obligations that we have, and just timing in time.

So if there is an additional amount that is going to spill past what we can do to reprioritize it with the housing fund in order to meet Southwood's request, that one, again,

all several weeks and months.

But if there is a amount over the amount allocated to the housing fund, then we cannot deal with reprioritizing other commitments.

I would like to know what that number is.

I would like that to be part of the conversation because I think even though it just feels like, oh, it's a timeline thing, it's just being southward is deploying slower.

Southward deploying slower means that they have to pay for additional mitigation for the existing properties.

And that may also have

So I think that needs to be really urgently flagged.

And I was just going to say, that might be, maybe we should carve out a little bit of time for those six pages and some of us, if we were ready to, I mean, because, yeah.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

Yeah, I just wanted to clarify that as you give us, maybe tax rating, whether the real property tax or whether the personal property tax, the, when you give us that amount, you also give us a split.

I think that's important to know what our, you know, arts play, what we would be able to use.

If I may, just because I want to make sure I'm clear on this, right, just to say that, just to revise Pruitt, there really is three items of the trail technician, the emergency aid fund, and then Southwood support were the three that I took in my note.

Make sure I didn't miss anything else.

Thank you.

It's all I'm going to say.

Yeah, so we have six pages.

Yes.

I think we have to all go back and look out at this.

and it is, I apologize for not taking a break earlier.

It's 5.36.

Can we forge ahead?

Is it, we can take a five.

Really, really five.

Look at the staff, actually, because you really have been on the seat for a whole time.

We will not be able to finish it.

I'm going to say let's see if we're going to be able to finish it.

We can tell us the time we're going to go.

Yeah, five minutes.

Recording stopped.

That's people.

We have much content to cover.

So my goal is to cover an overview.

We want to thank the school staff over here and then anything we don't cover, we can pick up on 25th for the rest of the time.

The good news is the board saw a lot of this information based on the information at the time on December 6th when we had joint work session with the school board around the CIP.

So this is really now the next iteration of how that has evolved.

So to spend some time

So it's been some time looking at the process back in the five-year plan and at that joint meeting.

We said staff would develop a recommended CIP when it's the following plan.

At first, we would take the starting point of the balanced fiscal year 24 to 28 CIP.

So years 25 and 28 are, we have at least a starting point to go over.

This is an important point because it also says, with that starting point, we're not looking so much to add projects in year one.

Most of the new projects tend to be in the outers.

Staff at number two would continue our just normal financial work to update assumptions.

The county did a bond issuance in the fall.

We now know the impact of that.

That's faking to our numbers.

On December 6th, there was a joint meeting with the school board.

When the school board was able to invoke boards, we were able to learn about the total context of the CIP.

The school board had an opportunity to tell the work they had been doing in their long-range space planning committee.

Their funding request and the board was able to engage with that.

From there, as we looked at revenues, we would then see staff prepare a starting point for the Board's deliberations of really using the strategic plan as that milestone.

This is another slide from the December 6 work session, which actually ended that on those next steps.

There are some revenue options that are available to the Board should they choose amendments to the CIP.

Some of the items in the CIP have already been incorporated.

We know the impact of the calendar year 24 reassessments.

There's some one-time funding that the school board is recommending to contribute to that.

But the last thing I want to take a moment on is an update from December, as the board may be aware, there is legislation in the General Assembly that would allow enabling authority if approved for localities to hold a referendum for sales tax of 1%.

1% sales tax in the county is in the range of $24 to $25 million, and that would be very substantial for school construction.

That is now for the governor to take action on and will

We'll see what happens and go from there.

So like we do in the operating budget, we take a look at our strategic plan, we weave in our obligations, our financial policies, and that leads us to a total five-year CIP.

The total is $335 million, $36 rounding up.

This is the revenue side of the CIP, but the first thing I need to point out that the board is aware of for the public or anyone else listening,

The first year of the CIP is the capital budget that is appropriated.

That is where the legal authority will be enabled.

Years two through five are the CIP.

We refer to them as the out years.

Those become the basis of planning, but they are not legally authorized to be spent.

And what we typically see is projects will work their ways through the CIP.

So for example, the Southern Elementary School construction has been in the CIP.

The construction is now going to be part of the fiscal year budget 25.

to the board appropriate that as recommended.

So in the revenues, we see most of the CIPs from planned borrow proceeds.

This will be for our friends.

Just continue the example of the Southern Illinois School because of the type of expense, the long life cycle, the nature of it.

It is eligible to borrow funds for that and pay that back over the next 20 years.

The next category of funding, about 28%, is cash equity.

This is the general fund transfer, any other one-time money that comes into the CIP.

I'm not going to talk about the small revenues in detail, because they tend to be assigned to projects.

For example, with the Darden-Tattle-Atlanticfield rebuild, the city is contributing funding to that.

The city can't take that funding and reprogram it for something to public safety.

It's tied to that project.

So looking at the expenditure side in summary, we have the public schools making up 62% of the CIP in the upcoming five years.

The largest county government portion is in community development, which is the transportation leveraging programs.

We'll talk about more of that on March 25th.

So I'm going to start rather than go by functional area on the previous slide, really talking about strategic goals.

So goal five education is what we're going to focus on today.

This is a slide from the county executive's presentation that shows the total school CIP of $207 million and the big projects in there with additional funding for high school center two in the first year, construction of the Southern feeder pattern elementary school in year one, followed by the northern field pattern in years three and four that would be designed three construction four.

and then funding in the all-years for renovations, maintenance and school bus replacement.

Let's focus on the big boxes and some dollars there.

System-wide renovations total is $14 million.

I know we have the other schools that are out there.

I'll share that in February, the school board provided a letter to the board based on their upcoming deliberations, prioritizing increased costs at high school center too, and the Southern Elementary School, those are addressed in this recommendation, which school board chair, they acknowledge on Monday.

This does not fully fund the school's capital requests, but it does reflect their priorities, where we coordinate closely with the school staff to understand where the school board's priorities are, and then allocate that funding down the list as we can go.

Let's take a higher look at these projects, which I'll be brief on because the board has seen these before.

This is the capacity projects for the southern and northern feeder pattern.

The slides reflect not only when these are appropriated, but the additional timing of when they would actually be open for operations for the southern feeder first and then the northern feeder and to follow.

System-wide Renovations is a broad term, but I want to clarify this is really work that is planned for Albemarle High School and Western Albemarle High School for a host of projects that are planned as one of the strategies as part of the overall high school project with Center 2 and modernizing the other facilities.

I just have one question.

I wanted to know whether or not the Northern feeder pattern school should that 1% pass?

And then I know the referendum wouldn't be till I think 26 or next year and then take effect till 26.

Would that move everything forward?

Give us the opportunity to move faster?

on the school because when you're projecting an opening of, what, 29, that's, it's a ball.

I just want to.

Rosalyn Schmidt, I'm the Chief Operating Officer.

I'll actually defer more towards the county financing and the gifts and doing more of the modeling of it.

I would assume increases in

Fundings would be able to accelerate projects, and that is one that has been deferred, basically, on the funding.

Certainly, I think there's two dynamics.

One, can we implement it, which I'll need to defer to the school staff?

I would expect you would find a way.

The second is really, we're working through now, if that bill was approved by the governor, what is the sequence of events for things to happen?

Sure.

So, looking at the calendar and what's in the bill of what the timing is, is there some timing components of when that week went into effect?

The earliest election that potentially could be on the referendum would be this November election.

That would be assuming if the governor was to pass.

Now, there's a lot of activity that we would need to collectively undertake.

to make that happen.

And it really depends on when the governor signs it.