Board of Supervisors Budget Work Session   3/11/2026

Thank you both for being here with us today.

Is there a motion to do so?

Second.

Alright, without objection, if the clerk would please call the roll.

Aye.

Bowman, I believe you're starting us off today.

I will, but I'll actually leave it for you.

So we're making notes of that.

And for clarification, I've been calling that the parking lot with the supervisors, so we'll just get on the same page, the list, the lot, the list, just so we're all on the same page.

And we also have Mr. Garland Williams here from the city of Charlottesville, director of transit, to answer any questions about transit.

I actually haven't met him yet.

So before I hand things over to Andy, does anybody have any questions?

And I know Mr. Sumner is going to talk about this a little next week with the board, but is there anything that you'd want to add to this right now?

and be able to plan should that have a negative impact on both either the schools and how local government supports the schools.

All right, Supervisor Missel.

this stepping continuing because we're probably not going to see land values decreasing or taxes decreasing maybe, I don't know.

In the other factors, there's a state sales ratio, and the real estate tax rates can influence those, but it's really common, because some of the variable, I'll say, it's very hard to project it precisely, because there are some variables that can shift a lot, but staff would project that to continue to increase over the next five years, barring unforeseen circumstances.

Probably at the same rate that we're seeing now over the last three years or four years?

Well, I would say it may not be quite as steep, but it's going to be a very different environment from where we were from that fiscal year, about 16 or so, the eight years where it was relatively flat.

Does that become an operating expense?

To clarify, that is the ongoing expense for all the staff, utilities, and their families.

So that gets baked into our budget for the future?

Any one-time costs would have been uncovered in the initial construction outfitting of the buildings.

Is that accurate?

yeah so yes that is and so what we've done to accommodate that is the Board of Supervisors has approved as part of their financial management policies the ability for the schools to retain up to 2% and so this is part of the general funds fund balance and when the school is requested it's available for them at subject to board appropriation and in an effort amount the intent is direction to the CIP but all of that is appropriated by the Board of Supervisors thank you got it

Just all big pictures.

So now it's like roughly, I'll say $310,000 to $315,000 or so.

Yeah, so there is that.

And as property values continue to increase, more relief becomes available for those who need it.

Maybe there's less and I'm just not in tune with it.

So I'll speak, every one of these has got its own story, so I'll be brief.

You don't have to go through every one, just be a picture.

And the FFT was another position that had vacant for some time as well.

Supervisor Missel, with just the time you've been on the board, we've talked several times about investment in technology.

Yeah.

That's a really helpful context.

Can you explain what that is?

That amount will decrease as we count those savings.

Okay, I just was surprised at the difference between 26% and 35% that jumped out at me.

I think it's we're always continuing to refine our methodology and so I think it's more of continuing to refine that rather than seeing a sea change in our workforce or something.

Thank you.

and just you know supervisors don't feel rushed this is our time to work through it so take the time you need to ask your questions if you want to surface a question and just want an email response later just call it out but you don't have to wait to send those in you can call those out they're tracking those questions as well supervisor Duncan

hang off with the $6.4 million.

So that's just kind of at a conceptual level where that is.

That's all I have.

Supervisor Mallek.

I think we're going to get more savings than we actually do.

If we can get that on the record, the staff agrees with me.

the value of the easements versus revenue sharing then we need to also be considering the value of the easements which are permanent versus the some people call it rental and the deferments in the land use program so that's something that I think would be important and if it's in here and someone can just tell us where to look then I'm glad to share that information.

So that is the answer to that question.

On 18, on the left hand, the $4.1 million, the source of that is local government revenue, correct?

Could you repeat the question?

Or is it coming out of their existing budget?

Yeah, it would be local money.

On slide 16, the drop, was that ARPA funding in fiscal year 25 and 26 that caused those reductions?

So in fiscal year 25, that slower rate of growth was the change in the local composite index.

It looks like the funding is lower.

That would offset that and so it's really part of this strategy in fiscal year 27 is from that learned experience How can we provide some support for the schools in the future given the uncertainty on the horizon?

Thank you very much.

Thank you for the team, for flagging both of those things for me, and I'm sorry to interrupt the board's flow.

I'm passing along, thank you.

Moderately devastating depending on just how high that population is there I'd be curious to get a sense of how that has impacted the county because this is one of those pre It's an exemption instead of relief, but we can share that data as a follow-up to this meeting

Great.

Oh, I wrote it down.

Or maybe I was looking at it upside down.

I also couldn't have spoke.

It would be helpful to know which of them is just having the more significant impacts.

I'm sure a lot of them are overlapping, right?

They might be claiming it under one, but they could get it under another.

So we'll add some clarity and some content to that response for you.

If I recall from having just reviewed this.

I can't remember what the scenario was but it was a different scenario which in the budget but it was I think a smaller amount and it was for a five-year period rather than this which is a larger amount for two years.

But it is essentially the same strategy, just done in one year, because we had a big tranche of money come through the LPI.

So to do anything is going to require something different, a lot of partnership and multi-year planning.

That's all I got.

Did I hear you correctly?

That item has been reprioritized first for the first two years to fund an eight million dollar requested increase in the cost of the Northern Elementary School Then the last years three and four are taking that eight million and putting that as a designated school placeholder in year five

and the Northern Feeder Pattern Elementary School has been pushed out to, is it 28?

That would take place over a couple years before the school opens.

How would that adjust the budget or would you just, would that money just go to the schools, do you know?

If anything changes for better or worse, that's a factor for the Board to consider.

Because I didn't, that's the first time.

The affordable housing and public safety and that was included and they're updated for November 19th where the growth in those values of the pennies is taken off as well.

I'm sorry.

But the board's policy, I guarantee you, is 100% correct, as is the calculation.

I appreciate that.

No other questions.

The 50-some million dollar preschool center plus all the renovations and things they wanted to go still, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it's still around 300 plus million dollars without the high school in it.

Aside from the 1%, they can only be sitting on school instruction.

So my understanding based on the superintendent's request of that $7 million, he was going to take $4 million that otherwise could have gone to operating and put it as a one-time expenditure to the CIP.

What I heard in that pass was that it was somehow not operating dollars.

They were taking operating dollars and putting it to the CIP.

So they would assume if they received the $15.4 million in operating dollars by an unadjusted formula of that ongoing revenue growth by formula, they would send 4.1 of that to the CIP.

Do they only come out of that FEMA grant line item into a county line item when they're done being fully funded?

So there's a $1.7 million budget impact for those staff, but the FTE amount is unchanged in total.

It's an accounting procedure.

Correct.

You're not changing the necessarily out of the FEMA grant until it's completely on the county side.

And so our approach has been moving the FTE to the general fund as soon as we start to pick up those positions.

Oh, even if it's not a full cost pickup?

A roughly 1.9 million dollar impact in fiscal year 28 before this begins to phase out a little bit.

Thank you.

Supervisor Missel?

Sorry.

So included in that number is the assumption that the board would allow Rivanna, and so the county is partner with the city at the Ivy Utilization Center and but it's mainly funded by the county so as we do these these fee increases the county sees the benefit of those fee increases through a reduced request in this contribution from RSWA.

Supervisor Duncan.

That's correct.

Supervisor Malle.

Thank you very much.

That's all I got.

I did have one quick question.

I assume, and that came from discretionary funding that was added.

That's a number if the board desires something different, they have the ability to add that to the parking lot should they desire.

It's essentially a carryover in a sense.

That was sort of the intent, just to keep poor momentum on that.

Thank you very much.

Great.

I have no questions, so ready to knock and roll.

All right.

And then after that, we'll talk more about the human services funding process and the nonprofit agencies.

Supervisor Missel?

That is our only reoccurring funding, correct?

Yes.

In addition to that, we're adding another $3.7 million this year to bring it to a total of $5 million that is going into the Affordable Housing Investment Fund.

Yes, for FY 27.

What was that number last year that went in?

It was $5 million in FY 26 as well.

It's essentially status quo.

That's correct.

Is there a plan trajectory for increases in affordable housing funding built into the long-term capital plan, or the long-term?

but it's planned and things can change but realistically it would not be coming in fiscal year 28 based on what was presented to the board that was seated at the time in November.

I'm requesting here for the therapeutic docket to divert seriously mental ill participants and it's not, I think it's about half funded or even less than that so I'd like to throw that in the parking lot if that's one we can do to look at that as additional funding and I think that is it for me.

Supervisor Duncan?

Or is that coming out of the $5 million?

I apologize for the confusion.

That's all I have.

Supervisor Malle.

Thank you.

Supervisor Pruitt?

Would they trigger that by asking?

I think we've probably had some move over the

And two that are in competitive, because while we believe in the work that they're doing, we don't have an underlying obligation to provide that.

I'm looking to Mr. Sumner for this one, I think.

But you are correct, we have yet to receive an application that has made its way to the board.

Is that accurate?

Typically, once a year, we'll do kind of a sweep of any cash profits for affordable housing, and we'll move to those in the funds as well.

And I think the community would find some comfort because it would also look like the fate of the housing fund in any given budget year has less to do with how much blood an individual supervisor can drag out in a given funding cycle and more to do with a shared consensus around a strategic priority.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley?

Do we know how much has been put this past year?

Give me a moment, we can look that up.

I mean, and I'm glad to know that that's ongoing and then it goes into the housing trust fund.

I was thinking I know there was the total funding sources from the... Or you could give me the amount.

For $25,000, it was $48,643.

section department or agency at PVCC?

So it's really kind of lumped in with those agencies for really purposes of revving the document, no other reason.

That's all.

Did we have at one point in time, I should have asked this during the split conversation, was there a point in time in our history that the monies or some portion of the Children's Services Act came off the top?

It's been one though where both, as long as I've been in the budget office, which has been more than 15 years now, both the schools and counties have contributed for their shares based on those services.

And was there a time when something with the ECC

There was a long time ago where there used to be a designated charge or a tax specific to the ECC and then in the mid to late 2000s the state completely redid the telecommunications code and so we simplified that just to say just all telecommunications tax is split and because that tax went away.

The monies in those transfers, are they only for the services that are provided?

There's different categories of expenditures, some of which are paid for by the schools, some of which are paid before by county government.

Supervisor Mack?

That I'm really upset about because I thought that went away two years ago.

Because the cash proffers can be triggered for different reasons, I think.

Thank you.

We don't need them all here.

We're not, we'll kill the agenda if we start diving into those tonight.

Thank you.

Is this where we were going to do a recess, or is there more presentation?

We do have the human service non-profits, but we're also two hours in, so I would defer to the chair.

Back to Caitlin and Andy.

So with that really high level introduction I will turn it over to Ms. Malcolm to talk about the Human Services Funding Process Agencies.

And I will note, as I said previously, there's a detailed appendix for all the programs that apply for the funding around page 300 of the budget book.

One, how do we, so I think you mentioned, I think you answered this actually a couple slides ago, measuring the outcomes is part of the assessment process, right?

Ms. Dimmick, do you want to speak to that?

Yes, both reporting on past outcomes and predicting future outcomes is a required and scored part of the application process, as is identifying the number of Albemarle County beneficiaries for those outcomes by zip code.

Another question about the 29, I apologize if this is in here somewhere, the 29, those were the awarded, how many applied?

Can we come back to you on that?

Do we take that into consideration?

We don't have sufficient staff to do that kind of deep dive, particularly for the amounts that are being requested here, but we do ask a question around collaboration and leverage, and we give additional points for those organizations that are maximizing the benefit of working together across systems.

Supervisor Duncan?

I've heard that there's some organizations that didn't get funded last year and then therefore because of the level of funding they didn't get funded this year and so is there a way to kind of remedy that or is it going forward you just if you don't get funded the year before you just don't get funded?

And so there are agencies who have gone in and out maybe more frequently the last couple of years than prior.

Because 20 years ago we used to have somebody from the United Way who was on that thing and that was the perception of disaster.

We are painfully aware of the number of eyes watching this particular process and we want to avoid anything, any real conflict and any appearance of a conflict.

I'm a little confused though because it says on slide 34 this group does not make funding recommendations but they choose the tiers and the tiers are directly related to the funding regulations so help me understand that.

Staff teams move folks into tiers.

I guess put those on for later.

Thank you supervisor

Am I correct in remembering this is the first cycle that we've had this tier system from the start in the HSFP cycle, or did we do this last year?

We did this last year as well.

What's the 1,000 yard blue sky kind of overview of this process that has been the source of some attempted reform and restructuring?

So from that perspective, this shakes that up and shifts the emphasis on a program that's delivering something the county has identified as something we need.

But Mr. Nick did say it better than I did.

Or am I under misapprehension on that?

Would you add anything to that?

No, I would not.

I think I'm hearing there is not a hard quantitative way that the tiers are applied to funding outputs.

We back into the amounts based on what's been prioritized and how many applications we have.

But I guess I would just like to get a sense of that.

Our priorities have remained the same for the three years of the cycle so that level of predictability is helpful I think to say the board has said they fund, they are interested in these particular services delivered in this particular kind of way and so if you don't match that then you know that you're at a higher risk for not necessarily getting funding that year.

If all we focus is on the increase and not the base amount, we're going to be limited in the amount of progress we can make in delivering the outcomes to the community.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley?

Is that a fair statement?

If you were trying to figure that out, I don't think any nonprofit achieves that.

And if they're in another section and they show up again at $5,000, are they getting $10,000 or how?

It really depends on the specific request of the program itself, rather than the agency as a whole.

If they ask for $5,000 from this pot on page 108, I'm making that up.

So we do that check to make sure that we have not done that.

Do you want us to point that out?

I'll gladly double check, and I'll say for those agencies that are funded in both processes, what are the specific distinct programs where they are to clarify what those differences are?

Because their amounts were the same, so that's why.

Is there, just to help us looking through this, is there a particular agency in question?

Earlier in the budget where it says new program and then it appears on this page also.

Yes, I believe, staff correct me if I'm wrong, they're the only applied through the human services funding process.

Okay, they show up earlier and now that was for Monday and I'm going to have to look it up and I'll get that information to you.

We'll also still clarify for agencies who applied for once to give the board the public confidence that no one has doubled it.

Pardon me for that.

That program is not responding to a specific at-risk youth or a need from a child, but rather providing a preventative and protective support to everyone who participates.

I think that would be good to know.

Okay, good.

Thank you.

If you still have questions on this section, we can email those.

So with that, I am happy to hear questions on community development, economic development fund, and transit.

MicroCat, is there any discussion of expanding that service or does it feel like it's that sort of capacity and where it needs to be?

Now there is the ability to look at potential changes.

That's all.

So we can come back with additional details about that.

Great, thank you.

Supervisor Duncan?

One, do we have, I know it exists somewhere, I just have never physically seen it, like a map of where the ridership is, like where the requests are coming from, where they're going to.

of that, and if you look at that and you want additional detail on top of that, I'd be happy to provide more.

This just feels like such a small amount of money for what we're paying.

It's been relatively minimal cost to that and so that would, should that be prohibitive in this instance, but we're still exploring that.

Supervisor Mallek.

Thank you.

Because it may take years for that to happen, I just want to know how we get some accountability on that.

And so there is a mechanism to allow for vacancies and other programmatic changes as we move through the fiscal year.

Because I know there was zero information about that a number of years ago, probably prior to Garland, but are you learning that information now on a quarterly basis and is that part of the true up?

So you would send that information routinely to the county about the numbers have missed, right?

In which case, I'll be quiet.

I mean, it is a 30 minute drive.

I'll stop there.