Board of Supervisors Budget Work Session   2/23/2017

so easy to forget.

Alright, so let's go around the table and introduce ourselves and that way Travis and Claudette, our board clerks are in the back, Claudette is our clerk and Travis Morris beside her and then everybody else can do the introductions here.

We are

So let's do a mic check.

Start with you, Doug.

Ann Mallek, White Hall District.

Diantha McKeel, Jack Jouett.

Brad Sheffield.

So do we have everybody clearly?

Great.

And we are, so that everybody knows, we're live streaming.

And the public has a chance now to watch our budget work sessions, which is really, really great.

So those of you in the audience can tell all your friends that the hot is showing down.

The budget work sessions that are gonna be happening for the next week.

And just for everybody's clarification, there weren't any votes that will be coming out of the work session today.

Plenty of questions.

Absolutely.

While we don't take public comment at our work sessions, we were going to remind folks or ask you if you have a question that comes up

You can get a piece of paper from one of our board clerks and write the question down and leave it for us and we'll make sure we get your questions answered.

and the folks that are watching live stream can email their questions to us.

Okay, thank you Madam Chair, members of the board, members of the audience and those listening.

I see that we have the shades down in the room so we can't look outside and dream about the beautiful weather out there today.

So I appreciate that.

I'm here to kick off our first work session for the fiscal year 18 budget.

As we start, I just want to remind you how we've done these work sessions in the past and how we think they work well.

And if there's any other way that the board would like to proceed, it would be good to know right now.

Basically, we do an interactive approach.

We do have presentation slides.

We are going to work you through the budget document.

However, we want this to be very interactive, so questions can come up at any time.

Please jump in with questions.

Please, or comments, or those types of things.

I also want to let you know that the members of the budget staff and others, the finance staff and other departments are here.

So if there's questions that they can answer better as experts in those fields, they will be answering those questions as well.

What we do is we have the dialogue and then if there's a question we can answer right then, we get it answered for you.

If there's a question that you have that you will take a little research, we write it down and we bring the answers back to you either by email or at your next work session.

and then we have this thing we call the list.

So this is something that no one mentions except the board members.

If you have something you wanna put on the list, so you just say on the list, it's an item that we wanna have future dialogue and a future work session on.

So we may ask you a question, you're talking about a topic, we'll say is that something for the list?

So there'll be this list thing that we'll be doing, we'll be taking notes on that and those will be topics that we will bring back for further discussion at one of the next work sessions.

An important date, Diantha asked about a vote and those types of things.

An important date is coming up on, not March, well actually it's the next slide, but March 7th, you'll be finalizing your budget.

This is your proposed budget right now.

This is the county executive's recommended budget.

Soon it'll become your proposed budget.

And then it remains as your proposed budget all the way to the end to when you actually adopt it.

So March 7th is an important time for you to be finalizing your budget.

You'll be completing your discussion and finalizing directions and you're going to be finalizing your proposed budget and determining the tax rate.

So here's the schedule, just to keep this in mind as we move forward today.

The first one's at the top, today's work session.

We're gonna talk about revenues, expenditures, and we're gonna go through some departments.

Basically following the book, there'll be a couple exceptions that I'll share with you in a moment.

On February 27th, which is next Monday, the schools will be here.

The school board chair usually delivers the school board budget to you.

That'll happen.

They'll do that first and then we will continue with some of our department areas that we haven't finished today after the schools are complete.

On March 2nd, we'll talk about the CIP and debt service.

March 7th, that's the date I had up before.

This is when you're finalizing your tax rate for advertisement.

It doesn't mean you're finalizing your tax rate.

It's just what you're gonna advertise for the public hearing.

And that's an important date that has to happen.

There's legal requirements with the timing on that.

You'll also approve your proposed budget.

At this point we have this little dotted line with the arrow up here says we have some placeholders.

Some years we need more work sessions and some years we do not.

We have put some as a placeholder on your calendars in case you want to have further dialogue on any of these topics so you can see the placeholders there.

April 11th is when you have the public, you have basically two public hearings on the same night.

We open and close them both.

based on a legal requirement.

You'll have the public hearing on your proposed budget and your public hearing on your tax rate.

And April 18th, which is a little later this year than in the past, we'll be asking you to set the tax rate and approve the budget.

So that's the schedule coming up.

So we'll go ahead and start with today's work.

As Doug has been sharing with you, the two-year plan, the fiscal plan that we did really did set the stage for us putting this budget together for you.

And it set direction, no tax rate increases, it delayed the CIP-related tax increase, enhanced use of dedicated revenues for specific services, strategically used the one-time money, and used our existing funding formulas.

And then we set up three major goals.

Depends on which way I go.

All right.

Got it, thank you.

I might hold it because I want to make sure people hear me all right.

Because I'll move to the left and then I'll move to the right and keep changing the lapel.

So the focus of the 18 budget has the three goals from your two-year plan and then two additional goals.

Implement the board's approved strategic priorities, drive transformation, support the quality organization, then two more to make thoughtful investments in the future

and obviously to meet our mandates and obligations.

You've seen these slides before.

I'm just going to breeze right by them.

It's the recommended total budget.

As you know, the total budget is a general fund plus the school fund plus the CIP fund, special revenue funds.

It's just everything that we appropriate, everything that is your total budget.

It's the big picture.

We're gonna concentrate, as Doug has done, on the general fund, but I just wanted to bring this to your attention, that you have a total budget, it's the $397 million budget, increase of 5.8% over the 17 adopted budget.

Moving into the general fund.

The general fund is the revenues are 68% of your total county budget.

This is the area that we're going to concentrate a lot of our conversation on.

Your budget document does include other funds and some other information.

Again, the CIP and other funds we'll be discussing.

But tonight, or this afternoon, we're going to talk mainly about the general fund.

The General Fund revenues, I'm going to start with revenues and move through expenditures.

The General Fund revenues total the $274 million.

You'll see that there's three general local revenue sections.

There's your general property taxes, which includes real estate, personal property, and public service taxes.

You have a category called other local taxes, which is a lot of those consumer driven taxes that Doug has mentioned before.

You have something called other local revenue, which is fees, building inspection, permits, investments, charges for service.

And you see that we have 14

$1.85 million of growth in those areas projected for fiscal year 18.

And then the bottom part of that chart is the state revenues, federal revenues, transfers from other funds, one of which is a tourism fund, which I'm gonna talk about a little bit more in a few minutes.

And then the use of fund balance.

The use of fund balance is basically a use of savings from fiscal year 16 and before that, but it's called a revenue for purposes of how we put the budget together.

I'm gonna start with just a little closer dive in the real estate revenues.

They're calculated at the current rate of 0.839 per 100 of assessed value.

The revenues are expected to generate $143.5 million, or 52.4% of your general fund.

It provides a $7.8 million increase over fiscal year 17.

A portion of it is due to the change in reassessment, and another portion is due to the new construction and the land divisions.

Now, it's based on two things.

As you know, the tax rate is a calendar year tax rate.

So it has a couple assumptions.

It has one assumption, of course, that we know and one that we are projecting for the next calendar year.

So it's a 2.87% increase in calendar year 2017 reassessments.

That's a reassessment that just occurred.

An assumption of a 2.5% increase in reassessments next calendar year.

So a portion of this is a really solid projection coming out of the finance department of what they think will happen next calendar year.

Each penny on the tax rate yields approximately 1.7 million in estimated collectible real estate tax revenues.

You hear conversations about the lowered or the effective tax rate that we will be advertising would be 0.809 per 100 of assessed value.

And then we do have a tax relief for elderly program that we have every year.

We have nearly a million dollars available on that program for elderly and disabled.

You've seen this slide, but I added a little more information to this slide.

We had some local revenues in addition to the real estate that we're seeing some growth in that we want to just share with you.

The local personal property, which includes automobiles, other personal property, and business personal property, is projected to increase of about $2.9 million or 11.8%.

The activities that we call consumer-driven activities, which is your sales tax, beef pole, food and beverages, others, a net increase of 2.1 million or a 4% increase.

The public service tax, which is railroads, utilities, pipelines, seeing an increase of about 1.1 million in that category.

Now this next slide, I actually wrote some notes down about, so I might go into a little more detail here.

This is in your budget document, and it is what we call trends and other local taxes.

And again, this is a consumer-driven taxes that we were talking about just a moment before.

And this shows you trends over time.

It starts with fiscal year 09 on the left and goes to the fiscal year 18 recommended budget.

The top line is sales tax.

And you can see that's the largest, this graph is set up also from the top is the largest amount of money.

You can see sales tax brings in about 6.2% increase, and it's $16.2 million in sales tax.

I was talking to members of the finance department earlier today, and I think there was, 10 years ago, it was up to 14, five or 15.

So before we hit that recession, it was about, we're working our way back to almost

kind of the pre-recession times on the sales tax.

Lori, real quick, on the sales tax, is my understanding that's projected out, right, for FY18?

That's correct.

When do we find out actual collections?

Well, we watch it all the time, so we'll be watching it every quarter, so they'll start coming in.

Is that correct?

Finance department's in the back, back there, about the timing of when that comes in.

Let's bring them to the table.

Betty Burrell, Director of Finance.

I don't think this is on.

I'll talk loudly.

Sales tax is remitted on a monthly basis.

So we know effectively basically 30 days after the month end that the money comes in.

So we won't know fiscal 18 really until July of the fiscal 19.

Thanks.

Betty, stay close.

There might be some other questions for you.

So don't go all the way back there.

The next category is business license fees, estimated increase 6.1% to be at $12.1 million, an increase of almost $700,000 in this category.

This is based on the strength in job growth, increase in construction, increases that we're seeing in how 16 ended, how 17 is going right now, and where they think 18 will be on that.

The next column is called utility taxes.

You'll have two utility taxes in your budget document.

This particular one is called consumer utility taxes.

And it includes telephones, gas, electric.

And this is one that we think there'll be a decline in.

And it's been slowly declining.

You can watch that trend over years there.

Going down about 4.5% or down about $400,000.

It's about a $8.5 million revenue stream for fiscal year 18.

The reason it's going down is there is less landlines now.

That was a landline.

There was a tax that we would receive on that.

We also think that people are becoming more energy efficient and that's actually helping people but does reduce this tax.

So it's one that we're watching and we do think there will be a decline in this.

The next line is food and beverage at 5.2% increase.

This is a tax on prepared food and beverage.

It's going to increase about $381,000, we believe.

It'll be about a $7.8 million revenue.

and then the bottom one is transient occupancy tax.

And that one, although it's there at the bottom and it looks a little flat, there is an increase in that about 26%.

And there's two ways that we look at transient occupancy tax in our budget.

One amount comes into the general fund, which is 2% of the tax.

There's also a 3% that comes into a place called other funds in your budget document and that totals 5% overall.

And the 3% has to be just targeted for tourism related activities.

So because of that we keep it in a special fund.

Some of it could go to ACE, you know, to tourism related properties related to ACE.

Some could go to parks.

So the tourism piece has to go to things that have to do with tourism.

Is it part of this line that is divided and part of it sent to the convention visiting bureau?

It's the pot that's in the tourism fund.

Do I have that right, Andy?

Of the 3%,

So we do keep some of it isolated.

What comes into the general fund could be used for anything.

So that's why it comes into the general fund.

It's not restricted.

The restricted, when something's restricted, we have that in the tourism fund, and then it's directed specifically to areas that can be related to tourism.

We also have other local revenues.

I'm not gonna go over those.

Fees for service, investments, those types of things that they're also a local revenue.

I'm gonna move right now to just talk a little bit about state revenues.

We have four different categories of state revenues.

We have one category called non-categorical aid.

And when it says non-categorical aid, it means it's not specific.

We get a personal property tax relief from the state of $14.9 million.

This is really stable.

Every year, we get the same amount.

This sense that when they made that change with the car tax, it never increases.

It stays the same, which if it would increase, it would be more helpful, but still a fairly large number.

We also get vehicle rental tax and some other miscellaneous in this non-categorical aid.

Overall, it totals $15.9 million.

A very slight increase is projected in that category.

The next category is called categorical aid.

This is restricted funding.

It comes from the state, but they have an item that has to be spent on a specific thing.

It includes some social services funding, recordation taxes, the House Bill 599 which is a law enforcement funding.

and other miscellaneous funds in this area.

This totals about $5.7 million, 10% increase of a little over a half a million is projected in this category.

We also have another category in state revenues called shared expenses and this is where the state shares expenses with us for the Commonwealth Attorney, Clerk of the Circuit Court, Sheriff Register and some funding actually for a finance department as well.

This category totals $2.2 million.

Small reduction is projected here.

We get payments in lieu of taxes from UVA.

Small increase, about $138,000.

Yes.

The next category is the federal funds.

This is general fund federal funds.

As you know, when we think about the total budget and we think about the schools and those other areas, there's some federal funds that come in and other funds that you manage here at the county.

But the general fund federal funds is what I'm talking about here.

You have two categories.

Again, the first one is payment in lieu of taxes.

For tax-exempt park land in the county, estimated a very small amount of about $38,000.

You have also the categorical aid of federal, $5.7 million, designated again by the federal government for specific use.

Usually this is received on a reimbursement basis.

And in this general fund, it's primarily for social services and Medicaid reimbursements.

We're anticipating an increase of about a little over half a million dollars or 10.5% over the amount included in the 17 adopted budget.

But it's important to let you know that what came in in 16 was about $6 million.

So we're predicting a little bit less than what we thought came in in 16.

So it's not that it's a huge increase over time, it's just an increase over the adopted budget of 17.

These federal revenues, if you looked at the Department of Social Services budget, you'll see that they are coming in as revenues into the Department of Social Service to offset some of those departments' expenditures.

So basically that's the quick look at revenues.

You have a nice chapter in there that describes every revenue that comes in and little details on the projections and why the projections are where they are and more information about exactly what each of those revenues are.

So if there's no questions, we'll move right into expenditures.

This chart shows expenditures and millions of dollars.

It has the broad categories that we are required to report to the state.

So you'll see our budget document follows these categories.

You see the administration, judicial, public safety, and on.

Bill will be going over those categories in a few minutes, so you can go into much more detail about these changes.

But this just gives you a snapshot.

of those categories.

The bottom part of this chart includes some other expenditures, the revenue sharing, transfer to the schools, transfer to capital and debt service, and some other uses of funds.

You can see that the increase is 6.5%, the fiscal year 18 recommended budget when compared to the 17 adopted budget.

This next slide is one that Doug and I have been doing like hand signals in the back and forth about how many years has it been that we have not had an increase in the revenue sharing payment to the city.

So sometimes we talk about revenue sharing with transportation revenue sharing.

This is one about revenue sharing that we have with the city of Charlottesville.

So this just gives you a snapshot of the last several years.

You can see that fiscal year 11, we actually had an increase.

We were paying $18.5 million.

And then you can see the remnants of the recession riding through many of those years following that.

There's a two-year lag in the formula.

So this is kind of lagging behind the recession.

Lori, I don't know if this is a quick question, hopefully it is.

I know it's a very complicated formula, and there's not any one really good answer, but is there something specific that's going on that has caused this increase?

I mean, I think it is the economy.

I'm getting a nod from Betty Burrell.

It basically reflects the actual economy to your lag and revenues that come in.

And it is a complicated formula.

I was just wondering if it was predominantly driven by the property value.

It would be useful if we could provide sort of a breakdown.

I think it would be nice just to have a simple way, because we have the formula, we have the information, but when we're trying to explain to the public

What's the main driver in it?

Real property values, tax rates, and population, and how the cities relates to the counties.

It gets plugged into a formula.

So I'm gonna move now into a category, it isn't in your budget document, but we call it cross departmental because it affects all your departments.

You will see dollar amounts showing up throughout all the departments associated with a 2% salary marketed increase adjustment that would be effective July 1, 2017.

The total of that for general government is nearly a million dollars, and this includes the general fund and our fire fund, just to kind of give you that picture of it together.

There's no increase right now for the general government's Virginia retirement system rate.

That adjusts every couple years.

We keep our eyes on that, but at this point, we have our own separate, I guess they call it a trust fund for Albemarle County as a sub-fund in the DRS.

The department operational costs overall again you'll see department over you'll see these throughout your budget document increasing almost 10% or 1.1 million dollars and this includes items such as those resources needed to support the strategic plan some increases in IT information technology maintenance costs training utilities health services for police officers and sheriff deputies

Operational impacts from the CIP, so there's a variety of things, and you'll see the details in each of the department budgets.

Lori, we're having complaints that people can't hear us, so just to remind everybody to get their mics where it's working.

Do you guys want to do this?

The other category, again, is not a real category, but we're calling it cross-functional agency funding.

You'll see there's a lot of agencies that we fund throughout the budget document.

You'll see them in each of the categories.

There's human service agencies that are reviewed by the agency budget review team, which is a team that we do collectively with the city.

And it includes city and county staff and community members.

And we actually, the little book that you have in your budget document, I'm gonna grab

I guess this is yours, Bill, if you want to show it to them.

That gives you all the details from that committee and the cover tells you the people that are on the committee and they do a really good job.

They look at outcomes, they make site visits, they do a lot of really good energy going into making recommendations to the county.

there's also cultural agencies which the city will still include in here so you'll see some cultural agencies in here and you'll say hey there's no city there's no county funding in it this just shows the city's funding for cultural agencies because a few years back we moved cultural agencies away from the

agency budget review team in-house because cultural agencies are a little different than some of the health and human service agencies.

Thank you.

There's also agencies called regional authorities.

There's agencies called Joint Exercise of Power Agreements like ECC and my understanding is the jail is also a Joint Exercise of Power Agreement.

You also have agencies for which we have written agreements and so the funding is adjusted per your written agreement such as the SPCA.

You have some other discretionary agencies that aren't necessarily in the ABRT but that are basically nonprofits.

Another thing that I wanted to bring to your attention is that we have broken the staffing resources into four categories just for we hope for more transparency and understanding.

The staffing resources that are included in the 18 budget

Some of it funds temporary and contractual resources, and I want to bring to your attention a blue piece of paper that we put at each of your chairs.

This is the details related to the staffing resources.

Bill will be discussing these throughout all the chapters, so you can have a reference sheet if you'd like to see them in a different form.

We just thought that would be good for you.

We also have it in the budget document.

Lori, do you want questions as we're going through right now, or do you want to wait until... Sure.

And I hate to say it, but I'm going back to cross-functional, and maybe it's a question for Greg, I'm not really sure.

Agencies for which we have written agreements, then you reference the SPCA, and I understand that.

We have a written agreement with Java,

and yet it's not listed as one of these.

It's listed under the ABRT.

I'm just curious as to why because I know we do have a common agreement that we signed off on 30 years ago with Java.

I was just curious as to why it's not one of these.

Any other questions, Diane?

Sure.

No, I'm fine.

Thank you.

Back to staffing resources, we also have resources that are continuing your approved positions that happened during fiscal year 17.

So these would be approved positions since the adopted budget.

So there was some community development positions.

You'll see them on the list here on your blue page.

Some of those positions that have been approved since July 1 of this current fiscal year.

The third category is recommended adjustments to current positions.

These have not occurred yet, but these are recommendations for some changes, and Bill will go into some of the details of these as we move into the departments.

And then the final one are actually new positions that are recommended to be included in the budget this year.

Before I turn this over to Bill, I wanted to mention a couple things.

Staff's here to become involved in these next parts of the discussion.

They work very hard.

We have staff members from OMB that work with each of the departments in each of the categories of this budget document.

We did say to you the last time we were together that we were going to follow the budget document and just go through chapter by chapter.

We have a couple exceptions that I wanted to mention to you today that we would like to hold off a couple of these until Monday.

One is the Department of Social Services.

Phyllis was unable to be here today because of a death in her family, and we'd like her to be here if there were any questions about her budget, so we'd like to hold that one off.

We also would like to talk on Monday on the community developments budget and the economic development budget just due to us wanting to prepare some more pieces of information for you that we'd have together by Monday.

So those are just the three exceptions.

Otherwise, we're going to roll right through with Bill here next.

All right.

Well, thank you, Laurie.

Everybody can hear me OK.

I guess what I'll do is I'll hold the mic here just to be sure.

So as Laurie had mentioned there are a number of categories of expenditures in the general fund.

They're all listed for you on 73.

What we're going to try to do today is get through most of those expenditure categories which include administration, judicial, public safety, public works, we'll do health and welfare except for DSS.

Parks and Recreation and Community Development, which will be also, as you said, part of the project.

So I'll direct you to page 83 when we get started.

And let me again say that it's always difficult to find that right balance of how much detail to talk about.

I'll try to do my best in highlighting what I think are the most important salient issues related to each of the departments or expenditure areas.

I certainly would welcome questions as we go along.

I also tried to highlight some of just the important issues or aspects of what this department's or functional areas are about.

So again, we'll begin with administration.

You know, one of the things I would say here is that administration, of course, is responsible for a lot of the sort of leadership management operational areas in the county.

This includes largely the finance department, information technology,

County Executive Office, of course, County Attorney's Office, Board of Supervisors, voter registration, and multiple budget.

These departments, as you know, are largely responsible, as are the departments, for advancing a lot of the board's priorities and strategic initiatives.

They're also very much involved in a number of the

Transformational and efficiency efforts, both that are underway now and that are projected to be underway in the future budget, as well as quality organizational issues like our HR department and the free recruitment and retention issues.

Also mentioned is we're proud of the work that a number of these departments do.

As you know, we've received national GFOA awards for both our finance and our budget departments for their work.

We've been recognized nationally for the IT department for counties of our size.

Very, very impressive.

And of course, most recently, the re-establishment of our AAA, which is extremely important.

As you know, we've issued a great deal of debt here in just the last couple of days, and that has played out very much to our benefit, which we'll talk about in a later section of the budget.

So if you turn the page, we'll begin with a category of forum supervisors, which is a part of this category.

Total expenditures in this category are about $674,000, and the budget, recommended budget, reflects a decrease of about 1.5%.

Major issues or changes here in addition to those cost departmental issues that Laurie had described.

We have a

Small increase related to live video streaming.

The corresponding decrease which brought down the entire budget was the changing benefit cost.

And that really just has to do with the elections that those that are in this category have made as it relates to health care insurance.

Page 87 is the county executive budget.

Of course, the county executive office is responsible for the overall administration of the day-to-day operations of the county.

It also has a division of community relations, which is about our engagement with the community.

Overall, this category two reflects a decrease of 0.2% in this case.

We had net decreases of 24,000 related to a series of expenditure reductions that are

You might remember last year we had funds in the budget to support the 29 advertising and community relations issues there.

We had a decrease with some software.

Bill, before we turn from that, I've had a question from a constituent about if we have lost a deputy county executive recently.

because we've gained an interim county executive and we've lost a full-time county executive.

Why have the salaries in fact projected at fiscal year to up 1.3%?

And I'm sure the answer is very similar.

It is another fiscal year.

It's probably worth mentioning that we, sorry I'm just trying to make sure that I'm being heard, that we do also budget lapse throughout the organization so it's a factor that is considered so it's not on a position by position basis but it is broadly applied and factually adjusted

the allowance for lapse based on experience so that we are, you might be able to say that, are benefiting more from a higher degree of lapse savings as it relates to the expectations and projections for the FY18 budget.

All right.

If we can, we'll go to page 89, which is the Department of Human Resources.

And just again, this is a department that is actually a schools department.

The budget that's before you represents the local government share of the cost of that department, which is approximately about 25%.

So it's about a $2.5 million operation.

Our component of that is about $782,000, or about

as I say roughly 25%.

There are broad services provided by HR as you know as it relates to recruitment selection and retention, classification and compensation, administration of benefits which of course with the HSA and the changes there has been quite complicated and involved this year.

employee relations, employee rewards, performance management, workplace safety and wellness, teacher licensure and certification, and learning and development.

So a very involved department.

Overall the budget reflects an increase of 21.5%.

Turn over to page 90.

It gives you some of the reasons for those changes.

I would highlight the third bullet, which has to do with unemployment insurance.

We had an increase of about 33,000 in unemployment insurance.

Of course, that will vary year to year, depending on the actual experience of the county, in terms of the number of people that actually file.

So you never quite know.

The other major change here is the inclusion of the diversity and inclusion generalist position, which we are proposing this year, which really is about focusing on recruitment and retaining a high quality workforce that accurately reflects the community it serves.

That, again, is one of the number of positions that Laurie has referenced.

Okay, I just wanted to know who does that now?

Lauren and Jerome, Director of Human Resources.

HR staff currently does some of that, but there's so much more that we really need to do.

We do manager training, but what we hope this position would do actually is go into departments and do needs assessments because there's just different levels of training that are needed and we kind of model it after the position we have on the school side where a lot of the work really is around inclusion

We can target how to recruit employees, but to make sure that the work environment is going to be inclusive and that those diverse employees will stay really takes a whole different focus.

Could I just raise a thought and Lorna and I talked about it yesterday after an excellent presentation a week ago about the retention challenge facing the county.

I posed the question and I don't think this is necessarily the time for the board to make a decision.

I'd like to suggest this is a future item that we come back and talk about on the budget.

But I would submit that there's also a compelling need for retention specialists.

I do think that this board and the county government are very much committed to recruiting and retaining the highest quality workforce that accurately reflects the community it serves.

I do understand a need for tremendous sensitivity and responsiveness to maintain diversity inclusion, but I certainly also recognize the tremendous value if we add a second person

in the key role in HR to have that person also take on some responsibilities for retention.

So I'd just like to table that as the item that we come back to and talk about further.

In terms of this position, maybe a shared ratio of 50-50 and an evaluation by the board at the end of the year as to which side of the equation it looks to be most important that we would go 100% or maybe we go 75-25%.

But I do think retention is a very, very important part of what we're talking about as a county.

I think you've got it already there.

I would like to put something on the table as well.

I'd like to discuss later as far as HR is concerned.

It would seem like to me that there's a need to have someone in HR that can really do a deep dive into analysis and an analyst position.

I would also suggest that other divisions have that particular position underneath their health insurance, their health coverage for employees and charge it to their health insurance.

It may not even necessarily cost us a lot and might actually save us a good deal of money.

So I'd like to have that as part of a discussion going forward.

It would certainly be a reasonable charge to our health, especially since we're self-insured and could very well be very beneficial in saving money.

Remember last year we readjusted based on a real deep analysis that I think Dean did with some of the folks in HR.

I do think though we need to work out is it a 50-50, 85, 15, 75, 25, whatever for clarity with the discussion but Lauren are very much part of that process.

Just so that we're all clear that we know ahead of time what we think is appropriate.

And Ms. McKeel, to your point, one of the things I may do as we go through these chapters, as Doug had mentioned, is this budget makes progress toward addressing some of the work needs or the positional needs that the county has.

It doesn't do them all.

We had some 47 positions that were requested that were not funded.

What I may do as we go through is just highlight or point out some of those positions that were requested.

And I think the advantage of that position or what we could really do is parlay that with our health insurance and let the health insurance piece pick it up perhaps.

So there were actually two unfunded requests in HR.

One was for an HR specialist who perhaps could do the kind of work that you're referring to.

And the other is a total compensation statement benefit software program.

All right, well, if there are no more questions there, we'll move to page 92, which is the county attorney.

As you all are aware, the county attorney provides legal services and advice on all civil matters, the board of supervisors, and the school board, and other boards, agencies, and officials of the county.

They're telling me specifically they can't hear you.

Doug, you're being heard well.

Rick is not coming through very well, just letting you know.

Diantha can be heard, so we just all need to be really careful.

Is that better?

Don't eat it.

All right.

Well, let's get going to the county attorney's office.

This, as I say, is an office that provides legal services for both the schools and the local government.

It's been very challenged in recent years.

The proposed budget is for $1.2 million, represents a 13.1% increase, driven largely by the request for a new assistant county attorney position to augment their existing staff.

And I'll just mention a few things about the department.

Of course, they have been looking around the state at other comparable attorney offices.

They see that they are at or below the level of number of attorneys they have for the complexities of the kinds of things that they have to deal with.

As it is now, the allocations for the school division, for example, take up practically a full-time attorney position, as does the Department of Social Services.

The Department of Community Development requires approximately 1.2 FTEs, and the Board of Supervisors and the County Executive Office requires an additional

one full-time equivalent.

This leaves one other FTE to handle all the other work of the county departments, including finance, police, fire rescue, human resources, facilities, environmental services, housing, emergency communications, and others.

Currently, the workload has been at or above 40 hours to continue to keep up with the level of complexity that is in the county.

It's also anticipated that as we move forward, there are a number of more sophisticated and complex issues that the County Attorney's Office will be involved with.

Those include local government personnel policies, the preliminary work on recodifying zoning ordinance, as you've all talked about recently.

providing ongoing legal services to recharge economic development authority and the economic development office.

And of course, as we move toward issuing GO bonds, that too is a complexity that will require legal services.

Other issues that are upcoming include the formation of perhaps a wireless service authority, which is something we're talking about and may consider, storm water utility,

We talked additionally about the idea of forming service districts.

So all of these and other issues are concerns and complexities coming forward that we feel are certainly justified for the position.

Is this okay?

I can't hear myself very well.

I'm just curious about in the county attorney's office, I forget the word we're using, but the search for efficiency and trying to do things more easily and, you know.

Transformation.

Transformation, right.

So, how does transformation affect the county attorney's office when I, you know, driving here quickly, because I was running late, but there was a sponsorship on NPR by LegalZoom and we've all heard about that and, you know, just kind of the

Physical transformation in our office is actually happening right now.

We've moved 50 years worth of boxes out of our

out of our office today into a secure offsite location where it was I thought a safety hazard.

It made it dangerous for people to even access older files and the rare occasion that that happens.

We're also physically

planning to modify the space where our paralegals work so they can be more efficient by having a workspace that is a little more quiet and removed from the hub of the office.

From the legal standpoint, having capacity in the office to update a number of our forms.

I've had on my work plan for probably five years or so updating a whole number of

Community Development Department related documents that need to be revised.

We get complaints, for example, from bonding companies that say your documents are so out of date and just having the capacity to

update all of those.

One thing we did just recently do is I think we have a new much stronger, much clearer stormwater management maintenance agreement for all the private stormwater facilities out in the county.

We're implementing processes with Department of Water Resources and working with Community Development so that there's much better communication between our office and those two departments in dealing with stormwater issues.

What we discovered when we started working with water resources was that there was a

There was a real communication deficit once construction ends and community development hands off the stormwater facilities to water resources to oversee.

Being able to spend more time, appropriate time when we're defending or pursuing litigation.

it's always been a scramble to keep up with that.

Litigation is incredibly time intensive so having the extra capacity to be able to properly litigate without exhaustion will be another thing.

Two of the big things on our list of course are recodification of the county code and recodification of the zoning ordinance which is part of that and you know community development is our they're the one client that keeps us busiest and a lot of that is spent on helping them interpret various provisions in the zoning ordinance some of those provisions that the text itself dates back to 1969 and it is

We have a wonderful comprehensive plan but our zoning ordinance really needs to be updated.

That will build capacity not only for our office but also for that department.

I think I've hit the key points.

And I guess one last thing, the other transformational thing that we're doing is that we are now working more and more out of subject matter silos so that the attorneys in the office are engaged in cross-topic issues so that we can build redundancy in the office.

so that we have more than just one person who handles and has expertise in employment law and school law and land use law and finance.

Seems like we constantly have this catch-22 in community development and what you're describing of if only we had time to make ourselves more efficient.

It's the usual situation.

I just want to make sure I understand.

So you're asking for one new position?

One new position.

You feel like one position will, as Norman says, it feels like we're sort of chasing our tail.

Well, I'm not going to be greedy.

I can go back and I'll tell you.

Once we have the sixth attorney and that attorney's up and functioning, the work will fill every hour of the day.

And I think probably most departments could say that.

There's always more work to be done.

2018.

With this extra human being, you will be able to complete that in FY18.

If I could clarify, the board back in the fall approved one-time resources to support community development and the county attorney's office to initiate this recodification process and at the time indicated that it was possible that this position would be coming forward that if approved then would mean that those one-time funds would not be needed in FY18.

We have this ongoing resource identified for the county attorney's office, but not additional one-time money for that purpose.

And it was delayed because in March community development will be coming forward with their

revised work plan but will be coming to the board probably in April with the action plan for amending the zoning ordinance and probably with a number of resolutions of intent to get started.

A number of these amendments will be very easy.

They're non-substantive.

Oh yes.

And these ordinances that are being worked on right now, this will be a two-step process, and we're taking chunks of it at a time so that the Planning Commission and the board can see what those changes are, and then when it comes back for recodification,

Okay, if there are no other questions then we can go to page 94 and begin our talk about the Department of Finance.

This, like the County Attorney's Office, is another department that serves both the local government and the schools.

Finance provides a broad array of services and functions.

including financial management, reporting, assessment and collection of all local revenues, cash management, debt management, risk management, and financial systems management functions.

A number of the services that are provided to both schools and local government and some of our joint agencies include payroll, accounts payable, procurement,

Capital Financing, General Accounting, Quarterly and Annual Financial Reporting, Economic Vitality Monitoring and Reporting, and importantly Revenue Forecasting, Assistance with the Office of the Management Budget.

So a lot of areas here to cover.

They've been very challenged to keep up with the workload.

The budget is one of the largest in the category of administration at 5.6 million.

The recommended budget reflects an increase of 7.4%.

Primary reasons for that increase in addition to the cross departmental areas is an addition of 90,000 in part time salary and benefits to assist with the transition of a number of key positions in the department.

As we have retirements and others happening, this would allow for the engagement of contractual labor or part-time people to help with those transitions.

The other major increase includes two new positions.

One is a buyer position in the procurement area or division of the finance department.

As you know they deal with procurement for both schools and local government and this year and next we're going to see significant increases related to all of the capital programs that are going on with the bond referendum projects and others.

There's some 135 different projects that are coming out over that time period in addition to all of the normal routine procurement efforts that the department is responsible for.

The other position is a management analyst position to address some of the critical work needs within the department and the four divisions that are part of it.

They right now do not function with any management analyst.

Those positions have been absorbed elsewhere in the department.

So this would enable more focus on such things as customer service.

There's clearly more need to work with the OMB department in the area of debt management and capital programs.

Betty's here and certainly can speak further to the needs of both of these positions if there are additional questions.

I would also mention that one of the resource plan requests that came this year was for an additional real estate appraiser position, which was not funded.

And that was one of our more difficult decisions.

There is so much need within that department.

There has been so much growth in, as you know, in new construction.

We've seen all of the new permits that are happening.

All of this work really requires more work on the part of the assessors to get out there and actually see these properties and make these assessments.

Well, a couple of things.

One, and again, others can speak to this detail, but we have implemented new software this year.

I think there was some sense that let's get our hands around that.

Let's get that fully implemented and understood before we make decisions about actually how these positions might be funded.

I would, I don't know if the rest of the board has an interest in this, but I would love to get just some

information or thoughts from the finance department or the assessor's office from going to every other year, what that would look like and if that would free up because one of our issues too that we've talked about quite a bit would be is looking at land use and looking at going back through some of these other things that we really want to make sure our assessor's office is looking at and we did do every other year,

Betty Burrell, Director of Finance.

Pete has already started developing some talking points and I'm sure would be more than happy to make a presentation to the board.

The Assessor's Office is greatly challenged with respect to when the county went to an annual assessment process, no additional staff was added.

and at the same time the expectation of more thorough review of the land use applicants' properties, it put a tremendous amount of stress on the resources that we have.

We have done a decent job, but we consider ourselves not only triple, triple A as it relates to our financial practices, but we would like to also incorporate best practices with the assessment process.

So there were two part-time retired, or maybe full-time, but previously retired people who were helping.

That's a good question.

We did have Butch Beverly, retired assistant county assessor, was helping us complete the 2015 revalidation process.

And then we had Bruce Woodsell in because we had a tremendous workload trying to implement the new computer-aided mass appraisal system while getting our work done.

And so we were able to bring Bruce in

You may know that Bruce is now working full time for the city of Charlottesville.

So you're, what you, I think I just heard you say, Betty, is that you would like us to at least, the discussion and think about another assessor position, is what I thought I could just say.

I'm just trying to separate out what Liz was asking for, which was to go back to the two year.

The reason why I brought that up is obviously, you know, what Betty just said was when we went to every year, no additional folks were requested and that did put a stress on them.

So the question would be is there a value in doing that or not?

And that's, yeah, and that's fine.

I don't want to belabor this too long.

I was just going to say I had already marked in my homework to put the appraiser person on the list for further discussion and because of the biannual variations up and down, up and down, up and down that the intermediate

I think it's a good point to bring up.

I would say first Peter and staff have dedicated a lot of time and the county did as well to upgrade the software to be able to have an annual assessment which is now after this year we will have the whole county up to date current with market conditions so that it really reflects state of the art assessment of the value of properties.

Here's the downside once we now have this tool.

Before, if we didn't have the tool, I would say, oh yeah, we could look into doing it every other year.

Now that we have this tool, if we go into an economic downturn in year one of the two-year assessment, the second year

really the actual values of the property will have probably declined but we're in the second year of the assessments which we keep the same that works to the disadvantage of the homeowner.

Homeowners are not going to like that because in reality they can feel market conditions have changed and that the taxes have not adjusted or the valuations have not adjusted.

The second thing is what happens if we have a year in which there's a sudden jump is this year

So that works to our disadvantage.

and a disadvantage to the county and the operation of the government.

And we can try to have a steady state of predictability on an annual basis.

And that's fine.

My issue was what's more efficient from a money standpoint.

You have to weigh if it's a few less FTEs, how much do you gain versus that change that you would have had on that every other year.

And I don't know the answer to that, but that's...

Put that on the list and if I could Madam Chair and perhaps also to put Betty and any others at ease and this is a balanced budget and so choices were made and there are certainly needs that were not included here that we would love to talk to the board about and that being one.

Okay, that brings us to page 97, the Office of Management and Budget.

As you know, this office is both involved in the annual budgeting process as well as a significant amount of time into the planning cycles for both the five-year plan, the five-year capital plan, and as you know, more recently, the two-year budget.

which has introduced a fair amount of effort on their part.

Performance management is also an aspect of what they do.

Just want to point out there's a striking correlation between the thousands and the number of pages in our budget book.

313 pages and 343,000 for salary.

I'm just joking.

We're really good in OMB.

Okay, the total of this budget is recommended is $512,000, an increase of 13%.

Primary drivers behind the change are an increase in salary and benefits related to FLSA regulation.

We had to modify an employee salary.

The additional change regards a resource plan request totaling $30,000, which converts an existing part-time office associate.

to a management analyst position which is sorely needed to help address some of the complications related to the capital program.

I'm sure, and I also have staff here that please help me out if I don't cover everything.

We're a pretty small department.

We do long-range financial planning.

We do the two-year balance plan now.

We have one person that primarily works on the capital program, which is Lindsay that's here today, and it's $174 million CIP.

The capital budget's one year of that.

She does, I don't know how many scenarios that she plans when she works through the capital program.

She manages all the budgets for all the projects.

Just so much for one person to do.

Plus she does a very strong part of the debt management work.

And with these additional borrowings and all the challenges with the different sets of funds, we feel that it's just too much for one position to do a good job on it.

So I think that's one of the main areas that we're concerned about.

All right.

Page 99 is Department of Information Technology, IT.

This represents a $3.2 million component of the budget, increasing at 8.5 percent.

Primary increases are due to anticipated vendor prices.

We have, as you might imagine in IT,

Many, many software systems and programs for which we pay licenses and support for.

We have seen increases in a number of those.

The other major addition has to do with really a transformation idea that is about moving from the platform of housing our software on servers in-house to moving to a cloud-based hosting environment.

We're not doing everything, we're doing some of those.

but in that regard we're saving the cost in the capital side of having to actually purchase and maintain servers that has our software to a place where it's more of an operational expense we're just paying a license.

Doomsday.

We've done a lot of research.

We're actually putting our servers up in the Microsoft community cloud.

It's a government-based community cloud.

Seven by 24, 365 days a year, highly secure.

It's made it through all of the federal regulations for security.

And to put it bluntly, it's more secure, more safe in their data center than ours.

So that's one of the reasons why we're moving in that direction to give us that type of redundancy and protection that gives us seven by 24, 365 days a year monitoring and better power, better redundancy, access from multiple devices.

So we've made a lot of headway in that regard and we see this as a transformational issue that offsets our capital and moves that same amount of money into the operating that gives us a lot more benefit.

The internet connectivity that we're working on today includes two separate internet service providers.

We're actually looking at bringing on a third.

I'm sorry to be crabby because during the derecho nobody was talking to anybody about anything and for seven days after that so we will be out of business if this is where we put everything.

Well, if the building burned down, we have remote storage and backup that way.

This is something that's gonna be more cosmic, but this is where we're going.

Even John has three different redundancies and that allowed us to maintain access to our files even during that incident.

So I'm pretty sure the county will have the same approach.

None of the access codes are in Russian, I assume?

Thank you, Mr. Ramsey.

Thank you, Mr. Sheffield.

Good question, Ms. Malek.

Definitely a concern.

We'll have to have some of our systems reliable here on site, so we definitely have to have that backup plan that allows us to continue operations if for some reason all internet is down.

Good, Mike, thank you.

I would mention too that, of course, Mike's office and operation is also challenged.

There were actually three unfunded requests in his department, including an enterprise records manager.

And I would just comment there that we, as you know, are really underway as a transformational item to address our records management program.

We've started in new development.

We're moving now to HR in earnest.

We are talking about the conversion of our copy center to an imaging center.

These things are underway and I think as they are implemented we will be able to take a closer look at the need for this position probably in fiscal year 19.

They also have requested a help desk analyst and a systems analyst position which were not funded but there too we would look very carefully in 19 as a potential funding opportunity.

Page 101 is Department of Voter Registration.

I won't hover here.

There's actually a decrease in this department.

I understand their share of state funds is also going to be down, so we're taking care of that at least to keep them whole.

I mean that was in the news, not in the book.

That's one of the things that the state budget is cutting, is their supportive Board of Elections.

Bill, I know you're going to another section.

I've had someone that requested maybe a break.

I was going to just take a pulse here and see if people would like to take a quick five minute break and come back.

Do you want to do that?

Just a quick five minute because I will tell you that we do need to be out of here by quarter of six.

Is that good?

Well, it was great to have you with us.

It was great to have you with us.

I learned a lot.

Thank you.

Okay, so we're back.

You don't need us to do another sound check, do you, Travis, for everybody?

We'll get started.

Okay, we'll turn it to page 103 now and address the the judicial category There are I think we can move pretty quickly through this there are relatively few changes.

So I'll try to be brief This includes the sheriff's department Commonwealth Attorney the clerk of the court The public defenders office and the courts our contributions to the various courts that that we have in the county

Page 105 is the clerk's office.

Here we're seeing this total budget of $935,000 or an increase of $21,000 or 2.3%.

Primarily, the increases in this department are related to a new software system that allows them to schedule jurors in a much more efficient manner.

A well-justified expense.

I think he's been doing extremely well in his overall management of the department.

We've been excited about our recent annual audit that has been done, and Mr. Zugg has been doing just a generally good job overall, so very pleased.

He's also doing a great job with his records.

Yes he is.

The Commonwealth Attorney's Office is on page 107.

There too we're looking at a decline in the budget in this case of 2.3 percent, relatively few changes in the department.

There was a decrease in operating expenses associated with the removal of some one-time expenditures.

The Commonwealth Attorney did ask us for an additional position, which would be a full-time assistant Commonwealth Attorney.

We had discussions about the timing of this.

He felt that while it's important to add the position, he could wait until fiscal year 19 to do so.

So we have actually included it in our three-year fiscal plan.

Could I just ask you at the end of all of this budget discussion would you give us an idea of the number of unfunded positions in fiscal year 18 that you're looking to potentially add in 19?

just so that we are prepared for that and if it could be similar to the very helpful blue sheet you've provided here so we would have it broken down by department and dollar figure associated with it, I think that would be helpful.

That would be really good.

Bill, could you just recap the Commonwealth Attorney's Office and the state, how the

It seems like to me that we're always having to pick up from this, this is one of those offices that we're having to pick up a cost for because the state is not picking up the, am I correct on that?

Yes, well as you can see in the budget, we get 606,000 total revenue in support of the operation.

The other challenge is that they don't always support additional positions, even though

even though they need them and they want them based on the population or the caseload trends they can't get the state to approve them so they don't get the additional funding.

Okay, page 109 is the Office of the Sheriff.

It's a $2.4 million expense recommendation, a relatively flat from prior year.

It's a 0.7 percent increase.

driven at once by some increases in operating costs.

As you know, the sheriff's department is vehicle intensive, so they have associated costs with fuel costs, maintenance vehicles and the like.

There's also the establishment of a regular health service physical program that is included in this increase.

and they're trying to transition from the use of shotguns in their operation to rifles, which is more standard in the industry.

This increase includes some of the ammunition that would be necessary and the equipment necessary.

One of the requests that was not funded was additional training that felt like we could do that in fiscal year 19.

They are getting training at this time.

So currently they're on our fire range facility in Milton two times a year?

I believe that's correct.

Okay.

And so it's not a matter of access.

It's not that the Albemarle County and Charlottesville Police Department and University Police are overusing it.

It's a question of actually having the money in the budget for the ammunition for them to be able to practice at the range.

I think that's correct.

We contribute to our three basic court systems.

I'm sorry, I'm on page 111 now.

Circuit court, general district court, and juvenile domestic relations court, and the magistrate's office.

Very little change here.

The only difference is, as you know, the city of Charlottesville is fiscal agent for the JNDR court, and they manage the maintenance and repairs, and we're seeing a reduction in what we expect the cost to be in fiscal year 2020.

Other judicial contributions regard the Public Defender's Office, which is on page 113.

The only change here is that we have agreed to increase this budget to reflect the 2% budget salary increase reporting to our employees.

So that concludes the judicial category.

We can go then to Public Safety, which is on page 115.

This is behind the schools probably the largest category of expenditures in the general fund at 39.8 million.

Largest category within those groups as you can see in the pie is the police department followed by the fire rescue transfer.

and there's the Albemarle, Charlottesville Regional Jail expenditures, Emergency Communication Center, other public agencies and inspections.

Inspections, as you know, is actually managed by the Community Development Department but for purposes of classification it is part of the public safety category.

Overall, this whole division is changing by 4.5% increase or 1.7 million.

If I may, Mr. Dill, as soon as we get to the fire rescue, we'll talk in detail about how that funding is set up as it is now a separate fund, if that's all right.

Okay, so on the police department, in addition to the overall increases for salaries and for health insurance, they also have increases of 86,000 for representing overtime wages, most of which are of course reimbursed to the department.

Other expenses include, again, fuel-based, as they are vehicle-intensive in this department, vehicle repair and maintenance expenditures.

They too, as with the sheriff department, have established a regular health service physical program for their officers, and then other minor expenditures.

The category also involves transfers to other funds that are related to grants.

For example, there's an increase of $35,000 for the problem-oriented policing program, grant program, which is reflected here.

There's an increase of 14.6 or 18.8% as it relates to our contributions for the training facility, the firearms training facility.

In the area of resources, this category, let me back up a second.

That fourth bullet under other transfers regards the crime analyst grant fund.

That is a position that has been funded through grant funds.

So it will be fully funded in fiscal year 19?

Correct.

By the county.

That position, Grant.

I misunderstood.

Are those officers that are out on patrol, are they dedicated to the gang unit?

Because I had a lot of active discussion about that.

These specific positions are

Patrol-oriented, allowing the police chief at his discretion to determine how they can best be used to complement his resources.

The intention is to, again, to help further implement the community-based, geo-based policing model by adding resources to existing shifts.

So this was identified along with two other positions, patrol-based positions, in the two-year plan.

Can I ask another question and I've been watching this very closely in other parts of the country that local police departments, New York City for example, and Florida have picked up huge security costs.

in having the President and his entourage arrive in Albemarle County in the Scottsville District, we have a piece of property that's owned by the Trump family.

If the President decides to visit with Eric, then Albemarle County, is Albemarle County prepared in terms of the overtime costs?

I think it would be best for the police chief to speak to that directly.

I do know that we do incur cost, overtime cost, or other resource costs when we have those dignitary and their entourage come into town, whether it's on campaign or visiting Monticello, certainly with the location of the

of the Trump Winery in Albemarle County that may present some other concerns.

But I can't speak to it directly.

It would be appropriate to be chief.

And I will ask him to do that.

That's great.

Thank you.

OK. Any other questions on police?

And we'd like to, if I may, Andy Bowman is here.

He's our senior budget analyst, and he's gonna speak to the fire fund.

He is the analyst for that fund and knows it inside and out, just as well as he knows John.

So he's gonna share some information.

You missed it?

I said that Andy Bowman is here, yeah.

Moving to the next slide.

This is a snapshot of the Fire Rescue Services Fund on page 120.

This is kind of the same snapshot we've looked at for the total budget and for the general fund for the major pieces on the revenue and expenditure side.

On the revenue side, the primary funding source for this fund that was created in fiscal year 2016 is 7.2 cents on the real estate tax rate.

That makes 82% of the revenues for the fund.

This fund has also received support from the EMS cost recovery program.

There is some related state funding.

We have some use of fund balance for one-time costs, and then there are also some permits and other fees to complete the pie chart.

In addition to these revenues, really in addition to the 7.2 cents, there is 0.4 cents on the real estate tax rate that goes directly from the general fund to the CIP to support fire rescue, capital, and debt expenses.

But this is just operating expenses that we'll be talking about today.

Then on the expenditure side, the largest category is the fire rescue department.

That includes the various stations run by the department and their divisions sport like prevention and training.

It also includes bulk purchases for the entire system like building insurance or turnout gear for really all partners in the system.

The next category, kind of that dark blue piece of pie, are volunteer station contributions.

Those are direct contributions to the ten stations for costs such as building maintenance and utilities, uniforms, basic operating supplies, training, meals, and so on.

Andy, real quick.

Do we have a sense of how much our contribution, what percentage, and maybe Dan can answer this, covers the volunteer stations operations?

So that 9% is going towards the volunteer stations as our contribution, but what else is not covered?

Sure, there are unfunded requests that they have, and actually we have a summary of those on page 122.

Those would include things like, just as a broad category, there are some major one-time costs, some which are capital nature that have been requested.

We have not included in the budget.

There's also, CARS has requested full funding of their request, but we have not done that because they largely serve the city of Charlottesville.

There are also costs that

You know currently are not considered outside of our funding policy for things like grounds maintenance and janitorial supplies.

Is it possible to get a just a quick summary at some point of just what the total operating cost is for the volunteer stations and then what our contribution is?

Sure, I can provide it as a follow-up.

That's another conversation just operating.

Station by station would be most appropriate.

Okay.

And that's another topic at some point with capital.

Since serving as supervisor, I've had conversations with other people that I know throughout the southeast of the country and other places that I've done other work and stuff.

And I've come to realize that there are some places that pay basically the majority of the cost for capital related to volunteer stations.

I'm curious at some point to get Dan's take on how we might differ from other practices in other plates of Virginia and maybe even across the mid-Atlantic of just how much we contribute to the volunteer stations from a capital standpoint.

Just a clarifying question for me.

It seems like to me, I remember CARS was not billing.

That is correct, they do not participate.

And I was just questioning, they still are not billing.

That is correct.

Alright.

Exactly.

The next piece of the pie is system-wide fleet management, and I'm actually going to hold my comments on that for one moment because I have another slide on this issue entirely.

Then the two relatively smaller pieces of the pie for other fire rescue, this includes costs such as the contract with the City of Charlottesville for fire services.

We also have a tax credit program for our volunteers in the system and some other smaller costs.

The total fiscal year 18 recommended budget for this fund is $15.4 million and this is an increase of 8% over the 17 adopted budget.

There are two issues that I want to discuss in more detail, one of which is system wide fleet maintenance and the other is going to be minimum staffing for the department.

Thank you, Lori.

One of the things for system-wide fleet management, Mr. Walker already commented on this in his comments in his presentation on Friday and Tuesday.

Really, this is a strong connection to our budget goal of transformation.

And just the county, certainly innovation and transformation are nothing new.

This is particularly true in the fire rescue system.

Our fire department volunteers have partnered together to create efficiencies by consolidating how we have purchased our fuel, how we do training, our management and our repair of turnout gear, and also in the capital improvements fund our self-contained breathing apparatus project.

Looking in the fund and how we work together, the next best opportunity we've seen to do something transformative is in our system-wide fleet management.

Currently what we do for vehicle repair and maintenance is we provide a contribution to each individual station for these costs each year.

What we are proposing to do differently in fiscal year 18 is to take those contributions and put them into one pool of funding and then to create a new position which will have a total cost of $108,000 and then this position will be kind of in charge of managing centralized pool of funding for the entire fire rescue system.

They would be coordinating all essential preventative maintenance to make sure that it's being performed, make sure we're getting the best possible use of life out of our apparatus.

Also taking a look at all of our repairs and contractual services, making sure we're going through our public procurement process, make sure we're getting the best possible rates.

This is a concept that has been discussed over the years with the TIMSS Board and they are supportive of it.

And they certainly will be an important partner in this implementation with the Fleet Committee in developing the procedures and implementation to work for the entire system.

The final comment on this is really the chart on the right that sort of speaks to the urgency of our need to try and find a way to do something different.

are the costs that Ms. Mallek alluded to that have been increasing in recent years.

These are the actual reported expenditures for our volunteer stations, which in fiscal year 12 and 13 were approximately $300,000 a year.

Andy, Dan, is that because we have more vehicles, or is that because we're holding onto our vehicles longer?

With our rescue chief, we have a couple years ago extended the life cycle of our apparatus out to 20 years.

So this could be reflective of what that decision is in terms of our increased cost and maintenance.

But I would say there's two goals really associated with this project.

The first goal is to honor our commitment to fund the basic operating costs for the volunteer departments.

We are finding that some departments are having to dip into their savings to repair their units, which means less money for their buildings and one-time maintenance costs.

So that's not a good situation.

And the second goal really is to be more efficient in how we manage our limited funds.

And we believe that we can be much more efficient by contracting

I'm a little slow.

So the position, the money you're going to spend is someone to organize.

So you're not going to use the pierce repair guy over on Preston anymore.

You're going to hire a mechanic to do the work.

That's one thing.

To organize and also work through our FIMS board to seek a contractor, a contract out to get a better price in terms of time, material, and repairs.

We'll probably still use the shop here in Charlottesville.

And just one thought for you all.

With the three engines, Seminole, Earlysville, and somebody else who all got the same engine and all had number two year limits over and over and over again, $80,000 for the Crozet alone that they had to pay for almost a brand new engine.

Perhaps we should consider doing RFPs each time we buy something instead of lumping all these things together and getting so many that when they're having a bad year you really get nailed.

So I know there's a recent purchase in Crozet that ended up spending $200,000 more because they were trying to nag onto some Houston RFP instead of getting a smaller engine that the guys really wanted.

So this is an analysis that I would like you to come back to us and talk about.

and the other question to leave with you is when the fire rescue fund was created it was supposed to create a budget that was going to stay up and down depending on the value of the sense and we're still putting in extra money for operations all the way along so we're not real and the other thing we were supposed to be able to see is transparency and yet we've never really seen or I would like to see and maybe others would as well

Andy, you're getting that detailed stuff right?

The $0.72 thing happened before my time and I don't quite understand the rationale of why one department has this automatic funding kind of thing.

It's never been explained fully to me, but it seems that increases a lot of responsibility to account for that money much more diligently.

We can provide whatever information that we have available that would help you better understand how the fire fund works.

Certainly there's a history to the decision to actually create the fire fund in the first place that now goes back, I believe, three fiscal years.

I think so, yeah.

And it certainly was intended to improve transparency over the costs associated with that major area of expenditure.

Yes, in fiscal year 16, it was a total of 7.6 pennies.

0.4 of that went to the CIP, 7.2 for operations.

So it's still the 7.6.

It's just split differently.

And it started out as a penny at 1.2 million, and now it's a penny at 1.7.

Yes, everything that is included in the fiscal year 18 recommended budget is funded by the value of those 7.2 pennies.

If I could, I just want to clarify one thing that

What was ordered was a bigger engine, not the one that they wanted that had the bigger pump to help the tower, and that engine that's ordered cost $200,000 more than

and the smaller engine that the design committee had wanted to get.

And so it's just not working, it's not always perfect to lump a whole lot of purchases together and make everybody have the same engine when they have different needs.

So that's just what I learned last week.

And I know it's already happened and it's done.

So when you all are talking about this new position, you're referencing the one that's I guess the new position here.

That's what you're calling the one fleet management position on our blue sheet.

I just want to find them.

Yes.

Connect.

All right.

And have you, what makes, what analysis have you done to show that that's going to

Our hope is that in the long term by making sure all preventative maintenance is being performed we can get a longer useful life.

We know in the short term that there is work that is performed now at contract rates that would be higher than what this position would be performing.

So we know off the bat there will be some things because this position will be managing all the contract management but also doing hands-on work themselves.

Right.

For instance, this position can first try to diagnose what's going on to avoid potentially a very expensive time material charge and a trip charge, which is very, when you talk about sending a mechanic down to North Garden, that's a lot of money, so much per hour.

I would just add that this whole area of fleet management is a very, very important transformational type efficiency thing that we're looking at going forward.

As we look at our county wide, the amount of rolling stock that we're dealing with now has reached this critical point of where you really do need to centralize and carefully manage

How all of this equipment is maintained.

We're just at that point where we can't have all different kinds of ways and manners of which how this equipment is maintained.

We need to centralize it and look at a very efficient operation.

In interest of time, can I recommend that what I would find helpful is to have a definition job description, short paragraph for each of the four proposed positions, and that we revisit this when we meet again to talk about it further.

But I just had one last question.

At the bottom on page 122, Andy, it indicates the planned use of $210,117 in fire rescue services fund balance to fund a one-time expenses.

What were those expenses?

Would you see if I can do this by memory and I can certainly provide the full list as a follow up.

One thing we are doing with this fleet maintenance consolidation is we are going to have a one time contingency for major repairs.

Just in case we have a bad year, which happens in fleet management if we have a large number of transmissions fail, we will make sure that we have a reserve to go to to be able to accommodate those costs.

That will be the largest one of those one-time expenses.

Looking at what we are projecting to spend on our system-wide turnout gear next year based on the aging condition of that equipment, we're anticipating a one-year spike.

We're going to cover that with one-time funding so that when the cost

decrease in fiscal year 19.

We've kind of already accounted for that.

There are also some select one-time costs in volunteer stations that we're providing funding for.

These would be things like replacing some equipment that has failed.

And then I believe the last category is the positions I'll talk about in the next slide have some one-time startup costs as well.

Ready to move forward to the next slide?

I think we are.

I will keep my comments brief with that in mind.

The other three positions, the total four that Mr. Randolph spoke about, the other three are included in the support for minimum staffing.

This is a change included in the 18 recommended budget aligned to a budget goal of sustaining the quality of the organization.

These three additional positions total 221,000.

If I remember correctly, about 20,000 of that is a one-time cost for the initial startup.

These three physicians that were adding into the department are seeking to do a few things, primarily to reduce mandatory overtime.

Mandatory overtime is kind of a technical term, so to try and plainly kind of describe what that is, using the example of a situation where you imagine a paramedic in the department who has completed their 24 hour shift in the field, then due to the availability of staff in order to keep that ambulance in operation, they are required to be held over for an additional 12 hours, so they are working a total 36 hour shift.

and as you can see on the chart on the right, for the last five years of actual data, this is happening with increasing frequency, approximately 100 times in fiscal year 12 and 13, to a total of 307 times in fiscal year 16.

mandatory I don't believe as much as a law it is just our policy to safely operate the apparatus we need a certain number of positions I believe so but I'll look to Dan to correct me it's not it's in order to maintain staffing for a particular unit for instance of an ambulance would need at least a paramedic and an EMT to stay in service so to keep the apparatus that we have currently in the system

In service, we have a minimum staffing that we have every day.

So when we fall below that minimum staffing, as Andy indicates, we have to tell someone they can't go home and they've got to work.

And I can speak to that briefly.

I mean, as hard as Lindsay were, she's not a 24-7 hour employee.

And so, where the fire rescue system is, and so to ensure that we have a coverage around the clock, that is why we're requesting three.

It's a choice I mean we could reduce service and that's certainly an option and if that's what you want to do we can do that but you know this is this is an obligation I have for our employees safety and for the citizens safety

and we have tried to attack this several different ways.

I think really what happened is when we added staff, we just added such a lean group that we're paying for it now.

Because I know this

It would appear to me we need a deep analysis of this.

Well we certainly need to schedule a specific extended amount of time to have a deeper conversation about all of the issues that are associated with the fire rescue fund and the fire rescue budget and the staffing that's being recommended in this budget.

Well, we'll just have to look at the overall schedule so we can do it as part of this budget conversation.

We certainly do have some budget work sessions that are as needed.

We could use those or look to see if we have some other options.

So the increase that's being asked to be appropriated is 1.1 million dollars over last year's revenue if this line on page 122 is top and bottom of the page.

So it's all being spent somewhere.

Everything that's additional revenue into the fund this year, there's no full fund balance or holdover or savings or anything else.

I want to thank Andy for all of his work on this.

He's taken it to a good place, but I know there's more we need.

I think we need a deeper dive into that.

Right.

Page 125 is Inspections and Building Codes, as I've mentioned.

Very, very little change in the area of building inspections.

This, again, is managed by community development.

The major change here is the expected revenues from permits and fees, obviously.

We've seen the number of permits that were issued in 2016 actually exceeded the peak years of 2007.

I think we just learned today there was over 820 permits issued in fiscal year 2016.

This generates the additional revenues that were projected here for 18.

Page 126 is our public safety contributions.

As you know, many of these arrangements and partnerships are by formal agreement.

And as you can see, the overall category is actually reduced by 1% over budgeted in 17.

There are a series of changes that are enumerated there under

fiscal year 18, Albemarle County Regional Jail increased by 196,005.3% again as a result of the formula of the agreement which relates to the number of actual inmates.

Blue Ridge juvenile detention decreases by 261,000.

and this is a good story.

This relates to the retirement of the debt service obligation that we had on that facility which made our last payment.

ECC Center decreasing by $83.97.

And then there are other categories of expenditures there that have shown increase and decreases throughout.

I do, I just want to be sure that the Seville-Albemarle SPCA contract is up in 2019, is that correct, Greg?

We renegotiate that?

I think you told me last year it was 2019, I just want you to be aware that I continue

That's not for their pound activities, though.

That's a separate thing, which is what we're getting.

And Madam Chair, just in relation to Ms. Randolph's question, this of course came up last year and we do have a report coming out to you in a matter of days in advance of next week's presentation by the SPCA with some analysis on the

our assessment of the value of our relationship with the SPCA versus what we've seen and experiences in other communities in terms of the cost associated with doing it differently.

Wonderful, thank you.

Okay, well we can, if we may, go to page 129, which is the category of publics works.

This category totals $5.2 million in general fund and is made up principally of the Department of Facilities and Environmental Services and a portion of that program that relates to the capital operation, which I'll talk about in more detail, and then our contributions to the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority.

As I think you all recall, this department was the combination of combining general services formally and the department of facilities development into one.

This has, I think, served us very well.

It coordinates the like activities of these various functions into one coordinated department.

and at this point it's involved in maintaining and improving the physical assets of the county including its buildings, grounds, keen landfill and other infrastructure.

We're also involved in the environmental compliance for all of the operations.

Also involved in environmental pollution prevention and minimizing waste recycling in other areas.

It oversees all of the planning, design and construction of all of our major capital projects undertaken by both the county and the schools as well as in some cases our agencies.

It coordinates with the Department of Community Development protecting our water resources and natural resources of the county through various programs.

Total budget is $4.6 million, increasing 5.4% or $237,000.

It's important to note that there are two components of the facilities team.

One is those various groups that have to do with

what we call an internal service fund which is receiving its money through the capital program.

So whenever we plan for a capital project, we include in it those fees that are required to pay the architect or those fees that are engineers and as well those fees that are required to manage the project itself, the project management costs.

So those funds are included in the capital fund and then transferred to the internal services fund

to support Trevor's operation project management.

We think this is an efficient way to go because it, the department itself is, reflects it.

So if over time that increases, as it is in this case, we are able to staff up either through contracts or other units to deal with that additional.

As you know, we've issued 35 million in additional projects for the schools.

That is putting a real strain on the department.

This budget includes a number of contractual positions that will be hired by Trevor's office to accommodate that additional workload.

Trevor is here if there are questions related to specifically the operation.

I'd also mention that with this additional activity and volume of work, they're proposing the addition of a converting a part-time position for a full-time management analyst position that helps them with the overall volume of keeping up with the contracts.

I have some questions.

Trevor, what is the major driver of the increased utility cost?

Is that electricity?

I'm assuming it is.

Okay, one question for you.

You show a $10,000 increase for the recycling services at the RSWA and within the county office building, and then if the committee that is making recommendations to the county on solid waste, if

The county implements a modest expansion of recycling services.

Is that actually going to increase the cost in the budget?

This $10,000 as a placeholder really was at the request of the Solid Waste Alternatives Advisory Committee.

In discussions over the past summer and fall, part of their charter is to increase recycling activities throughout the county, including the county office building.

In the original discussion, our request was to put a placeholder, if you will, for Rivanna's budget so that we could potentially look at an expansion of services, hours, time at our location here at either McIntire or to do something out in Ivy.

Recommendation is still kind of being worked through.

Working with the budget office felt like it would be better to place that in the facilities budget as a line item.

Once we have recommendation goes to the board, board approves, we can then use that funding as recommended and agreed to by the board.

That's what I was expecting.

That's why I was struck by the $10,000 increase.

Last item, and I apologize for being parochial, but $8,500 increase for a Scottsville pumping station for maintenance of the levee.

I thought we were working out a memorandum of understanding with the town of Scottsville as the anticipation in the future that a

Based on the discussions to date, we're anticipating an increase in cost, but because that has not been negotiated out, we wanted to... We're building it.

We're building it, yes.

So it's...

That work is still occurring.

Yep.

Okay.

Good.

Good.

Absolutely.

I have just a question about this and maybe I'm not sure who needs to answer it.

I thought that at one point we had, you all had a list of possible areas to combine with the school system or you were looking at to see if you could save money.

And I thought that the custodial services was one of them because of course the school division has such a big custodial services division already.

Am I imagining this or?

Michael may be able to help.

This was part of the efficiency committee that Bill chaired a couple of years ago.

I think what was looked at was using contractors at the schools and not the reverse.

So there was an investigate, am I capturing that correct Bill?

Yeah, there was an analysis that was done saying, you know, we saw savings to the total budget by implementing a contract of services here.

Might we apply that to schools?

I think there was some vetting of that, but for a lot of different reasons, the decision was made not to pursue that.

Okay, so I guess the thought was that reversing that wouldn't make any sense, that we'd actually lose money on that.

Yeah, that's right.

It would be going back to an employee-based kind of program where we hired those people in-house.

And we found that in converting to the contractual program that we saved over $200,000 a year, as I recall.

So it wouldn't work to absorb the county office going into that.

Is that committee defunct now?

Are you all working, still working?

Where is that?

Did you finish your work?

The schools are very much a part of all of the transformation

That's good, I was just curious as to where that committee is, because it just seems like sometimes if you combine things you might be able to save some money.

So, anyway, okay.

All right.

I know we've moved through that quickly.

A lot going on in that department.

But if we may go to page 137, this public works contributions.

This is just very simply our contributions to the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority.

This is increasing 19%.

and as I understand the explanation, this has to do with their projected value of recycled goods that they're able to sell and as fuel prices fall, it ends up actually costing us more money because there's less value I guess in the recycled goods.

Any other questions on that?

If we do not, we can go to health and welfare.

And as we have talked about previously, we will postpone the discussion of social services, Bright Stars, and CSA till next time.

So we could go to the contributions page.

This category represents $5.2 million, an increase of 3.7%, and there are a whole list of various agencies that are there to review.

I would point out that there are

three funding three agencies that were funded this year for the first time the first is the what's called the bridge line program and again Ellis Gretchen is here to speak to that if you would like more information

The other two relate to the Women's Treatment Center Program at Region 10 and the Women's Initiative Program, which is at the very bottom of the table.

I guess my question sort of goes back to my earlier question.

I still don't understand exactly why Java is under a contract with us.

Java is actually reviewed by the Office of Management and Budget.

And then looking at it, it looked like it was just lumped in.

I'm sorry.

That was my confusion.

Maybe it's just how it was listed.

So Andy, can you back up and explain how an agency like Java is reviewed?

No, they're actually reviewed by Christy Shifflett, who's sitting in the front row.

Okay.

So when it comes down to the difference in the funding that was decided on, that doesn't necessarily go through a weighted process.

That's more of a conversation with Christy and staff about what's funding and what's not being funded.

That gets to the point of some of the conversation I think Diantha wants to have about

It does, and we can have that discussion later.

Java is, and it is worth talking about the collaboration between Java and social services with respect to this budget, and Christy can speak to that either today or on Monday when we're here talking about social services.

Okay.

I know we're living out of time.

I want to have a discussion at some point.

We're running out of time.

And I know we have other people here.

Maybe Monday's the best time.

Whatever.

Marta?

Marta's here.

That's fine.

That works.

Christy Shifflett.

Yes, I review the Java request and all the requests that I review with health and welfare, we go with, I coordinate with social services and the individuals that work closely with those areas of expertise and then I also reach out to the agencies and we discuss their requests.

So in this specific case, we actually met with our adult services

It gives me one side of the equation.

Could we just have Marta comment?

Is that alright while she's here?

Because I'm concerned about the funding at Java right now.

Marta Kane, CEO at Java.

Thank you for the opportunity to talk about this.

As you do know, we have been hit with federal and state cuts and so we were unable to increase our funding or our staffing for Albemarle.

Last year we served about 7,200 people and we know that that increase is gonna continue.

So we did work with Christy and we did look at possibilities.

One of the things that's become very clear is that at Southwood there's a very huge need that's not at all really been touched in the past

So that was one of our areas of concern that we would like to be able to focus more on.

And we just know in general that information and assistance and options counseling is a big part that will continue to grow.

So we basically will probably fund a half-time position rather than a full-time position, which is a matter of again making decisions about how we can work together and what we can do.

One idea that came up very late and actually too close to when this budget had to be put together is whether or not there are things that adult services does that we could actually do more efficiently and help them meet some of their deadlines and their compliance.

but being able to send people to us because there are things we can talk about with them that Department of Social Services isn't able to discuss or explore with them.

And I think that's got a lot of potential but it was too late in the process for when Christy was trying to pull this together.

I think that's something that we can certainly explore going forward and that would offer some opportunity here.

because it lets us have access to people to explore a lot more than the one question.

As we know, every time someone asks a question, that question actually suggests there's about three or four other needs below that question that once we get them in with us talking, we're able to help them work through that.

So what came up at the last minute?

So this was an opportunity where we had our social services adult services team sit down with Java and we talked about how we serve the community and this part of our community.

and so I think what we discovered is that there could be more solutions down the road.

What we thought we would do for this budget is fulfill the part-time request for the adult services worker in social services and also fulfill the $30,000 to Java to assist them with options counseling.

If I could just add one more thing given the discussion about fire and rescue.

One of the things that I've been working with Chief Eagleston on is having an options counselor try to help with the high risk, high repeater,

Callers because one of the things we know is that there are some people who over utilize or inappropriately utilize calls to 911 and when we look at it a big number of that is actually social determinants, it's not medical issues and so we actually started with a pilot case last week and we wanted to take it from there and that would be my other hope for the options counseling

That's the other piece, but we're not far enough along to have said it's a proven thing, but it's something that we really feel we want to move forward with.

I believe anecdotally it will be, given what we've seen with hospital to home impact.

As of October 1, the state cut our funds for this year by $58,000 and the state budget that just is going forward did not replace that funding.

Obviously, you're probably, you're just about half, the 7,200 people we serve from Albemarle County is about half the number of people that we served last year.

So in that sense, I guess you could say 30,000 is half of the 58,000.

However, that's a very rough estimate.

In truth, the costs are not as evenly divided as the number of the people that are served.

But what that did was it replaced our lost money.

It didn't give us any potential for growth.

So in that sense, we're still behind the eight ball.

I guess is there interest in having that on the tickler list that we're creating to have a little bit more discussion about that?

Yeah.

Great.

It's already on the list.

That's good.

Yeah, that's right.

There you go.

I think that, again, compared to some of the other things that we're putting so much money into, $30,000 is for something that's really serving critically

I would just say that this is consistent with our budgeting philosophy and how we do try to look very discreetly at all of our relationships, all of our service partners, all the areas where we really are trying to help make a positive difference in the community and this conversation between Java and social services

Again, the board will take that information and obviously do make it yours, right?

And do what you want to with it.

It does enable us to pull down more state money by converting that half-time to a full-time on the social services side.

And so there's an efficiency aspect of that too.

Not that it's all about that, but that is part of how it is that we as a staff and working with our agency partners also try to think about that.

So without getting into the magnitude of the investment,

So we get one FTE that helps us pull down more money from the state and does that cover, I mean I don't know how much money that is that pulls down.

In theory it can help offset to some extent the lost money that goes to Java if those services are coordinated.

Okay, I'll take us to our last category.

I'll try my best to cover this last category.

I think we might be able to do that.

Parks, Recreation, and Culture is on page 155.

John Halliday is here to speak.

I will summarize quickly the changes.

The other is the Department of Parks and Recreation, of course.

Our contributions to Darden and Powell Memorial Park and other agency contributions.

Total budget for these categories is 8.2 million or an increase of 6.6%.

In the area of Parks and Recreation, here again, a minor increase, well a 9.2% increase in overall expenditures.

However, the good news here is that our transfer from the tourism fund has increased rather significantly by 367,000, bringing our net cost to the general fund, actually down from last year.

The only capital expenditure change that's worth noting here is for additional trail maintenance equipment.

that I would point out.

And the resource category, you may remember that in this year's budget we have budgeted $125,000 to do a community recreational needs assessment.

That work is underway.

We do anticipate that with the implementation of those recommendations there will be implications for staffing, whether it be reclassifying or

Reorganizing his department to address those things.

We have included $90,000 for those purposes.

Just real quick, I sent an email about this, but it probably falls under this, that one of our strategic goals was entrance corridor beautification.

I believe it would fall under Parks and Recreation.

I don't know if it would fall under Public Works, but that's something we discussed, but it didn't make its way into the budget, but I really do think.

I did see that from earlier today.

That's our particular list, too.

Can I just ask one question on page 159 under Darden Tow Park?

It does indicate in the last bullet a decrease of $4,604

primarily due to increases in repair and maintenance costs.

operating expenditures, but you increase your costs.

Can somebody just help me with that?

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to embarrass you.

I looked at that and I thought, that's truly Orwellian.

Thank you for putting that and we'll get that corrected.

Libraries, our total recommended budget is $4.4 million.

It's an increase of 4.5%.

The other increase relates to adding five hours of operation to the Northside Library.

I have to say I have gotten contacted numerously about the extra hours so I will fight to keep that in there.

If I could just, obviously we've been getting more and more emails about the parking situation at Northside Library.

I think we need to come up with something soon about how we might address it.

And just a shout out to the library staff at Northside.

When Diantha and I had our economic development forum there, they were very, very helpful.

The library staff throughout the whole region is so spectacular and each one has their loyal supporters and that part-time shelver has about 15 volunteers who help all the time.

So you have that many books going in and out all the time.

You really need a lot of volunteer help as well as someone to keep them properly organized.

I was just going to ask, it struck me that it looked like that potentially was a volunteer position as a shelver, that somebody might want to take that on.

I'd better clarify.

I know you're over time, so I'll be very brief, but first I wanted to really thank Doug Walker and the staff for all their communications throughout this budget process in the library.

And I want to thank the Board of Supervisors for your support of libraries.

Last year was the busiest year ever in the history of the Jefferson Museum and Union Library, not only in terms of the number of books checked out, but also the number of people coming to library programs, story programs, adult lectures, those kinds of things.

and the Crozet and the Northside libraries are real hits.

Everyone loves them.

We just hear positive comments.

We realize that parking is an issue and I have been working with the county staff over the last month.

We have some ideas that we're pursuing and we hope we'll have a solution to some of those problems soon.

Regarding the Shelver position, as Dan indicated, we have many volunteers working at the Crozet library.

Throughout the system we have over 200 volunteers.

We just need additional help shelving on a regular basis at the Crozet Library.

The use of Crozet Library over the last three years has increased 86%.

That's in the number of books being checked out.

There's just thousands of books that are coming in and going out.

The volunteers do a great job of trying to keep up with it, but we need an extra half-time person.

This will be the only position they added at Crozet since opening the new library, so we really could just use a little extra help out there.

But the volunteers do great work and we appreciate it.

We really have people gathering outside to try and get into this room, I'm sorry.

That's all right.

Thank you, John.

Good.

Go ahead.

Oh, second.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.