Board of Supervisors Joint Work Session with School Board   12/3/2025

Okay, thank you.

The brief announcement before I open the meeting is that we know they're filling up behind me.

They're also setting up to broadcast into Lane Auditorium, if anybody.

in that room instead, you should be able to see the whole meeting.

And I am pleased to call the order that's meeting the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors on the 3rd of December at 1 p.m.

here at 241 of McNair office building.

For the Board of Supervisors, we have President Mike Pruitt of the Scottsville District, Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District, Mr. Malcolm McKeel of the Chelsea District, Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna District, Supervisor Ned Gallaway of the Rivanna District,

We're also joined by our County Executive, Mr. Chuck Richardson.

Our County Attorney, Mr. Andy Perry, is in the room.

He doesn't have a seat yet.

and our clerk, Ms.

Claudette Borgerson.

We're also, of course, at the table joined by Mr. Andy Bowman, our Assistant Chief Financial Officer.

Briefly behind him we have Mr. Jacob Sumner, the Chief Financial Officer, and Jacob Malcolm, Chief of Budget.

Welcome everyone here.

Also let me please welcome the

Albemarle County Police Officer, President Jason, Sergeant Jason Freistadt, and Master Police Officer Steven McCall.

Thank you for your service today and every day.

This December 3rd joint meeting of the Illinois School Board is now in session.

Unlike Mr. Andrews, I will ask my colleagues to introduce themselves around the table, starting with Ms.

Hi, I'm Ellen Osborn from the Scottsville District.

Rebecca Berlin, White Hall District.

Thank you.

Oh, Heidi, Mom and Dad.

Anyone else in the audience planning?

Thank you.

I understand that we need separately to formally adopt the agenda for this work session.

Second.

Mr. Andrews?

Yes.

Mr. Gallaway?

Mr. President, follow Mr. President.

Yes.

Mr. Mallek?

Yes.

Yes.

Mr. Kiefer?

Yes.

Ms.

Lucas-Kirtley?

Hi.

And so now we'll start our joint work session, and I will turn this over for leadership here of Andy Bowman, assistant chief financial officer, and Mike Cozzale, the business director of budget planning.

Thank you to Chair Andrews, good afternoon to the Board of Supervisors and the School Board.

Thank you for the introduction.

I also want to thank Ms.

Kumazawa for all of her partnership and really just so many people in the back.

I know we're listening online to really put together this presentation, try and take really complex topics, make them simple, have creative strategy thinking, and all of the things that go into that year round.

I really appreciate whether we're talking about the capital budget, the Des Moines County Health Fund, just the partnership that we have between mine that goes through all the thinking year round.

And so just to begin the frame today as we dive into what is scheduled to be a three hour work session.

I'd often like to start with the Board of Supervisors framing everything in the context of the Board of Education Plan.

This is a plan that was adopted three years ago, this fall, and it includes six goals, one of which is education and learning.

Now, educational learning is one of six, and it's also, as the Board discusses, it is the largest component of the county's operating budget.

It is also the largest component of the county's debt service and capital budget.

And so this is a topic when the school board had their strategic plan and I'm sure they'll be part of the comments later.

But you're really stood around this.

The Board of Supervisors through October and November spent a lot of time discussing where are we in different areas, whether it's public safety in Goal 1 or the economic development as part of Goal 4.

But today is really going to be focused on Goal Prime.

And when I think about the capital budget, and this is really a forward-looking conversation today, and I think of the partnership and all of the good work and thought that comes from these teams, I thought, how do I try and encapsulate at least just one slide in a rear view of where we've been?

And so perhaps it's because I'm analytically minded, but I said I can make a chart to show that.

So if you all can bear with me, this will be the most complicated chart that I showed today.

So what I have here, oh and I'm sorry the animation didn't come in in this version, so bear with me.

What this shows is the county government and public school debt service for the last 10 years and also where it is projected to be based on the adopted CIP.

The public school debt service is the blue line for actual and then we turn to the red for the projected.

County government is the orange line for the actual and it is the yellow for the projected.

Now, it's tough to really describe all of the changes that happened in summary.

I have some that I'll walk through, but to have such a change going from debt service payments of roughly $12 to $13 million and roughly $6 million, evolving to the out years of debt service payments of just under $30 million and just under $20 million, that takes a lot of intentionality, a lot of partnership, a lot of long-range multiple years plan.

So just to walk through some of the history of how this has taken place over time, just as we look ahead, just use your board or past boards and past staff to help shape what that trajectory looked like.

So I'll start kind of moving left to right in the top.

We can see that in fiscal year 18.

Now let me explain something about debt service charts as well because it looks almost like the ridges and peaks of a mountain.

So the way this works is when the county issues bonds every few years, you'll see a spike in the county's debt service as everything has to be repaid over the course of 20 years.

When you begin to see a downward slope in the mountain, that reflects years the county did not issue bonds but debt to be retired for expenses in the last 20 years.

So that's why we have a little bit of those, you know, kind of the mountain ridge outline.

So moving left to right on the blue line, there was in 2016, the school board requested, the board of supervisors supported, and the voters approved a general obligation bond record for a series of projects, some of which are listed on the slide.

After that happened, the Board of Supervisors, they issued bonds to implement those projects.

The debt service was paid and the Board of Supervisors raised the tax rate to support the debt service for that increase cost.

Moving ahead, we go into fiscal year 22, the next county's budget issuance, and this included improvements at Crozet, Red Hill, and Scottsville among the highlights.

This also includes a lot of the ongoing maintenance, school buses, all of those things.

I'm really just trying to highlight on those more notable items that we think of as the generational investments beyond what is current facilities.

Moving ahead to fiscal year 26, we see really the portions of the Southern Elementary School or the Mountain View Upper Elementary School, the ACE Academy or High School Center 2 and the renovation projects really begin to ramp up and that's going to continue in the current adopted CID right now.

To fiscal year 27 and 29, we begin to see that debt service climb as those expenses are put in, as the buildings are built and the services are being provided and those schools are open.

Now we'll talk more about that later.

This is a big increase, but it's all well within the county's financial management policies.

And this is just a line on a page.

It doesn't talk about any other partnership that could take place.

For example, when the schools were contemplating originally where to locate Center 2, they were looking at land on the southern end of the county in the development area.

The Board of Supervisors donated at no cost land to the school board to have the property for what is now Mountain View Elementary, or the upper Mountain View Elementary site.

So that's one example, too.

It's not always about dollars, but it's the partnership and strategies of how that can take place in the future.

We'll talk about that more later today.

Also, just for a note, not to ignore the county government line for the other five strategic goals, we really see that increase in fiscal year 24 and beyond.

That is primarily driven by the general district core building downtown that is now open.

the renovation of the historic courthouse building for the circuit court, the purchase of the Rivanna Futures property which we'll talk a little more about today, and the Biscuit Run Park and the partnership with the state.

So that's just in a nutshell, where have we been for those 15 years?

Take just a moment in the rear view, what that is, now beginning to look a little more forward about where we are headed.

So diving into the content today, I always like to ground ourselves on what is all the work that is taking place to get to this meeting, and what is the work that will continue from it.

As we can see here, the Board of Supervisors, Texas is in black, the school board is in blue, but we can see there's been a lot of long-range discussion to date, and this is going to continue.

This is not an action work session.

No action or votes were requested by staff to be taken today.

This conversation will start or continue, and it will be picked up in the budget process through February through April.

Thinking about the desired outcomes and agenda for today as a staff from the county government public school strategize, one outcome is to take some time to start a meeting and ensure that all elected officials have the understanding of the county's current financial landscape and what is in the adopted CIP.

I spent some time with the Board of Supervisors on November 19th and I'm going to hit the highlights of that presentation in just a few moments as well as review the adopted CIP.

Then we'll shuffle some seats and Dr. Haass, Dr. Acuff, Dr. Scubazal will go through a review of the capital request.

That was provided in advance of the materials and the schools will be in highlights and of course through that we would allow as much discussion from the boards as possible.

After that discussion it would be a good time for the break for the boards if they desire and then we'll come back and I'll do some presentation on strategies and next steps for where we could go today.

And of course board discussion which is the most important part of this work session.

So I'm going to go back and just hit the highlights from where we were first at the five-year financial plan on November 19th.

So with the Board of Supervisors, you all have seen every single one of these slides before on the 19th, so this will be a condensed version of what you saw.

So again, we're all grounded in the same information about where the county is and maybe heading.

So long-range financial planning is a regular process the board survives and conducts to really think through are the decisions being made today, can they be afforded tomorrow, and if not, what are the strategies in the long term that can begin to shape that trajectory very differently?

It's not only about just dollars, there could be policy levers, there could be other strategies that you pursue.

It does provide a framework for the budget, but it's one of those things, as we know, is that this is the best information we have today.

We'll have the best projection we have, and the exercise of planning will be more important to the plan itself, because we'll continue to adapt to new information, strategies, and how that plays out.

So a really good example of that is where are we in the current five-year plan?

And so I'll jump right to the bottom line that I shared with the Board of Supervisors that would show a, we can see here, it's kind of hard to see on this particular screen, it's a dark red line on top for projected expenditures.

This includes meeting the county's obligations and also initiatives that would move forward with the Board's strategic plan.

It also includes the blue line of projected revenue growth.

And it's okay to have a long-range plan that's out of balance.

The county is required to balance an annual budget, but it's okay to have a long-term plan that's out of balance.

Because that sets the stage of what can we do differently, what can be transformative to begin to shape those out years differently.

I'm also starting now because sometimes those efforts take a few years to play out.

Now I will clarify that the gap shown on this screen of just about a percent or only to three percent is just a county government gap.

In this revenue projection, in this expenditure projection, we would assume the transfers to capital and debt service and public schools would continue to be made by formula.

So to take a moment where we talk about its information changes and how we begin to pivot, I want to share a comparison to where this plan was this time last year for five years compared to where we are now.

So in the top line this time a year ago, in fiscal year 27, county government rejected a deficit of about 5% growing to 9 by fiscal year 30.

This is a very different picture.

I would say this five-year plan, as someone who's been doing this for several years, this is a very different five-year plan compared to one that I've seen before.

Other staff have shared that sentiment.

So now we see that the gap is about 1% and it really gets to 3% up about in fiscal year 28 and kind of levels off.

So there are two major changes driving that.

First of which is the Board of Supervisors increased the real estate tax rate in this calendar year.

That additional revenue goes all the way through the five years and funds some of those investments in public education, public safety, and housing that were contemplated in last year's five-year plan have been unfunded.

The second outcome is really the change in tax base and economic in the out years and I'll speak to a moment of what that looks like.

Again, just in summary, this takeaway in the five-year plan is we currently have a very different trend than we have in the past.

There is opportunity in the horizon in the out years, but in the short term, fiscal year 2007-28, we know in county government there will be some significant expenditure obligations as we pick up grants for firefighters, as we fulfill contractual obligations with our regional partners like the regional jail, the regional SPCA.

The school board will also have obligations as we open two schools next year.

and other operating pressures as well.

So there will be certainly challenges in the next couple of years to work from, but by that long-term planning and multi-year approach, there is opportunity that can be made on the horizon.

So to kind of understand a little more about that opportunity and what are the strategies to really shape that outcome a little bit differently in the county's revenue picture, I want to focus on something that the board has been, the board of supervisors has been very focused on this year.

What is the makeup of the county's tax base?

And so this is a chart that shows by category.

These are the state code categories and how properties are assessed.

We can see that from 2015 to 2025 the county's residential tax base increased from 61 percent to 68 percent.

That growth came with the trade-off for declines in the commercial and industrial sector as well as agricultural and you all can see the declines there.

So why this matters so much, because a dollar revenue is a dollar revenue wherever it comes from, but it's really about the expenditure side.

Because while all of these different categories can generate revenue, they're very different in what it costs to provide services in these categories.

So earlier this year, the board received a report for the cost of community services study.

And so it's a different breakdown in the analysis, though the words are the same in terms of residential, commercial, industrial, and agricultural.

So the general point remains the same.

I think we know this intrinsically, that when it comes to residential development, it costs more to serve those residents than it does for the revenue collected from those.

The opposite is true with commercial and industrial.

For every dollar of revenue collected, it costs on average 32 cents to provide those services.

So as we've seen over 10 years, as that has shifted from 61 to 68 percent, commercial decline from 15 percent to 11 percent, that really begins to shift some of the burden onto the residential tax base.

And so one of the reasons we know residential is the highest is that is where the school population comes from.

That is the largest part of the county budget and that's where students come from.

So this does not mean when it comes to rebalancing the county's tax base as a way to generate revenues.

It's not done to chase commercial and industrial in that regard.

There's a plan for that.

And earlier this year, as I feel like I'm giving highlights of the board's work in the last year, the board adopted an updated economic development strategic plan.

So there's a lot of focus when it comes to commercial, industrial, and even agricultural.

What does that look like?

Across the top there are three industries that are targeted, intelligence and national security, bio-life sciences, and agribusiness.

Now it's not just about attracting business as well, there are strategies in powering talent and competing for investment.

There's a lot of alignment when it comes to empowered talent because you may hear phrases such as workforce readiness, workforce development.

Another good synonym for that is education.

How do we have our future generations ready for this evolving world that we're going into?

And so I'll back up.

When we talk about that out here, a picture of the revenue is increasing.

The governor has been here twice this fall for the announcement of AstraZeneca located in the northern part of the county.

The continued development of Acton Scientific is more homegrown business.

And really the opportunities that will come with that, and even smaller examples, it's not a one-size-fits-all.

We have the Home Depot room development.

as the value of Fashion Square declined over time.

Now there's an anchor tenant there and we'll see in the future how does that begin to develop.

How does all of these other strategies begin to come together to change that tax base and provide something different.

What was once a plan a few years ago is now seeing more tangible results of that and that will continue in the future as this is built out.

So with that said in the revenues, there is some uncertainty we have to navigate in the short term because all of these changes are not going to happen overnight.

And so the county consults with a group from Virginia Tech to do an annual economic outlook report.

The big takeaways we had there is first in the national economy.

The economy is slowing down compared to prior years.

We are still seeing modest growth.

The economy has been very resilient nationally, but we also have this very big continued uncertainty with federal policy shifts that are occurring.

Second, is that Virginia's economy is cooling faster than our nation's economy, at least through the first half of fiscal year 25.

This caused staff's attention because historically, Virginia will outperform the nation in economic performance.

But because Virginia is so heavily leveraged in the federal government, and as that federal landscape changes, and about 42% of Virginia's economy is based out of Northern Virginia.

So as that is impacted, that has a disproportionate impact to the overall state.

So right now in the county's revenues, we don't see any impact of this directly, but what might that mean to future state budgets?

What might that mean to how that may indirectly impact localities?

We'll see as that plays out.

We'll continue to watch this closely, because right now, based on our current year performance, Albemarle County has got a strong economic base to work through.

And because of that, because of the board's approach and discipline to your planning, thinking ahead, and these strategies, that provides us a really good scope to head on through this uncertainty for the next few years.

So again, in summary, we're in a very different trend from where we were this time last year, prior years, for the five-year plan summary in the past.

We do have two very distinct periods in those five years.

With an evolving revenue outlook, revenues we would project to continue to grow, but it would not be at the rate that we have seen in the last few years.

and also that shifting landscape can impact expenditures as well.

And then in the longer term, the strategies continuing to play out to change that tax base will provide an ability to continue to meet obligations and more robustly advance strategic planning goals.

So with that, I'm going to shift gears and I'm going to provide a overview of what is currently in the appropriated capital budget and the adopted CIP.

What we'll hear from today from the schools, and I'll touch on this briefly for county government, is what is the request of those things ahead.

Just to get us grounded, there are some projects we're not talking about because they're under construction or will be soon.

So just taking a moment because terminology is important when you talk about the capital improvements plan.

We are referring to capital budget, that is the appropriated budget, legal authority is there, things are under contract, dirt is moving.

Those are things that are in the capital budget.

When we talk about the CIP, it's really referring to years two through five of the plan, where those projects are adopted.

Planning is underway to implement those when it becomes legally appropriate.

But what we tend to have is a project where those march forward one year at a time.

And new projects, when they're added, as we review the CIP, tend to come in in the later years of those five years.

Just as I talked about earlier in multi-year planning, we also have to plan for the multi-year impacts.

What does it cost to run the day-to-day impact when those good projects are constructed and then put into service?

What is the annual debt service?

Capital projects are generational investments, and so when it takes 20 years for that debt commitment, that is the one commitment we always have to be preparing for, as well as ensuring that we're operationally ready to implement those projects.

So at a very high level, we have the CIP revenues for the five years, a total of over $300 million.

The two big revenues that fund the majority of the CIP are cash equity, that comes from the formula allocations by the Board of Supervisors, also any one-time money that you need at the board or the school board that may come available that can be applied into the capital budget.

The second category is planned borrow proceeds, which is the majority of this, where again, generational investments, generational paybacks with 20-year debt service.

The county will strategize for those projects that are eligible to be borrowed for.

There are criteria that we would meet to then, what is the amount of bonds we would issue, and how do we manage that?

And so one of the ways we manage that is through the board's financial management policies on debt service.

So these are two charts that if the public is following the capital discussion before, they may look familiar.

That red line is the policy cap that the Board of Supervisors has set, and that's informed by national standards of what a triple-triple-A monetary agency would look like.

So currently, based on what's approved with the major projects like the courts, Rivanna Futures, the three schools, everything else in the CIP, the county has a CIP that is well within its margin of capacity.

The tightest area, for anyone who may be eagle-eyed, is actually on the area on the left, where there's about $72 million of capacity if we were to go to 9% on that policy.

I'm going to come back to that at the end of the presentation.

and talk a little more about that figure and strategies for the future.

But charts about debt are one thing, but it really gets back to the question of why do we have a triple AAA bond rating in the first place?

This is a common question that I may get.

I'll share that when I'm discussing with folks in the community or just others, when I talk about municipal bonds, sometimes I can lose someone's attention, so I'm going to frame you.

And I, with apologies to our CFO, my supervisor, but this is one where I want to put this in the realm of what does it mean if you're an individual with the equivalent triple AAA bond rating?

Albemarle, they had two ratings that retained in 2003, the third was attained in 2013.

There are only 54 of the 3,000 plus counties as of last month in the entire United States who had this.

Of those 54, 13 are in Virginia, so when we look at a lot of our peers in binge parking, they are just like us in their financial management.

So there are a lot of benefits to a moderated agency.

And so we think about this, if you're an individual, you have a perfect credit rating if you're in this situation.

And so what does this mean?

One element, and I think we can all understand this, is that future flexibility.

If you think of an individual, you think of the first thing they would need to do is pay your mortgage or pay your rent every month.

The lower that amount is relative to your overall income, the more flexibility you have to do everything else, whether it be for your quality of life, your basic needs, whatever that may look like.

and so again that future flexibility for localities where they may not have this rating and they have much higher debt load they don't have as much flexibility to do something different on a year-to-year basis because again debt is an important tool bonds are an important tool to move forward capital projects but it is a 20-year commitment

The second is when you have such a high credit rate agency, if you're this individual, you get the best possible rates in the market.

You can imagine a situation if you were an individual and you needed to do a home renovation project or maybe a major car repair.

What would happen if you needed to do that and immediately you had nine mechanics or nine contractors show up at your door to give you your quotes and what that would look like?

You're probably going to be in a pretty great situation, and that is exactly what happens when the counties use bonds.

In 2023, there were nine major financial institutions who were ready to purchase those bonds, and that allows the county to get the lowest possible interest rate as those bonds are paid back over 20 years.

And finally, in the case of an emergency, there was every major natural disaster or sudden shock where the county didn't need to borrow unexpectedly or short term.

The county would be able to access that cash and be able to do so in the best possible rate relative to

So that's just a little bit more of kind of some real world examples on how that AAA plays out whether you are a municipality or whether you are an individual with a very high credit rating.

So moving from the revenue side, now to the expenditure side, and what makes up the CIP.

As you can see, just like the operating budget, the public schools are a majority of this.

The current five years is 59%.

One of the major drivers that we talk about, and I know the public schools will have this in their presentation, are these ongoing programs in the CIP.

The Board has in its financial management policy is the expectation that the county will be doing responsible preventative maintenance on all of its assets to prevent major longer-term costs in the future.

So whether it's replacing school buses, ambulances, providing just basic repairs, utility work to all of these county and school owned properties, all of these things make up a significant portion and it's actually 56% of the adopted CIP.

So moving on beyond ongoing programs, just walking through the rest of the CIP, what are the highlights that we have?

Now begin with fiscal year 26.

These are the appropriate projects already underway, the public school projects.

We have notably on the right side the Mountain View Upper Elementary and the ACE Academy.

We also had at the start of the year ongoing balance as the schools continued to implement system-wide renovations and there was a small balance to complete the Mountain View expansion that was approved a few years ago.

Totally 90 million dollars was currently appropriated above ongoing programs underway, appropriated under contract.

I'm looking on the county government side and I'll say that I didn't put the dollar amounts on here because the words would have gotten pretty small.

What we have here, these color codes respond to the color codes on the six goals of the strategic plan.

The board has investments in transportation to leverage state funding to improve the transportation network.

There is a Northern Convenience Center.

This is really the same concept as one that opened at the southern part of the county.

One is currently under designed.

Part of the event in the future is that it's a debt service.

I don't mention all the past debt service because that is one of the larger projects.

I do call that out.

And as that property continues to evolve, we'll be continuing to analyze the best way to manage that debt service.

We have a few community nonprofit projects who have been requested, such as volunteer stations, in recent years.

The green category speaks to all of the parks improvements that are underway with district-run athletic fields and other areas.

In blue we have the workforce and customer service.

This really speaks to the core service modernization project, core system modernization project, where several years ago the county developed a multi-year strategy to phase in the replacement of its very old antiquated human resources system, followed by a community development system, followed by a financial management system.

All three of those are live.

These were concepts now that were just really in the early stages around fiscal year 18 and now we've been able to look back and see through multi-year planning, phasing in that work, having our staff ready, how that can be accomplished.

Workforce facility renovations is really speaking to how the county has managed space in the new office environment.

Then we also have the course construction that is ongoing and renovations to station 11, which is Monticello.

What's appropriate and underway on the next slide are those projects in fiscal year 27 to 30 that are already in the adopted CIP.

All else being equal, we would expect them to march forward in the next CIP as we of course update project cost, evaluate new conditions.

I'll pick out a few ones that are new.

There's a central library renovation.

This is the library right down the street off Market Street.

It is jointly owned 50-50 with the city of Charlottesville and a surprising fact is the majority of the circulation at that library is from the county, not the city.

A lot of that work is going to be about electrical systems, water and sewer systems, as well as some improvements they're seeking today.

The other areas that I'll add really are continuing from the year but obviously the northern feeder pattern that we'll hear more about from public schools soon is planned to be designed in 27 with construction dollars to follow in fiscal year 28.

So finally, I know we'll hear from the schools about their requested needs.

I'm not going to have a detailed review of what the county projects are, but I just wanted to acknowledge there are other needs on the horizon we're analyzing and thinking about, really with the timeline towards fiscal year 31 or perhaps beyond.

Right now the court's construction is underway, but that's not done.

Just like any major project, we're watching to make sure that budget is on track.

We'll continue as the fire rescue system has expanded to monitor the apparatus replacement cost and any other equipment that meets the capitol threshold.

We know we have a regional ECC, Emergency Communications Facility, that's a partnership with UVA and the city.

They have identified space needs and a horizon that we would need to plan for.

That would be quite a large multi-million dollar facility and regional planning that will take some time to put together.

and then Transportation, Rivanna Futures continues to be in the mind that we have.

Thank you, Mr. Cohen, that was very clear.

Good afternoon, Chair Andrews, Vice Chair McKeel, members of the board, Mr. Richardson, and county staff.

On behalf of the school board, Dr. Hawes, and the ACPS staff, we welcome this opportunity to discuss how we can best partner to build for the future of our students and the community.

We provided you with the detailed capital priorities and background information for all of the projects listed, and I hope you've had the opportunity to look at it.

The discussion of school capital investment is a discussion about building for the county's future.

Schools are central to every community.

They provide a sense of place where students and families connect and engage in shared life experiences.

Schools also reflect the quality and image of the communities that they serve and are critical drivers of economic development.

Speak to any family or business considering locating to a community and the quality of schools regularly ranks at or near the top of their list of priorities.

We are proud of the learning opportunities we create for our students and the notable progress we've made to ensure that all students have the chance to learn, dream, and grow.

into the future they imagine for themselves.

We especially want to thank you, the county, for prioritizing the funding for our new Mountain View Upper Elementary School and the Albemarle Career Exploration Center at LLC, both of which will open next fall and be wonderful learning environments for our students.

We've also begun planning for the opening of Northpoint Elementary School in the 29-30 school year.

These two elementary schools, plus the 35,000 square foot addition to Crozet Elementary School that opened three years ago, will make a significant dent toward expanding our elementary school capacity.

But we are still playing catch up on our capital construction needs.

There is no doubt that investment in school capital projects is essential for building a future for our students and our community.

As the Yale School of Economics notes, capital investment in schools improves test scores and raises housing values.

And so together we have an obligation to our constituents to provide school facilities that reflect the quality of life families and businesses expect in Albemarle County.

Our proposed CIP places an emphasis both on new construction to address critical capacity needs and essential renovations to modernize our aging schools.

Prioritizing the projects to allow us to plan and fund construction is critical.

To that end, the school board focused on three criteria.

One, improving school capacity.

two, modernizing school infrastructure, and three, creating greater accessibility for our students.

Using these criteria, new school construction emerges as a top priority as new schools improve school capacity, promote enhanced learning environments, immediately meet modern construction and equipment standards, and assure that accessibility is factored into the design of the buildings and amenities.

As you have seen, building a new high school is at the top of our list of priorities.

This may have surprised you considering the significant cost of the project, but I urge you to view this and our conversation today as an invitation to think beyond the bricks and mortar of a new traditional high school.

My hope is that we can collaborate and establish a vision for how a new high school can be a catalyst, not only for student success, but for economic development and community development initiatives.

How might a new high school and the Northern feeder pattern improve property values, attract a diverse workforce?

support our growing biotech and life sciences business sector.

Yes, a new high school certainly has a large price tag, but it is an investment in the future and together I believe we can make it a reality.

But today is about more than a new high school.

As we will discuss, our aging school facilities require modernization and improved accessibility.

Our urban ring elementary schools require particular attention and we must find a way to support our growing

We realize that there are a number of critical unmet needs that need to be addressed and we are grateful for your continued prioritization of the Albemarle County Public School System.

As you well know, the board of supervisors bears the task of determining the tax rate, identifying how we might fund the CIP, and budgeting for the ongoing debt services that these projects would require.

We are all county residents, however, and understand that there are other important needs beyond important public schools that the Board of Supervisors must consider.

From first responders to code enforcement, economic development to social services, recycling centers to park facilities, the needs of our community are immense.

However, public schools remain a central part of our joint obligation to the future of our county.

Like you, this school board has met with and lobbied our state representatives for the past two years to enact a one-cent sales tax dedicated to school capital projects.

And we have some confidence that it will pass in this legislative session.

That additional funding could be a game changer if ultimately adopted and would certainly ease the way forward.

However, the projects that we

We propose remaining priority regardless of the outcome of that legislation and we must identify a pathway forward.

I would close with that by reiterating that although today we are focused on capital improvements to support our public schools, this CIP ultimately reflects our collective commitment to building a strong future for our community, our students, and for all who will someday become part of the Albemarle County community.

All right, thanks a lot Dr. Acuff.

Good afternoon Chair Andrews and members of the Board of Supervisors, school board members, and colleagues.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here today and thank you as well for your ongoing partnership and oversight of the resources ACPS needs for our capital and operational work.

We truly value the collaboration between our two boards and with local government staff because it is this partnership that makes it possible for Albemarle County Public Schools to provide learning opportunities and environments where every student can grow and thrive.

On the opening slide, you'll see students from Mountain View Elementary School photographed during the topping out ceremony for Mountain View Upper Elementary this fall.

Moments like that remind us of why we do this work.

Today's presentation reflects the school board's priorities for ensuring that all students across every school and community have access to safe, modern and engaging learning space.

We appreciate your time, your questions and your commitment to strong public schools for Albemarle County's children.

Before we move into the full CIP overview, I want to pause on this slide and thank the Board of Supervisors again for the financial oversight and support that made these projects possible.

Because of that partnership, we are making steady progress on three major construction efforts.

Mountain View Upper Elementary, Ace Academy at Lambs Lane Campus, both of which are on track to open for students in the 2026-27 school year,

and the new second floor connector at Albemarle High School which will open in the second semester of the current school year.

It's really any day now.

These improvements directly strengthen learning environments and we are grateful for your continued investment in the success of our schools.

The school's CIP is where the priorities of both boards come together.

The school board is focused on student learning and the Board of Supervisors is focused on community development.

Research shows that school construction directly advances both goals.

Modern, well-designed facilities improve student performance, increase property values, and strengthen local economic growth.

One study published in the American Economic Journal, Applied Economics, found that students attending newly constructed schools not only make significant gains in test scores, but also attend about four more days per school year.

The same study showed a 6% increase in home prices in neighborhoods that received new school buildings.

These are investments that support students, families, and the long-term strength of Albemarle County.

Given the strong return on investment that school construction provides, both for students and for the broader community, it is important that our recommendations come from the thoughtful, data-driven process.

For ACPS, that process begins with the work of our Long Range Planning Advisory Committee, or LRPAC, as you'll often hear us say.

Their recommendations are grounded in five key pillars.

Creating high quality learning environments, ensuring modern, safe, and accessible buildings, providing more space for a growing county, sequencing projects strategically to reduce duplication in cost, and making equitable, needs-based investments across all schools.

Every project in our CIP aligns with at least one of these drivers and often several.

This helps ensure that our capital requests are not only responsive to student needs but also responsible and forward-looking for the entire Albemarle community.

Building on those five investment drivers, our Long Range Planning Advisory Committee brings an important level of independence and community representation to this work.

Their strength comes from relying on multi-year data and a deep foundation of master planning studies.

This allows them to look at the full picture, capacity pressures, aging buildings, instructional needs and fiscal realities, and develop recommendations that are strategic and grounded in operational reality.

We now have several major master plans that lay the groundwork for our future CIP.

The Lambs Lane Campus Master Plan, the 2023 High School Master Plan, the Middle School Master Plan, and the 2025 Elementary Feasibility Study.

Each of these studies gives us a long-term roadmap for how best to modernize learning spaces and to manage growth.

The Lands Lane plan, in particular, has moved forward meaningfully with the ACE Academy project, which contributes to bringing that vision to life.

This transparent, viewpoint-neutral approach ensures that our capital investments deliver long-term value for students, families, and the entire Albemarle community.

Let's just kind of soak up the slide a little bit.

Our long-range planning and facility study point to an important reality for Albemarle County.

Many of our school buildings are aging and a number are now outdated in terms of infrastructure and instructional design.

Over the past 50 years, we have opened only eight new schools, including just one in the last 25 years.

To meet enrollment needs during that time, our strategy has often been to expand and renovate existing buildings.

That approach has been possible because of the steady support of our community and the Board of Supervisors, support that is not always present in other parts of Virginia or across the nation.

The timeline on this slide helps put that history into perspective.

It shows how rarely we've had the opportunity to bring completely new facilities online and how much our system still relies on buildings constructed decades and almost a century ago.

The districts have helped us meet growth, but they cannot fully address modern infrastructure needs.

As we look toward opening ACE Academy at Lambs Lane Campus and Mountain View Upper Elementary in the fall of 2026, this timeline underscores the value of continued, thoughtful reinvestments so that our learning environments keep pace with the expectations of our families and the needs of today's students.

This is another slide just to kind of pause

Get a food floor.

As I shared, Albemarle County has long relied on additions and renovations to meet enrollment needs and extend the usefulness of older school buildings.

That strategy has been possible because of consistent support from our community and from the Board of Supervisors, and it has helped us make thoughtful use of our existing facilities.

This slide helps show how that approach plays out over time.

The weighted age reflects both the original construction date and the age of any additions.

Most of our additions are relatively small compared to the total square footage of a school.

So even when newer spaces are added, the overall weighted age still reflects the much older portions of the building.

Murray Elementary School is a good example.

The school was built in 1960.

So chronologically, it is about 65 years old.

But because Murray received an addition that updated a portion of the building, the weighted age calculation extends the life of the school by about 20 years, which is shown in the bubble on the left.

In the chart on the right, Murray appears closer to 50 years of weighted age rather than its actual 65.

The small addition pulls the average down, but most of the building still reflects its original 1960 construction.

This illustrates how additions increase capacity and help us stretch the life of older buildings, but they do not fully modernize the infrastructure.

As our population continues to grow, the additions alone will not keep pace with future instructional and capacity needs.

All of this helps explain the picture we're seeing as we look across the school district.

Our renovation efforts along with the construction of Mountain View Upper Elementary have gone a long way toward relieving several of our most immediate capacity pressures.

Those projects have helped stabilize enrollment in parts of the county that were experiencing the most significant overcrowding.

Even with those improvements, this slide shows several needs that still require attention.

We continue to face overcrowding in our urban ring elementary schools.

Where enrollment growth has been especially strong, all three of our comprehensive high schools are also above capacity, which creates challenges for scheduling, programming, and common spaces.

In addition, several of our lowest rated buildings still require modernization to support today's instructional expectations.

So while we've made meaningful progress, the remaining needs in the urban ring at the high school level and in our oldest facilities show why a long-term sequenced capital plan remains essential for the school division and for the county as a whole.

As we consider the remaining needs in our buildings, it's important to recognize that our capital work is not only about adding space or building new schools.

A significant portion of our CIP must also support the day-to-day functioning of our existing infrastructure.

Our aging equipment and building systems require consistent investment to maintain a modern, reliable living environment.

This includes everything from HVAC, roofing, and plumbing to technology, networks, buses, and essential maintenance and replacement cycles.

These ongoing programs are projected to cost nearly $25 million per year over the next five years.

While these investments don't always generate the same visibility as new construction, they are what allow our schools to operate safely, efficiently, and without interruption.

Sustaining these programs ensures that students and staff experience environments that support learning every day, not just in newly modernized spaces.

With both our ongoing maintenance needs and our long-term facility challenges in mind, the School Board has worked carefully with the Long-Range Planning Advisory Committee to establish clear priorities for future capital investments.

To guide that work, the Board focused on three critical areas that reflect both current pressures and the long-term needs of Albemarle County.

The increasing capacity where schools are overcrowded,

Modernizing equipment and facilities to support high quality instruction and improving accessibility so that every student can fully use and benefit from their school environment.

I think we can all agree

that these goals are essential as we plan for the next generation of students and for the county's continued growth.

They also provide framework for the specific project recommendations ahead.

With that foundation in place, the next slide outlines the projects that rise to the top of the school board's CIP request.

As these priorities in mind, this slide shows the full Capital Improvement Program request for building improvements and new construction.

These recommendations come from the Long Range Planning Advisory Committee and have been reviewed and prioritized by the school board as part of the approved

CIP plan.

The list reflects a system-wide look at where capacity needs are most urgent and where modernization will have the greatest instructional impact and where accessibility improvements are essential for students.

There's a great deal of detail behind each of these projects that is found in the school board's approved LRPAC Advisory Committee report, so you all have a copy of that.

And of course, our staff are always available through email to ask questions about the projects.

We promise to give you as much detail as you need.

For the purposes of today's presentation, I'm going to focus on the school board's top five priorities.

Those projects that offer the greatest combined impact on capacity, modernization, and accessibility.

These represent the most significant steps we can take to ensure that our facilities keep pace with the needs of Albemarle County students and families.

The first and highest priority project is the recommendation to build a new comprehensive high school.

This project has drawn significant interest because it offers the greatest impact across all three of the school board's criteria.

Capacity, modernization, and accessibility.

A new high school would immediately relieve overcrowding across our current high schools, provide a fully modern facility built to today's instructional and safety standards, and ensure full accessibility for all students.

It is also the most costly project for the CIT, so it's important to understand the context behind the recommendation and the long-term benefits it provides for the entire county.

Up to this point, renovating and expanding our aging facilities has been an effective strategy.

but that approach works best when population growth is relatively stable.

The pace of growth we're now seeing in Albemarle County requires us to look ahead with a different level of planning.

The graph here illustrates that shift.

Albemarle continues to be one of the faster growing counties in Virginia, significantly outpacing statewide growth.

Among the 27 Virginia localities with populations of over 80,000, Albemarle ranked ninth in growth.

This increase has made capacity a central issue for our schools.

Together, we've helped make Albemarle County a place where families and businesses want to be.

The quality of life and the opportunities here have contributed to this growth, and our school facilities must continue to evolve in step with the community we serve.

As we look ahead to long-term capacity, we rely on enrollment forecasts that are intentionally conservative.

There's a saying that goes, it's hard to make a prediction, especially about the future.

And that is certainly true in school planning.

Even though Albemarle County is projected for considerable population growth, our enrollment model assumes student growth at a slower rate than the overall population growth.

There are many unknowns.

Future housing starts, shifting market conditions, and the impact of major economic development projects like AstraZeneca.

Still, even using these conservative assumptions, we project steady enrollment increases across all levels of the division over the next decade.

Our projections are built through a very detailed process.

We use a cohort progression model, which is the industry standard and also used by Weldon Cooper.

This method examines historical enrollment patterns, transitions between grade levels, and variations unique to each school.

We also consider trends in homeschooling and private school enrollment.

In addition, we work closely with the county's community development team to model different housing scenarios, and we review outside studies to test our assumptions.

To give a sense of how our forecast compares, Weldon Cooper projects ACPS enrollment growth of 6-7% over 10 years, while PowerSchool, which is an application in our student database,

That model ranges from 8 to 18 percent.

Those differences reflect the various methodologies used, but the consistent theme is clear.

Albemarle County Public Schools should plan for steady, sustained growth.

These enrollment trends lead directly to one of our most pressing challenges.

All three of our comprehensive high schools are currently operating above capacity.

Even with careful scheduling and the use of every available instructional space and sometimes non-instructional space, the buildings are simply serving more students than they were designed to accommodate.

When ACE Academy at Landsland campus opens next year, it will provide some temporary relief primarily for Albemarle High School because of its proximity and the specialized programs offered there.

That added space will certainly help, but it will not resolve the overall capacity pressures we face across the division.

Nor will it meet the level of growth we anticipate in coming years.

This is why long-term planning for high school facilities, including the recommendation for a new comprehensive high school, remains such a high priority in the CIP.

A reasonable question we sometimes hear is, you've known high schools were getting crowded for years.

Why are you recommending a new high school now?

The fact is that we have been addressing capacity issues for decades.

Albemarle High School and Western Albemarle High School in particular have received multiple additions and modernizations over the years to add space and extend the useful life of those buildings.

That strategy worked when growth was moderate and it allowed us to be responsible stewards of our existing facilities.

But we have now reached a point where additions alone cannot meet the school board's capital priorities or align with local government's long-term vision for economic development.

When we look at comparable jurisdictions, those with a major university presence in the vicinity,

A similar total population and a similar student population, a fourth high school is the norm at this scale.

Our challenge is further compounded by Albemarle County's geographic size with such a large geographic footprint that becomes increasingly difficult to maintain attendance boundaries that ensure reasonable commute times for students and families.

Given the growth we are experiencing and the current condition and capacity of our high schools, there is no question that we must invest in our high school facilities to meet the needs of the community.

The question of how we fund a project of this magnitude is one that our two boards will need to engage with together and we welcome that conversation.

While ACPS consistently and adequately funds ongoing maintenance, many of our school buildings now require more comprehensive regulations.

Projects that go beyond routine repairs and allow us to update whole facilities in a more efficient and holistic way.

These renovations will not only increase capacity at the selected schools, they will also modernize aging infrastructure and improve accessibility in the buildings where major upgrades have historically been deferred.

The elementary schools identified here represent the highest priority for this type of investment.

Their selection is based on a comprehensive facilities conditions assessment conducted across all ACPS buildings.

For each of these schools, we also have detailed master planning recommendations that outline the specific improvements needed to bring the facilities up to concurrent instructional accessibility and operational standards.

These renovations will help

to ensure that our elementary schools provide safe, modern, and inclusive environments that can serve students and families for decades to come.

Just a moment to digest this one.

The blue outlines the capacity and then the purple is the current enrollment.

To identify capacity issues, we'd look to our current enrollment, which is anticipated to grow steadily over the next 10 years.

Our CIP request focuses on the group in the middle, which includes our urban ring schools, Agner, Greer, and Woodbrook, and our oldest schools, Broadus Wood, Murray, and Stony Point.

Even with the recommendation for a new comprehensive high school, it remains essential that we modernize our existing facilities and improve accessibility for all students.

The age and condition of Albemarle High School and Western Albemarle High School place them at the top of that list.

The division completed a high school facility planning study in 2017, which identified AHS and WHS as the highest priorities for renovation.

A follow-up master planning study in 2023 provided more detailed recommendations for improvements at both schools.

These projects focus on updating instructional spaces, improving circulation and accessibility, enhancing safety systems and creating collaborative areas for students and staff.

These modernization projects do not add new capacity as the board shifted that responsibility to the recommendation to the recommended new high school.

Instead, they ensure that our existing high schools, some of the county's oldest and largest buildings, can provide safe, accessible, and modern learning environments that support today's instructional needs.

Finally, the school board has prioritized the construction of a new preschool center to increase capacity in our schools where pre-K currently is held and to expand opportunities for those students who qualify for pre-K but where we do not have current capacity.

The LRPAC recommends continued study to analyze the alternatives for creating a central location for ACPS preschools in the urban ring.

Most ACPS elementary schools host these programs with participants living both in the respective elementary school district and participants from neighboring elementary school districts since the programs cannot be offered at all the elementary schools in the students' districts or zoning.

Centralizing these services will provide a higher level of service, greater preschool capacities and program efficiencies and quality control.

With that, thank you again for the opportunity to share the school board's capital priorities and the work that has informed this plan.

We remain committed to parting closely with the Board of Supervisors and with county staff to ensure that our school facilities support the needs of Albemarle's students, families, and growing community.

We appreciate your continued engagement, your questions, and your oversight of resources as we plan for the future of our schools.

Thanks.

Thank you very much.

And this is our practice.

We'll go through questions from the supervisors.

We'll turn it back to the school board as well.

Very well, very well presentation and a lot of information for us.

I did want to ask, you had mentioned that 67%, that's the growth over 10 years for your school.

This is not a figure that I have off the top of my head, the county's recent rate.

I was just wondering if the county population, so whole is increasing more than the 67% that they're anticipating for schools, if that has any correlation.

Regarding the preschool center, and I know my other supervisors, the other supervisors, but would you give me a little bit more detail because you're planning on one preschool center which would mean that, and that would be in the urban ring?

So, thank you very much.

We certainly, as a school system, we value early learning opportunities for students, and those programs help to close the achievement gap, which usually starts out at 18 months for students who do not attend preschool.

And one of the things that

County Executive, Mr. Richardson and I did several years ago was passed over the preschool funding and operations to the school system.

For many years it was forever.

The Virginia Preschool Initiative Grant was managed by local government and then we took it over to build it into our

instructional program.

So in the urban arena, we have several elementary schools in close proximity to one another that host preschool classrooms in those schools.

And what that does is it reduces the overall kindergarten through fifth grade capacity of the school.

It's a good thing because we're there at the school, but at the same time, it breaks down the capacity of the school.

The other thing it does is for those students in those particular areas that probably need the most access to quality preschool, it reduces the consistency of programming across the schools.

Since we have some opportunities to bring that all together with limited transportation time,

A shared vision that we have is to provide those preschool opportunities on one site.

It will then open up more capacity at the elementary schools in the urban ring and in that vicinity around it.

Yup, yes ma'am.

And do all the urban ring schools have a preschool program?

I mean, just to add to what Dr. Haas said, we predict 11 to 14 classrooms are being dedicated to pre-K in our existing urban rain schools.

Those schools, especially Woodbrooke now, is really coming up with capacity issues.

So it would eliminate the need to add on to three elementary schools at a minimum.

as they grow and concentrate the educational experience in one location.

We do have some land in a proffered in Brookhill which is reasonably approximate to those three schools and I think that could be a really great solution.

I mean, as you know, in all the planning that we do for schools, one of our chief hurdles is transportation.

I mean, we're just very vague.

So, could possibly Holly Meade or Mountain View Elementary schools, you know, participate in that?

Yes.

But, you know, Scottsville is, you know, or Crose, no.

I mean, the transportation time would not work.

That's all at this point.

Thank you.

Supervisor Provost.

In terms of student enrollment opening in the fall?

Yeah.

Well, it will be fully enrolled.

So it will be fully enrolled because

They'll be programming there that students will sign up for, but also because students can take classes that would normally be in the Albemarle High School facility in the center.

So we could have Algebra I classes there, and she'll let you do enrollment.

We're not going to fully enroll probably all of the programming classes because to do that you would need full enrollment.

So you might need to start up some classes.

Our minimum typically for new programming classes like back in the day when we first started offering AP Calculus would be eight students.

So you're not going to have a maximizing of the space.

We're expecting, what we've always been expecting is significant drawdown from Albemarle High School.

I think I remember saying it's about, what we've looked at in other localities that have opened up centers like this, it's about 10% of the students will move from other schools.

Now I think that's an underestimate because I'm very, I wouldn't even say optimistic.

So with Center 1 that is more of a recruitment issue.

The entering 9th grade and 10th grade for this year are fully enrolled as compared to last year and we're already enrolling students now for 9th grade next year.

Within two years it will be fully enrolled.

I worry sometimes we talk past each other in these things.

This is probably out of turn and probably a bad idea, but I'm just going to try and put the tiger on the table and yell at it for a second.

We do our operating budget planning on a three to five year basis, not even talking about obviously capital.

I generally don't try and question the wisdom of the school board's long-range planning on schools.

I'm really excited to be part of a county that is reinvesting in schools.

I'm very excited about the projects that we're moving forward on.

I've, when asked in the community, carried water a lot for the center model because the

The argument I've heard from school division has been consistently we are avoiding complex and challenging redistricting efforts by having a host of other challenges that might come with the comprehensive high school that I've heard.

As a southern district person, I hear people constantly asking for a new comprehensive high school.

I got really raked over the coals in an interview with a student asking for a new comprehensive high school.

I carried water for the school division's plan, which I said, well, what they're planning is a plan and a model that has a drawdown from all three districts at the same time.

And that's what they propose.

They are currently not moving forward with a comprehensive school model.

I've said that to many people in my community again and again.

and we built a capital plan designed to accommodate that as our strategy, as our shared strategy between the Board of Supervisors and the school division.

And now, having programmed those funds, we, it feels like at the 11th hour, are receiving a request from school divisions for what?

The public has been bullying us for a while.

And frankly, my peers on the board of supervisors will tell me this, right?

And will not shy away from it.

I am not someone who is gun-shy about really leaning in on risky financial policy.

I am probably the most comfortable with financial risk on the board.

And I say, I don't see a way to literally do it.

It does not seem like a possible proposal on the timeline that is presented.

Since I was first running for office, I have stood in front of my thousands of people.

There are hundreds of people, including my own church and my own priest.

And I've said that I am going to get $10 million for housing.

I'm going somewhere with this.

And that's a big ask.

This ask is 20 times bigger, but that's a big ask.

And I have owned that, and I have fought for it, and I have proposed a lot of cuts.

I have proposed we've taken a pickaxe to every reserve.

I've tried to take a pickaxe to every reserve to accomplish it.

I proposed cutting economic development.

I proposed not hiring an additional sheriff.

I proposed raising our personal property tax rate, which I did not have anyone raising their hand on.

I then have to go in front of those people every day and look my priest in the eye and say I failed again and this is what I'm going to try and do next time even after voting for all these cuts and it is hard not to look at what's coming to us today as a really significant failure in long-range planning and it's hard not to look at what's happening today as a

Not staring your priest in the eye and explaining what you tried to do to make it possible.

And so, I've shared this frustration with my peers on the board.

That doesn't accomplish a damn thing if I don't share it with y'all.

That is my frustration with receiving this.

If this is what the school division says they need, we will try and figure out what the hell we can do.

But I'm saying right now, if someone does not go and take a laundry list at the existing programming, I literally think what you're asking for is impossible.

And I don't say that with glee.

I don't say that because I like to not build schools.

I fucking love building schools.

I talked about it on the campaign trip.

Pardon my French.

But anyway, this is supposed to be questions, not random.

In my piece.

Was there a question in there?

No.

Yes.

So we will continue knowing that there will be a need to respond, of course.

Supermeasure kids.

Thank you, Mike.

I too share your concerns.

We're at the questioning and asking questions stage right now.

I have some thoughts about the need for more data and I think it's very serious more data if we're going to move forward with what your all's request is or if we're going to move forward at all with

position ourselves.

And I want to point out just a couple of things that I'm concerned about with data, and I think I do somewhere here.

I have a couple of questions.

When I look at K-12 Albemarle County, and I'm talking about Albemarle County public schools generally, you know, not one school.

In 2018, we all had 13,692 students.

In 2025, you have 13,644 students.

What I'm saying is in 2018 and 2045, and that is correct.

The landscape for everything has changed.

You can have some retail in this community if they're the same since COVID.

COVID has affected the landscape for everything.

School populations all over the state are down.

Birth rates are down.

Our community is changing.

We're seeing growth.

I do.

So I'll give a shout-out to Bart Savota, Deputy Director of Community Development at Goose Listing Head.

And a big thank you to Mr. Savota.

And according to Weldon Cooper, from their projections from 2020 to 2024, that group was 4.8% over that time.

Yes, and that's population growth in Albemarle County, not schools.

That's what you're addressing, right?

Because we have to keep those separate.

So, we know, and I think Andy and folks can comment on this if I'm incorrect, but we know the growth in Albemarle County, even over the last decade, has been the people point at 55 and 65 years of age.

That's why we have all these retirement communities now.

and we have all the facilities that are taking care of people as they're aging out and you need to go into places to take care of them in their old age.

So we have an older population in this community just like other communities do across the state and across the United States.

What I'm looking at is, to case point,

since the pandemic and certainly even prior to the pandemic.

Fewer people are having children.

In this community, we have a lot more homeschoolers coming out of the pandemic.

Homeschooling is much more popular than it used to be.

I think probably what happened was people stayed home with their kids and homeschooled and said, hey, I can do this.

I can do this.

And we have a lot of families

who have mothers who can afford to stay homeschooled.

We have some that can't, but we have a good number.

Let's face it, our community in general at this point is pretty wealthy.

So we have homeschoolers, we have economic development impacts that are creating

I'm going to come back to that in a minute, but I did have a couple of questions.

And I really want to say U.R.

All's report was wonderful.

It was beautifully done.

I appreciated the report.

I think your points were well taken and well noted.

And there isn't anyone at this table that doesn't support schools and education in this community.

And there's probably not anybody in the audience.

We all recognize the importance of education.

And I'm getting away from asking questions here, and I apologize.

I want to just add, I'm really supportive of the preschool center that you all are talking about.

I think that's a great idea.

And it really meets the needs.

So I'm really in favor of that particular.

So I don't have so much of a question about that.

I think Bea answered the questions that I might have had.

I agree with

Mike, and then I'm taken back because with the change in the center model, I pulled out our March 17th of 2025 minutes, and you all were espousing how the center model was what you were putting your money into.

It's where you were going in this community.

That's what all of us thought we were doing, and we've been talking about that now for years.

And I'm like, Mike, I've been arguing that in the community, too, to my constituents.

That we were utilizing the center model.

We had center one, essentially, this coming year we were going to be interpreting, if you wanted to think about it, a center two.

And I know Ural's language is tied the way you're calling these.

I apologize for my old brain.

But I've been arguing and making this case for years.

for now several years.

And we had, my understanding was, we had a recognition that the Lambs Lane campus was certainly overcrowded from the

because it had so many extraneous facilities on it and that we were together going to do a master plan, which we did, to free up space on the Lambs Lane campus for another building, another school, whatever it might be.

And that was part of what we wanted out of the center model.

We have that center going in now, but there's lots more space on that campus if it isn't just a gas station or a washroom.

and 200 school buses.

Having said that, that goes to my concern about when I look at Albemarle High School, Albemarle High School actually has been losing enrollment for the last few years.

I hear in the community from certain folks, Albemarle High School was approaching 2200 students.

They're actually 1875 students and that's fewer than last year and the year before.

I guess I'm talking about data.

I am concerned about the data that we're hearing and seeing with our own eyes when we look at your data.

And at this point, well, maybe I'll just go back to the questions and see what my other questions were.

Part of your CIP, and I can't remember right now where it is in the placement, where you had a CIP request of a lot of new school buses, right?

And I don't remember how that was scored.

It may not have been scored terribly high.

But with that, I just wanted, because we talked about school buses at the last meeting.

Your school buses run on diesel?

4 Electric that you're trying to move to, which are very expensive.

I get that.

But they're mostly diesel.

Have you all done an alternative bus projection out on what you're... I've seen the projections on, you know, the graph about how you need to buy so many diesels a year and all these school buses you need to purchase.

But have you done any forward-looking

projections about what your alternative bus purchases might look like, planning for the future as you move to electric or hybrids and how that would impact your need for a new bus facility.

You have a very aging, antiquated bus facility that is actually inappropriate for people to be working in, so antiquated and old.

We could have plastic dropping down to shield the bays for the workers who were there working in that facility.

I'm just saying that facility is 50 years old too.

It needs to be updated and modernized.

I think the uptick in school bus requests

because of the Great Recession plus COVID we got very behind in our 20 school bus replacement and so the proposal was for five years to purchase 30 buses a year instead of 20.

I think this past budget was 27 buses.

We're just trying to catch up on the replacement schedule, which is about 200,000 miles or 15 years of service.

Forward thinking is a good idea.

Forward thinking is all I'm suggesting.

That's one case of where forward thinking and looking to the future.

I hear a lot about air quality, the environment, congestion.

from not only cars, but from buses as well.

And it's just something to think about going forward and look at data that might be advantageous around your bus purchases.

But going back to this, let me jump back to the center model.

Since Mike and I both have questions about the center model, are you all doing away completely with the center model?

We got a pushback from the community asking about new schools and also from some of our school board members.

And we asked the Long Range Planning Committee in September to do a deep dive on the pros and cons of a new high school.

And I have to confess that I was surprised that it was at the top of their list.

We as a school board looked at it and we agreed and that's what we have brought forth.

The center model was originally developed both to be a focused

Center for Learning, but also it would impact capacity.

But the original plan was to, A, we should have been on maybe on our third or fourth center by now, and rented, or other space, and that would populate around the county.

This one was delayed five years, and it's 30% more than it originally was.

I think that the center model

will ease, at least in the short run, our capacity issues.

But I think even more important than that, it will be, I believe, heavily attended by our students.

If you look at what the applications were, if you give the students what they want, and if we give them K-Tech, they go to K-Tech.

And Western students are proportionately represented at K-Tech.

and I think that that will also be the case at this center.

If you look at the applications we had for MESA when we had the math, science and engineering academy, we had tons of applications all over the county.

So if we provide the right career exploration component there, I have confidence in that.

The center model, I have to say I too have been a loud proponent of the center model.

I have been persuaded that we should consider a new high school.

I think that they're not mutually exclusive and I am concerned about even with the center and even with

Disproportionate attendance, at least in the uptick years of Albemarle High School, we still will have eight trailers behind.

I mean, we still can accommodate that capacity.

But a new high school, we are having a robust discussion.

And that's what we're supposed to be doing.

I think I, too, Mike, was concerned about the redistricting.

A new high school will require it will be the most expensive, and it will be the most disruptive in the short run.

We will have to redraw the district lines.

But when I look at the growth projected at 29,

We will have to add and add and add on to

Albemarle High School can't get any bigger.

It's too old.

The infrastructure's too old.

The hallways are too narrow.

They were built for 800 students.

With the growth going up the northern corridor, I guess we could build another center or a different kind of high school.

Maybe it's not a high school like playing fields and all of that, but this is supposed to generate

I think there are possibilities for a

A center where there's a great permeability with business and part of that whole thought process that you all have been doing in terms of academic development.

But I have said, we just...

I feel your pain because I have made the case for centers as well.

Well, I really appreciate you speaking to that.

Mike and I really want to speak for you, but I think it was helpful to at least have you all speak to that.

The advantage, I don't disagree with you, about Albemarle House School and the corridors.

I agree.

What Landslide Campus provides you with is land that you already own as the cost of land other places.

So that's my point is it gives you expansion of human and other buildings

not to add on to Almonte High School.

That's only my point because land is what costs us in this community.

We all know it's land.

Having said that, just a couple of questions about trailers because you rightfully said and made note just a minute ago, Albemarle High School has two eight classroom units and one will be removed in 2026.

That's the plan, in 2026.

So, and I'm noting here that

At least a number of the other, those old, what we call trailers, the old classrooms, are not being used by students.

And in fact, even more of them than that, than the Albemarle High School will be removed in the near future, in the next year or two.

So across the county you're talking?

I'm just talking about me in the schools, yeah.

I'm looking at, Holly Mead has three units that are not used by students daily.

Stony Point has four individuals, only two are used for students.

So I get the concern about trailers, but I think

And the great news is that one at Albemarle High School, the one at 8th Classroom will be good.

Yes.

Which is really good news.

They will still be one at Western Albemarle.

And one at 1th.

I just saw Western Albemarle, one at 8th Classroom.

And I recognize that.

And I guess I'll wrap up here because I do have a suggestion because I think given our concern about what we're seeing with the data, all of us around this table want to make decisions based on data.

I get that.

But we have to agree on the data.

I'm concerned about the future and how the data is going to look down the road in the future Mainly because one of the big drivers is Rivanna Futures That's a big cahoot in this community Rivanna Futures alone is going to be transformational in many ways for our community But we don't know

because I hear folks saying, well, because of Rivanna Futures, we need a new high school.

We need this, we need that.

I don't disagree.

I'm not opposed right now to URLs having the new high school in their CFT.

That's not what I'm pushing back about.

I'm pushing back right now about what is the data going to look like in the future because we see

Lower population, lower birth rates.

We see people moving out of the public schools.

We see Rivanna Futures coming in which could bring us more students.

So what I'm suggesting at this point, and I know not everybody's had a chance to talk, but I would like to see the school board and the board of supervisors team up like we often do.

and reach out to University of Virginia, the Logan Cooper Center again and say to them, could you help us with what the future might look like in this community?

Because we need more data before we spend $200 million on a new high school, before we spend maybe more.

Right now, we're redistricting to fill schools up.

We're redistricting to elementary schools to give them populations so that they don't get too small.

Not a lot of elementary schools, but in my world, in the redistricting world, we redistricted when kids were practically falling out of windows.

We were so proud.

We moved them to Stony Point because Baker-Butter has 12 trailers.

That's an issue.

That's not sustainable.

I'm just saying, and I understand, I believe me, I understand all about bus routes and all those problems.

I didn't spend 16 years on a school board without understanding those issues.

I'm just saying that we have concerns about populations in some of our schools and how we can deal with them.

We have our organic futures coming.

Could we together say, okay, we have a CID and you

And we don't have to adjust the CIP immediately.

You all have prioritized your CIP.

CIPs can change every year.

We have time.

But let's at least ask Willman Cooper to help us with new information going forward

even based on what that Rivanna teachers project might look like in the northern feeder pattern because they are the experts, in my opinion, they're nationally recognized and they have the capability to be honest with you with all due respect our school and county staffs don't have the time to do.

and they'll have the bandwidth to do.

If you're a supervisor here, we use both the two words at one of our points, but in my personal, my professional life outside of the school board, I use the statement as a single source of truth.

And so maybe that is not something that we do being a newer person on the board, looking at common data around population, school, different types of growth, so that we are agreeing to sources of data and looking at those, and if we together could

And our questions go away.

And I'm really pleased that you've used the Cooper Center.

charged them with looking at it in a different way, Rebecca, looking at it over the next 10 to 15 years and how that Rivanna Futures project would play into what we're doing.

They might say, you need two new elementary schools and a new high school.

They may say, no, this is what you need.

But I think, not only do these two boards need that information, but our community needs that information.

If we're going to sell a referendum to our community, and we talk about the one cent tax increase, that's based on approval by the community.

And I'm sitting here telling you that the population in this community, the older population in this community, we are different now than we were when we passed our referendum at 74%.

Well, I think this is very useful.

I mean, I think we definitely can sit down and develop the questions for Wilden Cooper or whomever we use.

And I agree, we need to have the same set of data and we need to believe in it.

Absolutely.

We need $200 million from this school, or we

We need this other $600 million to modernize our older schools so that we don't have to do whatever the new bill might be.

And I would argue that, and I'm going to turn to Matt and Jeff, I would argue that that data would be informative not only for the schools, but for county government as well.

We work best when we work as a team.

And data

about the schools and about Rivanna Futures would really help us as well.

So, I'm very confident that our superintendent and our county executive could work together over the next year to start that process.

I don't know how long it would take Logan Cooper, but I think for me, and I'm not going to be here in January, which is why I'm taking up so much time right now,

I'm going to be gone.

But it does seem like to me that that would position the two boards in a much better place to actually determine the CIP that we want to sell to the community.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate all the comments from colleagues who went before because I agree with many of them and I will point that out as I go along.

There were a lot of slides in the presentation about benchmark counties and I would love to get at a future time, not right now, information about the more complete picture of those counties that are used as benchmarks for the acreages, for the amounts being spent, etc.

etc.

like test score success, like per child expenses because we hear little snippets coming out of school board meetings or whatever about

Successes on old-fashioned small counties and who are spending far less than we are and what's the difference here?

So, as I said, looking for information.

I read very carefully this little booklet and sadly, unfortunately, because I don't live in that world all the time, I found it very superficial and without what I needed to have support for what was said there.

So, that piles on to what others have said about impartial third party data.

because I don't know where any of this data came from.

I don't know where the data comes from that the Long-Range Planning Committee uses or if there are people who are not school affiliated who are on the Long-Range Planning Committee.

I don't know who they are.

So that is part of the information that I would think would be helpful for us to have more going forward.

I looked for in the Applied Economic Study that was mentioned and couldn't find it so if someone could send us all the link to that article that would be helpful because it made some pretty bold statements about you have to have new buildings for kids to succeed and yet Poor Little Broadus Wood is being described as a fallen down old school and it won a state award.

for accomplishments of its children.

So be careful what you expect people to take at face value.

I just want us to all, words matter, and we want to make sure we're saying things that are, give enough information to know.

I was surprised by the slide in here that shows that there are schools that brought us what is under capacity, because just, it seems like yesterday, but probably a couple years ago, they were pushing in 400.

So that's one that I know about, I know that

In the mid-teens, Crozet Elementary was in danger of losing its librarian because it was, you know, more 300 and now

got its addition and it's pushing 600 and that certainly helped.

Brownsville, which had 100 children show up in September or August a number of years ago who weren't even on the list and that was a crisis for them.

So certainly in the Western pattern there's a lot more balance than used to be among the elementary schools for which I'm very grateful and people are happier that their kids aren't sitting on the floor and there wasn't anything people could do about it when people didn't know that these kids were coming.

It was very rough.

a couple of months at the beginning.

You know, slides 34 and 35 particularly, but where's the sources of those types of data?

On page 40, it shows about the circles in Crozet, which I think add up to way more than 1,200 units.

So I'd like to understand more about that when we're looking at that kind of data to say what's coming.

I'm interested in learning more about the

Preschool collection only because when I was subbing in preschool before I go to the elementary classrooms, the kids were so excited to come to preschool at the school where their older sims were students.

And they could not wait to get to kindergarten because they were already part of that emotional connection.

So that would be totally erased if they're being bused some distance to some other place.

So it's just a thought that I had.

and I was surprised that all the elementary, remote, or rural schools had their own preschool things because I had understood that that was not the case.

I probably missed something in the last year or so that there were no classrooms for that.

All right.

I understand about how hard it is to predict, and I understand the distances.

I mean, I was a student at Albemarle High School in 1964 to 1967, and the kids in Scottsville had an hour ride, and there was no alternative.

They didn't drive.

The only ones who drove were kids who were at K-Tech, and they got to jump in their cars and go to the other half of their school, and everybody else was very jealous.

So I get it, as far as the distances are concerned.

but I think that since 2008 there's been a continual, my kids are coming, a thousand kids are coming and it has not happened and I understand it's hard to predict but I'm just waiting for more detail before I can believe what is being put out there that thousands of kids are coming and we have to start building right now.

I really want to see, if we're going to be collaborating with our business community, I want to see more bona fide collaboration with our existing workforce programs that are in the community as well, rather than duplicating them at the schools.

Because if we're worried about cost of education and other people are doing this work, we could have them do that.

And the last thing I will say

maintenance of facilities is important and I am very offended to see the school bus routinely coming through the northern part of the county whose hood is rusting off and it could just be sanded and repainted and not look like that because that's just I don't know what the goal is to why these buses are allowed to look like they are but it's not that hard to get them to be to look less less dangerous let's put it that way.

Supervisor Galloway.

I'm being really motivated.

If I could, and I'll try to

I'll do this in an organized way just to save time, but I will focus on some questions.

I do have commentary, and we can decide.

For me, and I'm not saying that as a critique of others, it is what it is, but we do have to get through the meeting, I suppose.

But I do want to provide some commentary.

My question is, the preschool building, I didn't see it in the report and didn't hear it, so I apologize if it's somewhere and I missed it.

How many students will that preschool center be designed to serve?

20 classrooms and it would depend on the composition of students because some, it depends if they're special ed students that need smaller classrooms.

So is two to three hundred, when you remove your classrooms from the schools, which I think is very smart, by the way, because of the capacity issues you're dealing with.

I don't like, because we've always, during my time, and you'd like to have the pre-K connected to the school that they're going to transition into.

So I'll be curious to see how you keep those relationships going, but that's really none of my business.

That's y'all's job.

But 200 to 300, knowing that we have a dearth of just preschool need, have you done the analysis or had the conversation about 200, 250, 300, what that does to the overall need that's out there right now, demand for preschool seats?

I don't know who to look at.

I'm sorry, Maya.

I landed on you.

The reason why the report doesn't have as much detail as you might like is we do have a committee that is studying the issue at a deeper level, engaging with the community, working with other preschool partners to figure out what is that exact need.

We know the demand for the current preschool students we currently serve and we know that there is a demand higher than what we can accommodate.

Do you think that this capital investment of a preschool center

Thank you.

I'm curious, now this is just a curiosity, with the Southern, I thought it was smart, how you're breaking out the Southern elementary school as a lower and an upper as a model.

I've been reflecting on the fact that it seems that could help you kind of spread out or ease in the operational impact.

because if you build a new high school, you've got to get all new first grade teachers, you've got to get all new second grade teachers.

Well, in this case, you're still going to need some, I'm guessing, because of the growth you're satisfying, but you will be transferring existing in.

That's right.

So to me, that's like, oh, that's kind of interesting how that lessens in some way.

It doesn't get rid of the operational impact, but it lessens it.

Yeah.

No, we did that because those schools would see each other and rather than redistricting and go through that whole process and not having, it also allows students to have parity of programming because you won't have some students attending the old school and some of them doing it.

That also came out of a super significant community.

What I've learned is that I've never been in a division as a student, teacher, or elected that's had upper and lower.

So I don't know if other communities do it where it's always proximity.

makes that the case or if you have an upper elementary school and then six miles away you have a lower?

I just don't know.

I don't know enough about it.

I do want to foreshadow though for operating conversation.

Building a separate K-5 school and separating the schools, there are not significant operating savings.

Because even if you build a K-5, you're still smoothing half the kindergarten teachers over.

There are a lot of overhead costs that come along with both models.

I just didn't want to make it sound like it wouldn't be costly.

I wasn't dialing that.

Thank you.

I just got to track some questions.

To jump into the question about the center model, the comprehensive high school and all of that.

And you know, we really have to, the state puts us immediately at tension a lot of times because you guys have to define the need, come up with the dollar amount to meet it, and then we have to determine capacity for funding or however you want to put it.

So immediately it puts us at attention.

And it's just baked in.

It doesn't exist this way in other states.

I take it seriously that if you're going to bring forward a request, that this is what we have to figure out how to do.

That was not what I meant.

I knew it would generate a discussion.

Can I ask some questions then?

You may.

I'm sure that at least some basic papers have.

It was when we were going through the criteria of different alternatives, we did estimate operational impacts for every alternative, and we have an estimate.

Yes.

Okay, so the top priority, which other comments have been made that what's changed from last year's top priority to this CIP request, but we haven't done the full-on analysis of what it's going to impact for financial planning in five and ten years yet.

I mean this is your first ask, your first top priority now is this comprehensive high school.

We have looked at the burkhmarb parcel to see what

whether it was feasible to use it basically.

And we have done that and we can get a high school, a traditional high school with playing fields on that property.

There are some, as I understand it, and probably Miss Schmidt knows better than I, there have been some issues of covered with that property in terms of underground water and other things.

Pardon?

Significant challenges.

So we have not

Well, what I'm getting at is this is the plan.

This is the capital improvement program that we're going to figure out for the next five to ten years.

When's the decision going to be made on what piece of property that's going to be built?

When's the school board going to decide we're using the Berkmar property or we're acquiring land to do so?

because you can't build, you can't, I'm not, I will not be very supportive of building a high school if I don't know where it's going.

I want to know, because this isn't, you know, when we titled over land down in the southern part for the center, it was your call, it was your piece of property now to move that over to an elementary school.

I mean, fine, I mean, that's your piece.

But this is a little different of an investment.

That was handing over land that we owned.

We said we're fine with the school division determining what the usage will be.

But a 200 and plus million dollar investment and a CIP that has struggled to figure out how to, that it's just, we're digging ourselves out of a hole that we created for ourselves, we all know that.

To drop a 220 million dollar investment in there, that's a conundrum.

And our guy that's ready to just run up the credit cards just said that's not being said that way.

You're fine, no, I mean... Is that part of the commentary on that?

does it can't see a way forward, then that's a problem.

And you're asking us to figure that out.

So I need some other decisions to be made that aren't mine to make.

And we need to know your decision on the Burke Bar, in my opinion, as soon as possible because there's a project being planned there right now that money's being spent on.

Your facilities, I'm sorry, I'm forgetting the last name.

Mr., it said this to you in a meeting.

So how do we keep

spending money and planning for something that if you decide you want to use that property for, I don't, I don't, you said yourself Kate that you didn't want to recycle, well you cut yourself off when you started to say I don't want a recycling center by the schools.

But I'm just saying that I don't think I want a recycling center there either based on just the logistics of running a site.

but we need that decision because if we're going to figure out how to work in 200 plus million dollars into a CIP that we just got told as a capacity of 72 million dollars a one cent sales tax or not we've got to figure that out and we need to know that because if we're not going to use the Burkemar proper then there's other things that that land can be used for and then we have to go figure out where the land's going to come from and you've all had some thoughts on that about county-owned land

And I'm just speaking to your public meetings, your meetings you hold, and the commentary I've heard about county-owned land.

Well, we've got it figured out.

And if it's not a piece of property that we currently own, then we've got to acquire it.

And if it's acquired in the rural area, how do we get, everyone forgets that Albemarle High School's in the rural area.

But it's been serviced with water and sewer.

and it's been serviced with a lot, we had to do the approval for center two because it was in the rural area.

So we've got, I mean there are things here that have to, that seem to me should have taken place before this becomes the top priority on a already overstretched CIP where maybe the high school needs to be the top priority for year five or six.

versus your top priority that you want right where you're at.

Because I still think there's information that ... Now look, man, I'm scolding, aren't I?

I feel like I'm scolding.

But I'm saying that that's information that I don't really comprehend hasn't occurred yet to make its way all the way up as your top CID reporter.

And I've been getting hammered, just like the rest of us, of having to defend the center model, which in your public discussions about it, sounds like you've pulled the plug on, frankly, in my opinion.

So my question is how, so this is the next part of the discussion that I think should happen, that I think is important, is that how does a center model and a new comprehensive high school coexist and what's the educational strategy for that?

Because all along we've done them in isolation of one another.

We've talked, well we want to do the center model, which happened in 1617 if I remember right,

And now, this past year, the new high schools moved in.

Fine.

I mean, if it's a need and it's justified, I'm happy to support it.

But there seems to be other elements that I'm curious about as the person or one of the six people that have to figure out how in the heck

to get at the dollars needed to pull this off, when I also have heard over eight years your frustrations that I shared when I was with you about not being able to renovate your schools that you haven't been able to renovate, because as you say, Dr. Acuff, we constantly have to deal with the past patients.

Well, and you've also said that, boy, if we do this high school, it crushes our CIP for a long time.

So with the good news part of it, with the oncoming of the $25 million potential from a one-cent sales tax and some creative solutions of how to maybe build for that, to build to something like a $200 million, I wonder what the school board's discussion would be if it said, well, if we maybe plan for this high school

that you clearly said we need for year five or six or seven, how does that change your priorities ahead of that?

I think that's a great question.

Well, I mean, I listen to your conversation and the rationale for putting that in the top five.

Don't disagree with that at all.

There's a huge demand for preschool.

The transportation piece, I'm curious how you all think about that and you're going to work that through, but again, that's your job, right?

You'll have to figure that out.

But if that's a $54 million ask, that's the price tag on the Northern Elementary School right now.

So I'm struggling with this big one, I guess to bring this all back around to some of the other questions or comments that have been made.

We have done a lot of things in this county with really good work being done from White Weldon.

I mean, our whole economic strategic plan and the acquisition of Rivanna Futures, which is now yielding something that will be of benefit to our county, started with a Weldon Cooper study about the importance of the defense sector in our area.

But then just doing growth studies didn't lead to that type of report.

So in addition to endorsing the idea, and I'll have some comments, I'll save that for my commentary later because clearly I'm not providing commentary right now, is that the nuances of what we're seeing in both our economic report, our housing report, and then the differences in magisterial districts of living in these units.

Not to mention the fact that for the last seven or eight years we've never really, really contended with affordable housing units.

We still, I'm looking at the person that will say we're still not even attending to affordable housing issues.

But that matters for school population.

I would offer that affordable units in a development impact you differently than the whole raw number.

And right now,

I didn't know it when I was served on the Long Range Planning Advisory Committee.

It was just raw units.

Oh, it's 1,200 units over here.

There's 500 units over here.

There's 600 units over there.

And we think just because it's new units that it's going to blow everything up.

Well, guess what?

Rio Point is different than Arrowwood on Rio Road East.

that it's just different who's going to live there and you only have to look at the rents to be able to tell.

And if I could start making anecdotal connections that a $1,900 studio apartment at Rile Point, you're not going to see a lot of families living there.

Because the two in the three bedrooms are pushing $28,000, $3,000.

And, you know, that, we've never really got into that level of nuance and analysis with what we use for long range planning counts on, that you all count on and we count on.

And I think we can get at that type of stuff if it was, as somebody said earlier, ask the right questions.

But that's, you know, I saw how budget town halls went last year.

I've been on both sides of the fence on this, from the school board's perspective and from a supervisor's perspective.

At the end of the day, I know that the community is going to prefer that we could stand on either side of the fence and lob things at each other, or we could tear the fence down and figure out what's a real game plan going to be that if we need 570

million dollars for school projects.

How are we going to do it?

Then we really have to do a different approach.

I'm thrilled that we're building two new elementary schools.

I joined the school board in 2012.

It took 13 years to finally see it get into the CIP.

I'm thrilled about that.

So I'm not opposed to the new building or the new comprehensive high school.

What I guess I do oppose is that it has to be done in a very strategic, well-thought way because that's how we earned our triple, triple way bond rating by doing it that way.

and I'm saying that as a supervisor that we'll continue to have this conversation in March but there are other questions that need to be discussed and answered in my opinion by the school board to see whether or not this high school is really the top priority or if we need to figure out a different game plan of how to get there.

I was just going to say, we welcome the partnership.

There was a question there.

When we, the Berkmars site, that's pressing.

When is the school board going to decide if that Berkmars site can be used for a high school or not?

I mean, and if you don't want to say, oh, next month, Ned.

And I think that, and this is my newness question, is there are, my understanding, there are environmental questions around how, if there is remediation that has to happen around ground, I mean ground water, is this right?

And I could be wrong, so that, and so what do we need to do together to

because there would have to be a spend, I believe, to be able to look into some of that feasibility.

And then if this is a little bit of a chicken and egg thing, right, like how much do we have to spend to see if it works or not?

I'm happy for Matt and Jeff, I'm sure we'll have a debrief and a conversation after this, but that's pressing because dollars are being spent now.

A beer.

We'll not have a beer.

My fellow supervisors disagree with me that you don't have to worry one bit about what I'm saying, but that is a pretty critical

I guess the only other thing relative to the comprehensive high school that is

and I don't know if it was on your data or not.

There was a theoretical redistricting done to show how it could change the racial demographics if you did the theoretical.

Now I know it's not gonna be the actual one and all that.

There was another piece of data on that chart but I didn't know what it was.

I don't remember it being explained in the meeting when it was presented to you all.

Was the economic disadvantaged student population considered in that racial makeup?

We probably used something called Gap Group 1, which is a combination of free and reduced lunch, EL, special populations.

So is that on the same slide as the racial data?

I think that's the data point that includes the free and reduced lunch.

Thank you for that, because I was like, what is this?

This isn't exactly, I guess this is a response.

I think just one of the points on the comprehensive mainline school, and I agree, it is a change.

In my mind, it's a both and.

We need the center model as an instructional piece, but as we look at the data in green, we need to kind of look together to make sure we're looking at similar data.

As you look at long-term growth, we will continue to have all of our schools

hitting the top of capacity for high school, even if you fully fulfill a center.

And so long term, the only way out of this is a comprehensive high school.

And even if, I think the reason why, why did it jump to the top?

I mean, one of the reasons is it jumps to the top because even if we all agreed today, which we're not, we were not taking a vote, we're not doing anything.

and you started moving forward.

The absolute earliest you could put students there is 31-32.

So that means someone who is in fourth grade right now, right, in 25-26, would be a ninth grader.

And that's the earliest.

So, I mean, I think part of this is the long amount of time it takes to, like, to

Plan, construct, and then open a comprehensive high school is significant.

And so by moving that higher up, we say, how do we begin to do some of this important work?

The longer we let it sit further down, then we're talking a fourth grader at kindergarten who will not even open a new high school.

And I think that's this piece, as we're beginning to look at the continued development that will

we are seeing in the North, the Philadelphia part.

And even as we are bringing these high-quality jobs more and more in, they are going to be dual-working families.

Retirees aren't moving into those types of jobs.

And if we want this economic development to continue, as Cherry Cuff said at the beginning, people will look at the quality of our schools.

And people are being compared to the New York suburbs, the New Jersey suburbs, the Washington DC suburbs.

I don't disagree with you.

In my mind, I've got to figure out how to figure that out.

Last year, I asked specifically about the comprehensive bicycle and it was off the table.

A year later, it's now back on the table.

So when you walk into a CIP, the way that we've been looking at budgeting is we don't look at it just a year in a single snapshot.

We're like, man, we've got to do this in year two, and then we've got to get this in year three, operational and capital.

So up until about a month ago, when you got your Long Range Planning Advisory Committee report, brainstorming what the budget was going to look like coming out of last budget cycle, this is just, you've thrown in a big one.

that was going to be tough if you didn't throw it in.

So we have to start contending with that.

So I just, you know, next year at this time, we're going to all be sitting here.

Some of the faces may have changed by then.

The CIP has to be committed to and the orders stayed in so that we can figure out how to properly try to invest in it.

It's just sound planning that I think our constituents expect of all of us.

I do have one other question.

There's a lot of people working that are going to be working on this.

Have you all, at the school board level or division level, and I'm happy to say, yeah, we have thought about this and have some ideas because it'll have to carry over into other meetings, but have you all thought about

Like what I just said about we have to figure out ways to do this.

Have you come up with ideas of how we could get at the capacity needed to do this and what mechanisms we could pull?

Have you all had that discussion as a brainstorm to go, man, the Board of Supervisors should really think of this as an idea.

Is that, have you had any thoughts on that?

I mean, I think we're all in agreement on the one cent sales tax.

I think there are some communities that the school boards and the elected boards will

There will be a few, but those I think are in tandem on that, the local government and the school division side.

I don't know if anybody stands with Mike on our financial, getting creative with our financial stuff.

In addition to the tax, is it new or is it going back to?

Supervisor Malek noted that we did a bond referendum in the past.

It is a lot to ask of the community, but again, we have seen a lot of central and northern Virginia cities doing multiple bond referendums for them to play catch-up, which is a heart, I understand, from all of our constituents.

You know, we did a lot of educative meetings when we did our bond referendums because bond referendums don't change anything that we saw on the screen.

It doesn't change our capacity.

So Fairfax County, I suspect everybody knows they do a lot of bond referendums.

They've got a $15 billion CIP budget.

They've got a $5.1 billion operating budget.

When you read their CIP request on page one of their report, it's six, we will follow

The ten financial principles that we have outlined is smart.

And right before that line, that's the second phrase of the sentence.

The first sentence says, we will maintain our triple, triple A bond rate.

So what's interesting to me is that a place that does a lot of bond referendums has the same commitment to the financial approach that we did.

So bond referendums, while it can maneuver what you can do, doesn't change the overall capacity outlook in a significant way.

And public-private partnerships don't either, because you still have to obey your capacity.

They are incredibly creative, and I'm saying, yeah, pull in on that, let's discuss it.

But I don't, like somebody said, it's important to be on the same point information-wise.

I think the 13 of us are probably further along than most in understanding what I just said, but I think there's a lot of folks in our community that have to be reminded about how bond referendums can work as a tool for us to do the things that we're trying to do.

and it's probably, I mean, I know at the supervisor level, I think my first year on the board, we had a presentation on PPPs and PPEs, but it's been eight years, so I'm rusty.

It's probably helpful for all of us at some point to get together, I don't know if it's during budget or outside of budget, to just remind us of, wow, we've got a, we probably have a 50-year problem, if not more here, and if we gotta start,

Thank you everyone for comments to this point.

I've got a few, but not very many.

I'm going to Mr. Baumann.

I know that there is a presentation coming which talks about the next steps, and it's not just a calendar.

It's a discussion of the impacts of a sunset sales tax and other possible ramifications that I think might address some of the concerns that have been raised.

At least start us into the conversation of

What is the capacity depending upon which year things might be open?

The first presentation shows that I think the county relies on very detailed, precise, long-range planning.

They work very hard to

We're a disciplined approach to our finances.

The schools have been burned in the past with this board's renaissance to fund schools a decade or so ago and to get behind and end up with lots of trailers and I think that helps

It's still a sense of urgency to addressing needs that could be seen.

That said, what I think we've been hearing from fellow forebears is the need for new data and nuanced data.

Looking at things like the real impact of the center model, the community of the op school,

It also has 160 more students predicted on that, effects of KTEP, private school impacts.

Then also looking at the demographics and accounting, what's the actual build-out, not just what's the theoretical build-out or what's the approved build-out even, but looking at the

We expect an actual build-out to population growth, the demographics of the population growth, the preschool center effects.

A lot of things that we are hearing that I think are really important that they maybe just need a little harder look at what they imply about these needs.

I will put back that I think that if it turns out that all of this pushes towards a need for a new high school, the question of Albemarle or another site is extremely important

But if we've already identified that the need is there, then we're going to have to figure out what we're going to do about that, whether it's this place or another place.

And stop the dollars being spent there now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I agree.

So with that, I don't really have, I probably did have questions, but I don't want to take the time because I know we're running long.

Oh, another data point is the comparables.

People ask questions about the comps that are being used.

How do their performances compare?

I would be interested in, do any of them have a center model?

You know, how are they distributed?

Just to simply say, well, this has this population, and they have four high schools, isn't enough for me to determine that, oh, that means we should have four high schools too.

We need a lot more understanding.

And I actually think that, deep down, I'm not sure that

That's as relevant as the rest of the data that we're getting as to whether we needed additional high school capacity beyond what we could get with the center model for all of these other factors that go into that.

So, and the differences between population growth projections for the county versus the population growth projections for the schools, and the flat nature of a lot of the school population over the past few years needs to be explained better for us to come to a point where we can say, yeah, we really see this need at this point.

But, you know, the time for a budget is coming up on us fast, so a lot to work.

Before I turn it back to Andy, I want to turn it to the school board and allow you additional, you know, a chance to respond and address any of these, but we will hear more from other projections.

Nothing has been covered, but it is definitely a both and, because the center model

really serves a great purpose with the specialty instruction there.

No, she covered everything.

Well, just like Diantha, I'm not going to be here after somebody, but I do have a question, maybe from my own curiosity, I guess.

I realize how important data is, but how much information do the supervisors try to get

Like a subdivision that's planned or approved, how much information do you try to find out or do you try to obtain about what impact that's going to have on the schools and on the community?

Because I realize too, just like our data would be hard to get, but I think that would be pretty important that when something is being approved

That's a great question because it's the same issue that we just brought up with the longer-age planning.

It's the same data.

And it's not nuanced, really.

So we see whatever rezoning we get, it tells us what district it's in.

And then what the projection that the rezoning will have on each school.

So every one we have, we usually have conversations about what the transportation and the roads impact will be.

Depending on where it's at in the county, we have a lot of conversations about water.

and Stormwater Rama.

And then Scholes is always right there about it.

This could mean 13 extra students at Agner Hercht, or it could mean it gives you every school and then what the impact using the same data that your Law Rage Planning Advisory Committee uses to project out your growth.

So the formula, I guess is what I'm saying, is nuanced to that specific, like Arrowwood over on East Rile Road goes to Agner Hurte, if I remember right.

I don't think it goes to Jouett, her career.

So we saw how many students would probably be projected to come out of that to go to each of the schools and the one that always pops up at least in my district and Diantha's district is the impact on Albemarle because typically the elementary school students it can be absorbed in what your current capacity is at Agner and Whitbrook

So it's the same data.

And frankly, it's for the same reason I would support a new piece, it needs to be more nuanced, even what we've received.

Because at Arrowwood, I've seen the rents over there.

There will be about 30 units in Arrowwood that will be affordable units.

It's those 30 units that are going to produce students.

Not the 300 units.

Because the rents are just going to be out of reach.

for folks that are going to have families and are relying on multi-family.

That's why multi-family a lot of times produces fewer students than single-family detached.

We all know that.

So your biggest concern right now in the Rio district are all the Bi-Rite project going on back behind Belvidere.

Not all these multi-family units that we freak out about because the numbers are so high.

But none of our data right now gets at that level of nuance and that's exactly what I think all of us need to start doing so that we can understand better and plan with some more certainty.

what those impacts are going to be.

I think what everybody has said that I'm just tagging on and saying I agree with that Diantha started is that we're basically just using raw units, raw unit count, and just growth data.

And we need to start having a, we need to ask, you know, AI's only as good as the inputs you put in, so we have to start,

We've never really had a heart-to-heart either board about what we need to change the input so that we can get better data out and we need to do that and that's critical because our economic report we received like they say that our poverty levels are dropping in Albemarle County and what's the reason for that?

We can't live here.

We can't afford it.

So to get at that, that data that we need is future working to some degree, right?

Because we, that's right, we have our Nevada futures coming, we have population changes, and you add to that, if we're not expanding the development area,

Because we have said consistently we're not expanding the development area.

We only have so much development area land.

I'm just saying, all of that in the, we need some help.

And to the degree that we have developers that actually have in their notes to us, this is a private school which will reduce the capacity on Albemarle County Public Schools because we're not going to be putting any school children in your school.

For the new private school.

That's right.

And we're seeing a lot of it.

Good question.

Very important question.

And I confess that we sometimes do things that are not sufficiently nuanced, and not to fault the presentation, but when we talk about $1.31 in cost versus $1.00 revenue, that's not a very nuanced number, and it really is

Part of the reason for that question I guess is danger of food too, because thinking back when we first talked about the Center model, it was with the idea that at the same time that the centers were being built, that all of the high schools would be renovated.

And I realized that there was problems with money at that time.

But it looks like we're going down the same road again.

It looks like 10 years later things haven't changed with that conversation.

So I just want to make sure that maybe we are aware of that too.

I mean my takeaway from our conversation today and the many comments is that A, I'm in high school or CIP was a surprise at least and the price tag is such that we need to understand more, we need to get more background data to support that or not.

And that is fair.

That is fair.

We do need more data.

We need to make the case.

We need to make the case not only to you all, but we need to have a sufficient argument for the community.

That's where we go.

I also heard, I think it became clear,

You know, talking about perhaps delaying this, you know, is this a priority in this next five years or is it a longer term ask?

We could look at that.

I know the clock is ticking with respect to budgeting going forward, but I think we need to go back and answer some of the questions that you all have raised.

Thank you.

I want to just point out Ned talks about birthmark, that piece of property, and the urgency.

Our Board of Supervisors saw several years ago a schematic design that our staff presented to us that had the recycling center and it had all of the extraneous

facilities on the Lands Lane campus put on that Burtmar property.

It was the gas station, the bus depot, the car wash, and they put it right, they had a schematic design.

Have you all seen that?

I think so.

Okay, because what I'm saying is that that was planned out with that in

designed there, and the recycling center.

And it all fit on that one piece of property, and that design is somewhere.

I understand.

I would like to turn to Mr. Bowman.

At one point, we had talked about possibly having a break.

We're looking at 20 minutes left to what we scheduled.

I would say I have a 10-minute presentation.

That's all right.

We'll continue on.

At the end, I have two things to add.

Sure, we'll go through your comments.

We have in place the adopted CIB from fiscal year 26 to 30 and really the goal is to keep that on schedule as much as we can as projects move from one year to the next.

We'll be updating financial assumptions, looking at what our projected interest rates for borrowing, how might project costs change, are there timing adjustments that would need to happen.

We're here today and between now and February 25th it's really looking for any additional capacity, what are the projects that can continue to move forward all six goals of the board's strategic plan.

recognizing those projects tend to enter into the out years unless there's an extenuated circumstance where there's a sort of state mandate or there's a very large amount of funding or other extenuating factors that can happen.

So not impossible, but they tend to come into the out years.

And these discussions will continue in March.

So the challenge from a financial planning perspective, as the board has articulated, is all the way back earlier I talked about $72 million of capacity if the board were to go up to 9% based on the current CIP.

$72 million is just a point in time.

That number will change, so it will get attached to it when it comes around in March and April, but the principal will be the same.

So the challenge is that the current capacity first is not able to use because you need to have the cash on an ongoing basis to pay for that debt service once the bonds are issued.

So even though 72 million dollars of bonds could be issued, you still got to pay them back over the 20 years and have that planned.

The second category is for a, I'll use the high schools example, but it's really for any major project or combination of projects.

If the $232 million cost of doing this a conventional way would require $220 million of bonds, which is roughly $150 million more than capacity.

So if the conventional or traditional way to do this, and the board is seeking to do a transformational investment, looking at the out years, that's going to require some different options of how that could play out.

So the workforce at this time, as the boards have alluded to in their comments, consider what does that impact for future flexibility, knowing debt service is a 20-year commitment.

What is the operating cost plan for multi-years when a new facility comes online?

Making sure we have our ability to execute lined up.

What I've done in these next five slides is throw out five options.

These are not recommendations.

None of these would be easy.

A lot of these would take multi-years to implement.

But this is really just to spark some discussion of approaching this as a, if there's a long range challenge, what are some of the things in place and how can it be managed in order for, you know, to, from a financial perspective, begin to do something like this.

So the first up, the board has talked about, just recently with Monday, with the state legislature of just the critical importance of the 1% sales tax referendum.

That would generate, if it existed right now, about $26 million in annual cash.

That would be probably the biggest game changer in my memory in the county because that's equivalent to 8.3 cents on the real estate tax rate that would now come through sales tax, which is certainly paid by some of our residents, but also paid by a lot of out of town residents and visitors when they're drawn to the county, the university, and everything that comes with that.

So while $200 million in bonds, if that $26 million is coming in annually, it can't support that, but it could be a reserve that gets built over years to provide additional flexibility.

So just kind of in the art of what's possible, not a recommendation, but if you were to think about this, with all of these ifs subject to the bill, if the General Assembly approves that the next year, if a local referendum was passed and approved,

Reasonably, collections and sales tax begin in fiscal year 28.

If for four years from fiscal year 20 to 31 that is collected and not spent in the reserve, by the time fiscal year 32 rolls around there's $115 million of cash that provides flexibility to do something with.

That itself does not solve the problem.

It would require a lot of discipline to collect that money and manage public expectations.

This is not immediately going back to improvements.

But again, this is just the art of what could be possible and try and spark discussion about what we may play out over time.

So the second strategy, just playing out another scenario of trying to take a concept and put some numbers into how they can play out, is really a re-prioritization of future revenue growth.

So right now, as the boards are familiar, I'll share with the public listening, there's a formula in the county's financial policies that provides a guideline in terms of how revenue allocation is allocated among school operations, county government operations, and capital debt.

Generally, I'll go through all the math, it's 54% for public government operations, 36% for county government operations, and 10% for joint capital and debt.

So what if, it's just a what if, because it's not my place to say what school priorities are, but I'm intending to share options and art of possibility.

What if the school board were to say that the priorities and capital are so significant, they would say, what if 44% of that revenue growth went to operations, and that 10% was redirected into school capital and school debt?

that would have about a $1.9 million impact and if the school board made that decision that would need to be a 20-year commitment, not a one-year commitment.

This really would come down to the school board about really weighing relative operating capitals and priorities.

Capital and operating priorities.

And I know this from all my coordination with them, I and their team, there's a lot of school operating priorities.

So this would be the trade-off.

If you had $1.9 million in the scenario, that provides $23 million of capital projects could be implemented.

The trade-off would be that there's about 1.9 million in new operations that would not be provided.

Now that's about a little less than what percent of this is in school operations.

I should have a perspective not to minimize it.

I'm thinking that is a trade-off that the school staff could consider in longer-term planning.

I wouldn't expect that to be next year's budget because I would imagine they're very long as we are working on that budget.

If we were to plan for three, four, five years out, perhaps that is a lever to do something different.

Again, this doesn't solve me by itself.

Really the theme you'll hear is the options as you would need to explore several of them and you would need time and partnership to implement all of them.

Continuing OB, the Board of Supervisors also has the ability to allocate that formula differently in the future, though I'll say that it's just technology and it's not a suggestion to revisit that because the board just reaffirmed and updated that policy just last month.

The other key strategy for both boards, and this is one that has been exercised in the past, is investing as much one-time money that's available, whether it be one-time unexpected revenues, one-time savings, and putting that into the CIP, whether it be to build up cash reserves or to

That is one of the reasons why we see a CIP that is able to do more than we could historically.

So option C is really taking a look of, again, not an easy thing to do, but to reallocate existing projects in the CIP.

So this is one, I'll use a school example, but it's going to happen for school projects as well.

The ongoing programs in the northern feeder pattern, there's $20 million in school renovation for the program in the next four years.

That money, if the school board were to say their priorities would change, could be directed to a different source, or could be put on hold while the school board has time to evaluate these other questions the board has had.

Another option out there, more conceptually, is as you would be implementing such a large project, you may need to slow down your rate of implementation before or after the CIP.

I'm not saying stop, but slow down that rate of implementation to give yourself a little bit of the headroom and breathing room.

as that major project comes along because we are talking about such a large investment.

A third is the example of evaluating unused parcels for the highest who has to use.

Both the board of supervisors and the school board have properties that are proper to them.

They also have properties that they own.

And just as in the way back in 2019 when the board donated onto the school board that is now supporting the school, which reduced the cost of that, what else might be used?

Will there be property sites that the county owns that could be future school sites?

I say this with no particular parcel in mind or with no particular recommendation.

These are some of the partnership discussions that begin to start when we get clarity on those priorities.

Again, they would take time.

Finally, property taxes for perspective, the change in the tax rate, which the board exercised in the most recent year provides $3.1 million depending on the state.

Personal property is about $100,000, and that would be updated in the upcoming budget.

Also, a reminder of the way I talked today to start the presentation around the change in tax base, making those investments differently.

I ran through that really fast because I want to allow as much time as I can for discussion.

So I can answer questions, but in summary, to pull up something of such a magnitude of

And if I may, I will go back to our order if I can.

Thank you for all of that.

My head is kind of spinning.

That's okay.

I like the fact that you have some different options.

all those kind of fun things.

I think we're going to have to get creative, maybe out of the box to see what we can do, what we can do.

Thank you.

Dr. Pruitt?

Yeah, I just want to take this, because the board has seen this previously.

I saw this two days ago, I think, two days ago, which is why I said earlier that I just want to emphasize this.

I don't see a way that it is currently possible.

The way we could do it is literally not A or B or C. It is all of them.

The gap, if we put our debt spending literally to the stops, as high as it can possibly go, we still have an existing $150 million in projects.

If you then implement the largest tax rate increase we have seen in a generation that mostly falls on lower income people, and I'm in support of the tax, but I want to make sure it's not free money.

It is the largest tax rate mostly falling on working class people.

If we implement that.

that does not close the tax gap.

If we implement that and don't spend any of it, until 31, it does not close the tax gap.

If we then completely reprogram every other priority that we have not yet allocated money to, it still does not close the gap.

That is the gulf of this gap and that we're really struggling with.

I mean, I can imagine for members on the school board just one element that only gives us $23 million seems almost untenable for y'all, right?

A 10% reduction in your new operating costs, right?

That feels untenable for y'all.

That is a single one of them, right?

We are grappling with four of them at the same time, which is why I would again say something needs to be radically rethought because

We can do all this, but the strain on the engine of state would be really extraordinary.

I am not suggesting I know the solution to this, and the reason I express the tremendous amount of frustration that I know other people share, and maybe I'm just young and I wear it on my sleeve more.

We just laid the final top off beam at a big old school.

that is not meeting this need.

It's partially meeting this need, but it's not meeting this need.

And now I'm being asked to do something I literally can't do.

And I don't know how the school division wants to grapple with that, but that is a problem I'm looking at.

Supervisor McKeel?

Yes, thank you.

Certainly, a new high school right now is beyond our capability.

But there is time.

And I think the school, I'm not going to be around, but the Board of Supervisors and the school board are going to need to work together.

And I think it starts with, and I go back to what I said before, reaching out to the Logan Cooper Center with the right questions and getting information back about what our future growth really looks like as it impacts schools.

We might find we're not going to even need a new high school.

Maybe we will.

But that's a starting point and you have time to do that.

To spend the time to do that and then look at the properties that you already own.

What's the best use of Portland?

It may not be a northern high school.

It might be something else.

I don't know.

But I think that looking at what our school growth and our population growth is going to do in the future will help inform some of the decisions that you have to make going forward.

The other thing that I would ask

It is for the school board to remember that it's really important when you go out into the public to talk about what's happened today that it not be finger pointing because we're in this together and we're trying to solve it.

And I'm not saying it's happened very often, but the public needs to understand that this is not something that the Board of Supervisors have foisted on you.

This is a situation and we're trying to work it out together.

And to turn to somebody and say they've got the money, they need to solve it is not acceptable.

And I'm being harsh when I say that, but I'm being serious because that's happened before.

I have one very quick point that I want to add to the other thing I was saying, which is just, and correct me if this was already baked in, but I would also assume if we execute

Yes, correct, because even though the high school You're assuming an inflation for the school that exceeds the inflation otherwise in real estate taxes and things like that, which may be true, but it's difficult to do.

Thank you.

Just in closing, I would refer everybody to Andy's number two page because for the first 15 years I was on the board.

The only time that there was a money shortage and the things that were funded were school things.

And we're finally catching up on the other five categories in the responsibilities of the board.

So that has to be in everybody's mind, not just ours.

I also would refer you to the $100 million in extra transfers since fiscal year 18 that have been provided to the schools because we do hear a lot from our constituents about what they're hearing from their school representatives about how we're not giving them what they need to do the job.

So this is why I'm grateful for this information that was provided by staff today.

Lots and lots, plus the extra money in last year's budget, the $12 million on top of the $11 million.

Working together does not mean just getting out what you want, because it's got to be taking seriously the questions that were asked today and making some effort to fill some of these information gaps.

Two things.

2010 or 2011, the buses were taken into the CIP.

They had historically been part of the school budget forever.

When that happened, I was not in favor of it at the time, but it was assured that state money coming from the buses would

keep that pot full and now we're looking at five or six million dollars a year out of local government side is where the CIP money comes from so out of the pitiful thirty four percent or the forty percent of the new revenue comes all the money for the CIP.

So you get my crabbiness on this.

Last question, for which I don't expect there's an answer today.

Do I understand, from the comments made, that the Northern Convenience Center is now, after a whole lot of millions has been spent on planning a design and approval, that that is now being thrown down the bus because somebody doesn't want to have a recycling center next to a school?

That was said here around the table and at some point I would appreciate clarification about that because we have spent 15 years trying to get something on the northern part of the county and it's ready to show as far as I'm concerned.

Andy, for maybe, I would imagine, the budget time because I've got that open.

Like all these scenarios that you ran, like one of them, the operating, like you said, well, if you chose operating dollars and put it to CIP, I mean, that's a tough, that's a tough ask.

But if you took, is there a way to theorize how at the end of the year if we run surplus,

that we often use those for one-time expenditures.

That's correct.

That's to be the strategy.

We, on both sides, the local government and we often will commit those dollars before we even get to the year.

So what I'm getting at is a strategy that could say, well,

We cordon off, I mean, years we've taken surplus and put it into CIP, but if you did a 20-year or a 10-year strategy of saying any, the first whatever percent could yield you this as an option, then it's not necessarily trading operating dollars for CIP, because it's one-time monies.

So if you said, well, the first 2% of any surplus or 10% or whatever, immediately both sides are going to commit to go into CIP,

I'm just curious what that maybe turns into.

The other explanation that was frankly difficult walking in, and I'm still not, I know it's because of how debt service plays out in given years, like even if you don't do new projects, what your capacity is can fluctuate because of the way debt service plays out and timing of previous projects.

but like last year we had some capacity if we went to the nine percent this year it's the 72 million.

I'm still not got my head wrapped around quite how that plays out year over year given like if we just didn't do any projects right now what does it look like in five years or six years if we held

We could give an example of what that would look like.

It would take a pretty big change to alter that over time.

I know it's one is, you know, the county, there's not one on the horizon, but if there's an opportunity to refinance, we would take advantage of that.

As we look at debt to another strategy that's going to work for you or our department, how do we responsibly manage that to stretch the dollars as far as we can within the confines of possible financial management?

Part of it is even just understanding year to year, if you don't, like I think it would be in my brain anyway, well if I don't commit to doing projects this year, that should mean I should have more capacity next year.

You can make that note for budget time and maybe we can dig into that.

I think to me it's more of an understanding issue than an option, if you would.

And then I just want to make a comment on the highest and best use of properties, because I think we have an example that's playing out, or will play out, that was discussed at the rezoning of Southwood Phase 2.

Southwood phase two, there was a site proffered for the schools in Southwood phase two.

You all have to execute your decision on that by 2027 or it reverts back to the developer.

And why I bring that up is because we had that conversation when we locked in the price of the property, and I believe we locked in what they were going to do to the property before they handed it over.

It was like $620,000 is the locked in price for the piece of property over there.

If the school division says we don't need it, don't want it, then they'll just use it to develop more units.

And that's where those of us that were at the time making that call were like, well wait, do we want the, because I think if they don't, if you don't use it for a school site, it translates to about 50 affordable housing units.

So that's a question that

But if it was something that wasn't really there and you're saying, well, it'd be this or 50 affordable units.

Because in my mind, that was part of the reason why I was okay with the deadline.

Because those units are critical in our community.

And if it's not a high and best use for the schools, the affordable units would be a high and best use for a community.

So that's an example of how that stuff plays out.

This is an issue in terms of communication.

Well the site even wasn't great.

You'd have to think higher.

But for a center or a preschool property, you've got some things now that weren't on the radar two years ago for any of us, I think, that that site could be used for.

But it does beg the question of having you all going, well, if we did use it, here's what we think our highest school use would be.

Hey, county, what would your highest use be?

Which we've already defined as affordable units.

And then we could all sit there and go, which one maybe is more important?

And just a little nugget because we just had this conversation with our state legislators and I love it when certain things can intertwine and we can see how it can impact.

I think it was Supervisor McKeel that was really getting after him again about sun site provisions on developments.

So if you have a development that got approved 20 years ago,

They got approved 20 years ago at a different impact on schools than what the current impact is.

And if they wait 20 years to build it, and they build it in 2026, after sitting idle for so long,

It can catch you off guard.

That's a way where old developments can do that.

Now, I bring it up to say for everybody, when you're thinking about what you advocate and try to get concrete pulsing, maybe you're offering pre-deeds to do, that sunsetting provision would be a huge help to us, not just to be able to predict what's coming out of developments or impacts,

but could also then reset it because if they allow the approval to sunset it has to come back before us and we get to reconsider what the current day impacts are.

I think at the end of the day, if the General Assembly would do that, it doesn't cost us any money.

It's just giving us a sunset.

That would be a great item for Ural's legislative package.

Thank you, Mr. Church.

If I may, I'd just like to jump to option E, I guess.

And I agree with the comments that have been made.

And I really want to hear if the board has any feedback yet, but may want to take this and discuss it and come back to us.

But the last item, a lot of these are quantified very well.

The last item, change in composition of the tax base.

isn't quantified.

And it is one of the things that troubles me in this whole discussion because I know that when AstraZeneca comes up, we see it as a game changer in some respects with respect to our composition of the tax base.

But we also know that there's 600 jobs, but then there are 3,000 add-on jobs potentially.

Where are those people going to live?

So there's a lot of uncertainty

I think that there needs to be a better understanding of what that can mean and going forward how that would impact things so I just bring that up because it just

It was fun when it bothered me.

When we looked at it in industrial use, I said, oh this is great, but I'm looking at all of the other trade-offs, I don't care what they've got.

Well I for one would thank you all for your input.

I mean we knew this was going to be a big ask and I really did not and do not now want to set up it to be adversarial at all.

What I have heard is that we need to go back to the drawing board and get data that we both can feel comfortable with in terms of supporting the high school.

I think

Mike's comments about if we did all these things it still is not feasible.

I mean I think we really have to go back as a school board and look at that.

And I think, and I'm speaking only for me now, I think

Part of the data we need is proof of concept on this new center, that as we are putting, having our topping up, topping out ceremony, I'll say it wrong, it's an exciting new space.

It will help somewhat our capacity issues.

So my view is, I do think at some point, as a county, we need to have a high school in

I mean, we need to have another one.

Although, I'm willing to look at additional data to verify that.

And we need, as a school board, to talk about whether or how we might modify our CIP request.

I think I have been persuaded, I don't know if my colleagues are all persuaded, that

that the timeline at least needs to be rethought.

And so we get the data, as Jim was just talking about, about the impact of the environmental development area.

We get the data that several of you, including Ms.

McKeel, have raised.

And we can do that.

And I think that's both of our due diligence.

So I really appreciate your comments.

I was going to say apologize, and I understand your surprise at introducing the new high school concept.

We have had a lot of feedback from the community about the need for a new high school, but I think we need to document it further.

My colleagues may disagree with me.

We're going to have to have a fuller discussion at our next school board meeting.

But I don't know if anybody else wants to chime in.

And I absolutely, my goal in this meeting was, don't leave with it being an adversarial thing and that those bad old supervisors aren't going to fund us.

That is not our intention.

What I would say is, I'll put this on the shortest term piece, so I've been on this board for two years and we just haven't had the opportunity to have discussions like this with the board of supervisors.

I've heard times in the past where you've had more education meetings together, some

The first next step I would say is between the chairs or the clerks or the incoming chairs as we look into January

is what is the way for when everyone's schedule and everyone's busy schedules and budgets that we begin to, that we plan out both kind of, as Mr. Galloway said, those education sessions and what are those pieces that we look at economic development data and have a series of learning sessions together, even on some of these issues.

That's what I would say.

Both the administration and the city.

Maybe more than one.

Mr. Chair, the comment I would just real quick I think the high school the big ask is what triggered this data conversation but man it goes beyond any justification and it goes beyond schools like this could inform urban pocket parks this could confirm so I don't want us to think leaving that it's just to justify whether the high schools need it or not

And I said that when I mentioned it because it would inform the Kenilmore County government as well.

We're going to get data to find out what the data is, and then find out where it's going.

Because when people hear in the public, we're going to get data to support what we want to do, that rebounds very badly.

Ann makes a really good point because I will say that we talk about Fairfax County a lot.

We want to sort of think about what the big cooking food does, you know, it is what it is.

They have 200 schools

they hire a consultant group about every 10 to 15 years to prioritize their CIP projects because they know they can't do it.

They don't have the bandwidth to do it, to wrap their arms around 200 schools and the CIP.

They hire a consultant to do that prioritization.

But what, and that's fine, I'm not suggesting we do that, but part of that deal is they have the board of supervisors and the school board

on record saying that we will maintain that prioritization and will not let pressure from the public and politics change that prioritization.

Because if they do that, if they start letting that creep in, all of a sudden it's all for naught.

And I'm just putting that on the table.

Mr. Bowman, is there anything further you can do?

Nothing further from staff, Mr. Mazzone.

And I'll look to Mr. Richardson and Dr. Hodge.

Yes, sir.

Dr. Jacobson, you have a meeting to adjourn.

Thanks, everyone, and thank you for coming.

Well, thank you for coming.

Thank you.

We are adjourned.

I'm going to stay, so...

Take a break now?

Okay, let's take it.