Board of Supervisors County Executive's Recommended Budget   2/17/2017

I'll call our meeting to order.

This is the meeting where our Interim County Executive is going to present the budget for us.

and what is a little different today with our meeting is that this is the first day we've been able to live stream in this room.

So you'll see our two friends that are now attached to the ceiling.

We're live streaming which means we'll be able to podcast as we have been, you know, as always.

But because we're live streaming and it's the first day, we wanna be very careful about

sound checks and make sure that Travis and Claudette can hear clearly.

We also have a lot of people around the table.

So a great way to do a sound check is for everybody to introduce themselves rather than just saying yes.

If you'll introduce yourself and then they'll be able to nod yes or no as to whether they can hear you clearly.

And we have

Officer is not here quite yet.

I'll introduce him as he comes in.

So anyway, so with that, let's get started.

Doug?

He's saying no.

Can't hear you already, so.

Try it again, Doug.

It's pretty important.

It is.

Bill McCeary, deputy county executive.

Brett Kamptner, county attorney.

Brad Sheffield.

I'll try again, Doug Walker, Inland County Executive.

And I will say that Norman is not here right now.

He had some family medical issues this week, and he said he may or may not be at the meeting, so I'm not sure whether he'll come in a little bit late, but we're not starting with Norman, unfortunately, right now.

Okay.

As a nurse I would suggest that's probably not a great idea.

and by the county executive's obligation to prevent you from being in a balanced budget.

Those new board members are all part of the budget process.

The changes that are being suggested are part of the process.

I would also say, as part of the induction, Madam Chairman and members of the board, that we did survive a press briefing yesterday, and we bargained that information, and the press would be better prepared to write the story today.

That's a typical part of our process.

I think it's a good outreach to the media.

This information can be quite complicated, and we appreciate the media's

My style is a little conversational, but I will continue to work through the presentation, try to stop and answer questions, maybe just kind of get through the questions

The budget is always about numbers.

It is fundamental to the relationship between

We also want to talk about what the budget does and the meaning behind it.

A fair amount of conversation will be dedicated to talking about what this budget supports and what the focus areas are.

This budget intends to be focused on action, and action to achieve certain goals that were established by the board through the senior planning process.

Starting with your approved achieving priorities, and including our focus on organizational transformation.

Our focus on the quality of our organization, recognizing that as any service organization we are about people for the people and the work that we do, the work of talent, the dedication, the training, and the capacity of our organization to continue to meet those needs is important.

This budget does also focus on thoughtful reductions in the future, both as it relates to reductions in the capital improvement program, as well as uses one-time money to advance some of the board's strategic priorities.

and underscoring all of our initiatives is our fundamental obligation to continue to meet the many mandates and obligations that are responsible for it and including maintaining the current levels of service and programs as guided through the two year plan.

This project is a culmination of a year's worth of response to

What was discussed in the FY 17 was a very thoughtful and innovative process making changes in how we are focusing our investments for you and for the community going forward.

You may recall that in adopting the FY17 budget, it included a direction to the county and resources to focus on a sustainable future.

There was a conversation about the gap, the end of the gap, and our need to reposition ourselves so that we are closing that gap and having a better, more sustainable, structural relationship with the revenues coming in and expenditures going out.

Part of that work is the student planning effort, where they're actively involved in working with communities, working with organizations to prioritize the community needs and the result of which was an adopted student plan and prioritizing of initiatives within that plan.

In addition, using a focus on our program and service inventory, we engaged in a priority-based budgeting initiative, then involving staff and the community and the board along with the strategic planning in solidifying the priorities for the board's work heading into the fall.

And then, new this year, in addition to continuing to focus on the five-year financial planning work that is very typical in the county and is part of an overall commitment to long-term financial management, we included a two-year fiscal plan, a balance sheet fiscal plan to include clarity in which we're looking not just at the upcoming year, but also at the implications of the New York projections

and choices that are apparent in year one in the state of Crystal 18, but also in the second year.

And so the balanced two-year fiscal plan that was adopted in December of 2016 laid considerable groundwork for the work of Indian to developing the recommended coverage.

So it's indicated that this work was guided by that two-year plan, that by the completed, no tax rate increases,

A delay in the CIP-related tax increases is a projected 1.3 cent increase in the tax rate rate specifically to funding the CIP.

An enhanced use of dedicated revenues for specific services, an example of that would be the utility, the creation of former utilities, which you know is ongoing.

Strategic Use of New Revenue and One-Time Learning, maintaining current levels of service.

According to the program and service inventory, the staff is not elected to eliminate services or to reduce service levels.

and then using existing funding formula to specifically represent the commitments that we have had in the past of dedicating 60% of new revenue in our contribution to employment.

And I transfer it to K-12 education.

driving transformations to reduce costs and improve productivity and continued support for a quality organization.

Let me talk for a minute about a significant change in the information that was considered as a significant meaningful change.

We anticipated when we had the competition before December that we were going to be experiencing about a 1.8% increase in the set value from calendar year 2016 to calendar year 2017.

With the completion of most recent assessments, the information is different.

And so the question here is that we are looking at instead of a 1.8% increase, a 2.9%

It's really intended to illustrate direction and magnitude of change.

The point here is to illustrate that instead of the 1.8% projection that you saw in your fiscal plan process, that this budget is like 2.9% increase in the value under the assessment.

There is also an increase in real estate revenue due to new construction and land additions.

We'll talk about those separately.

Other revenue sources that have strengthened this year compared to the adopted FY17 budget.

Most of our comparisons we're looking at year to year is budget to budget to budget because we adopted FY17 budget to the recommended FY18 budget.

So we did experience some meaningful improvement in our revenue outlook.

As I mentioned previously about the changes in value, I indicate here also the increase in revenue from new construction and land use.

Local personal property taxes, that would be card and personal property.

Also, we've also seen some meaningful growth there.

The food driven activity, the sales tax, the meal tax, the lodging tax, the food falls, all of what sounds moderate growth, certainly all of it becomes a meaningful part of the overall revenue change.

and in public service act, this is essentially being actually one business that has been reassessed by state corporations.

You know, we actually receive that information from state corporations, and they should be able to see it and tell us if there's any value to it.

But some significant changes in the values can obviously translate to where it's obviously a negative.

In this case, it is targeted, and it's relevant to the county.

So, apart from the

and the questions that the board has already made specifically as relates to your strategic priorities and our efforts on continued transformation in our organizational activities.

At the highest level when we talk about the proposed budget, we talk about the total budget.

The total budget of

Almost $400 million is a reflection of uses and sources.

On the sources side, the largest share being local revenues, particularly from property tax and other local revenues.

You also see in this the use of fund balance, borrowed proceeds, that would be proceeds from really the upcoming borrowings from the debt that you just approved, the GO debt and the lease revenue debt that then gets translated into proceeds for the coming year.

On the expenditure side, not surprising, K through 12 education enjoys considerable support from this community.

A total of 61% of all expenditures are reflected in support for K through 12 education, the majority of that being operations, but also our support for school capital and the debt service that supports school infrastructure also.

You will note, as we have in the past, the 4% of expenditures dedicated to the city revenue sharing program.

We'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute.

So this total budget, the highlights include an increase of almost $22 million in revenue.

That would be both for increases in operating expenditures and in increases in the capital budget.

It does reflect the strengthening of overall revenue growth.

It does reflect an increase in real estate values through reassessment.

It is built on the current tax rate of 83.9 cents and that's guidance that came through the two-year plan process and just to reiterate that this budget does not include any recommended changes to the tax rate.

State revenues have increased slightly, primarily for increased support for the school division, although probably not as much as we would like.

and increased support for social services.

On the federal side, those increases, again, primarily for social services.

Much of the programs and services provided through social services do include a federal and state component.

In tabular form, this is intended to reflect again the change in

expenditures from the adopted FY 17 to the recommended FY 18.

We would note in here on the school division side again you kind of roll up the increased support for operations, their special revenue funds, and their debt service funds, again a very meaningful investment.

in the cost of K through 12 education.

At the bottom, just pointing out the capital projects investment, much of that gets actually started in FY 17 and then unspended, the unspent portion of those proceeds have been rolled in to FY 18.

We can talk much more about capital through the course of our conversations also.

And then highlighting that for the first time

several years, I'm looking at Lori, six or seven years, although it's been an $88,000 increase, it's the first time in several years that we've actually increased our support to the city through the revenue sharing program.

That formula, as you know, has a lag to it, and from the Great Recession, that lag resulted in a decrease in our contribution.

Coming out of that recession now as our performance improves, then we're now, even with the lag, are seeing that go the other direction.

So I'm just pointing that out.

So most of the work that we do,

at the staff level, and we will do with the board, is in the general fund.

And the general fund is a component of the total budget.

It comprises about 68% of the total budget.

Things that it does not include is the state share of support for K through 12 education, for example.

And other special revenues that don't go through the general fund.

And it's a hard concept when we make this change because we start talking about a different number.

And I don't want to get too detailed, and we certainly can, but kind of reflecting that, it's almost important just to make this transition from talking about the total budget of almost $400 million to the general fund, which is

which is less than that.

In the general fund budget as recommended for FY18 is 264 million dollars.

Not as significant but there are aspects of the total budget that really aren't addressed when we talk about the general fund.

So here you see in this tabular form reflecting change from FY17 adopted to FY18 recommended.

And you show here on the revenue side where the increases are coming from at the local level and at the state and federal level.

This is a slide that we've used in the past to illustrate trend in changes in revenue over time.

For the last several years we have been reiterating the modest growth in revenues.

We certainly have been performing better year over year the last several years.

but not in a dramatic way.

This slide I think really reflects the meaningful changes on middle state revenues and as you know most of those increases over the last several years have been in conjunction with tax rate adjustments.

So I just want to make sure that I am being transparent in referencing that.

The other highlight here is you see a slight uptick in local generated revenues in real estate, other local, other general property.

You see state and federal revenues remaining relatively flat.

That is a theme that we'll talk a little bit more about in just a minute, like right now.

We tend to work off of the governor's budget.

We know that there's a lot of work that goes on between when the governor submits his budget and when the money committees go to conference and come out with ultimately what the state says the budget's going to look like.

It's such a moving target, it's very difficult to make assumptions around that.

In general, the governor had a fairly pessimistic view about the state's economy.

We think then.

That's been changing, it's been improving over the last several weeks and we're seeing, you're seeing, the public is seeing some dialogue within the money committees about how they want to use some revenue to make some investments.

Again, this budget will certainly take advantage of the best information that we have when we have it, the timing of which is really hard to predict, but we will, through our process, continue to update information as we have it.

The bottom box is intended just to reinforce

the changing relationship between local support for local needs and what has typically been a relationship, a partnership with the state.

Although maybe not a dramatic shift, certainly the change in the percentage support from the state is indicative of the evolution that's going on despite the increase in

State mandates that we overall receive less support proportionately for the cost of providing programs and services to the folks in Albemarle County.

And we got this live from the schools.

When you look at the school's story in this respect, it's even more

Again, from beginning in 2009, actually the 2008-2009 school year, which would be fiscal 09, to the current, you'll see again reflected a changing relationship between the proportion of support for schools that is borne by the local government versus the state.

So this partnership is changing.

and that's not without some meaning.

You actually see there the 3.45% increase proportionally of the share of local support for K through 12 versus the declining share of state support.

and without, I'm the bureaucrat, so I don't often get into the politics, but this is, I think, is an important story going forward in our collaboration with our partners in the school division to find ways to engage with our state partners on the funding piece so that when in fact that there is an interest in providing, let's say, for example, increased salaries for our teachers,

that there's an acknowledgement at the state level that they have a role to play in that too and are not just assuming that their failure to provide support for an increase is going to result in the local just going to pick it up.

So there is that dilemma that plays itself out.

again in tabular form, trying to work between words and charts and tables.

This reflects how we report our

expenditures in categories through the Auditor of Public Accounts comparative report.

Ann will remember, maybe others, which used to be the yellow book, right?

And it is how we can account for and then we use that in the budget so that we are able to report information to the Auditor of Public Accounts that can be used then to share broadly across the state so we can approximate benchmarking.

So I say that because when you look at, for example, community development, that's not the community development department.

That's the community development function and it includes a number of, not just departments, but agencies that we support also, including CAT.

John is actually reflected, I believe, if I'm saying this correctly, under health and welfare.

and so it's just being mindful.

I know the board may be aware, but for the listening public, certainly there are details that we will be getting into on a department and agency basis, but this is more of an overall snapshot in those functional areas of where change is happening.

And again, as I mentioned, because we are a service organization, much of our resources are tied into personnel.

Those personnel costs reflected in this budget are spread throughout these

departments and functional areas.

And even when we fund our share of our obligation to let's say the regional jail, sometimes it gets lost that the regional jail is also a service organization and much of their cost is also driven by personnel.

Okay, so shifting then to our focus on how this budget is supporting the focus areas that were identified through your two-year plan process, getting out of the summary number conversation.

First is the implementation actions to ensure timely completion of successful outcomes related to your strategic priorities.

This is our acknowledgement of your priorities and our attempt to really drive them towards implementation.

Strategic plan implementation in this context, we can talk more about the details, but this budget does recommend a one-time investment in resources to actually manage the many strategic plan

priority activities so that we can, as an organization, stay focused on the progress that we're making in getting them two points of completion so that they don't get kind of lost in what sometimes can be our day-to-day delivery of services.

The board's focus on urban redevelopment and revitalization.

You recall that there were resources that were added in the current year

to enable community development and the county attorney's office to focus directly on modernization, rethoughtification of the zoning ordinance, the initial aspects of implementation of the Rio Route 29 small area plan.

This budget does continue those investments into FY18, most of which on a one-time basis, so that anticipating that the project has a start and has an end and is not trying to tie up ongoing resources for that project.

The Neighborhood Improvement Funding Initiative, we've talked about that most recently.

In addition to the 1.4 million dollars this budget includes an additional 200,000 dollars to help support what we would call the support cost or soft cost so that more of that 1.4 can actually go to projects and doesn't get then tied up into the resources needed to actually make the projects happen.

That could be design work, it could be

the engagement work that goes on working with the CACs, the planning aspects of it so it is intended to enable more of that 1.4 to be actually available for projects.

And then support for economic development is also in here in a number of ways and I know this is an important topic for the board and we'll be talking about that in I would imagine considerable detail in the weeks ahead.

Pantops Master Plan, Rivanna River Corridor has resources intended to drive those initiatives forward.

There is a Finding Families pilot program in social services intended to help them meet some of your priority initiatives in service to families.

There is agency support in here specific to your strategic priorities.

I would mention, among others, the expanded hours of Northside Library right in the middle of your development area as a reflection of the board's commitment to addressing issues related to urbanization and redevelopment.

Support for the Boys and Girls Club at Southwood also in your development area.

Support for the Senior Center and support for the Women's Treatment Center, that's the Region 10 Treatment Center that you've heard talked about which we firmly believe has a direct correlation to our ability to prevent other costs in service to these families through our Children's Services Act requirements if in fact we don't have alternatives like this for them in our community.

Second is our transformation.

We as an organization pride ourselves in having a culture of being innovative, transforming, being efficient.

You've seen that drive itself in a number of ways and I guess it's always arguable about how successful we are but certainly what this is intended to try to is to take the ideas that we think are ready for implementation and move them forward in that respect.

Those would include continued conversion of our records management from a more paper based system to a more digital based system.

Conversion of our current copy center to an imaging center.

Expanding the innovation fund.

I think the board is aware of the many successes that we've had in engaging our employees and

In developing innovative solutions to problems, these funds help to operationalize those improvements.

We'd love to talk about all the examples of where that has been successful.

The inclusion of a diversity of inclusion

I didn't mean to say that twice.

It does provide for diversity inclusion generalists in the Department of HR.

This position is intended to really improve our recruitment and retention for the specific benefit of helping an organization look more like the community that we serve.

There are some departments who have already done a good amount of engagement in this area to try to improve their recruitment of a diverse workforce.

This adds to that focus not just for those departments but for the entire local government side of organization.

Fire Rescue System fleet consolidation continues in a number of successes that we've had with consolidating fuel purchases and in consolidating training.

This will consolidate our fleet management and fleet maintenance and so that we are taking best advantage of economies of scale and coordination of the maintenance of our very, very expensive fleet.

All of this will be coming back to me for discussion.

Yes, ma'am, including that one.

And a workforce management program that has been in development.

is now ready for implementation, the first phase of which is a time and attendance system.

This is a significant change in how we will be relying less on a paper-based time and attendance and more on a computer-based enterprise system across our entire organization, again, for what we expect will be significant gains in productivity for all of our departments.

And accuracy and efficiency.

The quality organization.

The budget does include the 2% market adjustment that the board saw and approved previously in conversations with the school board and through your two-year plan process.

The remedy to relieve the entry-level compression is included in full in the recommended budget.

You're aware of the projected 7% increase in health insurance.

This would be the employer share.

of that and of course as we heard at a most recent meeting our continued evaluation of whether there's other opportunities based on information that we have available to address that further.

It is worth noting that the changes that we have made we think from staff level is enabling us to bring forward at least there are increases but there are smaller increases than we have seen in the past and we are trying to look for how it is we can continue to make those improvements.

increasing your training funds to support the quality of our workforce.

Staffing resources are addressed in the budget.

There are a number of positions.

There are temporary positions.

There are contractual positions.

There are positions that were added in FY 17.

I would mention specifically the two that were included in community development to deal with our workload would be continued in FY 18.

There are some adjustments to some current positions both in reclassifying, redefining, as well as expanding from part-time to full-time and there are new positions here as well.

We obviously will be working with you in as much detail as you want on exactly what those positions are and why it is that staff is bringing those forward as being the highest priority.

This is a chart you've seen before and we think it's worth bringing forward again just to reflect on the changes that have been made in the composition of our organization since FY09.

FY09 really is that year, right?

the fall of 08 which was 09 and all the austerity measures that had to occur after that.

We have as the economy and our financial circumstances have improved and adding positions back thoughtfully through each budget process and you can see here as you've seen before where those positions were subtracted

since 2009 and where they have been added.

It's an interesting illustration, I think a meaningful illustration of a kind of change in focus, again with limited resources, so it's always about choices that you have to make with more emphasis on health and welfare, that would be particularly in social services and in public safety.

And then less emphasis

I don't want to minimize that, but let's emphasis in the areas of public works, parks and recreation, and community development.

What's difficult in a view like this is to also understand in this context the transformational changes, the efficiencies.

So it's not just to say that because we are now staffed differently that we are somehow understaffed.

There are certainly conversations we'd love to have with you about what positions are not included in this budget and where we think that that

may lead us to want to have more conversations about where we go in the future, but we do think this is an illustration about the change in composition of our workforce.

We've also showed this to the board in the past.

It is kind of an illustration of how we have changed in our staffing levels per capita over time.

Again, going back to FY09, we're trying to use that consistent benchmark.

Again, this doesn't compare us necessarily to other localities, but it does reflect the fact that we are a growing community and even as we add staff across the board, we are mindful of the staffing levels relative to the size of our population.

It is not necessarily the most definitive

View, but it is a view that we think that adds value to kind of understand where we stand with respect to our service to our citizens and residents.

And this is a slide you've also seen before, although in a different format, this is information that does come out of the auditor of public accounts compared to the report where we are tempted to kind of benchmark against communities that are more like us.

and we can get into considerable detail.

That's not the intent.

We did want to show that with the exception of Fauquier, which is a little high, and Montgomery, which is a little low, we are relatively on par with the other counties against which that we benchmark.

Again, if you get into the particular functional areas, there's another story there, but we did want to just to illustrate that we're not an anomaly with respect to how we perceive our market.

We include Charlottesville in here, and you can kind of see how that is an anomaly, it sticks out.

They are a city, not a county, and we can certainly understand the unique nature of city services, however,

I would suggest that as we focus on becoming more urban and delivering services in a more urbanized way to a more urbanized community that it becomes more meaningful to be looking at how cities are structured and what services they provide rather than only looking at counties.

So that's just a heads up.

We believe at the county level that efficiency and innovation, transformation is part of our DNA.

We pride ourselves and have a good enormous energy organizationally around trying to be better.

We think we hit the mark in a lot of respects and certainly to the extent that we get awards for that we bring those and share that with you.

We all jump up and down and celebrate.

There are changes that are big and small and some that you know maybe kind of just show up more.

This is just an indication really of

who we believe we are as an organization from an innovation and transformation and this really underscores when we talk about driving change into the future and driving innovation that we've got a track record.

This is not new for us that we know how to do these things and we are excited and committed to doing them.

with resources dedicated to making some of those changes, we think that we can expand on these items.

And I'm not gonna go through, you can look at them at your leisure.

And we could do a whole nother list of other changes too, but we're very proud of the work that we do on behalf of you, the board, and of the folks in Albemarle County of always trying to be a better organization.

The fourth focus area is strategic investment.

This would be investing funds to improve our urban neighborhoods, bolster our CIP, and reduce future borrowing.

We've already mentioned the Neighborhood Improvement Funding Initiative.

This budget restores $700,000 in ongoing

and written revenues to the capital fund.

And they recall that back in FY16 there was a diversion of funding from the capital fund to operations to deal with what were the circumstances then.

We now have circumstances that put us in a position where we can return that money to the capital fund.

And we think that that is, obviously it's recommended for that in order to kinda bolster our cash component

of support for the capital program.

We are also seeking to add significant one-time funds, about $1.2 million specifically in the FY18 budget.

That is different from any investment we may wanna make from FY16 year end, right?

There's a whole nother category.

This would be FY18 resources invested into the CIP in addition.

One-time funds in addition to the $700 in ongoing funding.

This does include increased resources for transportation revenue sharing.

The process of identifying priority projects is coming up.

We also know that there may be an opportunity to, not just on the revenue sharing side, which also seems to be changing to be more like smart scale, but even on smart scale, where we have projects that we want to make more attractive, that the expectation from the state is that we're going to have to invest more local money.

So this intends to begin that process of investing more local money towards transportation whether it's revenue sharing or developing smart scale projects so we can be more effective.

As indicated previously, this budget enables the board to defer the previously identified tax rate increases that were identified for the CIP.

That is the 1.3 that was identified and associated with the

It's also the point two that was identified coming out of the oversight committee for the senior center project and support for the PVCC project.

So it was not as apparent, but it is a combined implication of that.

is part of this picture that gets deferred.

And we'll talk more about other things going on in the capital fund that are meaningful.

It also does provide for ACE funding, both in FY17, which we're not talking about, but also in FY18.

The mandates and obligations, not to spend a lot of time here, it is what we do.

and again, not to minimize it either because it's a significant part of cost of delivering programs and services in local government.

First and foremost, always, as you know, is our transfer to debt service because of our fire fund obligations that's actually treated into separate funds of transfer to water resources, which we will, during the course of this year, continue to work to implement a stormwater utility,

Again, targeted for implementation beginning in FY19, so it's not an FY18 initiative.

The revenue sharing payment to the city, which I mentioned, which goes up slightly for the first time in many years, and our transfer to the school division, both for operations by formula and for the debt service.

I want to take just a, almost done, take a closer look at the capital fund.

I know that the words on here are small.

We've tried to, at least they're small to me.

Maybe they're small to you also.

And again, some of this we've already talked about, but I do want to make a couple other points.

As the board is aware that you supported borrowing all of the

of the funding supported by the general obligation bond referendum as well as the lease bond in order to avoid what staff was concerned and your financial advisory concern would be increasing interest rates.

And so that was not the original plan.

So borrowing more money sooner, although we believe saves money in the long run, certainly requires us now to pay back more money in the short run because we have more money to pay back.

We borrowed it sooner.

So that's part of what's happening in the capital fund is that reality.

So infusions of cash one time or ongoing kind of help to mitigate that consequence.

We do think that it's the right thing, but it does have consequences.

So part of the story is not only are we able to, we believe, avoid future increase in interest rates,

We're still able to defer, based on the model, the increase in the tax rate for this year.

And overall, to the extent that we're using more cash and less debt, then taxpayers are paying less interest costs, the cost of less in the long run.

And that is, again, consistent with

are intent to try to get closer to this 3% equity funding for our CIP going forward in the future.

And in the highlights, as mentioned previously, the Senior Center and the PVCC project, transportation revenue sharing, the school improvements that were supported by the referendum,

the maintenance and replacement program which as you know is the lion's share of our capital obligations and then the ACE funding.

Challenges that we see and this could have been a list of ten or you know but we stuck with three that we think kind of helped to

kind of frame our concerns at the staff level as we get into these conversations and first and foremost and without minimizing it is our concern about the uncertainty within our economy.

I'm the bureaucrat, not the politician, but there are a lot of changes that seem to be afoot, and the ACA is one that is getting a lot of attention.

We don't know what that means to us, and so putting this budget together, we are mindful of not over-committing.

Again, part of making investments in the capital fund, making investments in one-time resources versus ongoing resources is to enable us to be more agile, flexible going forward when and if circumstances change.

There are staff capacity needs that remain unmet.

We can certainly provide you great detail on the resources that were identified by staff in order to kind of keep pace with what they see is what's driving their demand.

We did provide resources for some investment in personnel, but not in all.

And we're also aware that the board may have interest in expanded services or new programs and services that we would want to be sensitive to in working with you to try to help address those also.

and that as much as we were able to provide support for the capital plan, again some of which was mitigating the borrowing the money sooner and delaying the tax rate, there is also this larger issue of the capital needs assessment which has not gotten a lot of attention over the last several years with major projects that may continue to kind of sit out there.

That's on the general government side.

The schools, through their long-range planning,

and there I mentioned the high school has its own interest and concerns about where their priority capital projects are and obviously what those are going to cost.

So this is just a marker about staff's concern about continuing to work with the Board of Supervisors and with the school board in understanding the longer term implications of your capital plan and then looking forward on how to best address those.

In summary, this is just, I hope, repeating what I've already said.

If there's something here I didn't say, then shame on me.

Implement the board's strategic priorities, achieve transformation that promotes efficiency and productivity, sustain a responsive, flexible, high-quality organization, invest resources into the CIP to build the county's future, and continue to meet our mandate's obligations and to maintain our program and service level.

That's the end of the presentation.

I did want to shift very quickly to what happens next and of course our ongoing commitment to engagement both with you and with our organization and with the larger public.

There is a public hearing scheduled for 6 p.m. on Tuesday the 21st.

Okay, and then your first work session is scheduled for next Thursday, the 23rd.

At that work session, the intent will be for staff to provide just an overview of the budget

and then start on the chapters, starting from the beginning.

I know in the past we may have done this a couple of different ways, but if you are working through this material over the weekend or ahead of the work session, then we would encourage you to start from front to back because we will not be trying, we try not to jump around.

We're trying to kind of work from front to back.

and again you see the other opportunities there, both work sessions that have been scheduled, work sessions at the end of March that have been set as placeholders in case more time is needed.

I will note on March the 7th is the final date for the board to finalize the tax rate for advertisement purposes.

and then heading into April you have the public hearing on the proposed budget and then final adoption of the tax rate and the budget scheduled for April the 18th.

This does, I'll just note that this does avoid spring break in Albemarle County which I understand is the week of March, excuse me, April the 3rd.

So as we always try to be mindful.

Also note that we only have one public hearing this year, not two.

Two on the budget, but not two right there at the end.

and that's what I have.

We certainly take questions that you have.

I know that I do want Lori in particular to kind of give you an orientation just to the materials that you have, because it's a lot of stuff to throw at you all at once, even if it's familiar to you.

So I thought I'd have her just kind of make sure she can get you oriented, but we're certainly here to answer any questions.

Oh, I do also, I want to thank, I mean there's so many people who thank, I can't really start, but the budget team is amazing.

If you look at the acknowledgements in the budget book, the departments work on this material, on their budgets, all year long.

It does have its ebbs and flows, so I don't want to suggest that the same level of effort occurs throughout the entire year.

I just want to commend the seriousness and the dedication the staff puts in to not just creating numbers for you, but creating the background behind the numbers so that you should be able to ask, anybody should be able to ask any question about any number

and there's an answer for it.

So whether you call it modified zero-based budgeting or whatever, but this is intended to be a highly user-friendly, as complicated as it can be, where every number has meaning.

And if we're not able to provide a meaning, then we've got that claim to do.

But I want to thank all of those who are involved in getting to this point, and then of course you'll

You'll take it from here and we'll help you get through it.

Do you all have any questions right now?

I do.

I have a couple of comments, but I also have some questions.

I really appreciate, Doug, you and the staff's thoroughness and your very well done presentation today.

I did have a question on, if we turn to page 8 at the bottom of your resume.

will increase by 3.1% primarily for social services.

Are these projected revenues?

Or are they committed revenues?

And I'm going to come back to that theme.

I'm assuming that they're projected revenues.

So I do want to talk about that.

Today is not the time for that.

But we need to focus in to see how accurate

Projected revenues are going to be given where the administration and the Congress are currently going on social services.

Page 11, just an observation I wanted to make looking at the state support for school division.

We see the declining fiscal level of commitment on a state and federal level.

We're very fortunate in this county

to have the resources potentially to draw upon, to compensate, but I'm just mindful of the fact that I'm in certification with supervisors throughout Commonwealth, that there's other counties that don't have that capability.

So they're also, on the other hand, they're not experiencing population increases as we are.

But they certainly feel it fiscally as the state and the federal government cut back on their traditional commitments to local government.

So that's just an observation.

Page 12, under general climate expenditures, where is DSS?

in the administration to community development listing there.

Where would we find them included?

Is that health and welfare?

That's what I presume, but I just wanted to confirm that that was the location.

And then if we can flip over to page 14.

For that last bullet, it's about 14 positions.

We do FTEs, full-time equivalents, so you have to be mindful of that.

There's a page in your budget book, which I can draw your attention to, that actually outlines all the changes in positions.

and when you total them all up, the FTE from the ones you started in 17 since the beginning of 17 all the way through, it's about 19 FTEs.

Okay, that's good.

I just wanted to get a figure, do I solve that?

We'll discuss each of those positions as we go through all of the 30.

I know we will, but I just, today, and given the press being here, we're going to hear from constituents.

I just want to get a handle on that.

I do have another observation, page 16, under the comparables to benchmark jurisdictions.

When you look at the purple, you notice that Albemarle County has a larger purple band.

And the reason for that, when you look at the level of poverty in the comparable counties, Albemarle County has higher rates of poverty

Perp population than the other comparable counties do.

So we're much more similar as you look at that somewhat glaucoma-ized Charlottesville band.

You see that they're the largest in terms of the purple, but

We certainly, that purple dimension indicates the extent of the urban complexity of the Albemarle County that distinguishes us from our comparables.

So one thing we may want to do over time is to try to find another comparable out there that's urbanizing at a similar rate to Albemarle County and bring that in even though on other levels it may not be as purely a comparable

But I would like us to be able to look at that rather than just having Charlottesville as a comparison.

Another factor to consider is our support through social services for the Bright Stars program and family support.

That also adds to our cost for social services in an educational type of environment.

It's a choice that we've made.

That's a great idea.

I agree.

But I think, unfortunately, given what's happening, we need to really develop

strong strategic planning to deal with the fiscal impact of a reduction in federal support in this critical area.

So I'm just making the argument right here.

On page 17, where I'm pleased that $700,000 in this budget is proposed to go over to the capital fund, and I assume in the budget there was a total number

between fiscal 2016 where we're putting surplus funds committing them to capital and in this fund.

Do we have a total number between fiscal year 2016 surplus and this capital budget, how much we're proposing actually we deliver?

We certainly will, yeah.

And that's in the budget?

Yes.

Okay.

I will get the page in a minute.

The page, if you can find it on

And that assumes appropriation of the FY16 positive variance in FY17 for carryover into FY18.

And so that appropriation hasn't happened yet.

Another comment, I'm delighted to see ACE being funded for 18 and 19.

I would note that part of the funding for 17 or 18 is coming from our tourism revenues.

Right, right.

I'm trying not to talk about 17 because it confuses.

and we understand that there is a likelihood transfer of revenue and there is this delay of when money is available and when that money is spent.

I'll be quick.

Also on page 17 we're talking about differing previously identified texture increases.

In the CIP those were shown for 19.

So I just want to clarify when we're telling the story that they were not in 18 and they were being pushed out.

They were pushed out.

They were pushed out.

Maybe it was 19, but they were supposed to be in 18 for 18.

It was original.

I just checked.

It was original.

OK. That was a year and a half ago.

Anything else in there?

Not right now.

OK.

I've got one more on this side.

Why don't you go up, please?

Let's let Lori go on and go through the book for us, which will probably help all of us.

And again, I just want to reiterate, we really appreciate all the hard work that I just put into this document.

The presentation was great.

As you expect that, that in itself takes a team.

If I may write before I do, I do want to also thank the finance department.

They do work on the revenue side of the picture, and we do the budget side, so I always think of them.

They're not as close to the table right now, but they have a very strong role in Eddy's here and others.

I want to thank them as well.

So this budget document, this document is in a folder for you.

It's for you to take notes.

It gives you a place to put information in.

We want you to totally engage in this budget document, ask questions, become involved.

And as Ann says, you can get homeless.

You know, you get started on this.

It's a large document.

We think it's a great document.

It is a GFOA approved document and how we set it up.

There's a lot here though.

We use it almost as a historical document as well as like what happened three years ago and so we do add narrative to numbers so you get both narrative and numbers.

You have in the very front of your document the table of contents that really outlines what each chapter is

and what categories, for example, where social services is and where different departments are within the budget.

So your table of contents is your friend if you just refer back to that if you want to look for specific information there.

Right behind that table of contents is your acknowledgments page that Doug brought up of all the folks that work closely.

with the budget development, so take a look at that.

As you go through the chapters, I'm not gonna go through every chapter with you, but as Doug said, our very first work session, we're gonna be going through kind of chapter by chapter.

In the past, we used to go, hey, let's go public service or safety first, or let's go to different categories, and we found it's just better to just ride straight through with everyone on that.

When we start on the work session,

Next week, we will go into some depth on the expenditures and revenues that Doug touched on today.

We'll also do a category that's not in your book that we call cross-departmental.

So things that cross all departments, we'll hit those.

For example, the salary adjustments and things like that.

So we'll start off with that, and then we'll then start moving through your chapters.

And if you think about the first one being administration as a category,

I'll back up a little bit.

The revenues and expenditures are nice chapters for you to look at because we will start with those in the broad way and a lot of details about some of your answers on revenues and why the projections are as they are is listed in detail in your revenue chapter.

Then move into administration and that starts on

Looks like it's page 83.

And then you just kind of read through the chapters if you can ahead of time.

It would be very helpful so you'll become familiar with them.

We're going to move quickly.

We're going to make it interactive.

We're not going to go into a bunch of details about every single department.

We're going to hit highlights that we think are important to board members.

I took notes of things, comments you have, and areas where you're like, I hope I hear more about this, to make sure that we add that to your work session and bring some more dialogue back to you on those.

If you have more things that you look at between now and Thursday that you really want a little more conversation or you want us to prepare some more information for, please just email us and we'll work on that.

So anyway, that's basically how the document works.

There's a category that even though we won't get to it probably on Thursday, I think you'll find interesting and it's a strange name, but it's called non-departmental, but that's a lot of where a lot of details are about the additional funding, the one-time funding,

the funds that we put in a category to move forth a lot of your strategic planning initiatives.

So I think you might find that chapter of interest.

The education chapter is basically information provided by the school division, a brief overview of their budget.

They also have their entire budget in front of you in a document as well as it's online.

So you really refer to their document if you want more details on that.

They're going to come speak to their budget in one of the work sessions.

The capital improvement program and debt will be their third work session.

And you'll see those chapters as well.

If you want to get ahead of the game, you can look at that.

So I hope you find this very useful.

We will look forward to the work sessions coming up.

Thank you, Ellen.

When you get there, then you can talk a little bit at some point where it's appropriate to adopt actual and adopt it, because that's a question that's always been asked.

We can move on to our next topic.

It's from the board.

Now it's not listed on the agenda.

I have just a couple.

Rick?

Sure.

I do, Madam Chair.

I wanted to let the board know, and I wanted the public to be aware, that a Virginia winery owned by Eric Trump has

is seeking 23 workers from overseas to plant and harvest grapes there this spring.

That was reported Thursday by Buzzfeed and was in the bill published in the capitol on the 16th.

The Department of Labor published a request from the winery earlier that day on Thursday.

That's how Buzzfeed picked it up from the Department of Labor.

Thursday's posting says potential workers will earn $1,127 hourly, working at the 1,300-acre estate from April 3 to as late as October 27.

The workers are being sought using the federal H-2A visa program, which permits U.S. employers to hire foreign agricultural laborers for temporary work as long as no qualified Americans want the jobs instead.

All right.

Rick, was that it?

OK.

I just have a couple of things.

First of all, I want to just thank Dr. Moran, our superintendent, and the chair and vice chair of the school board.

They flipped out just a few minutes ago.

But I think it was great that we had those three folks joining us for the budget presentation.

The other thing that I did want to ask about is, we're now live streaming in this room.

We have renegotiated a contract with, you can probably tell me, Bill or somebody, whoever it is that we do this work with.

I understand that the contract now has an unlimited license shield.

which would mean that we could use this to allow the school board to livestream their meetings would not cost us any additional money, that's my understanding.

So since that's the case, and I know how interested our public is in education, it would seem like we would want to open up the livestream

They'd have to figure out how to support it, you know, with the folks, and I get that.

Do you want to make a comment about that?

I think the issue actually lies in their agenda process and the way that the industry corresponds to the work that Travis and Claudette do to connect all of those individual agenda items to the discussions.

As long as they're aware, I just want to make sure.

Because at one point we did have a stop of wheat, there was an issue because of the licensure in the contract.

and since that's changed I want to make sure that they are aware of the wedding commission.

With that, I'm very interested in a motion to adjourn.

And it looks like we're adjourning February the 21st at 6 o'clock.

I believe that's correct.

It's in the Lane Auditorium.

In the Lane Auditorium.

Ms. Malle?

Yes.

Ms. McKeel?

Yes.

Ms. Paulman?

Yes.

Second.

Yes.