Board of Supervisors Closed Meeting and Budget Work Session   2/27/2017

Travis is not in his head, okay.

Liz Palmer.

Kate Acuff.

Greg Kamptner.

Doug Walker.

Rick Randolph.

Norman Dill.

He asked that we get started.

I believe that's the first thing on the agenda.

With that as a setup, I will yield to Mr. Honkaro.

As a result, the VRS rate is increasing by 1.78% next year, which means the school division must contribute an additional $1.5 million.

It's not on here, I guess.

That's okay.

And that puts us in the position of making an extra $1.5 million contribution during 17 and 18.

Yes, gotcha.

With that, I'll turn it back to Dr. Acuff.

And on the previous chart, we saw that two charts back, part of the costs also go toward transportation and transportation assistance for these students.

Can you explain to us what's driving this increase in special education students into Albemarle County Public Schools?

I'm not sure if any of its measurement changes in identification of those students, but it's not entirely clear to us why we've seen such dramatic increases.

that are coming from the outside and moving into Albemarle County expressly because of the better quality of services available.

But, Diantha, you had something to add?

Sure.

And we could provide that with you if you'd like to know that in more detail.

It would be good to know how many out of that hundred plus now are actually coming in from CSA, how many of them have been as a result of better identification and how many people are moving in from the outside, so we have a feel for that.

Thank you.

Just to clarify, CSA is Comprehensive Services Act.

Children's Services Act.

Children's Services Act.

And finally, an incentive-based professional development model, much like the one you've implemented for county police, but designed to increase transfer to practice in the classroom.

What's the deliverable here?

I don't know if Matt, do you want to add, do you want to put some embellishment on that?

It's also a new system.

Yeah, it's a new software system as well.

So that's the reason that that's in there.

And could you also, you would also find a child who was having difficulty that way when the staff gets together and discusses the findings, is that correct?

That's a good point, Liz, yep, that's a good point.

It wouldn't just be to identify a teacher that might be doing something wrong, but a troubled middle schooler that needs some

There's a lot of discipline levels before you get to an out-of-school suspension and this could track, you know, sort of the whole profile of the student.

Right, right, exactly.

So, I mean, just measuring out-of-school suspensions is a pretty gross metric.

He's talked about the middle schools as well.

But you need to hire somebody.

So just trying to wrap our head around this.

in the urban ring, so we feel that by bringing that on board and an enterprise application specialist to bring it on board to run it, at least for the first year, because we don't have the staffing right now in dark to handle it, it's a necessity to help address the needs of these students.

So this cost includes a person as well as the software package?

It would be like an equivalent of a Beth Brown position or that level of person in DART who's really just going to be front line management to help bring it on board for the principals to use.

Thank you very much.

Is this the same that's referred to on page 10 where you talk about the DART data line and contract services or is that something different?

You know, obviously, once we do the assessments on that.

I think Matt just spoke to that.

I think he referenced it, so let's let him broaden out the explanation.

It would require at least for the first year a person to bring it on board, integrate it with PowerSchool, integrate it with our other systems that we have in place, offload the old system and so it does require a position and it may not be permanent but it's needed to get through this process at the beginning.

That helps, yeah.

Yeah, okay.

This brings a solution in-house and then brings a staff member on board to be able to make sure that we have ongoing management of it moving forward.

Yeah, not just at the beginning.

Okay.

So you're replacing a contractor is essentially what you're doing.

the more secure route for us to be able to move forward with our special ed management is this type of solution.

Thank you very much.

One of the things is from a dollar and cent point of view, the initial outlay is a big chunk of the dollar amount in total, so the going forward cost would be very significant.

That was readable and accessible inside this one.

From the standpoint of a vice principal wanting to access this database, they will be accessible on their desktop.

to meet and address students.

Go ahead Ann, you had another question.

So is the data line question that's under the growth, is that part of your establishing hardwiring to the remote schools?

No.

No, okay.

So the data services that you would see in terms of cost projection increases go to our overall internet connectivity and the bandwidth that we buy.

So more of a regular operations.

Okay, great, thank you.

Thank you, Vince.

Thanks.

And we will try with our support team here to answer them.

Thank you.

At least I'm not trying to run for president and forgetting the department that I ended up nominating as academy officer for.

But include those as comparable for us.

I think it might lead to a more robust evaluation.

Okay, that's easily done.

Norman?

I was just wondering if, without going into a lot of detail, what the reasoning was for how this initiative came about and were there other ones that you chose between?

I mean, that's extraordinary Go ahead and I'll ask my question a minute

Do you know all the homeless children?

How do we know who's homeless?

Is it turned on?

Federal government.

Thank you.

I was just trying to figure out how you find out about them.

Not exactly your criteria for defining.

and there was actually verification forms that people have to fill out.

So Social Services has a client who is homeless, they know, they have children, they automatically contact you and tell you that.

Or vice versa, we sometimes notify them.

I'm just trying to get it back.

How do we network services in to support our children?

To sort of organize and...

Yes, to help with that.

And an integrated, yeah.

And our principals are gonna tell us all the things that they need, and I'm sure that this team will be able to meet all of those.

Ann, you had another question.

I mean, the software has to happen, the training has to happen, and the people have to happen in order for this to get started almost.

Any other questions?

I see you just passed out another piece of information for us.

And if you have any further questions, don't hesitate to contact us.

I'm sure we can develop one.

Because we're going to all be having town hall events.

A fact sheet on the initiative or the whole

Just put the school budget is what I was thinking about.

Something very simple and straightforward that we could use.

Okay.

Let Lori have some time.

Welcome back.

So Doug, are you gonna kick us off or Lori or?

So I just wanted to see if that works before we move forward.

That sound like a plan?

328.

We had it, we have it reserved.

Yes, we did.

As a possibility, but we were, you know, we weren't sure that we needed it, but we think now it would be a good idea.

I think it's a good idea.

So we're just going to finalize that we will be having that.

If needed.

If needed is now affirmed.

But that works.

I'm gonna take off the, if needed.

It's not a lot of money dollar-wise, but we think the contributions do show our support for agencies that are supporting the group of children that we want to focus on in our strategic programs.

Do they provide us with a breakdown as to the county versus city versus surrounding county figures of participation?

I can provide that to you as follow-up.

I'd be curious just to know for both of them what the percentage is in terms of county that participate.

I know for the book festival they have many different events at the school that the kids get, author events at the school that the kids get to do.

in the room if you need to ask questions of that department.

We want to make sure there aren't any questions.

from a former part-time.

So there is one full-time position and one that changes from part-time to full-time in the recommended budget.

It seems like that has to be related to social services and I'm surprised that they don't need more resources to handle that.

I'm gonna invite the director of social services to answer that question for you.

If you'll just introduce yourself for people that might be watching and make sure your mic is on.

Thank you, dear.

I'm Phyllis Savitas, Director of Social Services.

Thank you.

And so your question is more specifically?

And I'm surprised that you don't need more people or at least to do.

I didn't want to be greedy.

Well I know, but getting one and a half and approximately 14 are needed.

Right, almost 14.

I think you touched on your report, but I don't have that in front of me right now.

I can get financial information about the specific dollar amount for both overtime and our temp costs.

So in a situation where you could save money by hiring people?

I would certainly say that it would be cheaper to hire full-time staff as opposed to continuing to pay temp or overtime which is usually a time and a half.

This could be increasing from there, so you're more or less trying to stay ahead of it as it catches up with you.

and oh, go ahead, I'm sorry.

Maybe there's some of that, but is there also other, I just think it would be good to analyze that a little bit because clearly if you could hire four FTEs and that would save the equivalent of five FTEs in cost for temps,

that had a lot of impact on our ability to keep up with the work but prior to that we were doing our we were trying to do our due diligence to stay on top of it but we've never been able to meet the compliance because there's just it's too complicated and too many cases to process.

Do you have any thoughts, I don't know if you have numbers right now, but any thoughts along those lines?

then maybe we would get closer to having enough people.

That's mostly for the benefits side, so for the services side you still have that $6.75

I wanted to bring it up as a way to kind of offer that that was our strategy for helping out on the service side.

Just some thoughts you might have.

So I do think the family support program would need to be very connected with that proposal.

Were you reassured after talking to Dr. Haas?

That was the only conversation I had with him, though.

I think that would be a good discussion to have.

So it does involve other

I really honed in on the family home connection.

Any other questions?

But just to have some thinking on it so we're prepared in advance and it's not a surprise that gets sprung on us in the middle of this fiscal year.

But that's different from the money that we draw down to help fund our operations.

those are programs that money is taken out of your paycheck and you're paying money in.

In the federal language the entitlement means that if the person is eligible then that person will receive it.

It just, and Rick has mentioned many things, it might behoove us to have a discussion at some point in the summer around some of these

I agree and in the short term it's obvious that we should be conservative with our money even if we don't know exactly what we could lose or win or anything like that.

Our fund balance and our reserves are going to be very important to us going forward.

Is there a legal maximum that we can't go over for any reason?

I think it's political.

That's what I assume.

So I'm assuming there's something similar to that.

We do have a conversation scheduled for today about our reserves.

The next couple of months will inform us a little bit more about what it might be looking like as well.

We can come back to it.

I'd like to have the discussion.

I just want to bring it up now and just say let's park it in the garage and we'll come back to it.

They don't have the access to the database and it's something that DSS and the health department are mandated to do together.

That's right.

I just wanted to clarify that.

Thank you, Phyllis.

You have some more.

That's basically what's included in a recommended budget, but we did have one more item we wanted to talk about around community development, and Doug is gonna follow up on that on the next slide, so I'm just gonna move forward and slide in your slide, copy of the slides there.

So unlike the two positions that you added last year that we continue to do with workload, we see this as an initiative, frankly, to help us address your interest in the urban area initiatives with your strategic plan.

They had it up here and there was consistency and the same story and the familiarity of who to go to for questions and I think this is a wonderful idea and I hope it will go.

It will add resources that will enable the department to actually meet that need as a department.

So they would be a project related funded position versus a broad regular staff position.

This is not the time when staff is supposed to be adding to your list of things that you're adding to your budget.

I'll do it for you.

But certainly we will have to have the conversation with the board about where resources are.

That's right.

So without further ado, Lee Catlin.

Where is that?

But right now, it's just continuing on like we have the position.

Yeah.

And if it's not needed, of course, it drops the fund balance as a one-time cost.

General fund balance?

Yeah.

And it's been just very, very challenging for them to fill those positions.

No, we are not.

Right now they are city residents going into the city jobs program.

I understand, but they can take a job with the city and then they can turn around because they have the opportunity to do so, leave the city for employment in the county or

But they pay less than, we pay less than the city so the chances of them coming to us are not probably very strong.

What if we paid more than the city, let the city train the drivers and let us hire them?

The current school budget does, I think, budget for an increase for the bus drivers.

So it needs to be kind of a full service program.

It just doesn't seem to make sense.

I wanted to talk to you about and then also there could be a city expansion option.

Because you don't want to be competing against each other.

As long as we're getting the training that we need and our requirements.

Could you get us what the proposed bus driver increase is?

for them to have that program up and running for the 20 plus possible drivers.

That's right.

We should take it to a next level of definition and we would look at the Economic Development Fund as a potential funding source for that when the time was right.

And many of you know Ridge Schuyler at PVCC.

His resource network would be brought to bear

training bus drivers and supporting them.

Well, I think it is because it's sustainable jobs for those families and that's part of what economic development is.

I think that's, well, my personal feeling is that's where I would like to put our economic development dollars into education to people who teach a guided fish.

Well, I agree that education is the best way to, that's economic development, but we don't pay for other things at DVCC for kids to go through doing.

I mean, we do have a lot of contribution to PVCC for various programs.

This would probably be the.

But we did feel like that was one place that we could go for at least a first year pilot to see how it worked.

We never really had money for economic development.

To put it anywhere.

What are we going to do?

To me, an awful lot of people would

I will say that in talking to the city, they have had tremendous success in recruiting and bringing people, building their own, basically we're building our own job training pipeline for an incredibly hard to fill

I think it's a great idea, but when you talk about, what was it, a ten week class?

It's eight to ten weeks.

It's more technical.

They would break out, they would take training specific to the sensitivity or the skills needed to handle kids versus elderly or people in a wheelchair versus college students or whatever.

Did many of the city graduates go into driving, I knew they've got jobs with Kath and John, but did they get them with the schools?

We need those skills.

And the Construction Academy, which I think was live at PVCC for a while, is moved to Lynchburg, so we need to reinvigorate that here.

Those are skill sets we will need.

I think there's a growing interest to partner with a lot of our development businesses in the area of what kind of skilled labor can we foster.

Brad is mentioning.

Outside of that, you're talking about private employment, which then becomes a little bit more difficult to

and we would then think of what might be the appropriate source of funding for it, then we're happy to do that work and bring it back to you.

The city was talking about, at our meeting, was talking about us partnering with them.

So when we come back to you, we would potentially have another option for you to look at to see how that would work.

Even if we do get information about that, we still need this to have as a comparison.

We'll keep them coming, both working towards bringing something back to you.

Thank you very much.

And I'd like to know how much we pay bus drivers for all that.

If there aren't any questions, we can move along.

All right.

I've been out here for a long time, Ron, without getting a chance to talk.

So that's a vulnerability we also have that we need to be thinking about.

So that's really the only changes in this category.

and its expansion of an existing bacterial monitoring program.

That's incredibly important.

Some of those items are identified in that chart.

Does the county and the school division split those debt-related expenses 60-40?

So the debt just mirrors what we've actually borrowed for.

Yeah, it's got other, it's all coming out of the fund.

So just how our debt service breakdown goes, depending on what the components of the capital program are that are being funded by debt.

But it is another one of those examples of money that comes out of the local government side of the house, really.

Yes, sir.

You heard earlier the school side of that, and we're doing that in commonality together with our joint HR department.

I just wanted to make sure that I understood that.

But right now it's reserved based on what we've been told by HR is the dollar amount we need, and then we'll move it into the salaries.

So is it coming out of a different fund?

But I just wanted to show you collectively what the total is.

But you're pulling from two.

So I just wanted to show you the total impact on the slide.

So that it represents 428,000 minus on page 184, 326,500 is the fire reserve fund.

No, this is the general government.

Yeah.

The first box and the third box add together.

Thanks.

So we did add a little funding for costs associated with that, just so we made sure that we got as much of the 1.4 to the neighborhoods as possible.

That's surplus from 16.

In this current fiscal year.

Thank you.

would be for fiscal year 18.

So it's another add-on here to the list, the blue sheet that you gave us.

Yeah, it would be part of that contractual at the top.

Is it not on there?

I'm not sure.

There it is, transformation implementation manager.

No, that's it.

Okay, so.

But it isn't the full 275, it would be coming from that source.

Okay, so we need to move that down under adds new positions, that's a new position.

If we adopt a contract, temporary.

Thanks.

Or temporary.

Or do we approve everything?

Some of that.

I would think something like transformational initiatives would be a kind of thing you'd have some latitude to I don't know what but you know do hire somebody for three weeks to try to figure out a problem or something like that right to the extent that it's already that it's been approved right doesn't how much there's not there's approved within the the broader category of transformation initiatives initiatives within the budget then there may be some latitude to kind of use those resources then as the needs emerge during the course of the fiscal year

So are we studying the copies and the reversion or change or are we studying it or are we doing it?

We have to hire somebody to tell us how to buy a new machine.

I'm sorry to be snarky here, but I'm thinking, come on.

This budget, as you know, is built around driving the implementation of these initiatives.

Again, you don't use it if you don't have a grant to match.

I mean, those charts you send us every month or so hadn't shown $100,000 in expenditure, I don't think.

I haven't added them up right.

So it is.

And that would have to be three or $400,000 probably by the time of.

Is it usually just like the roads putting in half to get a matching grant or is it more that you're putting it into buying something that makes it so that you are able to use the grant?

then there are others that say you have to provide a percentage so like something we always match would be our DMV grants that we that we receive for the DUI checkpoints and speed checkpoints so they we always have to provide money for that it's a small amount but they that's a resource that they use

Right.

So we haven't been matching the CDBG.

OK.

So that's one you're thinking of.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you, Christy.

So just to give us a reality check, we have 15 minutes more to go, so I don't owe of our scheduled time.

If I can, I'll move on.

For everybody to know.

So we reserve that for the schools for any contingency school emergencies that occur.

Do they have to come to us and ask us for that money, or do they get to have that?

For those pieces that you might have to dip in and out just a little bit, you really would love to, you need to have something a little bit, I always think about geography, like layers, you know, you have a little something above that 10% layer, so you don't, you dip in and out of that 10%, people will consider that we're in some kind of an issue, so we'd like to have some funding, just a little bit of a balance above your 10%.

What would the policy be on how much is in there or what its uses are?

We would write one out working closely with finance and bring one to you for your thought of putting it in as a policy.

That's great.

Yeah.

So again, you can't use that again.

What would be in that?

It won't be the largest one, but certainly the example that comes to my mind is the resources that were made available to the County Attorney's Office and Community Development the one time to support the Rio Route 29, the recodification work, yes ma'am, you're right, the recodification work.

If they won't use it all, we'll move that forward to 18.

We're getting some kind of rate of return.

And I don't know the exact page right now, but you'll see an interest line in the revenues.

It doesn't go back in these funds.

Not into a fund balance, but it definitely comes back into your general fund as a revenue.

So it doesn't stay with CIP, for example, or stay in fund balance.

Do you have the information?

Yes.

OK. Andy has the answer to your earlier question.

Does that answer the question?

It's a terminology, pay as you go sometimes.

before years ago we had I believe a policy where we put three cents the value of three pennies into the CIP that we're left over the first time it actually brings us back to close to those three pennies is that correct yeah yeah but one time

Yes, the three pennies sometimes would be an ongoing.

That would be a somewhat of a policy.

If we could do this all the time, we could really start bringing back our profile.

That would be our goal.

So using one-time money is a start.

Better than 200,000, which is what we had a couple years ago.

How did that affect it?

We're about six o'clock, I just wanted to mention.

to taxpayers to have to pay less interest costs on the debt that's borrowed and also actually incur less debt, period, by using more cash.

So thank you for your attention today and just a few minutes.

Thank you, Lori.

That was excellent.

Very good.

Let's see.

Anything they want to put on the table?