Board of Supervisors Closed Meeting and Budget Work Session   3/28/2017

Mikes.

We are working out so if everybody can put their mic on over their ear.

So we're going to take a minute make sure we're okay here and the other thing I want to let everybody know is that Liz Palmer and Doug Walker are on their way back from the Rivanna meeting

and I just had an email a few minutes ago that they thought they'd be here in about 10 minutes and that was probably five minutes ago so they're coming.

But this is good because we can get this figured out as far as our sound.

Hopefully it will be an improvement.

I'd like to introduce Officer Kay Kane is here.

There you go.

Thank you for being here with us today.

I appreciate it.

And let's do a mic check for our board clerks.

Our board clerk Claudette Borgersen is there and our deputy clerk Travis Morris.

And will you guys let us know as we do a sound check?

Nod your head.

OK. How about me?

Am I coming through?

Brad Sheffield.

We have time.

We're good.

That's what I did.

Okay.

Then I'm going to turn it over, I think, Laurie, are you starting us off?

I'm Lori Allshouse.

I'm the director of the Office of Management and Budget.

I'm here to kick off our fifth work session on the budget today.

It's a very important one because this is the day that the county executive recommended budget moves forward to become the board's proposed budget for the public hearing.

We have a lot to cover today.

I'm going to get started.

We'll have others working with us here.

Andy Bowman will pick it up in a couple slides to be working with you.

We'll work through the Fire Rescue Services Fund and all your questions on that.

Trevor is here on deck, right?

and he'll be talking with you about the beautification projects, the entrance corridor piece that you wanted more discussion on.

And then I'll help finish it up at the end with Laura Van Zant assisting me to move the budget to your proposed budget.

So just a quick look at the schedule here.

You'll see that if we needed a work session on the 30th, which I'm hoping that we won't if we get through everything we need to today, the next time we'll be together is April 11th where you'll have two public hearings.

One is on the tax rate and one is on your proposed budget.

On April 18th will be the day you set the tax rate and approve your budget.

and we'll be bringing you the resolution of appropriations which is really where your budget moves forward where you authorize expenditures in June.

So again, here's the agenda.

We're going to start off with the Fire Rescue Services Fund, entrance corridors.

At that point, we could take a break.

I know we're planning to go 330 to 630.

We believe that the Fire Rescue Fund will take some time.

The entrance corridors may not.

We don't have as many slides on that, so that may go a little bit quicker.

And when we get to the proposed budget, you have some adjustments you want us to consider.

So we're going to share with you some of your adjustments and proposed sources of funding.

and staff has a couple adjustments that we'd like to also introduce to you at that time.

So we'll be looking through those adjustments and then you'll make the decisions and would be approving your proposed budget for the public hearing.

Again, it's not your final budget, but it is the budget that moves it forward.

So I'm gonna turn it over to Mr.

Bowman now.

Thank you, Laurie, for the introduction.

For the Fire Rescue Services Fund, there will be a few areas that I'll be talking through.

The first of which is just the background of the fund itself, which includes the creation of the fund in fiscal year 16, how that budget's developed, and then also just a brief history of changes from fiscal year 8 to 18 for staffing and services.

After that, we'll look at two issues in the 18 recommended budget for four new positions that are to be added, three of which are looking to reduce the number of mandatory holdovers we have in the department.

in one position that is part of a system-wide fleet management.

So moving into the background of the fund.

The fund was created in the fiscal year 16 budget process two years ago.

Prior to then, all of the expenditures and revenues related to fire rescue were accounted for in the general fund.

This change moved them into this own separate fund.

In the fiscal year 2016 budget, there was a dedicated one cent increase in the real estate tax increase that went forward to support fire rescue costs.

In fiscal year 2016, there were a number of changes going on, a total $2 million increase, or 16% in operating and capital costs that that penny helped support.

This dedicated penny was really a continued concept in recent years for dedicated pennies for certain particular needs in a given year.

Examples being 13, there was dedicated tax revenue for capital and debt, fiscal year 14 and 15 in the school division, also in 15 for the water resources fund.

The total real estate tax funding for fire rescue services from fiscal year 16 on continuing through 18

is the value of 7.6 cents on the real estate tax rate.

So in fiscal year 16, if the value of a penny is about 1.6 million, 1.6 million times 7.6 is how we arrive at that number for the fund.

In fiscal year 18, the value of a penny is about 1.76 million.

That number times 7.6 cents is how we get the total real estate value of the fund.

Of that 7.6, .4 is sent directly to the CIP to support capital and debt expenses.

The remaining 7.2 supports operations.

When we prepare the Fire Rescue Services Fund budget, though it isn't a separate fund, the work that OMB does to prepare that budget is really no different than any other department in the General Fund.

Every fall, the Fire Rescue Department submits a budget request to OMB.

We meet with them just like any other department, ask a lot of questions, revise the budget as we work through the fall.

We also have a process for volunteer stations who request funding of the county that OMB manages.

Then the other areas, such as the city fire contract, there's another components of the fund, which I'll get into in a moment.

OMB will just work with whoever the relevant partner is, whether that be the city, state forestry department, or finance department, whoever that may be, to put together that budget.

All of that analysis takes place during the fall, just like the other departments, and then we get together in January with the county executive

to consider that fund under the same principles as we do for the entire county budget in terms of what is funded and what is not and how we develop that budget.

And for a brief snapshot of what's included in that fund, this is on

The chart we reviewed at the previous work session.

The chart on the left are the revenues for the fund.

You can see the largest piece of pie is the 7.2 cents for the real estate tax rate that funds operations.

The other major revenues that go into this fund are EMS cost recovery, followed by estate revenue, followed by fund balance in 18 that we are recommending including in the budget.

This fund balance supports one-time cost in the fire rescue services fund.

and then there's another small amount for permits, fees and other revenues.

The chart on the right is for expenditures, the largest category of which is the fire rescue department itself.

Within that budget does include support for the entire fire rescue system such as turnout gear which is purchased for county stations and volunteer stations and also other expenses like insurance.

The next largest category, which has mysteriously disappeared from that pie chart in navy blue, is the contributions to the volunteer stations.

That number is 9%.

Actually, no, the description for that appears in the upper left.

So the largest piece of the pie is the pie department, which is not there.

Volunteer contributions are the navy piece at 9%.

The next largest category is system wide fleet management, the Greenpeace at 8%, and I'll be talking about more in a few slides.

And then we have other fire rescue, which includes the city fire contract, a payment to the state we pay for state forest fire prevention, and then the volunteer tax credit program.

The final small amount at .3% or $50,000 is a reserve we have in the Fire Rescue Fund.

This is a reserve that is not allocated to anything in particular.

It was not included to be recommended to be spent on anything, whether it be unfunded requests in the county department or volunteer stations.

This reserve is available if something comes up unexpected during the year, kind of like the reserve for contingencies in the general fund.

If there was to be an appropriation of that, we would certainly bring that to the board for their consideration.

So in response to some questions from last work session and since then I wanted to spend some time covering the history of changes that have taken place in fire rescue from fiscal year 8 through 18 to take a 10-year period because there have been a number of changes and just to walk through kind of when those have occurred and why.

For each of these changes there's a lot of analysis and data we could provide.

I don't plan to go into all of that but at least to hit the kind of the short summary on those and if we need to get into more information we can.

The first five years of this history are very simple.

From fiscal year eight to 12, there were no net additional positions added into the fire rescue department.

And then the fiscal year 13 was probably the year of the most significant change that went on in the fire rescue system.

A number of changes took place.

Some of these were anticipated to start at the beginning of the fiscal year 13, and some began later in the fiscal year.

That was an intentional decision to phase in the cost over multiple years.

Another note on the funding is that some of these positions were grant funded when they started in fiscal year 13.

I've noted on the slide those that continued through fiscal year 14 and fiscal year 15.

and the final note I would add on the revenue side supporting these positions is particularly to those related to EMS transports, an increase in EMS recovery helped fund these positions.

So I raise this because while this is a large number of positions added in one year, the way this was done by staggering them to be phased in in terms of when they start, grant funding and EMS cost revenue made the fiscal impact over time a little more manageable than just one increase in one year.

So, beginning with what those changes were in fiscal year 13.

The first of which was adding a 24-7 fire engine at the Ivy Fire Rescue Station.

This was added in place of the city fire contract.

And this is a total of 12 positions.

And I've noted that the original budget in fiscal year 13 planned for 8 positions to be added.

with the hope that additional volunteers will be able to cover the remaining number we would need to provide for new staffing.

In fiscal year 13, that was not able to happen, so the additional four positions were funded with a grant that began in fiscal year 13 and continued through fiscal year 15.

And just to clarify, 12 positions, what that number represents, because there's a phrase I'm going to use called minimum staffing through this entire presentation.

and this applies to both ambulances and fire engines.

And when we refer to minimum staffing, it's people who are riding on ambulances and fire engines.

And for ambulances, the number of minimum people we need to operate based on regulations from the state office of EMS is two people.

If we have less than two people, we don't run that ambulance because we would not be in compliance with state regulations.

In order to get two people to have on that ambulance, there's a staffing formula we use to provide coverage depending on whether it runs 24-7 or whether it's running weekday 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. because there's more obviously than a regular work week for those two people.

Plus we need to accommodate for leave, whether it be holidays, annual and sick leave.

So in the fire engine minimum staffing standard is three positions.

And that is based not on state regulation but on the response policy we have set by our fire and EMS boards response policy.

And that's not just a number they came up with independently, that is a standard that is grounded in national standards.

Looking at our similar localities in Virginia, most also use a staffing of three.

There are some localities in the country that use minimum staffing of four, but that is not the level we're at.

We just use three positions.

So I say that all this is background is three positions as a minimum staffing to grow that 24-7, we need 12.

And so that's why we have so many positions added at Ivy in fiscal year 13.

The next group of changes were all about providing EMS coverage in the development areas.

CARS had prior to this time had been the primary provider during weekday daytime in the development areas and in fiscal year 13 it became clear they would no longer be able to provide the coverage the county was expecting.

So a number of changes took place in fiscal year 13.

The first of which is the county used to provide supplemental staffing during the daytime responding out of the city at CARS.

It took three positions running from cars and instead moved them to Berkmar Drive and then added five positions, which I've noted in this first bullet, to get a total of eight positions to run a 24-7 ambulance out of Berkmar Drive.

And eight positions being the magic number we need to get to to be able to staff an ambulance 24-7.

And I believe that ambulance is actually now the busiest ambulance in the county.

And also it had the added benefit of, instead of responding out of the city, pushed that ambulance in the middle of the development area where our busiest call load is.

The other two changes that took place on the east side of town, there's an additional weekday daytime ambulance.

When I say daytime, I'm referring from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. That is located currently at Martha Jefferson, and those positions will move to the new public safety station once it is constructed.

Those are three positions.

We need three positions to get two minimum staffing for weekday 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Then on the other side, on the west side of town, we have at Ivy three additional positions to provide that same minimum coverage.

Also in fiscal year 14, we have a grant funded training division position that was primarily working to fund volunteer fire training.

And then we also added one additional over hire position to give us a total of two at the time in the department.

I want to take a minute to again kind of define vocabulary because overhires are something I will refer to a number of times in this presentation.

An overhire is really just a management tool for staffing.

When we are adding overhire positions, we're really just authorizing the department at any time to be staffed above what we have funded.

So right now the fire department for their minimum staffing at any point can hire up to 85 people.

We have only funded them at 81 positions and through the year they manage that based on their turnover as they know people will be leaving.

And that's something they manage and we monitor throughout the year to make sure they remain within budget.

I'll explain a little bit more how this works and how sometimes when it doesn't work we'll be getting to some of the mandatory holdover positions.

So moving beyond fiscal year 13 into fiscal year 14, one position was added, that is the division chief of volunteer services, Mr. Tom LaBelle, who I see sitting in the back.

In fiscal year 15, there was an E&S cost recovery analyst.

This is kind of a financial analyst position.

Based on all the EMS changes added in fiscal year 13, we realized in the county to have the quality control we needed to make sure we were getting the revenue we'd anticipated and also to make sure we were meeting our requirements for HIPAA, the Health Information Privacy Act.

It was important to have a position there to help manage that program.

That was the only change in fiscal year 15.

In fiscal year 16, we expanded the over hire positions from two to four.

Those are no additional costs.

It's just again the authorized staffing that we increased.

Andy, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I have a question.

Under fiscal year 13, you had two positions that were grant funded.

The first was Berkmar Ambulance, grant funded through fiscal year 15.

And then you had a training division position in fiscal year 13 that was funded through fiscal year 14.

Actually all of the grant positions on this slide were in fact picked up.

They would have been picked up fully locally in the year they expired.

So the original year it started, when I put together this slide, just so positions weren't appearing multiple times, was to show the first year it appeared.

So the local funding for the training division position would have begun in fiscal year 14.

So actually when we look at fiscal year 15 to be accurate about it and especially for the public looking at this, they would find that we added two people in fiscal year 15 in our budget.

We funded an EMS cost recovery analyst

and then we also now funded a training division position primarily for volunteer fire training.

In terms of the services being provided, the services we provided in a prior year.

Okay, so that's actually two positions.

So can I go back to fiscal year 14 then?

Yes, because the same will be true on the... Actually 16, and when we look at 16, you had additional over-hire positions, no additional costs, and yet you show two over-hire positions.

Then do we add to that the five that were grant funded through fiscal year 15?

So we actually end up with a total of seven.

Yes, in total there were 10 grant positions added in fiscal year 13.

Four of those were related to the IV fire engine, five of those were related to the ambulance at Berkmar, and one of those was related to the training division.

So the local cost of those for the training division would have began in fiscal year 15.

So in fiscal year 15, the local cost would have been for the EMS cost recovery analyst and the training position.

A total of 11, yes.

But as of from the beginning to the end, on page four, it's 19 more people that have been brought on since fiscal year 13 in these various categories when you add up all those different things.

I just, I get confused when I'm going one year to the next, but they're all still there.

In other words, the board did not do what it could have done and say, thank you very much for the grant, but we're not going to continue this.

That is correct.

We did not make that choice at the time.

Correct.

Thank you, Andy.

Yeah, that is a good point.

It seems like that... A million dollars.

should be reported in the way that most people would say that's a new position.

Yes, in our budget document we report our history, we break them out by funds.

I think this was a different approach to show both when the service started and also when the dollar impact came in.

So yeah, if it would be helpful, I could provide that in terms of the local cost as well for

If I could, it is tedious for sure, and obviously we're making some choices here about how we reflect it and when the position was added.

But even when the position was added, it was grant funded, there's still a revenue source for it.

It's just not a general fund or now a fire fund revenue source for it.

And so, from the budget context, you're reflecting both the source of the money and the use of the money.

when that position is added.

and I remember the fire fund being introduced because of the huge increase in cost and as a way to make that more transparent at the time.

I'll leave a question for you in the future and I'll come back to other things later.

The amount of cost recovery for Berkmar is something I would like to know.

It was on my list of things earlier and we'll come back to the rest of it.

Brad had a question.

Andy, the FHIR Fund was created a year after those grant positions became funded by local funds.

I think, if I remember correctly, the exact timing in fiscal year 15, there may have been a month or two where they were beginning to expire, but really the full kind of... We didn't dedicate the penny because of those grant unfunded, those grant funded positions.

I think in fiscal year 16 there were a lot of increases that were happening.

Okay, alright.

And I just want to ask a really quick question while we're talking about this.

While we're talking about this, can you pull that up?

Laura's going to pull it up for me.

That's great.

We do, and we do have one table.

There's a few questions asked at once.

I'll try and hit them all.

We do, I think, on page 81, that we have a staffing table that shows all positions, regardless, with funding source, with general fund and special grant funds.

Going by memory, the only grant position I can remember right now in the future that will be an issue is we have a pop sergeant, problem-oriented policing.

We're in, I think, year two or three of a four-year grant where I think we're providing a 50% match.

The advantage to that grant is it is gradual phase in where we're picking up 25% a year, where with these larger FEMA grants it's kind of picking it up all at once.

So we're able to plan for those and we do in the two-year plan make an assumption about those positions.

Yeah, the crime analyst is one where in the fiscal year 18 budget we are fully picking up that position.

And I didn't want to take us down into a rabbit hole, but while we're having this discussion, I wanted to tie in for myself, at least, what we had coming up facing us.

It was one time.

Correct, yes.

Page 80 is a position summary of all of general government.

So you can see the totals over time all the way back to fiscal year 08.

I just remember it better when we have it in the context of the conversation.

So that's great, thank you.

Any other questions right now?

Andy can... Hit them all.

We got it.

Okay.

For now.

I'm expecting more.

In fiscal year 17, there were no changes.

No grant positions were being picked up, and there were no positions that were added.

In fiscal year 18, we have in the recommended budget three positions to reduce mandatory holdovers and one position to implement a system-wide fleet management program.

I'm going to talk about all these positions in much more detail shortly.

So in total, we have from fiscal year 8 to 18 a total of 33 positions, three of which were no-cost overhires.

and because I know some people like to see this information visually, here's a chart on the left showing the total department authorized staffing going from 80 positions in fiscal year 8 up to 113 in the 18 recommended.

The dark navy blue section are minimum staffing positions which again are defined as people who ride ambulances and fire engines.

The other category at the bottom refers to the employees who are in the training division, the prevention division, administration, the EMS cost recovery position I mentioned, division chief of volunteer services, and any other support staff.

So do we have 113 or do we have 81?

81 refers to the minimum staffing number.

That navy blue section.

I think I'll get to that in a couple slides about how we calculate minimum staffing.

If I don't, let me know.

And the chart on the right is the same information shown by per 1,000 population.

This is a common comparison we include when we're presenting budget information in our budget document.

So we've included it here just as a point of reference.

From fiscal year 8 to 13 when there were no staffing – I'm sorry, 8 to 12 when there were no staffing changes.

The positions per 1,000 population was about 0.8 and since that time we've been about 1.0.

Andy, do you have any figure on what a national statistic is for number of positions on average for a thousand person population in a county similar to ours?

We have not done that research, but that is something we could do as a follow-up.

But if we have three, four times the volunteer staff that we have in the paid staff, so that is one component.

Certainly the level of terms of, sorry, certainly the level of how much of the area is developed versus rural can play a factor.

What that county is using for minimum staffing can be a factor.

No, specifically fire and rescue.

I have one quick question.

Sure.

And I apologize because I've got a feeling that you went over the historical stuff before I came in, so I apologize for being late.

But, you know, we go along quite a ways with this 80 employees and all of a sudden we're jumping up.

And does that reflect anything in particular that happened for the volunteer situation at that time?

I think the only change really for volunteers there was really related to CARS and their ability to support the county during weekday, during the daytime.

Andy, just a related question, if I may.

Because it might also be interesting to look from fiscal year 8 through fiscal year 18, our number of volunteers.

I would agree with Rick.

And if we could translate it into FTEs, because I know not all volunteers are

It's interesting.

I guess the number of volunteer hours that are provided per volunteer, I think now compared to long ago, is a little bit less.

Yeah, but if you have five volunteers doing 20 hours versus

five volunteers doing 10 hours versus 10 volunteers doing an hour each.

We're comparing apples to apples when we look at the authorized staffing versus volunteer staffing, correct?

Is that what I think, Rick, you're trying to?

Yeah, that's where I'm going with that.

Yeah, so if you could come up with a comparable, Andy, is really what I think we need to have.

And obviously you're going to reproduce a chart that would show us that, probably the chart on the left.

Could you probably do a little color coding to show those grant funded staffing positions that are now navy blue but maybe should be a different color until they became funded by a local government?

Could you do that just to help with some of those conversations about when that transition happened?

I didn't know where to jump in with a couple of history thoughts just for the board to remember.

When the decision was made to open IVY, it was agreed to by the board at the time because we were going to be able to afford it with the savings on the city contract as a day station.

The fact that now we have hired 12 people for all new money is a big change from what the board originally undertook.

And I'm not casting aspersions on anybody, it's just what happens when we're not very very careful at the board to really

face this up front to say this was open supposedly as a volunteer station, it's not.

And we have to tell the community, or should we tell the community, you want the station to stay open in the evenings, you need to step up because it can happen.

The second thing, the Berkmar was supposed to take the people from cars to Berkmar Station, which was a great idea and put them in where the action was.

So that was also supposed to be covered by cost recovery.

Then it was changed because at cars they were only daytime.

and that was changed to 24-7.

So the other item I would like to know when you can is when are the predominance of times there because my guess is that it's between six in the morning and six at night but I may be wrong.

So I'd like to know about that.

And so I just would encourage board members to be very deliberative as we go forward with this constant growth.

I mean it's 19 more people

in these things that we've added here on this page that are certainly, I guess, seem like a good idea at the time, but when we, and Ken Boyd would always say this, when we have a staff person with a grant, we need to understand that someday it's gonna come home to roost and we need to be ready to make the choice to continue or not.

And so I have a sense that this huge increase in the cost during the year when the,

Can I clarify, Ms. Mallek, you're looking for calls, service calls for Rescue 8 by time of day

and it doesn't have to be broken down.

Day shift, night shift would be enough for me to know because when we agreed to do it, it was for daytime.

So I would just like to know how that panned out.

And I'm sure the board at some point approved going to 24-7, it may have been in the subsequent budget and I may have missed it and didn't make a scene at the right time.

I'd take responsibility for that.

Just for perspective on the magnitude, the city fire contract, I think the last payment was pretty close to a million dollars.

How close does it come?

We did at the time.

I would have to dig through some old files.

We want to also reflect the revenue from cost recovery in that same contract.

When those cost recovery was implemented and how that revenue then has helped to support the system.

At the time, the city had a fire station located next to the Emergency Communications Center on 250 and they were moving that to Fontaine, south of the city.

Before we get away from it, on the tangent of Ann's comments, one of the things I've always wrestled with is where we're headed with the chart on the left.

If, Dan, if you and your staff could take the next, I guess, 10 years and chart it out to the right, including if Pantops was fully staffed the way that you had originally wanted it to, that would be really helpful, I think, for this board to know

the decisions we're making what they're adding up to you know there's obviously what you're looking for will be to the right versus what we're willing to fund but at least it helps really do give a sense to the public of where we're headed with this because the question that I've been asked by just residents who are familiar with what's going on with fire and rescue is when will this stop yeah the increase in need for staffing

I try to tell them, well, when the population might stop, maybe that's when the need will stop.

I think we had the same conversation last year, and that's when we were giving money in our budget to contract for standards of cover, which we're right in the middle of right now.

We've had a couple of visits from the

From the consultant, they're coming back again this Thursday to meet with us.

We're hopeful that this will be wrapped up in several months and we can present to you the long-term outlook for fire rescue.

But it's been over 10 years since we've done something like that since the last planning.

Yes.

Or five minutes in the rural area and three minutes in the development area.

But I'm just making up numbers.

Just to follow up, which probably isn't included in your study, but we need to also recognize where our roads are and where we're creating unachievable things because there's no connection from here to there without going around over here.

And so that's not something necessarily within the scope of that, but it's something we need to be aware of with the routes.

I would also encourage us once again, it's a topic I brought up before, to think about potentially in addressing our overall needs within the county to assess the cost to actually train our police department

as first responders.

There are police departments in rural counties in America that are highly trained in this field.

And it may actually be more cost effective for Albemarle County to train our police officers.

We have them out patrolling.

They're there at all times on the highways and they can respond immediately and they have, well they do have telecommunications capability to the fire rescue department to let them know where things stand so I would encourage us to look at that.

because of the unique configuration of this rural county.

That will be valuable because you can make a difference between life and death in getting somebody there.

We had a close friend die on the golf course this spring and by the time fire rescue got there it was 13 minutes and so she was effectively brain dead and they brought her heart back after 13 minutes but cognitively she would have been nothing more than a vegetable

and fortunately she did die.

So having a police officer that was perhaps in the area that could have performed CPR or used paddles to bring her back to life might have saved her life.

So I think I would just encourage us to look at other ways that we can achieve our goal to have first responders and not necessarily put it all into one single basket.

Yeah and I think Rick you have brought that up before because I remember that this discussion before and you know we really didn't get down into the but I think you're exactly right it would be a really interesting discussion so yeah great.

I think I just want to say one real quick thing on that, on what Rick just mentioned, that we did have some email exchanges and finally did get something from our police chief at the time on that subject.

Okay, that was a question I'd asked several weeks ago about how, what were the unfunded amounts that were requested by the volunteer station that were not met in the current budget and I know that Seminole had a big chunk of about $50,000 and Crozet had about $60,000 and I can't remember the amount for Earlysville and to also readdress the question of the services when we're talking about

The kinds of maintenance issues that have been requested since long before I joined the board as part of the acceptable budget for equality's sake when we have volunteers who are working a full-time job and running calls at night to then expect them to mow grass and plow snow when we don't expect that of our

Page stations, I think is a grievance that is real and inexpensive in the overall picture of things.

It keeps coming up year after year after year, so we will need to be working on that some more.

It was supposedly addressed last year and I was surprised to hear that it had come up again.

I guess I'll respond to the second one first.

In terms of grounds maintenance, the current funding policy in place excludes those items as funded for volunteer contributions.

I know one thing we have done, much thanks to the credit of the fire rescue staff in helping my review of volunteer requests, is making sure snow removal is at least covered.

Because I guess in the past, it should have been.

But with 10 different stations requesting things in different ways, we discovered there were some inconsistencies and people were not requesting it the way they should have.

So I'm hoping at least that issue has now been resolved.

But certainly grounds maintenance, if that policy changes and the board desires to fund that for volunteer stations, we can certainly begin to include that.

I'd like to see what the what the policies are as far as what's funded but snow plowing is funded and maintenance isn't it?

Especially when we have staff that's used to doing some of those other jobs.

Anyway.

But that would be part of the discussion I think that Ann's talking about.

General discussion.

We're aware that the FEMS board, let's see if I have this right, in April, they're getting together on the same thing and they're reviewing the volunteer policies for funding.

But I know some of us would really like to have it

And also the legal ramifications of being independent, you know, 501c3s or whatever they are, their status, how does that affect funding and getting money from the government versus volunteer work and fundraising, that kind of thing.

because we make contributions.

As far as the submissions are concerned, and then there is lots of management going on.

Yeah, but it's not by our, it's by them.

but we also ask them to, we require them to do certain things as far as what kind of equipment they have and how it's maintained and that kind of thing.

So we have legal requirements both ways.

I think in terms of requirements for stations, I believe most of those are really established by the fire and EMS board, which of course includes volunteer representation.

I know, for example, fleet size and fleet requirements are one thing.

I hear very clearly from the board of interest in reevaluating the funding policy and the choices that we have previously made and have adopted into policy about what we the county supports for the volunteers and what the volunteers support for themselves.

So what I'm hearing from the board is an interest in evaluating that funding policy in conjunction with work that the FIMS board would do also in providing recommendations

prior to getting too far into the FY19 budget process is what I'm hearing.

Is that a fair characterization?

Well, it's a little difficult obviously for FY18 so what I'm hearing is if we need to start now

Others may disagree but I'm not closing the door on setting aside funding in this current budget for some changes that will happen in the future.

I have a tremendous interest in it and if we are, if there is a way that we can make it better for our volunteers, I would like stations, I'd like to look at that.

Well, the current policy reflects what was appropriate to the board at the time that it was adopted.

For what was requested.

Now, I think only five or six stations actually requested that.

We kind of have requested people to kind of tell us what you're spending and what you would request.

It was eligible.

So in the event that policy ever changes, we at least have an idea what the fiscal impact is.

I don't know if we started funding this, what other volunteer stations, and I don't mean to imply that it would be much bigger.

I'm referring specifically to grounds, landscaping costs, and janitorial costs.

There are also unfunded requests for what we call larger kind of one-time costs.

Many of those tend to be kind of capital in nature in terms of building, improvements, renovations, things like that.

Not everything on that list is.

I think one of the follow-ups I've heard is requesting a list of what all of those items were.

I don't want to be in a position where we're discouraging the companies from planning ahead and having set asides for preventative maintenance and not having to wait until the furnace breaks in order to deal with it.

I think

They consider that to be a foolish approach to do something only on an emergency basis rather than having something where you're deliberately setting aside money to do things.

So I'm looking forward to this May discussion at the Fence Board.

Any other questions or background before we get into the 18 issues?

The first one I will talk about are the three positions we have to reduce mandatory holdovers.

And I'll start before we get into a lot of our analysis and thinking about this is just kind of what's the problem we're trying to solve.

And I'll introduce this as an example.

We're at 6 a.m. on a Monday.

We would have 33 personnel in the field.

These would be fire rescue employees.

And they'll begin working either a 24-hour shift or a 12-hour shift depending on where they are located.

Just over the course of the day we find out by 4 a.m. on a Tuesday we have a paramedic who's called in sick at Scottsville Rescue and at Hollymead where we have staffing for their upcoming 6 a.m. shift.

So that means by 6 a.m. on Tuesday, Fire Rescue needs to find two personnel to run those ambulances at the station based on minimum staffing standards.

As I mentioned earlier, just to reiterate that for ambulances, minimum staffing standards are set by Virginia Office of EMS Regulations.

Without two people, we will not run that ambulance.

And just as another note in parentheses for Fire Rescue, that minimum staffing is three based on the FIMS Board response policy.

So in order to get those two positions, certainly we would look out to see if any existing personnel would volunteer to cover that, or if there are any volunteers in the system who would be able to cover that shift.

But the problem we're seeing is increasingly we're not able to get anyone to volunteer to cover that shift, employee or a volunteer.

So as a result, two employees would be, in this scenario, would be required to stay and work an additional 12 hours for a total 36 hour shift.

As you can imagine, this is very disruptive to employees' lives with the time with their family, other practical matters like childcare arrangements or medical appointments.

and the problem isn't so much that this happens, this is just a natural thing in public safety staffing.

The next slide illustrates the problems that's happening more and more as the years are going on.

The chart on the left shows the number of occurrences we have of these mandatory holdovers or 36 hour shifts.

From fiscal year 12 and 13, we had 91 to 100, increasing to a high of 307 instances in fiscal year 16.

We're beginning to see evidence this is really impacting our turnover rate and also employee morale.

The chart on the right looks at our minimum staffing turnover rate that shows we had a 13% turnover rate for those positions in fiscal year 16.

And I will note in this turnover rate we've excluded any new hires who did not meet their probationary period just because they are typically not impacted by mandatory holdovers as they're new in training.

So this is looking at more kind of experienced employees.

Just one piece of information not on the slide is that our fire rescue department, like many departments in the county, will do periodic climate surveys and they ask a specific question about the impact that mandatory holdovers are having.

And 22% of their respondents indicated they are considering seeking employment elsewhere due to the frequency of mandatory holdovers.

So again, it's not the problem that is happening, it's just happening with increasing frequency.

So about a year and a half ago fire rescue staff came to OMB with a lot of this information and we began to, as we often do in OMB, ask a lot of questions and try and figure out how it is we may go about solving this.

Andy, before you go into this, can I just ask a question?

Sure.

Do we know what is triggering these occurrences of mandatory holdover?

Have there been any effort to assess, to categorize, to get empirical data on what's driving these occurrences?

Because when one sees essentially here a 300% increase plus in mandatory holdover occurrences,

I think it would be valuable to know in each case when somebody doesn't come in exactly what's happening is it because of sickness of themselves is it because of sickness of a loved one do they need to cover for a spouse really to get a handle on this because that would be very very helpful it's useful to see this graph and to get a feel for what's happening as the output and

But I'd like to know what the inputs are that are driving the outputs.

What are the factors?

And a lot of those examples are what happened now.

I believe we can provide that data.

I'm getting nods in the back.

It's a lot of those factors.

It may be people who are on short-term leave, such as light duty, or Family Medical Leave Act, where they are still employees, they're just out for a duration and cannot provide service in the field.

I'm looking at the data.

Right, we look at the data behind that, trying to understand what may have changed in recent years and what may be the same, and seeing what are some other things we can do first beyond just adding additional staffing.

So kind of the five alternatives or kind of questions we talked through.

Starting first, I mentioned earlier the over hire that we have in place and was expanded in fiscal year 16.

Certainly the first question of can the additional flexibility we provided with that, can that help with this?

I'm certainly looking at the question of do we even need to have 33 personnel in the field during the weekday from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.

I think let's get Mr. Randolph's question about how we calculate what our minimum staffing is.

Looking at beyond weekdays, daytime, we have obviously staffing nights and weekends.

Do we have any flexibility there to shift around people?

Looking at mandatory holdovers as a part of our overtime in our staffing model.

How is that changing?

And then finally of course looking at how our volunteer support may be able to Help out the amount of mandatory holdovers that are taking place So I'll take these one at a time the first of which looking at over hires the first of which is just a definition of what the over hire is and

It is really a tool that's common in public safety departments that allows them to fill their positions quicker, to minimize the amount of time they have to fill their vacant positions.

In fiscal year 17, fire rescue at any point can be higher up to 85 positions or minimum staffing, but we have only funded them at 81.

They have to just manage it throughout the year to make it work.

And I'll walk through an example of how that works in a moment.

And then of course OMB, we monitor this to make sure they're on track to remain within staffing.

So if I were to answer, you know, do overhires help overtime?

I think in one word the answer is sometimes.

So when it does help is when we have anticipated turnover of employees.

An example is in July if the department has two vacancies and they know two employees will be leaving in December.

They'll go ahead and hire four positions and fill a training academy to do one training academy with more people rather than two smaller training academies and get those people trained up and then both in the academy and then in the field so that when those positions leave in December they'll be as fully staffed as possible.

And certainly there may be a brief period in that December month or even before where we have more staff who can help out with mandatory holdovers and we have more success having staff who can volunteer during that time.

And the way this works typically is those department personnel who are leaving in December are typically paid at a greater rate than those new employees who are coming in the system, which is how we're able to get by with having an overlap in staffing during that time.

Additionally, if we're able to reduce overtime, we may be spending more in salaries, but we're spending less in overtime.

And this is just one thing that we have to work with throughout the year to monitor to make sure that we remain on track.

Where the over hire doesn't really help is more on the day-to-day leave or temporary leave.

These are some of the examples Mr. Randolph mentioned.

where if we, at a given time, we have just a number of injuries and we have people on light duty or if there are a number of people who are simultaneously using FMLA leave, that leaves us a little short staffed and we can't really plan for that in the same way that we can for employees who would be leaving in several months that we know about.

What happens when you just can't cover something?

You mentioned the scenario where they just have to shut down that two-person operation.

The approach right now is that we don't do that.

We require people to be held over.

But the option exists to dispatch the next, the second due to the location.

That is correct.

I'll touch on this question actually in the next slide about how we staff and why we do that.

So looking at the second question, which I think will answer this, is we have 33 personnel in the field weekday 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Do we need to have those?

The list on the left shows the personnel that we have for those 33.

The top group are the county stations, which are mainly located in the development areas, or really only located in the development areas.

And I've listed the apparatus and the minimum staffing that we have for each of those.

So for example, minimum staffing for an ambulance is two.

At Hollymead we have an ambulance and an engine, so the minimum staffing is five, three plus two.

The map on the right gives an illustration of where those staff are located in the county.

There's a yellow box, it's where we have county personnel.

F stands for fire engine, R stands for rescue ambulance.

So in addition to the county stations, we have 14 personnel who are at volunteer stations.

These are the stations that are located in the rural areas with the exception of Seminole Trail.

And this is what I alluded to earlier where the staff in these stations exist at the request of those stations.

where volunteer stations have come to the county and said, in order for us to best provide service and staff our stations nights and weekends, we need supplemental staffing during the day to provide that coverage so we can focus all of our resources during those times.

So I think to get to the question of what happens when we don't run an ambulance or minimum staffing, why we don't, I think the fire rescue department is challenged

because if we were to not run an ambulance at a county station, which would be in the development area, that's where call load is the greatest for those stations.

In the rural areas, in order to maintain our commitment to the volunteer stations and what we've said we'd provide by not running those ambulances, we would not be meeting that commitment.

It certainly would be an alternative to if we were to make a regular practice of reducing service, but that is direction I think we would seek.

And I know there's a concern about not always depleting the coverage in the sort of middle fringe, pulling people into the growth area.

But before the days of Station 12, Earlysville was running 1,200 calls a year, and now they're down to 500 because the paid station has taken over a lot on 29.

But they can supplement.

It used to go out to 29 every day, but they don't anymore.

So there certainly are a lot of dots that can share

the work here in the central core, not so many way out in the edges for sure.

Scottsville sort of on their own, Crozet sort of on their own.

Yeah, I know that you understand this, but these staffing numbers and their placement of the staff, whether it's an ambulance or a fire engine, in these locations reflects the first call.

Right.

And only the first call.

So every call after that that impacts then has ripple effects throughout the system.

and I think board members know this too, but all of these volunteer stations had, or maybe not Stony Point, but had industries right there.

So the Seminole was staffed by people who worked at Grumman and at Condyle and would leave their desk and run over there.

J.B. Barnes supplemented everybody in Crozet for the Crozet station and the Murray Electric Box provided both the land and the house for the first Earlysville Fire Company and those guys would leave their desk and run across the street and jump on and go.

What about North Garden?

Where does that come into this at all?

They currently do not have any supplemental daytime staffing, so they're that, I guess the red F that's about seven o'clock we'll call it in the county.

And just because it's my job, I realize this is a great discussion, but we're a little over an hour into this first Fire Rescue Services Fund discussion.

Thank you.

Sure.

Assuming no other questions, I'll move on to the next question, which is really looking at beyond the 33 people we have daytime, we obviously have a lot more.

I mentioned we have 81 positions for minimum staffing.

And I don't want to get into a whole lot of math, but the formula I mentioned before, where if we have an engine running 24-7, we need 12 people.

If we have an ambulance running 24-7, we need 8 people.

And we also have different calculations for the engines and ambulances that run just 12 hours a day, Monday through Friday.

So if we were to apply that formula and come up with a number of minimum staffing positions we should have,

The total we would have at county stations and volunteers, this is the box on the left I'm referring to, the total by formula would be 89 positions.

The actual number of positions we have is the 81 number that I've referenced a few times.

So looking at this information, the first question that jumps out is how do we have so many fewer positions than our formula?

The way we do that is kind of the graphic on the right, in that how we staff our engines is a kind of a mixture of three ingredients.

our staffing formula, relying on overtime from those staff and also utilizing volunteers.

These three components are how we are able to get by with so many fewer positions than our total buy formula.

Also, because we are not at our total staffing buy formula, this suggests to me and the Office of Management and Budget that we really don't have flexibility with our total staffing in the county to really just simply shuffle people around to provide coverage for these mandatory holdovers.

So the next slide, I've talked about the staffing formula for these first few ones.

There are different trainings for minimum staffing for an engine you're required to have a driver, a captain

and a medic, an ambulance would be a driver and a medic.

And there's some other subtlety in that that's probably more detailed than the board is interested in.

But certainly we have people who are trained who can work as a driver, a pumper operator, some who are medics, some who are captains, some are a combination.

And while the paid staff is very well trained to do many, many, many roles, a lot of the volunteer companies have specialists in multiple segments.

So more of them will come to the call to take over their smaller chunk.

So looking at how overtime has changed from fiscal year 12 to fiscal year 16, in 8%, looking at voluntary versus mandatory, only 8% of mandatory overtime was the case in fiscal year 12.

That number has gradually increased to 26% in fiscal year 16.

And what we seem to be is almost a vicious cycle of mandatory holdovers.

where if you think, for me, at least how it helps me think about it, if you imagine an employee on a Monday who's working and has an opportunity to volunteer to cover a shift Tuesday during the daytime, they may already know they'll be required to be held over on Friday, which makes them less likely to volunteer so they're not held over twice in the same week.

If people are less likely to volunteer to cover overtime, that creates the need for more mandatory overtime.

If people are dissatisfied with their mandatory overtime and leaving the system, that creates turnover, which then creates more overtime.

So again, kind of a vicious cycle.

The chart on the right speaks to the ability for volunteers to support when overtime is occurring.

This data is for fiscal year 16.

The kind of light blue on the left is the amount of overtime that occurs from Monday to Friday during daylight hours.

that is 79%.

The other portion is nights and weekends, which is 21%.

Because so much of our overtime is occurring during weekday daytime, we also already know that's the hardest part of the week for volunteers to support us.

Five stations have already requested staffing during that time.

That's also when most people work during the day.

Certainly, the department utilizes volunteers when they're available, but it's not really a solution for when the problem is occurring the most.

So after all this thinking and analysis, the solution that is included in the fiscal year 18 recommended budget is $221,000 for three additional positions to reduce these mandatory holdovers.

The intended outcomes would be to reduce those holdovers, to improve our employee turnover rate and morale, and also to maintain our current service delivery, which is where we both continue to provide weekday daytime coverage in support of our volunteer stations as they've requested, and then to make sure that we're providing continuous coverage 24-7 in the development areas where call volume is greatest.

I would guess the greatest calls is car accidents in the development area as opposed to fires.

Medical calls in general.

Maybe this is not the right time to ask this question because again I don't want it to take us down in a swirly, but we do have an issue with service calls based on people using the emergency room as primary care.

for the ambulance, as I'm talking about, service, yeah, transport.

At some point, and certainly not today, I know we were looking at trying to help solve some of those issues, and I would be very interested, I don't know if we have time today, unless you can give us, because it does really relieve the load in the long run.

It is, and actually we've got a pilot program now, we're working with social services and Java on now to address this issue, and

Yeah, I mean all of us live in neighborhoods where I bet we could name a few folks in our neighborhoods that are in that unfortunate situation.

And the Affordable Care Act has attempted to help and is really working its, so that's sort of working its way through now.

Yes, and I would say too that our system is very taxed.

During the day there are often times that we're out of units.

It's so busy.

So it happens.

I just want to let you know it is very busy in the urban areas, especially in the daytime.

So we're very aware of options to not cover an area.

But when you not cover one area, it's only going to spread to those other areas.

But anything we can do to reduce the calls that really should be handled other ways would really be helpful.

And I'd love eventually to have a report back on that pilot.

It's a very complex issue, sometimes it involves mental health issues, sometimes it involves elderly issues, lack of family support.

But it is a multi-prong problem, but we can make an impact if we figure out the right way to do it, so that's great.

And it helps not only the emergency rooms, but it helps us in everything, so that's great, thank you.

I will move on to system-wide fleet management.

I didn't get to my microphone fast enough.

The $221,000, does that include any capital?

Okay, all right.

And that was the 221 you were asking for with the three additional positions.

Yeah, for any time we hire a new position, there are some additional starting costs.

So in system-wide fleet management, again, to start off the problem we're trying to solve,

is that from fiscal year 12 through 16, this is the chart on the right I'm referring to, our actual vehicle repair and maintenance expenses that is reported by their volunteer stations have increased a total of $264,000.

There's an average increase of 23% a year.

That's the blue line on the chart that I'm referring to.

An additional problem is that during that same time our county contributions have increased at 10% a year or a total of $112,000.

So while there has certainly been an increase in trying to address these costs, it has not been able to keep up with the very significant rate of growth that we are experiencing for these stations.

So our current practice, just to kind of ground everyone on what our fleet size is, we have 137 vehicles, and that's based on the FIMS board policy for what the appropriate size for a fleet is, and a total replacement value for those vehicles of $35 million.

Currently, vehicle repair and maintenance expenses are managed by each volunteer station.

The county provides a contribution to those stations, and then it's up to those stations to manage those costs.

And as I mentioned before, we have seen a very significant growth trend over the last several years of 23% on average.

A good example of some additional challenge for stations is that they are responsible for the costs that exceed county contributions.

Fiscal Year 16, to illustrate this in its example, the county fully funded volunteers' request for vehicle repair and maintenance.

but this trend was actually catching up to everyone and the total repair and expenses for stations was $176,000 more than was funded in the budget.

As a result, volunteer stations have to find a way to make up that difference either through looking at other areas of the county's contribution to them or relying on their donations and reserves to help make up the difference and if they are doing that, that certainly limits their ability to use those funding reserves for other purposes whether it be station renovations or whatever it may be.

And certainly beyond these costs, it requires a significant amount of time for volunteers to spend the effort to manage vehicle repair and maintenance.

So this is kind of another discussion of what the problem is.

What we have included in the 18 recommended budgeted solution is a concept that the FIMS board is supportive of and certainly will be a partner in its implementation.

and where we will take the contributions for these expenses that we're giving to stations and consolidate them into one budget.

This would be also consistent with the trend we've done in recent years to consolidate our purchasing of fuel to gain efficiencies there, looking at how we manage our turnout gear, looking at how we do training.

This is really just another step in that evolution and just provide the most cost-effective service for the entire fire system, fire rescue system.

We have a $100,000 increase for a new position

This position will work with the entire system to perform essential preventative maintenance.

This would be a hands-on position and also someone who would be in charge of coordinating repairs and contractual services.

The additional change y'all make, if this position is included in the budget, we will come back in May with an appropriation to start this position in advance of July 1.

The reason this is important is we want to have a seamless transition.

So if there is a vehicle repair or maintenance need in the first week or two or July, we have someone already on board.

I'm familiar with everyone in the system and what the apparatus are so that we don't have any gap in kind of coverage or question of whose expense is what.

We have also included in the budget, funded with one-time money, a $125,000 contingency for major unanticipated fleet repairs.

Because we know just the nature of vehicle maintenance and repairs, there can be bad years if we have a large number of engine or transmission repairs.

This just takes some of that risk and provides a contingency to help mitigate that.

and the intended outcomes of this change are to try and address the significant increase we are seeing in vehicle repair and maintenance costs, ensuring that we're performing all preventative maintenance to make sure we're getting an optimal life cycle out of our fleet and avoiding maybe any potential major repairs in the long term that may be more expensive because of that.

Also to help the stations to reduce their reliance on reserves and donations for these costs and to increase the support available to them to help them manage their fleet cost.

Andy, I have a question.

If in fiscal year 16 there were reported actual vehicle and repair expenses at $176,000 more than what were requested in funding, what is the cost allocation formula?

It varies by station.

When each station submits their own operating request to OMB,

Some costs are set by formula, but vehicle maintenance expenses is one that we have to take by station looking at their history, looking at the age of their fleet, and looking forward what we may be thinking is a reasonable budget for that station.

So some stations with larger fleets will have a larger budget or maybe they have an older fleet with more history of recent repairs.

We account for that.

So in this circumstance, which you've just explained, if we take the two professional stations, one in my district, Monticello, and then one out of my district, up Seminole Trail, both of those are professional stations.

I'm sorry, Hollymead, and therefore because those are more recent stations they have more recent equipment therefore the likelihood that you're going to see repairs and breakdown expenses is less.

versus many of the volunteer companies such as Earlysville and Scottsville, for example, that predate the professionalism may have older equipment.

So does this formula create a situation where the professional stations, in some sense, are an advantage in terms of having newer equipment and incurring lower costs

Yes, that's the question.

I think we do have a status where apparatus are rotated throughout the system to make sure we get the optimal life cycle.

One of the reasons we actually have in some ways newer stations are at a disadvantage.

One of the, and this is a good thing, that EPA requirements are requiring our engines to run cleaner than they have in the past.

which is a good outcome but it does require more complex engines, more complex parts.

So a newer apparatus we are finding in some ways can be just as expensive to manage as older ones who may not run as frequently.

then if we have our volunteer companies as we do which we depend upon in the county to provide fire protection and if in fact they have to incur additional cost and responsibility does that in fact create incentives for people to be volunteers in those companies knowing they have to raise more money they have to do more than the other companies

I don't think we see a disproportionate increase in repairs and maintenance and volunteers because we have a common specification a common replacement strategy so you'll see a lot of the newer equipment both in career and volunteer stations what we're seeing is some of the fleet in the volunteer stations a little bit bigger because they have larger areas to cover

But in essence, we're seeing just about every station that's underfunded.

We're underfunding the maintenance.

And when it's underfunded, they have to make up that difference through their reserve funds, their donated funds.

That's where we're really seeing that.

I would echo that with the four stations, two paid and two volunteer, I think, who received engines all the same year, and they all had really grievous mechanical problems.

Unfortunately, we could have hopefully sent them back, would have been nice, but we couldn't.

So, and I think they're all using the shop up here anyway.

They're not doing the work themselves, so it's not a question of quality of work or anything.

I sort of bristled when that sort of connotation was put out there at the last meeting that, wait a minute,

A lot of these folks are keeping their edges 25 years and running up the mountain just fine.

So we need to be careful about that.

But the one concern that's been voiced to me by several people is one person

to do a preventative maintenance apparently is a four day tear down and put back.

One person can't possibly do this job and still be available to run out for some emergency somewhere when he's got something torn down in Crozet, he's not gonna be able to run down to North Garden to fix something that they need because they need to get out the door.

So I would love to hear more at some point about how you're dealing with that situation and will the Pierce Geyser, whoever it is up here, still be

will certainly save us money but also we're looking at cost savings in terms of what now we pay time very expensive time material for someone to make a trip out to make a repair when in fact maybe it was a very minor repair or could wait to be repaired later on when we're scheduling other maintenance so we think the cost savings between those two endeavors would would more than make up the difference from this but

There's a committee now made up of Battalion Chief Walker and many of the volunteer fleet maintenance people that are working through those issues already.

I am curious, so the repairs are actually being done

So it's a privately owned shop and we are contracting.

Right behind Monticello Dairy.

I said, all these fire engines from Spotsylvania.

I said, what are you doing with all these fire engines?

Oh, we repair them right there in the middle of Charlottesville.

What we're looking for is we're required to have a certified mechanic technician repair the apparatus because they are very sophisticated, very electronic heavy.

I'm sure that's true.

Dr. Randolph had asked this question and we also agree that there's a comprehensive fleet maintenance, fleet management opportunity in conjunction with the schools and apps.

This budget doesn't go all the way there.

You know, we're going to get a report back just in general on that work from looking at those efficiencies.

We haven't heard about that for a good while.

Yeah, exactly.

That'd be great.

It would also, I think, inform our understanding to know what the overall value is of all of the cumulative fleets.

Yeah, I agree.

Fire we now have a figure on that which is a significant figure and then addition just the county has vehicles and the school board has vehicles as well and so getting a handle on that and if the board desires it Laurie's note to us indicated on March 27th that OMB could also simultaneously begin to develop a comprehensive

Countywide Fleet Management recommended approach that would build on this effort and support the county's continued desire to increase its efficiency and effectiveness.

Do you need a motion from us on that?

I think we need to discuss that more.

And I think that's great.

Okay, so we were going to move to, this is the last slide, Andy did a wonderful job working through a lot of information.

Before we take a break, we're all poised.

Is there, do you want to do this now or we can do it as part of when we put the proposed budget together which we need to do before we end the day for the public hearing.

Do you want to take a moment and say where are we with the fire fund right now on the recommendations for the fiscal year 18 county executive budget around the fire rescue fund.

I'll just ask a question.

Other than the $50,000 contingency which was mentioned, is the entire increase in the revenue being spent?

Or is there a fund balance that you're saving for other disasters, engine blow-ups, whatever?

That was a very large increase in revenue with the increase in the assessments, etc.

I think there is a fund balance in this fund that would have existed from prior year revenues and savings.

That's the 1% in your pie chart.

That is not included in the recommended budget.

It's fund balance that was available but was not appropriated for a one-time cost.

Let me speak because it is the county executive's recommended budget and so I have to own responsibility for the recommendations that are in it.

The problem is the problem as it's been I think very well articulated here and the solution we've come up with is certainly able to support it because of the resources that are available within the fire fund which was created a couple years ago for this purpose.

Absent the fire fund, then we would have looked at how to address this problem in the context of the general fund.

absent revenues within the fire fund then we would have the budget would have had to contemplate either asking the board to make an infusion from the general fund to the fire fund to support it or coming up with some other strategy including reallocating what positions that we have in order to address the challenge of mandatory overtime and so

The problem doesn't change, but how we approach it might have to change just because we're always subject to limited resources, doing the best we can with what we have, and then trying to prioritize then what we think is the right thing to do.

Certainly, I stand in full support of the recommendation because of concern for the impact it has on our employees and the services they deliver by requiring them to stay over potentially another 12 hours after a 24 hour shift.

But again, absent the revenues available here, either we would have suggested some service reductions or service changes or some additional infusion of revenue for someplace else.

So I think that's probably the cleanest way for me to say that.

But the FHIR Fund puts us in the position where it works in this case because there's revenue.

And one way going forward is that we

really look at the funding formulas in detail for the volunteers and creating a more hospitable physical environment for them.

Whether it's something as simple as having enough in the budgets for feeding meals for crews that are large as opposed to

The dedicated.

Absolutely.

When would we talk about that?

Because I think there's some interest in the board of eliminating the fire fund and just letting it be funded in the regular way.

It seems so much more cleaner.

I hope we can start it early summer because I know it will take longer than we think.

That's great.

Because the comparison is every year before

of Chief Sellers and Chief Lance, the current chief would come forward with four or six new police officers and get one or two.

It was always at this point at the board level of how these resources were going to be done.

So it is now 10 after five.

We need to answer maybe Andy's question.

Are we comfortable with moving forward with the budget and this recommendation that currently is in the budget for the fire?

I want to thank Andy for providing that information to us.

I really appreciate our now having the information to drill down into the dynamics of exactly what's going on here.

This is very, very helpful and meaningful to be aware of that.

It would be to save me a lot of time because I'm interested in this.

I can certainly ask the volunteer stations to give us this, but if you could just give us a chart on their requested and their funded each individual by station as opposed to the lumped in.

I was for one sad that the separate volunteer allocation got all of a sudden lumped into the

And just to clarify what I just said, so we're moving forward for now.

This is what we're going to be taking for advertisement.

Right.

And I just want to sort of echo Rick's comment that I think that staff has done a wonderful job justifying this and explained.

I do understand it a lot better.

However, I do like Ann's idea of just holding out a little bit for if we need to give the volunteer station something additional.

So we'll move forward with this for now for advertisement.

And it is 10 after, so let's take five minutes because by the time we get back, we'll have somewhere around an hour to get going on what we need to do.

Okay, good.

And I do like these new, but we are back.

I guess we needed it.

That's exactly right.

Madam Chair, yes ma'am.

Do we want to do a sound check?

Are we good?

Great.

Trevor Henry, the Director of Facilities and Environmental Services Department.

One of the divisions in our department is Public Works Division.

And I'm here in response to questions about entrance corridor beautification.

I know we are a little behind schedule here.

I have 11 slides of which some of that is just background and updates.

And so I will move quickly through this just to kind of establish

a baseline of understanding if you will but specifically here to talk about our entrance corridor programs there is a board strategic plan item that I that I included on the slide here that by January 2019 work with partners to increase efforts to address aesthetic appearance of entrance corridors and high visibility urban public spaces I think there's a lot involved with that being able to talk to the board today I think is going to help with that overall endgame certainly

So today I wanted to just cover our current scope of coverage an update on the VDOT projects and warranty periods with that work and in some near-term options and including a recommendation at the end and then hopefully some feedback along the way that will help us ultimately build out a broader program for the county.

Next slide is just showing our entrance corridor

The current scope of coverage, we have a permit with VDOT that allows us to do a certain amount of work along the entrance corridors, the right of ways.

This slide is kind of the bird's eye view of the county and I'm going to zoom in on it, but what you see is our entrance corridors really

are the urban areas currently.

And so as I kind of tighten into the view, the first one, number one, is Route 29 from Hydraulic Road to the Rivanna River.

So we do some enhanced services along that stretch currently.

On the slide, it lists basically the – you know, what I would really say is the entrance corridor through the urban ring into Charlottesville is what we currently are permitted.

We also have, kind of zooming back out onto the county map, out in Crozet we have some infrastructure and maintenance that we do in Crozet as well as the number 11 which is at the county line north on 29, number 12

County Line South, those are actually the Albemarle County signs.

Picture of Crozet, what's unique about that is it is based on that design, there's a little more work that we do in this area than we do in the rest of the VDOT permit.

And mainly it's around the biofilter feature that is along the road between the sidewalk and the road on Crozet Avenue.

and then here's a picture of that Albemarle County sign.

I believe this is the coming north sign.

So just a snapshot of where we currently are doing work and are permitted.

Next slide is the what are we doing.

So facilities, FES, Public Works Division, basically manages contracts for work in these areas.

We have a staff of three for grounds, but that is really just our local buildings.

And in order to cover this other area, we use contracting services for mowing and landscaping.

The budget that we have for mowing, and again this is the pro-rated budget, just in the areas that I just showed you a minute ago, is just over $29,000 per year.

Landscaping is around 20,000.

And it lists kind of what's included in that.

So that's current scope.

ROW – excuse me – Route 29 update.

The grade separated interchange was completed, obviously, in 2017.

December – excuse me –

A typo on my slide.

I looked at this thing about a thousand times.

It was actually 2016, December, when it was finished.

Landscaping along the 29 widening is at about 40%.

And along Berkmar Drive extended is around 70%.

These projects are anticipated to be finished mid-summer.

According to VDOT, as of a couple weeks ago, I met with Jill Denunzio actually last week about the scope of work.

VDOT intends to maintain them at their current standard, which is, you know, somewhere between one and three mowings in a season.

you know, kind of minimal landscaping that they do.

We think these are areas that we should recommend to pick up to increase the work that the county does as similar to other areas of the permit.

On the warranty piece, I did note that the contractor is on the hook for three years for plantings, trees, things like that if there are issues during that period.

So some future enhancement opportunities.

This is kind of getting into both, I think, in a near term what we might be able to do and a longer term.

We could extend the mowing beyond our current permit, which again is where we started with the maps of the county.

Our average cost is around $2,700 per linear mile.

What that translates to is two mowings a month that starts in October and runs until

End of October.

An example for the board to consider and really what one of the things we'd recommend today is that we plan in 18 to pick up that same level of service for the area of 29 Widening which basically runs from the river up to Hollymead

and then the Berkmar extended piece.

That would add approximately four and a half miles total and just about $12,000 per year to again extend that same level of service.

One thing to note too as part of our process is when contractors are out mowing the medians or the berms,

The first thing they do is a litter pickup.

So that is part of what our contractors do.

It's also what VDOT does for the areas that they maintain.

I'm going to get back to litter here in a minute.

So that's an example of something that I think we could quickly add to our scope of work, our scope of services for next year.

Another thing that I know the board has talked about are things like flower beds.

There is some experience in the county with the installation of flower beds back in 2007, 2008, we built a bed off of Fontaine.

It was a pretty decent cost for that back then, $15,000.

Part of that was the cost of the infrastructure and there was some grading that was required.

So I'm not suggesting every one of them would be this expensive.

It really depends on what you want to do.

But also that design was such that it would be a lower maintenance type area.

So those are future enhancement kind of things that we certainly could do.

Another example was actually just right down at the intersection here that the city does.

They have a lot of beds throughout the city.

That's not what we want

The city did provide us a cost to maintain, which is a higher cost of about $5,000 per year because they change it out so often.

And so there's a lot more maintenance.

So these are the kinds of things that I think getting feedback from the board as far as, you know,

levels of service and the kinds of things that we possibly could do would be helpful.

Other things that I talked to VDOT about actually recently was potentially in that 29 North corridor bringing in some of their pollinator habitat program.

I'm going to follow up with Joel and the program manager.

I think this is pretty low cost.

It brings in native plants, especially areas where there are big cuts.

It's really a good product to minimize maintenance, mowing, it stabilizes the banks, and then it's a great resource for our bees, our birds, our butterflies.

It helps bring that

you know that habitat back so I think just looking at you know this is one of the things I would recommend moving forward with investigating and I do think along 29 North and Berkmar there's some opportunities to do this you can see these in places throughout the state at rest stops on some of the bigger interstates you know the one thing on 29 we just would have to be careful about is kind of in the median making sure that the line of sight no issues with that but I do think we would have opportunities to do that and I'm

I'm just curious if something like that wouldn't also work where VDOT, you know we have those issues on Barracks Road where VDOT and the city and the county come together and

I get a huge number of complaints from just those two or three blocks of Barracks Road because what happens is you go from the city where it's fairly well maintained, you go under the bridge and all of a sudden it looks like another country to be honest with you.

and then VDOT comes down on the sides from the bypass and does some mowing and then we have contractors who mow the median strips and the road occasionally and nobody mows at the same time so the result is it always looks kind of awful and never really looks good just because of the way the difference in the mowings.

I'm curious, number one, the city comes right up there and stops

For that particular location, I think that makes sense.

We have had preliminary discussions with the city at my level about extending that program.

It kind of makes sense, and then it would look at least uniform.

Then the other question is that we have these swaths of

Banks that come down from the bypass that are really VDOT right of way.

and that would be, it looks like to me, something maybe we could get VDOT to do in that area to reduce the amount of mowing they really needed to do in there.

I can certainly, I'll take that for an action item.

Yeah.

That's just one other area and it's not probably a block.

I mean, it's not even, it's not very much but that would be really great, appropriate.

I would think.

That's helpful and it's really kind of the next slide is, you know, kind of in the area of others.

The city has equipment that does gutter pan cleaning.

They have a schedule, you know, similar to the extension of maintenance.

We've talked about potentially contracting them to extend some of that gutter pan cleaning work that, you know, we could add to.

The thing is as of today, you know, for today I don't have those costs identified.

But that certainly is an area of discussion and we can continue on that.

The other piece that there's been a lot of discussion about through the board via email and some board meetings is litter problems, litter control.

And so VDOT has a work order system where they contract with the jail.

The jail has a couple of crews that really are dedicated Monday through Friday working for VDOT eight hours a day.

And they work on a work order basis kind of as problems are created.

But VDOT also uses them for trimming, for maintenance, landscaping, things like that.

our contractor as I mentioned cleans prior to cutting grass but that's really not a you know a great preventative program or really a maintenance program for the county so we staff continue to look at what options there are we're looking at what other counties and jurisdictions are doing as far as as programs but it was it's so new that I didn't get the chance to update the slides that Michael Freitas and I chief of public works division met with

Colonel Coomer today with the jail about the ability to kind of tap into some of those resources.

And through that discussion and brainstorming, we are really looking at an opportunity to utilize weekend inmates for some work.

It seems like a great opportunity for the county as well as for the jail in our discussions.

It's kind of a problem that the jail currently has.

They have some inmates that come in Friday night, they serve their time until Sunday night, then they go back home and go to their jobs.

And so the jail doesn't really have a program to use these resources.

We have needs and we think that we could put together a crew that would come from this weekend

inmate force, you know, they're obviously eligible to work out in the public.

The cost to the county would basically be the cost of either overtime or the cost for that crew chief to kind of manage that.

So we're working on that, but we've already exchanged the statement or the memorandum of understanding

We're going to look at that and I think this is an area that we could really do some work in the county from a preventative and a routine systematic process to do litter pickup.

So I'm really excited about basically paying for one supervisor

Trevor, I have two questions.

The exit ramps or on-ramps on 64, I think the exit ramps are actually much worse than the on-ramps, are really, really bad.

They're awful.

Is it on?

I'm curious if there are any worse because people are throwing stuff there or because they're just not getting cleaned up as often.

So I'd be curious to know from BDOT on their schedule if that's the case and if there's something

we can do either in the way of signage or in the way of beautifying it or whatever that would reduce the trash in those particular areas.

And also, you may have already brought this to us before, but I think it would be a good idea just for us to know what the prisoners are being paid and how that all works.

I know there's been an awful lot in the news lately about

I think Doug probably knows more about that than I do.

As I understand from just my meeting today, there is basically a credit that inmates get for their work and it's an equivalent of like $7.25 an hour or something to that effect.

We can have Colonel Coomer provide a memorandum that we can share with the board that would be more comprehensive about that but yeah the

The contract with VDOT, VDOT pays the jail to pay for the staffing but does not pay for the labor.

The inmates that are eligible for labor being certified by the court then use that for credit.

I will say, Liz, as someone who's picked up for 20 years the ramps off of the bypass onto Barracks Road, I can tell you that the ramps into town are where they just get, it's as if they're coming into town and they've decided it's time to get rid of everything in their car.

The ramps leaving town are leaving Barracks Road and heading to the bypass while there's some trash.

That's what I've been noticing on other ramps.

I went off the ramp at 20 off of 64 today and I was just horrified at the level of trash.

So that's an example where if we could implement this weekend program, that alone may be able to help clean up those.

I'll have to contact VDOT to try to understand if they have some causality, if you will.

And there are other pieces to this too and it seems like to me and I don't want to take up too much time but we need to figure out somehow or another an education piece because it used to be that there were litter education programs and I don't know how we would do it.

As you're contacting the other counties though about their, how they deal with litter, if you could find out maybe what, if they have any kind of a public education program, or if they work with their schools, or if we work with the university, I don't think this is all UVA students by any means, but it is certainly a community problem.

And it's getting much worse.

Having just gotten back from New Zealand where there is no litter, I'm finding ours appalling right now.

I had a woman in a restroom recently who said I'm from Canada she turned to me and she said I'm from Canada and I am shocked at the way you're

County looks with the litter.

It's really interesting.

I mean, it's terrible.

But having said that, too, is there a way that somehow or another we can get to, again, educational piece, trash haulers?

If you watch on the way to the dump, and I see it on the bypass a lot, bags of trash that have obviously fallen out of somebody's pickup truck or a hauler.

And again, they're not all of the problem, but that's certainly a part of the problem.

And how we get at that, I would be open to suggestions.

That's something we'll have to look at.

I'll bring up just the fact that when I did the litter cleanup on 53, over three quarters of the items were bottles and cans.

Last thing on this slide just is depending on where we go with scope and expansion, as I mentioned, we have three staff in our grounds crew for FES currently.

One of those is a supervisor.

We basically manage our contracts through that group.

If we would do a significant expansion, it would probably exceed our ability to manage all the contracts.

I'm not sure where we're going at, but just to kind of give you a feel of what the costs are.

The other thing is, you know, if we get into a lot of flowerbed installations, you know, it may be worth bringing in an expert that would actually maintain that for the county.

I'm not recommending that for today, but just that's really kind of food for thought.

I am almost at the end.

So really it's levels of service, you know, our current level of service I'm just calling is our baseline.

I think today there may be some things that we could do on an interim level, expansion of lane miles,

you know pursue aggressively the work with the jail for weekend trustees pursue aggressively work with the city as a way to expand into the you know kind of on the border a few blocks and and those I think we could we could do pretty quickly and and look to to bring you know bring back recommendations to the board you know even after the maybe the budget is adopted

and then I think there's an expanded level of service which really is the work that I'm expecting us to do over the next year in preparation for 19's budget which is to bring back these levels of service to the board and have really detailed conversations about levels of service and expectations and kind of getting more towards that public works support if you will.

So those are those are kind of levels of service.

I'm interested in you know thoughts on that.

The recommendation that I would have for today would to be at the very least we should pick up you know approximately $12,000 in 18 to cover that

that additional 29 work in Berkmar to bring it to the same level of service that's in the permitted area.

And as I just mentioned, continued to really work with both the jail and the city to see what we might be able to do for litter control and then some expansions of services there.

We believe in our current budget and it's in the recommendation that there's ample money to maintain the plants that involve changing out the flowers when need be.

I guess what I envision is that's going to need to be more than just wildflowers growing in those pots.

I mean that just seems to be silly to have.

Well you have these, I mean massive pots with small little flowers growing out of it really don't send the hey look we are a beautiful community welcome kind of message.

Well I would like some tall plants.

I could come back specifically on a plan for those items.

I'm not very articulate in that today, but that's something I just know within our budget we're anticipating money to maintain and replace currently without any additional cost.

Not exotic, but something to the scale of the actual intersection, given that it's a large intersection.

To my estimation, it's one of the only two largest intersections that are not an interstate in the state of Virginia.

I was fumbling around here a little bit and I may have missed something but what about on Pantops, I know number four is Stony Point Road out to 64 basically but I didn't see any pictures of that area and there's really nothing there that actually was at our CAC meeting last night came up that

you know that's second to 29 more cars come in from east or are going west towards Charlottesville and 40,000 cars a day or something are on that road.

I don't know what we were talking at the you know throwing out ideas for the CAC money

Michael, do you want to pop up here?

We're currently mowing to Sleepy Hollow Lane, which is roughly about where the four lanes go to.

We mow that twice a month, and then there's very little landscaping.

There is winter jasmine in the medians that we trim.

and Mulch every year.

Yeah, I guess I was thinking in terms of, you know, flowering things or signs, you know, welcome to Pantops, or I don't know what they should say or do or anything, but that, you know, that, so many people say that that's like the most majestic entrance.

For me, it was my entry into Charlottesville was going up to the hills.

The lights, and the gorgeous lights.

Yeah, seeing the Blue Hoover Ridge Mountains there are often very blue.

You know, just that it's basically a bunch of automobile signs and all that if we had some kind of enhancement there.

I would be willing to bet that all the CACs that are all in these urbanizing areas, Rio, yours, mine, certainly, where we have roads and neighborhoods, those CACs have been talking about that funding in beautification because that was certainly a huge topic in the hydraulic CAC meeting recently.

When do you see us reaching that point to where you actually start putting together a plan for these corridors and these nodes for when I say a plan and an annual

work plan I guess of what changes need to occur whether it's actual bricks and mortar changes or you know enhanced mowing, plantings because you know vegetation needs to be replaced and I mean I imagine we need some sort of plan so that future boards can know what their budget is for.

Well these new mics, that's pretty exciting.

Poor Travis.

If we start to grow our investment and the quality of those entrance corridors, I would imagine we're not going to do this all in one shot.

So five, ten year plan of what that is.

As part of responding to the board's strategic plan item, it was my anticipation to be working with staff, with stakeholders to bring back those levels of service.

with recommendations for FY19, that could also include kind of that broader, you know, more than just a one-year look, but things that we might phase in.

Please put on your investigation list what other communities have done with partnerships and I saw your picture there on Fontaine with the Garden Club.

I don't know what they do, whether they installed it or whether they maintain it.

They maintain it.

I know down in Lynchburg every corner

has really incredible plantings and with a nice little sign that says sponsored by and maintained by all these various companies and I think that would be a great opportunity to draw people in.

I know the airport does all that layout up there at Airport Road and made for all that wall and everything else as a way to welcome people to their thing and I'd also encourage all of us to reach out to our community organizations

The Lion's Club raised all the money for plantings under the little Welcome to Crozet signs with the railroad engine on them that the citizens raised a thousand dollars for each of those signs a number of years ago and replaced them when they get mown down by errant drivers on Buck Road and Crozet Avenue on about an annual basis.

But they are a wonderful way for Pantops or others to create a little place, identity for people when they come in.

and I would say absolutely yes.

However, there are places in both of our, all of our areas where we have lots of traffic and wide lanes and you just can't get out there.

I'm not suggesting turning the moose in the highway.

Exactly, in the right places.

But I would encourage you as you're doing this work to be touching bases with these TACs that are in the urbanizing areas along these corridors because they certainly have some interesting, it'd be very informative for you.

It'll inform your work.

So, the budgetary recommendation I have for going into 18 would be to add another $12,000 to Facility Environmental Services, Public Works Division for basically our contract services to add in the

four and a half miles of extension of the permit for 29 North and for Berkmar extended.

Okay.

Second.

This was my idea.

It's Brad's motion.

I just said if you want a motion, I will make that.

So we know what the motion was and are you comfortable with it?

All right, so we have a second.

Aye.

Yes.

So you did not need a motion on the Fire and Rescue Services Fund.

You were okay on that because that was there.

I just want to make sure we're good.

And that was the only other, those were the only two things we've talked about today.

So, okay.

So it's five after six.

Alright, I'm going to take you home here, hopefully.

So what we're going to do at this point, as Diantha mentioned, today is the day for you to

approved the board's proposed budget.

So this will now move from the county executives recommended to a new title and it will be the board's proposed budget for advertising for your public hearing on April 11th.

So we have some items that were on the list from some of our previous work sessions that we wanted to revisit today based on your suggestions to revisit them.

We also have a couple items, some staff pieces, some staff recommendations.

Most of them you've heard, a couple you haven't.

that I wanted to share with you that we would recommend be added to the proposed budget.

So I'm gonna move through those slides here at this point.

The first thing I want to talk about is an adjustment that we're recommending in your revenues.

And this will help us with some of the additions that we are talking about for your proposed budget.

So since we put our budget together, as you know we work on revenues back in January when we finalized them for the budget, we're watching the state and federal revenues along the way and what's going on with the state budget.

and since we put the budget together, we've seen some changes on some of the websites which actually identify the funding that will come to the county from the state.

So we wanted to put these forward to you and we can make this adjustment in your proposed budget.

So if you look on this chart, the very first one is not a positive.

The very first one is a reduction in what we had planned for constitutional officers funding and this is your sheriff, your commonwealth attorney,

your clerk's office and some funding that's provided to finance when we check the actual numbers we built into your budgets for each of these departments there was a little bit of an adjustment to what's actually on the website for these categories it would adjust it down a little bit so it would be about it's not a lot but it'd be 11,490 less so there'd be reduction in that first category from what we had

recommended and thought we were going to get this from the state from these four departments.

That's not the correct direction.

I know.

But I'm going, I'm going somewhere.

Okay, all right.

It gets better.

It does get better.

So the next category, Kevin and Heather who work in the Department of Social Services, I have trouble with her last name so I'm going to

Pass that by right now.

They study state and federal revenue adjustments that are coming for social services.

These, by the way, have all been vetted through the finance department as well, but they have indicated to me that they're seeing some positive based on some raise money that they're going to get some raise, some

support for some of their raises for about 10 months of the budget of an increase of about 31,184.

So that would be an increase in state, and there is a little bit of federal in there that they're recommending that we make that adjustment.

So that would be a positive adjustment.

and then the final one on this page has to do with the regional jail.

It's related to revenues but basically they're gonna expect more revenues coming in from the state to support the jail and we have a percentage of that based on the formula that they use.

So they would reduce what they want from us as far as expenditures or what they're requesting by $37,000 because they're receiving more funding that will cover that from the state.

So the net at the bottom of the page there, your total net change would be a positive 56,776.

Sure.

Do you, you don't need a motion?

You don't need a vote for that.

You're just telling us.

At the very end I'm going to need a vote.

Well the second one is a couple of the items that were on the list that you asked us to continue to bring it forward for you to talk about again today.

The first one is the Assessor's Position in Finance, which is an item that was put on the list

would be $73,089.

And then we're saying the potential source would be the savings we received in the state budget that I just mentioned to you from the state funding.

So $56,776 between the jail reduction and what we have to place in the jail's budget and those other changes, that could apply towards local funding that could apply towards this assessor.

It didn't quite get us all the way there, and we would recommend that they reserve for contingencies

would pick up the balance of that.

For the year we're in right now.

No, this year we're 18.

What's the reason for doing that instead of having the Department of Social Services if they've, you know, their funding formula has changed, why don't they just get the money?

Social services will not lose anything for this.

We're adding an assessor position.

This is obviously where we're trying to work with the board to reflect the choices that you've indicated to us that you may want to consider, like adding the assessor position.

We're trying to offer suggestions on where the money might come from to balance the cost of that.

And this is just one suggestion from our standpoint of where it makes sense in the context of the budget.

If you want to add an assessor that obviously increases the budget by that amount, where might the money come from?

We've identified savings through the changes in state revenue and in reserve contingencies.

Other choices could be to reduce expenditures in the budget in other categories in order to offset the increased cost of the assessor.

So there are a number of different ways that we could go about it.

But social services is not being dinged.

In this case, they're getting non-local money, which frees up then local money, which is at the discretion of the board through your budgeting to allocate.

or not.

You can put it in contingency or reserve or the capital fund or any place else.

If this happened and we didn't have anything to put in there, like the assessor's position, would this money just go to social services and then they would use it?

No, because they wouldn't have a budget for it, so we would probably drop it to your reserve contingent.

It would go back into them.

I'd also like to add that on the original discussion on March 7, the funds for this position were to come out of one-time fiscal year 18 CIP contribution.

And I think it's far better that we fund this out of salary savings and budgetary savings than we raid Peter on the CIP to pay Paul

on a general governmental level.

So I think, Norman, your question and concern, I think is a really useful concern to have it shared with everyone, but I think this is a much preferred position than what was originally presented on March 7th.

It has my support because of that.

But I do think, coming back to what Ann talked about, we need to be reminded of the Ken Boyd adage that we may be funding somebody in this manner this year, but next year we're going to need to fund them fully out of the budget.

Let us be prepared for that.

No surprises.

Everyone's on notice that this will be a position that will need to be funded.

So do you want, Laurie, a vote on each one of these as we go through?

It's up at the pleasure of the board.

I'm just trying to figure out.

But you do need.

Yes.

At the end, we have to have a final vote.

I'll just move along.

Adding the funding for Java, remember that we had several discussions about that.

We had a lot of conversation about that as something that appeared the board wanted to continue to bring that forward for consideration.

Funding source for that is a recommendation from the OMB office would be, again, the reserve for contingencies.

I did put a note up there that you had a $300,000 contingency.

We did just approve 12,000 of that for the information for Trevor, which I don't have on this slide.

And then if we did 16,313 for the assessor and then the 30 for this, it takes your contingency down to about more like 240, from that number on there.

Which is, usually there's about 250 is about where a lot of times we like to start the year off.

Okay, so we're talking 30,000 for Java.

Comments, nodding of heads, sort of keep going?

The neighborhood planner, urban planner position in the community development department, you may recall that we got direction to even get that moving quicker, to get this on board even now so that they can be in place as soon as possible.

The source for this is, as you know, we have the program that we've been talking about with the neighborhood groups of the $1.4 million.

We also had $200,000 for what we use the term soft costs or support costs.

It was an ongoing source.

There's probably different things you would want to use that for, but one thing we thought this would be so connected to that program and to the support of the urban neighborhoods, we felt like that would be a source for you to consider.

It's an $82,658 cost.

and that would come from the $200,000 leaving a support cost balance of about $117,000.

We did want to say that, as you know, in the current fiscal year, we could end the year with revenues over expenditures.

We have an audit.

We do that every year around November, so if we find that we need more support costs for this program after that audit in November, the timing could possibly still work to

support to make sure that we provide the adequate support for this program.

So that's one way to think about it.

So we have that position for as a neighborhood planner being supported by the neighborhood improvement funding initiative.

I supported just one quick clarification.

The soft costs, did those also include matches for grants?

or would that come out of the $200,000 in their pot of money?

Good afternoon, Lee Catlin, Assistant County Executive.

I think that matches would be coming out of the $1.4 million.

The soft costs were for things like scoping the projects as we got further along, project management if there were design costs, those kinds of things.

So we're in the right category?

Yes.

I guess I just have one, I'm looking at positions, I see where you're going next, so I think this might be a good time for me to ask this.

I know we're not gonna talk about the new parks person for Hedge Row until April.

However, it was pretty clear when we heard from Bob Krickenberger that if we wanted to open up that earlier, we would certainly need a new position.

We've got, yeah, go ahead.

The money in the budget that's been identified for park staffing is at this point undefined, awaiting the outcome of their needs assessment.

The conversation that the board will have in the work session in April about the project for hedgerow should be very enlightening about timing with respect to how the project can be accomplished and how the maintenance costs associated with completion of the project, how the timing would work with that.

So I don't see that there's an inherent conflict.

Certainly if one develops through the course of the development of the hedgerow project as the board, you know,

receives information, considers it, provides direction, moves forward.

We can come back to you at that point.

But again, we do have the funding identified in the budget without a specific position attached to it right now.

It is a timing issue with respect to when the hedgerow project is developed and when resources will be needed then to start the maintenance that would be required.

The funding that's been identified in this budget was not anticipated to be used for a maintenance position for hedgerow.

That is true.

I didn't think he was talking about a maintenance person.

I thought he was talking about a staff person for hedgerow and not a maintenance person.

as to whether we were or not because it was kind of confusing the conversation before.

Okay, so the next slide has to do with some capital budget adjustments and I have a couple of them on here for your consideration to add to the proposed budget.

The first one, I think that we're all in agreement with the savings for the interest.

You know, we have that knowledge of

The interest rate, we had a planned interest rate for the general obligation bond and the revenue lease bond.

They came in much better than we anticipated.

We want to make that adjustment in your CIP budget.

It'll save about a half a million dollars.

Our recommendation right now is that it drops to the CIP reserve with the understanding that we need to have a target for potential construction cost increases as Trevor brought up to you as some of the things that we're seeing out in the bidding climate and community right now.

So that was just a recommendation to go ahead and make that change and put it in your proposed budget.

Now, you remember that you have a capital budget, which is fiscal year 18, and you have a CIP, which is a plan.

So also, your budget includes a CIP in your budget book.

So also, not only would we do it for 18, which is your budget that affects your total county budget, in the plan we would also place that into the reserve for all five years of your plan, because those savings would continue annually.

And that would help our $2 million at the end of the five years.

Unless we expend it.

Yes.

Unless we have to spend it.

That's right.

It just seems surprising to me that $10,000 here or $20,000 for

enhancing the corridors, that kind of thing.

And then we're talking about just, well, we happen to save $2 million a year for the next five years, and so we're going to put it all in the CIP budget without any consideration of, well, maybe 10% of that, which is a significant amount of money, like a million dollars, might go for some of these other projects that we're talking about.

I don't know.

It just seems like there's kind of blinders on things of

you know the fire department gets another million dollars and so it gets spent for the fire department and you get 10 million dollars on savings that we didn't even expect and we're just gonna put it all in to CIP I don't know it doesn't seem like we're being very thoughtful about where this money is coming and going is you know I'm not against the CIP or anything but

That's a tremendous amount of money that we're just not saying that it's going to go for NIFI.

In this particular, if I could, the staff recommendation is based on where the

where the savings comes from.

So it's the source.

So the source is the savings in the interest rate from the bond referendum projects.

So it's logical to us from a staff perspective that that savings then would then go back in to feed other needs within the CIP or other savings with respect to the capital budget.

So that's kind of how staff has approached it.

$30,000 a job has nothing to do with the contingency fund.

There's no relationship there.

There's no relationship really between

money, extra money going into social services and then using it for an assessor, you know, except it happens to be the offices are here and that's a, you know, a department kind of administrative cause, but I mean, why not have the assessor getting paid out of the 10 million dollars that we're saving on interest?

It's happened in the past, but I don't want it to happen.

I think they're saying that they would have taken the money out of Social Services anyway, so that's extra money.

Now if we wanted to vote to put it, to give it to, because Social Services has a list of needs a mile long.

But I would say in a lot of organizations, they try to maximize the utility of the money that's available, not just keep it in the same department.

Well, I do think we have to be mindful that there's always a dynamic, the dialectic between the expenditures for today versus the investments for tomorrow.

And I understand the compulsion to want to do the right thing for today, but understanding also that we're facing the $70 million additional public high school

on the horizon that the more that we put money into the CIP, the less of a burden that is created in the future for the taxpayers of this county.

How often can we come back to referenda as a solution for

funding capital expenditures.

So I think it really is a case of being very attentive to how we spend our dollars today and maintaining that balance between the operating and investing into the future for the CIP.

It's not, there's no hard to fast answer.

And we have to make sure we are conscious of the fact that, and certainly not in all of these cases, but sometimes it's one-time money, sometimes it's reoccurring money.

That makes a huge difference as to how you're using it.

Okay, so we're good?

And this is an important one about capital.

This is a second piece of it, and this is something that we haven't talked about before, so we felt like it was timely to also share this information with you.

This came after the regular CIP process as far as knowledge of this need.

And you might recall we have a project in the CIP that was funded in fiscal year 16 called the Time and Attendance System.

We appropriated about $621,000 to date on it.

It's a multi-year appropriation for that.

It needs a little more money to get it over the finish line of $151,580.

This was identified since the project had begun because this is an electronic way to track time in attendance.

And they have found out in all the research and the work that they've done that they need to purchase some more electronic means for those who need to track their time to put their time in.

So it's the ending piece of this that's up to 151,000.

for this piece of it.

So this is a request.

This supports both schools division and general government.

It's to finish this project.

This funding primarily supports the purchase of the timekeeping equipment that's required for employees who do not currently have access to electronic equipment to put their time in.

The project's estimated to be operational in June of 2018.

Ms. Betty Burrell is here in the audience if you have any questions about the project or any of the specific information about it.

We would recommend that this would come from your CIP fund fund balance.

Well, I think you have to finish to do what you have to do.

Okay?

And then we're almost done.

This last change is a timing thing.

The Economic Development Authority's fiscal, we're the fiscal agent for the EDA.

And there's been conversation with the EDA board of us no longer being a fiscal agent and that that's done in a different way.

So at the time that we put the budget together, the information that the OMB staff had at the time that it was moving by July 1, it would be moving out of our

We took it out just in timing.

Of course budgeting is a plan.

But there's been conversations that's occurred since then that the decision hasn't been made.

It won't be made by July 1.

They need a fiscal agent on July 1.

So we're suggesting to put that money back in.

It's no change.

The money's there.

It's just about where it is budgeted.

So it would actually show up in the proposed budget as we are still the fiscal agent for the time.

It may change in the future, but we wanted to make sure that they were in good place on July 1.

So that's just another minor change.

Basically, just get it where it needs to be right now until further discussions are made so that July 1 it hits it in the right place.

Okay.

So if all those changes and sources of uses and those types of things work for you, Andy's still here supporting this.

Great work today.

And he has a spreadsheet where he will toggle it yes or no, put the budget together, and we will have a total county budget that will be different than the county executives that will be put together.

We'll advertise it on April 2 in the newspaper for the public hearing for the public to respond to.

and then we will come back after the public hearing and make any changes to this one that we feel like are necessary after the public hearing.