Board of Supervisors Public Hearing on the CY 24 tax rate   4/24/2024

Good evening.

Welcome to this regular meeting of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors on this 24th of March, 6 p.m.

in Lane Auditorium in McIntyre Building.

Note that Supervisor is present here, Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District, Supervisor Ned Gallaway of the Rio District, Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District, Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna District, Supervisor Mike Pruitt of the Scottsville District, and myself, Jim Andrews, representing the Samuel Miller District, the Quorum is present.

We're also joined by our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, County Attorney, Mr. Steve Rosenberg, and our Clerk, Claudette Borgerson.

Also, let me please welcome Albemarle County Police Officers Present, Master Police Officer Paul Cohn and Officer Andy Munsey.

We thank you for your service here today and every day that you work you do throughout our county for our safety and security.

Board, our purpose here tonight is to consider three public hearings relating to our tax rates, the real property, personal property, and to consider a one-cent increase in the transient occupancy tax.

Thank you, Chair Andrews.

Good evening, Board.

My name is Jacob Sumner, Chief Financial Officer for the county.

And tonight, as you alluded to, we are going to be holding three different public hearings tonight.

One, we'll start with the 2024 real property tax rate.

And the second will be the personal property tax rate for 2024.

And then we'll wrap up with the public hearing on the transient occupancy tax.

We're going to begin with one presentation, however, that will cover all three tax rates before turning it back over to the Chair and to conduct the three public hearings.

There is no board action being requested today, as all tax-related actions will occur at the May 1st Board Meeting.

Just public hearings tonight.

We've shown this slide many times in our budget discussions this year and we're bringing it back to remind the board and the public that while we budget annually the decisions from one year affect what happens in the next year and decisions from last year are part of the budget story for this year.

The decisions the board makes for fiscal year 25 will be the driver for fiscal year 26.

Focusing on the general fund, as we do the introduction, the proposed general fund budget totals $438 million.

And while this evening's public hearings focus on tax rates and revenues, we want to highlight how the proposed increase in revenues impact the expenditure side of the budget.

In comparing to last year's budget, here are the major areas where we're recommending to allocate new revenues in FY25, including $13 million to schools per our funding formula, $9.3 million to workforce and customer service for salary adjustments, health care costs, and implementation of the community development system.

Additional funding is included in our partner agencies as well as transportation costs with MicroCat and Cat.

We are also investing $2.4 million in safety and well-being with operational costs for the general district court building, additional firefighters to support ambulance in the Burkmore area, and to address the 24-7 staffing needs at North Garden.

There is also an investment for an expansion of the heart team, as well as additional sheriff's deputy and police officer.

We're going to focus the majority of the time here on general fund revenues.

Again, the general fund revenues total $438 million.

on this slide are the four main tax rates set by the board and the proposed budget is balanced on these rates.

Tonight we'll hold public hearings on three of the four rates, the real property, personal property, and trade and disease occupancy.

The subject of the first public hearing is the real estate tax rate.

The current rate is $0.85.4 per $100 of assessed value.

Each penny on the tax rate equates to approximately $2.9 million in collectible tax revenue.

What that means is if the Board were to adopt a tax rate one penny lower than the advertised rate, then there would need to be a corresponding expenditure reduction of $2.9 million.

Another item to mention is that the advertised rate of 85.4 is a cap.

By advertising that rate, the Board can only adopt a rate at or below the amount advertised, but it cannot adopt a rate higher.

The real estate reassessment for 2024 is an increase of 4.07%, and as part of the legal advertisement, we have what is called a lowered or effective tax rate.

This effective rate is a tax rate we would need to set in order to maintain the same level of real estate revenue only due to the change in reassessments.

That is about three cents less or about 82.1 cents per $100 of assessed value.

The second public hearing will be on the personal property and machinery and tools tax rate.

The proposed tax rate is $3.96 per $100 of assessed value.

This is a 54-cent increase and will generate approximately $4.5 million.

Since this tax is a shared revenue, it is split between capital and debt, public schools, and county government operations.

The revenue split for the additional revenue generated is in the chart at the bottom of the screen.

The final public hearing tonight will be on the Transient Occupancy Tax, which is applied to overnight lodging stays at hotels and B&Bs.

The proposed budget includes a rate increase from 8% to 9% and will generate approximately $900,000 in additional revenue.

This tax is also a shared revenue and will go through the same funding allocation formula.

The next couple of slides will be a reminder of the adjustments we made to the budget since the county executive's recommended budget and the Board's proposed budget.

I'll review the technical updates and then address the CIP and General Fund budget highlights and highlight the areas updated by the proposed tax rates of the subject of tonight's public hearings.

On this slide, we have outlined the technical adjustments that staff have proposed through this point in the budget process.

Last week, as part of the proposed budget public hearing, I went over the details of the adjustments with the exception of one.

We have an updated technical adjustment regarding the Albemarle, Charlottesville Regional Jail.

As is common with other regional partners, after the county received initial estimates from ACRJ, their staff continued to refine their budget.

And due to some budget adjustments in the interim, the amount of the county contribution that was part of that budget was reduced by $114,000.

So we've included that as a technical update on this slide.

Also during last week's proposed budget hearing, we discussed the updates to the capital budget.

This slide outlines the total changes for FY25, including the removal of the funding for the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank, and the RSWA budget adjustment, related to the annual contribution to the Ivy Landfill Remediation Project.

We are also including the movement of Earleysville and Simon and Old Terrell Volunteer Fire Station's Community Capital Request from FY27 to FY25.

Lastly, on the slide, I will bring the board's attention to the $538,000 figure on the revenue section.

You will see this on the next slide, but this is the amount of funding allocated via the shared revenue funding formula to the capital budget.

Those are all based on the proposed tax rates that we'll be discussing tonight.

This is more of a summary slide, so I'm going to take just a minute with this one.

The revenue generated from the proposed tax rate increase for personal property and transient occupancy total $5.4 million.

Based on the shared revenue funding formula, 2.9 of this is allocated to the public schools, and 538,000 is allocated to capital and debt.

This is the amount that I referenced on the previous slide.

The remaining 1.9 is allocated to local government expenditures.

And with this 1.9, we are looking to fund additional firefighters to support an ambulance in the Burkmaar area and to address the 24-7 staffing needs at North Garden.

There is the investment for the expansion of the heart team and also the additional sheriff deputy and a police officer.

We've also included operational efficiencies and reserve for contingencies are also adjusted to balance out the local government expenditures.

Board, you've seen this slide before, but I want to bring it back one more time because I wanted to highlight one thing on the slide.

The 19 FTEs added to the budget for the North Garden support, the Burkmore Ambulance, and the Hart Team expansion is only for the half of the fiscal year.

This is due to the timing for when we hire the staffing and the required training for these teams.

Since the FY25 funding is only a partial year, it is important that we acknowledge the full-year costs of these positions in FY26.

The ongoing costs increase from $800,000 in FY25 to $2 million in FY26.

And while there is $830,000 identified as one-time reserve for contingencies in FY25, we are committing to ongoing service efficiencies of $250,000 in FY25 and increasing to $500,000 in FY26 to balance out these ongoing costs.

Jacob, thank you very much.

And members of the board, I'll be brief because I'm sure there are questions for staff.

And then I know we have three public hearings.

Board, I've grown to like this slide.

This is a slide that we've used at all seven of our town halls.

It's a slide that we've used every step of the way in the budget process, every work session we've talked about, and it gets clean and it looks over a three-year period.

And what I want to take a minute board and remind the board of is the FY24 work that we did.

I don't know that I've done an adequate job of really talking about that yellow box at the bottom that says $4.9 million.

If the Board will remember last year in fiscal year 24, we artificially balanced creating a $4.9 million capacity

through the artificial lowering.

And we took $4.9 million of ongoing money and we put it into the capital fund.

And that helped us with our capital debt and our pay for capital projects.

But really, what it did more than anything else, and I want to remind the board that that $4.9, let's just say $5 million, it's a split.

It was $3 million from schools and $2 million for local government.

and it took some heavy lifting to pull that apart and say, let's stop short and let's not spend all of our ongoing revenue because we were looking at fiscal year 25

and we were talking last year about our obligations, obligations that we're going to be required to pay for in fiscal year 25.

In addition to that board, we also had the advantage of having a two-year relationship with Virginia Tech and with Dr. Cheryl Bailey and she had come for two years in a row and had said, folks, I believe we're going to see a slight downturn in the growth in your economy.

and it didn't happen quickly but it happened over about a 12 to 18 month period and so that landed us into 25.

The yellow box is a five million dollar head start that we had on this year's budget.

3 million to schools, 2 million to local government, because we were able to pull that out of the capital and start the process this year ahead by $5 million.

Thank you schools for following our example and our recommendation, and I think the schools have had a very difficult and challenging budget process, and so they've needed that.

Board, if we take that same concept and we look at fiscal year 26, the weight of the obligations in fiscal year 26 are more than they are in fiscal year 25.

And we have seen the assessment and the revenue growth go back to what we see in more normal times.

Dr. Bailey and her team will be back in the fall.

and I would urge the Board that as you look at your fund balances, your contingencies and where we are right now, let's see if we can manufacture another capacity level that we're going to need in 26.

You have identified revenue associated with the tax rate considerations for the public safety package.

You've done that.

and if you're looking at additional revenue, I would urge you to be cautious with that and just be mindful for additional things over and above what you've discussed.

And just please keep in the back of your mind the obligations that we know we're going to be into in fiscal year 26.

The final thing that I would point for the Board's consideration is that we don't have a state budget passed yet.

There's continued uncertainty there.

We continue to have our fingers crossed that they're going to do good work in Richmond for both local government, schools, and our communities in that city and county.

I have put a very modest middle of next year compensation amount set aside for my staff for us to work through, and in the fall we're going to work through compensation considerations.

And so there's more to come on that.

We're going to learn more about the safer grant in the fall, and then that's going to work its way into fiscal year 26 and 27 obligations.

and so I would urge you just to consider the strategy that we did last year and at least think through that as it relates to your FY26 considerations.

That's really all I had.

I'll be happy to answer any questions, but I know you've probably got a lot of other questions for Jacob and Ryan and the team, but I appreciate your consideration for these thoughts.

Thank you.

Thank you both for an excellent comment presentation.

The slide you were just on that looks towards fiscal year 26th is compensation for staff over and beyond what your mid-year piece is that considered under the strategic priorities, is that in the mix of what your

about the markets that are around us.

And so we're trying to figure out, as these settle in and as local governments move beyond these organization-wide studies, what does it mean for the tempo, the cadence of annual rate increases for employees that are in these pay plans?

And so Jacob, Christie and the team are working through that.

Christie, I'm not putting you on the spot, but did I answer that to your satisfaction or do you have anything to add?

and Supervisor Gallaway.

Yeah, I mean, we did our own compensation study.

We went into last year's not just strategic plan but budget time saying getting us not just caught up or some percent of the market, but getting us to market was important.

So I'm of the mind that I'd like to be ahead of the market.

I don't want to be at market or 90% of the market.

So I'm just calling that out.

A lot of things can be lost in the word strategic priorities, but that was one that we definitely focused on and is going to take continued effort from the board and future budgets to keep us where we need to be.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

I have no questions at this time.

Supervisor McKeel.

I have no questions right now.

Thank you.

So this 4.9 million yellow box has not been established anywhere in the budget yet.

Or has it?

So that was ongoing revenues.

I would say we've conducted a very similar exercise, although we've titled it differently.

So we didn't move it into capital, but you'll see we have the reserve for contingencies amount.

as I'll go.

A vast majority of those contingencies are one time.

So the 831 is one time.

All right.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

Yes, if you could go to slide 15, please.

I guess this would be more for the general audience if they're listening, but just a point of explanation

to our community.

I'm going to give an initial response.

We do have our deputy chief, David Puck, in the audience, and David, I'll make eye contact with you if you have anything to add.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley, I think what you're asking for is what drove, what's the data that drove us?

to consider additional staffing at North Garden.

And during the budget work sessions this year, we did hear from the North Garden Volunteer Fire Department, and we had some interesting data that was provided to us where it showed in the aging process of the Volunteer Fire Department.

Of course, it looked at the total number of volunteers, it looked at the total number of calls.

And there is a correlation in that department with

Bontier members over the age of 70 responding to a very high number of calls over a one-year period and I think in a very diplomatic and collaborative way that they were communicating with us that this is not a sustainable model

and so on.

and we were able, with Mr. Puckett and their team, to put together a strategy where we could go after another safer grant.

We've been successful.

This board is fully aware over several years of several safer grants and what that allows the local government to do, if we're successful and we'll know about September, is to pull down federal money to seed additional staffing, in this case for North Garden

and then over the course of several years, that money slowly goes away and it's a slow shift from federal assistance to full local government support for those services.

And so we talked to the board about that and that's really what we're looking at.

That's the uniqueness of that volunteer fire department.

And I think that's very important for everyone to know because we, for frankly, decades, we've relied upon our volunteer fire department.

and things are changing and but we want to continue to support our volunteer fire department so maybe this is a way of doing it where people can still volunteers can still stay involved but they've got the support that they need because we know how how precious a commodity our volunteer firefighters are for our community.

The next one I just like briefly because I we all understand about getting additional shares of police and everything

What we've looked at, that is a team and we've had some amazing performance data that in a six to nine month period of this concept being operationalized, and this is a concept that includes a police officer, a firefighter, and a Department of Social Services social worker.

This is an interdisciplinary team that is on call, ready to take calls that are taken through the Emergency Communication Center.

where the type of call and the problems that are being identified, it's identified that it could be a distress call and it could be specifically around mental health.

And so this team has been in effect, they've been in the field,

and over the six to nine month period we've seen amazing statistics on their work in the field, not just in getting the person what they need but also freeing up police and firefighters in the field to be doing other things, the more normal 9-1-1 tempo of calls.

And so what our board considered was basically taking that team and creating a second team.

and it's going to give us a significant amount of more coverage.

It's going to give us the ability to continue to attack this problem that we see in our community.

Ms.

and I think that's something that this board undertook and is something very special.

I don't know how unique we are, but we may be unique in the country, I don't know, but this not only supports our police and fire, but it addresses the needs of those with mental health issues also.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

And I have no questions.

I may have a comment on the slides afterwards.

But at this point, Board, I believe we can open the public hearing.

So we are having three public hearings.

The first is related to the real property tax rate

These are one for real, one for person.

Thank you.

Yeah, but I'm going to read them together.

All right.

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Good evening.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

and for all of your work, I'm sure you're glad to be at this point in the process and it's taken a lot of hours and thought and I appreciate all of your service.

This presentation was very informative to me.

I don't feel like I'm at all an expert in the budget, but I am a resident of the county.

I live at 1221 Swan Lake Drive.

I'm not sure of my Magisterial District because I'm a pretty recent move there.

I've lived in the county for about 12 years, but I believe I'm in the Samuel Miller District.

and I'm here to say that I support tax increases overall and that's because I support improved human services.

I am employed by the Legal Aid Justice Center and I'm also working currently with the Public Housing Association of Residents.

Through my job with Legal Aid, I talk with many, many low-income people and they are hurting.

I have done quite a bit of outreach over the last few months to apartment residents and talked on the phone with people, been in meetings with people.

There are so many folks who are paying way more than 50% of their income toward rent.

and I know a couple of years ago there were more federal funds for emergency assistance and those have dwindled.

I think a couple of years ago you all were funding around two million dollars toward emergency relief and now I believe it's down to about a hundred no I'm sorry don't actually have the figure in my head so I won't say it but it is much less than two million dollars.

Unfortunately the growth in

Brent Burden has dramatically increased because of the prices that are rising so exponentially in our community.

So I hope that you will look toward the future for how to invest in helping people avoid displacement and homelessness and help to improve family stability.

Thank you.

and the next speaker is signed up under the personal property.

And I wasn't sure Claudette indicated to me there was someone online for this particular public hearing, I thought.

That's why I was confused.

Thank you.

All right, so, all right, so this is still the real property tax, and this person signed up online.

So, Chris Bortz?

He is not in the Zoom meeting.

Okay.

Is he here present in person?

About chance?

No.

Okay.

Does anyone want to ask any additional questions before I close the public hearing?

Are you Mr. Boards?

We are going to have two more public hearings.

There's a sign-up sheet here.

Please sign up at the sheets.

I'm not hearing.

Okay.

Well, rather than moving on to the next public hearing and just run through the order again, was there any comments about the real property tax at this point?

I guess the comment I would make is I revisited the sheet that Mr. Lynch sent out to us about, you know, our neighborhoods and the property rate.

And what I started to notice were the significant increase in just town homes.

like there's still some neighborhoods that were over the average but there were neighborhoods that were below the average and some even decreased not much but I mean that some stabilization there but it was interesting to see how townhomes had jumped for some reason so that might be a follow-up someday for Mr. Lynch to learn a little bit more about that.

I don't believe I have much to add other than

Yeah, the assessments, the way that they have hit neighborhoods is very remarkable.

I know we're basically seeing the trailing edge hitting the town of Scottsville, which is why we've seen such dramatic jumps this year, when previously during the main spike that everyone else saw.

So it is important to remember how these affect our localities differently.

I'd also add for Ms.

Supervisor McKeel.

I don't have any comments on that.

Thank you.

I don't have any questions, but I will add on to Supervisor Gallaway to say in the Crozet area, the townhouses are being marketed almost like single-family homes.

And that's, I think, is happening all across the district as well, which is probably why those values are going up so fast.

And there are lots of people who want just that kind of living.

So the demand is very high.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

No questions.

Thank you.

Unless there are further comments, we'll open the public hearing related to the personal property tax rate, all right?

So this is now the public hearing relating to calendar year 2024 personal property tax.

And we have someone signed up.

We do not.

We do not.

It is the same individual.

Thank you.

Without further ado, I believe we can close the public hearing.

And this is the personal property tax, and I'll just run through the order if anyone wants to make any comments specific to this.

I have no comments.

Supervisor McKeel?

No comments.

Thank you.

No questions, but I am

I think very appreciative of the work that staff has done to suggest a balanced approach, keeping the decreases in value in line with the increases in this rate.

And my only comment earlier when I was looking at the slides, I think it was actually slide five, if we jump to it.

I noticed that with this breakdown in their budget, which has a slightly increased amount due to the fact that we're changing the personal property tax on the DOT, that public safety still represents 15 percent in it.

This has been updated, I know it has, and it shows that

Even this is actually a very small fraction.

One percent of our budget is 4.38 million, obviously, and this adds about a percent to the schools, but less than a percent, half a percent to the rest, and actually

If we look at the comparison of the numbers from before, the administration section actually went down.

Some of this is rounding, of course, at this level, but I want to applaud that this is a very finely tuned budget and the tax rates are built to make that work, so I very much appreciate that.

I'll open the public hearing relating to the consideration of adoption of an ordinance to amend County Code 7, Chapter 15, taxation related to Article 9, transient occupancy tax.

I will open the public hearing.

I didn't close it.

Sorry.

Close the previous public hearing and we'll move on to the transient occupancy tax and open the public hearing.

Do we have anyone signed up to speak?

We do not.

So no one signed up.

Okay.

I mean, this is the last opportunity for public comment at this meeting tonight.

Okay.

Well, Board, having, I guess, run through the order real quickly again.

Just a comment on this, and maybe Jeff might speak a little bit to it.

This is an attempt on our part to diversify our revenue stream, to try and move away from our real estate property tax.

And while it seems like

It hasn't made a huge, huge difference.

It is an important effort to try and have the folks that are coming into our community to visit as tourists, but are using our services and driving on our roads to help pay for that usage.

You've summarized that quite well.

And I'm continuing to be very interested in our daytime peak population growth.

Last week we talked to our ECC when this board recognized proclaiming ECC 9-1-1 telecommunicator

Month, we had several of the staff here from the ECC, and it was quite interesting to hear that they have to staff for peak demand.

And peak demand in Albemarle County is somewhere during the middle of the day.

And Mr. Saxton talked about the fact that a nighttime population, which is really your residential taxpayers that are sleeping in their beds at home, that he off the top of his head said 150,000 people population.

It's more than that, but it's not that much more.

And we're talking about Albemarle County and Charlottesville.

And he was looking at peak load demand in the middle of the day, running call volume that maybe as much as 100,000 population more than that.

And Ms.

Mallek, I believe, asked the question about

and your telecommunicator staff.

He's into the 60s.

And they will be outgrowing the infrastructure that they're in.

And we've got to put on the whiteboard plans for modernization expansion.

And that's a partnership with us, the City and UVA.

There's a number of those things in our community that exist today.

Whereas a destination community, you grow significantly from nighttime population to daytime population.

This TOT,

is earmarked for people that are coming and staying for short term stays in our hotels.

And that's part of being a destination community, the things that we have to offer in this community.

But we're just beginning really to study this and really think through what is that tax burden and how does that affect, you talked about the diversity, the mix.

Mr. Bowman,

and Jacob's team, they put some stats together for this board looking at the breakdown of that and we track that over a period of time and we're looking to try to see if we can lessen the burden on the residential property taxpayer especially during the day when that population increases and we can fill our infrastructure begin to sag

and it really stresses our ability for service delivery in some key areas and so that's something that we've got to continue to keep our eye on.

I want the board to know that we're looking at it and that we want to be able to provide you with good meaningful data across the community so that we can say you could inform

Thank you, Jeff, and it's interesting in my head the way I sort of think about it, and I don't think it's easy not for the public not to really recognize it, but we really have two groups.

We have folks that are coming into our community during the daytime because of jobs.

which is, and I'm not complaining, I'm just saying, it is a fact.

They're driving on our roads and using our emergency communications as needed, whatever, and then we have another group of folks that are tourists that are coming in and the same thing is happening.

So, in a way we're being hit, our infrastructure is being hit by two separate pockets.

This address is one, the TOD addresses the tourists,

and I know, and I bet everybody at this diocese stayed in a hotel.

and been absolutely surprised at the list of add-ons that you get if you go to a real touristy-focused community.

So I just appreciate staff looking at this through the lens.

I'm trying to move, at least diversify us and balance us out a little bit so that folks that live in apartments and own property in this community aren't taking the full front.

That we're balancing it a little bit.

Thank you.

No questions and again I appreciate this effort to diversify and hopefully also we will continue to make more progress getting some business revenue as well to help that 80, 20, 60, 40, however we can get there to again take pressure off the residential taxpayer.

Thank you.

I believe I closed this public hearing.

I'm sure I've done all of these correctly.

At this point, Board, we understand that we've held the public hearings, but we're deferring action until May 1st, at which time the Board will consider these rates.

I just appreciate the responsive of staff getting everything that we've asked questions for and the information to us in a timely manner so that we've got to pull it all together and make our final call next week.

No, I know I've been the squeaky wheel on many parts of the budget, but I think one thing I've not been a squeaky wheel on is our proposed revenue structure that we're looking at with these tax sources, and I do want to also extend my appreciation to staff for putting together a very thoughtful presentation, a very thoughtful just set of numbers for us to work with, frankly.

I know that the

The number that we seemingly pulled out of the air for personal property was actually very thoughtfully constructed, and I appreciate the work that went into finding that happy medium that I know we were all asking for.

And I also do appreciate, while I still have, I think, some fundamental philosophical disagreements, I do appreciate the additional explanation on the equities that are going to be bearing down on us in fiscal year 26 and the logic of keeping that reserve contingency alive.

I still have my disagreements with it, but I think I thought that was very well put and I appreciate it.

Just a quick comment I remember and Anne would remember because we were on the board together at the time, 10 years ago, 9 years ago, when we were having discussions about the tsunami that was coming with the retirements for the volunteer fire department and how we were over the next decade going to be moving from volunteers

to Paine.

that change in our fire staff and moderating it because it's a lot easier to take it in small chunks like you all have done by using the grants, recognizing that it's not free money, we eventually have to pay it back, right?

But to sort of let us move into that, to that, those new

Paine staff, gradually without having a real shock to our budget.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And continuing on in that vein, I want to give credit to David Chief Puckett as well as other fire staff as well for really working so hard over the last 10 years to build

and so on.

but it is still very vibrant and the millions of dollars in prevention of expense that these volunteers provide and the love of their community and the service that they provide as well is very much appreciated and I'm very grateful for this board supporting this year two stations and last year another station

to have some structural improvements in order to be able to improve that workability for the volunteers as well as for the paid staff who were there during the day.

Thank you.

I'm extremely pleased because when I came on the board back in 2020 there was a lot of angst between the fire department volunteers and a lot of things were changing and now we've seen all this come to

in a good way, frankly led by our staff, by our executive committee and our staff, and frankly, this board.

I mean, the decisions we've made have slowly taken us to a really, really good point where we're all working together.

We're not at odds.

We're all working together in this budget, I think, as exemplary of

what has been done, the fact that we have a good budget, we have a balanced budget, it's meeting our needs and I think that's very important for everyone to realize is that this budget is meeting the needs of the community which is what the board is focused on.

That's what we have done and I really commend you all and frankly my colleagues for thinking outside the box and how can we better serve the community

and be able to make sure that all of our dollars are well spent.

Someone, I was told recently, think about this, if you have the same amount of money and taxes coming in every year, how's that going to work out in the long run?

How are you going to give raises?

How are you going to get good people?

How are you going to increase things?

You can't.

But we're, I think, this board and staff, we're doing it in a thoughtful way to make sure we address the needs of the community, which is the most important thing.

Thank you.

Board, it's been a fairly quiet evening of our public hearings, but I just, again, we all know that we've had 13 hours of budget meetings before the hearings, probably up to 15 at least by now, seven public town halls, numerous emails from constituents, phone calls from constituents,

Stituents, and a lot of press and interviews and places where we've been able to get feedback from a lot of people so I really appreciate the fact that this process has been ongoing for many months now and I'm grateful that we got to this point and I think it's a tribute to the

and so on and so forth.

We are a very careful organization that at this point we're not surprised by anything.

We are finished with the business portion.

We now have an opportunity for the board to just report from matters not listed on the agenda.

MPO meeting this afternoon, but the long-range transportation plan is finally coming to close, but there's still chance for the public to make comment or put input in through May 21st.

You can go to the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission website.

I also encourage the other members of this board if you want to take a look at it.

It's in its basic final draft at this point.

and if you have any comments or questions, likewise can submit your feedback.

And then I just want to thank staff, thank the police department, thank the fire department for the tour today at the Public Safety Operations Center.

It was fantastic walking through there today.

I remember walking through, as I mentioned this morning,

The before picture, what it looked like once J.C.

Penny was out and before, even all the hair salon and things were not, a lot of the things were not cleared out of there yet.

But then to see the after today and what it's turned into was pretty phenomenal.

and loved hearing the stories of the efficiencies found from having centralized ops happening there and plus the more space and what that is yielding.

Thank you.

I have nothing at this time.

Yeah, the tour today was really wonderful.

And having some relief for the Fifth Street station, our station over in Fifth Street, it's just wonderful because I can remember, I was laughing today and I don't want to take too long, but I can remember when a picture of my car was in a local newspaper

and so on.

and that was almost a decade ago struggling to have the forensic unit and the police and the fire and rescue and all of those vehicles.

This is just a great facility to expand and to be able to move into as well as having a presence for fire department and the police in our population center, which is really nice for them.

They're not having to run back and forth so much and the facilities people have really just done a wonderful job with that.

with that facility.

So anyway, thank you.

Thank you.

My two cents on the tour this morning was ten years of work on the CIP to get there from the evidence garage section that was way back when Chief Sellers transitioning to Chief Lance to be able to get a better control of the vehicles that needed to be preserved for evidence collection, etc.

and made my heart saying to walk in the

Service Bay to see in person what Todd Richardson, the chief at Earleysville, was lauding Chip Walker, who's the operations manager for the fire department, about how great it was that we had the ability to up-fit the new brush trucks right here, because it was

very small percentage of time and much less money to do it here and there were apparently four trucks in process that would have we'd still be waiting for the first one to get in the queue someplace far away to get the work done.

It's just so much better and we've learned so much from the COVID transition about the supply chain things and how they've very successfully modified their operations to deal with the new reality.

of what it takes to get parts for things.

So it was just a great way to start the day.

I was so, so happy.

And we're so lucky to have a property owner who is so willing to work with us and to help us be very generous and see the importance of these public safety departments for our community.

In addition,

Ned mentioned the LRTP Long Range Transportation Plan.

The vision list is all the projects that we might like to have.

The constrain list is the things that we think will fit in the budget that we're given over the next 20 years.

So this is 2050 is the goal.

And so please do cast your eyes upon the draft a little bit and share with either us or directly to Christine through the survey thing.

and so on.

Thank you.

Monster Database, where you can learn about demographics and all different things and manipulate things.

And the second is the Virginia Hazard Mitigation Plan, which Sean Nelson said is one of his go-to things on his desk all the time.

And it's another interactive resource, and we can learn.

And there's a lot of background in there, as I was looking at it in between meetings.

That might be very interesting for everyone.

And the last thing is I've been working

Missing most of the meetings, but following along with the American Farmland Trust Advisory Committee.

Today I finally managed to get in the meeting for a change and get an update on the toolkit for development.

It's called Planning for Agriculture in Virginia.

and looking at lots of different ways to strengthen the success and the productivity of agriculture in all of its various sizes from the small truck gardens all the way up to the commodities and to forestry as well and balancing all the different needs of the competing needs of solar, etc.

and still be able to feed our population, which is really, really important.

So there will be a toolkit coming out sometime in the next year.

Stephen Burson, who's head of the VDACs under Department of Agriculture in Virginia, is our state person on the board and lots of counties represented who have agriculture coordinators or agriculture directors.

So it's been really fascinating to work with this different group of people and I look forward to

providing the toolkit draft to everybody to look at when it's ready.

They were able to build a brush truck in-house.

And then, so it's now at Stonyport Volunteer Fire Department, which, as you know, doesn't have as many calls as like Seminole Trail.

However, they're using their brush truck for all areas in Albemarle County.

So that's a good thing.

And lastly, at our CAC Monday night, we had a presentation by the RWSA.

Fascinating.

If you can get it at your CAC, I highly recommend it.

Learned so much about the water usage and everything.

They really did a good job, and they kept everybody captivated of the RWSA for that presentation at our CAC.

then board, we will adjourn to our next regular meeting on May 1st, 2024, 1 p.m.

in Lane Auditorium here.

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

Participation will include the opportunity to comment on those matters for which comments from the public will be received.