Board of Supervisors Special Meeting (Budget Work Session)   3/4/2019

Good afternoon.

I call the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors to order for the March 4th 2019 budget work session.

Good afternoon everyone and we'll do introductions.

Off to my right our board clerk, Claudette Borgeson and with us today is Officer Chris Hernandez.

Thank you sir for being here and if we could go around the table and

Doug Walker, County Executive's Office.

Craig Cameron, County Attorney.

Ned Gallaway, Rio District.

Norman Dill, Rivanna District.

Chairman Galloway and members of the board, my name is Lori Allshouse.

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

Today I'm going to take you through the work session.

This is our fourth work session.

You can see by this schedule, it's a little shorter than the way this bar has looked in the past.

This is our fourth work session.

At this work session, you're going to finalize your tax rate for advertisement.

and approve your proposed budget for the public hearing that comes up on the proposed budget.

You see that you have two other placeholders if you need them, March 26th and the 28th.

April 9th is the public hearing on the board's proposed budget and the public hearing on the tax rate.

And April 16th is when you would set the tax rate and approve your budget.

So here's today's agenda.

We're going to do a very quick recap.

I'll go through the slides very quickly of what's in the county executive's recommended budget at a high level.

And then we'll review the potential adjustments to the county executive's recommended budget that you discussed at the last meeting.

Then we'll ask you to approve the proposed fiscal year 20 budget, which will be by motion, and to finalize your tax rate for advertising, again by motion.

So let's go very quickly through your fiscal year 2020 budget.

And again, this is a recommended, the county executive's recommended budget.

It's based on board guidance obtained from the county's long range planning processes.

We've had sustained economic growth.

It's balanced against an uncertain longer term outlook.

It invests in 21st century infrastructure to further our vision.

It reinforces a foundation of government services.

And it's balanced on a recommended tax rate of .854 per 100 assessed value, which is an increase of 1.5 cents in calendar year 19 that would be dedicated to the capital program.

Your total county budget, this is all funds budget, is $456.8 million.

We reviewed that at an earlier work session.

The general fund budget is where we spent a lot of our discussion.

It's $306.7 million.

The general government side of the budget includes 15.5 net increase in positions and we went through these and had discussions along the way of these positions that are included in the recommended budget.

The other thing that we do at this time of year is we recommended some investment of your year-end money.

So this, in addition to the fiscal year 20 money that we're talking about, we want to put some of the year-end money from the undesignated fund balance to work in fiscal year 19.

So after you approve the budget, if you approve that, we would actually

So throughout a lot of the pages of your budget document you see where we have talked about this use of one-time funds throughout your budget document.

I also want to mention that your recommended fiscal year 20 to 24 CIP which is a long range five year plan is $207.6 million and this assumes a real estate tax rate increase of 1.5 cents in calendar year 19 and a 1.5 cent tax rate increase in calendar year 20 to support the CIP over the five year period.

It's CIP undead.

The other recap is that this budget includes a transfer to the school fund of $138.2 million, which is an increase of $6.9 million or 5.2% over last year.

It also includes $50,000 in operating expenses associated with the bond funding for Western Albemarle High School Environmental Studies Academy.

It had some operating impacts from that CIP project that we've included.

and the school board's funding request gap is at $426,574.

One quick clarification on the last slide you just did.

So the 5.2% increase is by formula because of the natural growth impact, is that right?

That's where that whole increase came from?

Yes.

And then the $50,000 for operational is included in that?

So again I just made a really quick run through of a lot of the information we were talking about over the last three work sessions and just wanted to highlight the previous direction that the board has provided to staff and it was to revise the capital budget

which is the first year of the CIP to reprioritize the initial phase of Biscuit Run Park in place of Hedge Road Park.

So that's direction that we already obtained.

And you also told us to continue to hold the $2 million in Advancing Strategic Priorities Strategic Reserve for future conversations and consideration of the board.

And then we discussed at the last meeting some potential adjustments that you have in mind or I heard Mr. Gallaway mention like parking lots and ideas that the board has identified and asked staff to go back and do some more work on.

So then we'll work through that conversation today.

So I'm going to slow down now.

I was going pretty fast on those slides, but I'm going to slow down for this part.

This is information that we put in a chart form to share with you some of the conversations that we had at the last meeting, some of the direction you provided to us to basically identify resources to support these potential additions to the fiscal year 20 budget.

So you can see on the left is the name of the position and actually one of them is the Crozet connector so it's not necessarily a position but you can see there's four positions in there and adding the Crozet connector

And you can see what we call the net ongoing costs.

And when we say net ongoing costs, that means that there are some one-time expenses in addition to the ongoing costs.

So you can see the one-time costs over to the right.

Sometimes when you add a position such as a police officer, there's a significant amount of one-time costs that we can use one-time funds for.

So you can see the one-time costs in the next column, and then what we call the net total of the $489

569 in the last column.

Okay.

Yes.

It's the same comment on the previous two positions, or the top list of social services.

Those positions receive reimbursements from state and federal revenue.

Okay.

Sounds good.

Lori, since we're on this page, could I just ask senior staff to give us an explanation for why the housing generalist, the fraud investigator, and the school resource officer were not funded.

You know the nature of the budget coming forward always includes choices that the county executive is making.

The priority in the police department as was identified in the funding resource work that was done in the fall were for patrol officers.

at the time.

There's been some gap between then and now.

I think that Ron is here to speak.

I think he would say that the priority still is patrol officers, but he also did bring forward a number of other requests for additional staffing resource needs other than patrol officers.

The school resource officer has been in and out of that request for a number of years.

And so it's not that it's not important, but when you have to make choices, then you know, when you're trying to evaluate, that's always important.

On the social services side,

The high priority that I worked with the director was for that assistant director position, which you saw come forward in the recommendation.

But as is often the case, it doesn't necessarily reflect all of their priorities.

And so as you heard from her when she got up last week and spoke about the

The interest in the housing position in particular, I think that there is a fairly recent change in our organization around housing and moving the housing towards voucher program management from the office of housing into social services.

And as they have become more accustomed to managing that, I think that they are in a better position to understand

how then their investments in resources can translate into additional services.

So, that was the nature of Phyllis Amisovides' commentary last week was kind of an awareness of how the position can have a corresponding impact on the amount of services provided.

So, they're both here to speak to that.

The fraud position is one as is with any department where if you're making those choices where you're just saying we're going to prioritize this year, we may prioritize other needs in other years.

You're also aware that in the past there's been a pretty heavy consideration for

So I got a little confused.

I think that he will say that the patrol officers is still their single largest effort.

He asked for four patrol officers.

providing investments elsewhere, trying to do multiple things.

And so not being able to provide four police officers, providing one, when asked what's your next highest priority, the logical assumption is that second police officer.

Because so that he can get to four, this is part of his overall intention to kind of grow his field force, his control force, so that he can then further deploy his community policing model.

In the conversation around school resource officers, there is value there.

Part of it is the fact that the county doesn't have to pick up the full cost of it if the schools are going to share.

But neither the schools nor the police have brought that forward as their priority at that time.

It's also true that the school resource officer, in addition to providing support for the schools, can support patrol and other law enforcement needs when the school is not in session.

And so it does have a controlled value to it.

And beyond that, I'm going to have to let Chief answer that more fully.

Mr. Walker did a great job explaining what we were looking at with the budget.

I spoke with him briefly approximately two weeks ago and looking at the recommended budget and determining what we could do as far as a school resource officer is concerned.

He hit the nail on the head.

It's almost a double bang for the buck if you will because

Not just in the summertime, but when we close schools in the wintertime, they're assigned to patrol because the school's not in session.

So we'll be able to augment them to patrol more often.

Also utilize them on a POP team, which you approved the extension of that POP sergeant position.

So the vision was I would assign that SRO to the middle school out west in Henley.

That way we've got full coverage throughout the county, and it equals out all coverage.

So they can get the elementary schools out there, the middle schools out there, and in the event we had a

priority one situation in one of the schools, we had two officers out there to settle one.

So that's why I came up with that suggestion.

And Mr. Walker's correct, four was my priority and patrol was to build that capacity internally.

We've had approximately 1000 increasing calls for service since 2017 to 2018.

So as the county continues to grow, I see that continuing to grow as well, the calls for service.

So that's part of the geo-policing plan you've been hearing about for years is to build capacity and control.

And ultimately what we'd like to do is add two more patrol areas.

And that's going to come once we have the staffing to do so.

So that would eliminate the size of the patrol area down to a smaller response time.

Last year when I came to you to get to the squad base if you remember me talking about the squad base system When you approve those positions last year on one of the shifts, which is I believe it's daylight We went to a modified almost like a pilot and it's working very well so to make it work we have seven recruits in training right now once they're cut loose and

and then I'll have two more going to the academy and with these positions we can make it happen.

Patrol is still my priority.

The two patrol officers would be my number one priority.

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you.

In the years past, we talked about one point ratio.

We used to be at about 1.25, and I'm happy to report my annual report's going to be out much earlier this year than last year.

I just looked at it.

We're at about 1.32 per thousand.

So we're still sitting middle of the pack.

The state average is around 1.9 per thousand.

Just to give you an example, Charlottesville, which is much smaller than we are, they have 2.5 officers when they're fully staffed per 1,000 population.

Yeah, that's been the goal.

We figured out six months ago to get to 1.5, we would need about 162 officers total.

And right now, currently with one overhire, my authorized is 137.

Yes, right now today standing in front of you I'm way down three positions and I've got about eight people in the pipeline several which are certified so we're having more than we had in the past two years coming out and taking the test for entry level so we're doing very well staying fully staffed.

So the pay increase really has been very helpful?

Absolutely, the pay scale was one of them when they come talk to me that they saw

It allows me to thank the board for prioritizing that in order to keep the good investment in the good employees that we have.

And of course that then takes resources away from adding positions.

that want to give back to their community where they were born and raised and went to school.

And we're seeing, actually I've got one in the pipeline now from Nelson County, which is probably one of the first ones we've had in a while.

But we're starting to see more people homegrown, so to speak, that are applying, which I like.

I think the reason being is like folks from Tidewater, the Richmond area that pays a little bit higher in the cost of living's less than coming here.

I just had one more question that may be more for Doug.

Have we approached the school division on the school resource officer and asked them if we in fact funded it?

Are there any more questions about these items that were placed on the list for conversation today?

If not, we'll move to the next slide, which provides you some indication of where funding could come from to support these positions, should the board desire to add them to their proposed budget.

Here are some ideas.

I have to thank Mr.

Bowman and the OMB staff.

They went through page by page, every department, looking through the whole budget document, and it wasn't easy.

And they came up with some ideas to put in front of you.

The first one is the Children's Services Act.

And this

If we reduce the funding from General Fund into the Children's Services Act by $50,000, it would reduce our costs from $190 to $185 million.

So we put a lot of money into CSA.

This would be a small increment of funds that we could reduce the Children's Services Act from.

We're watching it all the time.

Service and reimbursement trends.

We do have a CSA fund balance.

It's adequate right now.

We think that it could address any unanticipated increases in fiscal year 20.

That's a good way to look at it.

So that's not one-time money?

It's on-going.

That's one idea.

The next idea is you may recall that we have a customer service and security enhancements that we've proposed for the county office building here at COB McIntyre.

It has $150,000 that was as a placeholder for that service.

doing some further analysis and spending a lot of time talking to Mr. Trevor Henry about it, who's very close to this, that we felt we could reduce the ongoing amount by from 150 to 125, which is a $25,000 decrease.

So you can see we're just taking small, working on things to see could we still get this service done for a lesser cost, and we feel that this is something that we could possibly do.

The third one on the board there, if you remember again, Mr. Henry was talking about this business process optimization funding a couple work sessions ago.

We have a reserve and he's here to address any questions you have on this, but basically we have ongoing money and one-time money sitting in the reserve.

for doing a lot of this business process optimization work, such as revising the website and those types of things.

So we felt that we could reduce that by $86,000, so that would reduce the ongoing amount, we'd leave the one time alone, from $250,000 to $164,000.

And then finally, we talked a little bit about this at the last meeting.

You have a reserve for contingencies in your budget right now.

You have some money that's ongoing and some money that's one time in your reserve for contingencies.

So the rest of the funding could come from your reserve for contingencies, so we could reduce the ongoing amount from 30

$300,000 a year to $150,000 a year, which would be $150,000 reduction and your one-time amount from $237,000 to $59,000, which would provide for the one-time costs associated with these positions.

So it would leave you a little over $200,000 for the fiscal year as a starting point.

And this would fund everything that you saw in the previous page.

I'll just back it up.

Your totals?

$489, $569, but you have some ongoing and some one-time.

So, I really appreciate you doing all that work.

It's great.

My first reaction is going back to the police officer and the police department says they want two patrol officers rather than a patrol officer in an SRO.

I'm not sure why we're doing an SRO.

I just don't know.

I'm not suggesting it's the wrong thing to do.

I asked for all the positions in the police department to break out so I could understand what they were.

These two made it on.

I think the main reason the SRO made it on is that it was a request last year.

It didn't get funded.

And I don't recall if it was on the school's request last year or not.

I just don't remember.

And it is

because we share the cost for the school division.

They would still have to come up with $75,000 that they were intending to.

I mean they said they would support it after we asked them that.

Well, I'd just like to suggest another way of thinking about this.

I'm not putting this on the table because I advocate for it.

The 2018 rate of inflation was 1.9%, and the accounting executive is proposing a 2.3% increase in salaries overall in accounting.

One could also look at potentially, instead of providing a 2.3, providing something below that, and one would automatically generate, in all likelihood, enough money to cover a full police officer, which was an additional cost of about $26,000 beyond the SRO officer, if the board wanted to go that way, and then not get them to

The reserve for contingencies were in essence reducing our flexibility and responsiveness

over the course of a year to address other issues that come up.

How did you decide on those?

I'll start and let others chime in.

Every fall we do a joint process with the school division where Human Resources goes out and looks at the counties, adopts the competitive market.

There's a work session, I believe it was held in November this year, where they come back with the results of that conversation looking at both a salary increase and a health increase.

And so based on that joint board meeting we have with the board supervisors and the school board, that then informs the board's five-year plan, the school board's funding request, and also the accounting segments right through the budget.

That's the payroll thing, but I think the general point was maybe we could reduce economic development.

Sure.

Okay, so why these options?

So, sitting down and going through the book, we did not hear any question or concern or felt that there would be enough guidance from anyone to take one of those 15 and a half positions out of the budget.

We've also, considering of the funding that we have for agency partners, we didn't feel there was any questions or concern or desire for anyone to back that out.

We think of one of the foundations of the budget are kind of the board's nine strategic priority objectives where there's a significant amount of the discretionary revenues we've been committed to.

Just as that was some of the first stuff we put in the budget, we didn't want it to start backing that off.

There are other increases that we looked at where we just don't really have that much of a choice whether they be just kind of contractual rates or some of those other things we didn't have as much discretion in.

I personally don't have any

I would like to know what's generated by that 0.3%.

Because as we adopted the 2.3 for planning purposes, not ribbon spend always.

That's the danger of doing something in the fall is that it then gets to be a big argument about making any change to it whatsoever.

So I would like to know what the difference is.

It's just so amazing.

A quick answer, for the total three percent, which is the two point three salary increase and point seven pay performance, the total impact of that for local government is one point six five million.

So if 0.3 would be a tenth of that, that 0.3 would be about $165,000 approximately.

It comes home with almost $480,000 if it goes down to 2% raise.

I'd like to say one thing that's more general, and he gave you a lot of really good detail and I think Supervisor Palmer said I'm fine with that, that's a good explanation.

I think an underpinning of any time we go back and look at the budget, this stage in the budget, is we're looking for money with the least amount of disruption.

to what we've already talked about and what we're trying to accomplish over the next year.

And there's a balance there of trying to look at things that are meaningful, that provide meaningful dollars, but at the same time that we're not in any way disruptive.

And so I would say with confidence that with those four bullet items, know the least about the top one, which is I believe a conversation that we already had with Phyllis, but in looking at the others,

I've had discussions with staff and we feel like we can still get significant progress if we were to change those and modify those as we describe.

Does it mean that it's easy?

Nor should it be easy.

But we feel like we can still get things accomplished.

Just speaking for myself, I'm not interested in reducing the compensation that we've already discussed that's based on the recommendation from HR for our current employees.

I do, for me, I recognize Phyllis' need for a housing general and a fraud investigator.

I would be looking at providing perhaps one additional position for social services rather than two.

And one additional position for them.

I mean, we're giving here four new positions.

These positions, we have to realize, are all coming next year.

I mean, they are part of the base.

And I think while we have four on here, perhaps for me, the way to look at this is,

I think her first, what she mentioned first was the housing generalist based on our work around the portal house and so I would be very supportive of that position, obviously the pros aid connect and

I would be very supportive of a compromise with Lon on the school resource officer because I think we do get a lot of bang for our buck with that one.

He gets someone he can use in the field at times and it costs us less.

I'm not sure that $500,000 over and above right now is where I would go.

I'm just kind of looking at a middle ground for this, these suggestions, recognizing that social services and the police department definitely have a need for more positions.

Hi.

I generally agree with you.

I think the job issue is great, and the housing generalist is great.

I still have a really hard time.

If a department asks for a position, I'd like to hear from that position, whose patrol officer.

I just, if the school, if it didn't rise up on the school's list and it didn't rise up on the police's list, I'd have a hard time going with a resource officer, even if we don't have to pay for the whole thing, the whole officer.

I'm struggling with that issue.

I think where I stand is the first four, other than the SRO, I think we should definitely do.

I think that's really important.

Not as a coordinator, thanks.

Yes, actually for Chief Lance, I think.

And that is, for one of the biggest safety issues, in addition to the things that SROs are supposed to do in the building, are they available before school time when we have the massive

That's all I'm out there this morning doing that.

I'm talking about in front of the actual school itself.

I have a question, if I may, for the county executive.

15.5.

15.5.

That's in the recommended budget.

That resulted in six positions being added at the Department of Social Services.

And I believe those are funded at right at 85% bond local money.

So those are six positions, six additional FTE, but they're not 100% funded for local county dollars.

Can you help me with the others?

Sure.

One of the positions was in Parks and Recreation.

We had set funding aside in the budget last year so that when that recreation needs assessment was completed, there would be some funding that would be available to help with that implementation, which was a position that the board approved actually shortly after the fiscal year 19 book budget was adopted.

The board may recall that when we finished the fiscal year 19 budget process, we had about, I think it was about $180,000 that was left in the reserve for contingencies that was undesignated.

This was a result of the revenue update that happened about a year ago.

And the board had directed staff to come back with some options of how that $180,000 could be allocated, and three positions came out of that which the board approved in August.

There was also, this is no budget impact, but it was an FTE.

Go back.

They were a drill group technician in Department of Parks and Recreation.

What technician?

A trail crew.

There was a project coordinated position in Facilities and Environmental Services.

This was a position that was a little bit about just the increased workload in that department as we take on more contractual urban services and also as we continue to add facilities throughout the county.

And then the third position was increasing an executive assistant position in the County Executive's Office from part-time to full-time positions.

I'll say all of these are on page 61 listed out.

That was not all, but I don't know where the full list is.

Pretty close.

To compare this list down, I've heard two supervisors suggest one for social services and one position for police.

It's not necessarily consensus on the position of police.

Mormon suggests both positions for DSS.

So I'm assuming though when you're saying those four, everybody is in support of the Crozet Connect.

We're not taking that off the table.

I'm not taking that off.

Which would be two police officers, so that's going to increase

They've balanced this to

One police officer and one SRO.

So when we're now talking about two full-time police officers, then that number changes.

Exactly.

Okay, Mr. Chairman, I'll make a motion that we add

I just wanted to make sure that what Doug just said, and Jeff just said, is that they've already got one in the back.

And this number, the fourth line, is the second.

And so the other discussion about changing an SRO to that would be free.

So now that I understand that better,

That's great.

Mr. Randolph?

Aye.

Mr. Dill?

No.

Yes.

Based on this, it should go down to what, three?

Reporting?

I do have two comments to make.

I will defer to your judgment on this, but I would like to just on two areas.

The reduced, I don't know how badly we hit the one-time amount in the reserve for contingencies,

When we talked about that last week, there were already things we were thinking could come up at one-time costs that that reserve could go to.

I get a little nervous seeing that getting brought down to 59.

And then the Transformational Business Process Optimization Reserve, frankly, that money should, in future years, pay for new positions, because really what that's going to do is eliminate something.

At the end of the day, when you optimize a process, there could be things that become automated, a position that starts to pay for other things.

If I may, just to amend our conversation, optimization, systems integration may create headroom that we're talking about, a little bit of capacity.

But in many cases, what it'll allow is staff to transition from a lot of manual work to being able to do analytics.

So it may not be a net decrease in headcount, but the kind of work that we're doing is more in the analytics, evaluating, kind of being more practical than it is.

taking data out of one system and putting it into another, if that makes sense.

And potentially, it actually could increase costs, not to challenge the county executive, because you will have moved up a whole level of skill set and evaluation assessment that we all currently have.

If you're looking for guidance, I would agree with Ned that putting the 84 back into the reserve, the one-time reserve, and the 60 back into the transformational ongoing would protect those activities.

Mr. Richardson, a question for you.

Is that something you want us to do and bring back to you on a break or are you just comfortable with what we do and it'll be part of the proposed budget?

Is that okay?

Yes ma'am.

I'm at the limit of my expertise.

Okay, so we'll take care of that piece and so we're going to move on.

We've had the discussion.

So if that's the only adjustments that you'd like to make for your proposed budget for advertising, we still can make changes, of course, to your budget.

But is this the only change?

If it is, we will make the changes per the motion.

We will adjust the funding for suggestions and for our expertise from the staff's perspective.

Do you have any hope?

To me it seems a little funny that we're doing this motion and you're still having public discussions.

What do you mean?

This is all that is happening today as it's moving from the county executive to us.

We've made the changes we just voted on.

That's the difference.

Yeah, so he's raising a good point.

It's kind of a chicken and the egg piece, right?

Do you do the tax rate discussion first and then this?

They do connect?

You can go either direction you'd like to go or you can hold and you can go back and do the tax rate and come back to this.

So it's up to the board's discretion on how you'd like to move forward on this.

It's the board's pleasure to have a conversation about the tax rate before we make this motion.

So as we've been discussing, this is where you would set the tax rate for advertising.

The rate you advertise, you can go below, but you cannot go above, is the Virginia law on that.

So just as a, again, we've shared this with you in past work sessions, but I'd like to just put it out for you and for the citizens.

The fiscal year 20 recommended budget,

It includes a recommended rate of 0.854 per 100 of assessed value.

This is an increase of 1.5 cents in calendar year 19 dedicated to the capital program and debt service.

Each penny on the real estate rate yields approximately 1.9 million dollars in estimated collectible real estate tax revenues.

A state law that when you advertise, you will also be advertising the lower or effective tax rate.

That would be .807 per 100 of assessed value.

And you do have a tax relief program for the elderly and disabled program, which is at $1 million.

I don't have much more other than just to share with you the motion that you will make and we actually have this motion printed up here and it's been approved by the county executive on what you have to say on your motion.

Yeah, I would, Mr. Chairman, I would like us to take a look at the scenarios that the Department of Defense kindly provided us for looking at the CIP and the tax rate for this year and for next year.

There were proposals

All of those pennies, which total three pennies, are dedicated to the CID.

The 1.3 cents of that is to be paid for the cost of borrowing

That's accounting incurred with the taxpayer's validation of the referendum in 2016 for $35 million in school division improvements.

The amount of revenue that would get generated with a three cent tax increase, $1.5 as proposed, and this year $1.5 is

is also indicated in the budget for next year would generate $31.2 million.

If the county were to go ahead and incorporate all three pennies in the current budget year, and that would be fiscal year 20, and nearby incur the full three pennies,

The amount of revenue that would be generated would only be $3 million.

And so that was scenario four, and I think that scenario four effectively eliminates itself.

Just because it doesn't get us

towards the goal that we all understand because we've had conversations with the school board chair and vice chair what the capital needs are that we will be, this county will be addressing next calendar year, next fiscal year rather, and fiscal year three years out.

The other scenario

which are Scenarios 2 and 3.

Scenario 2 with a two penny increase this year, 0.9 the following year, and Scenario 3 with a three cent increase this year at 1.5.

Scenario 3 certainly does generate a lot more money, but I do not see how the taxpayers would support Scenario 3.

So my recommendation

because we do not have to set a tax rate is to agree on a tax rate increase this year of two pennies, which will generate $22.8 million.

And that, with a 1.5 proposed next year, would generate $36.90 million, which would be $5.7 million more than the current budgeted proposal

Reaction, discussion?

So you're suggesting another alternative to funding the CIP.

It's all going into the CIP.

That's correct.

Would that result in, I guess I didn't ask my question last year.

Would that result in more projects being done more quickly?

Is that capacity there?

Yeah, we're putting it in the CIP.

We review what's in the recommendation for the CFP for FY 2020 tied to the recommended transcript.

If there is something that would come up that the board would want to prioritize, then this might provide the funding to do that.

I think we have a pretty

as aggressive of a volume of work we've had in a long time.

And so I think that from a capacity perspective, we are at a real level of capacity, which is why we're appropriating money in 20 that's going to take several years to execute on.

So I think what this does is it creates some bandwidth in the model for years two, three, four, and beyond.

So really, rather than loading up additional projects, I'm not answering the question very well.

One of my objectives in proposing this is to try to create a scenario where there will be assured capital funds to address

Now this is not going to create all of the funds in the first year.

to address the needs in Scottsville and Redville, but it would be a way of at least over time accumulating some of those funds and thereby creating less, thereby increased resiliency and capital fund and secondly reduce the

or increase also I should say the insurance that if in fact we do have any kind of a correction economically that we would have funds in hand at least for a year or two to provide support for those capacity needs in both of those elementary schools.

Can I just ask, since we're talking about CIP, I'd love for Bill to speak to this from the viewpoint of Rick's suggestion because I think when we're talking about CIP, he might be able to inform our discussion as well.

Looking at the scenario that Rick is bringing forward,

which is actually, I think, giving us another 0.5, am I right on that?

Yes.

0.5 over the next two years, but how that might impact the CIP, I think I framed that right.

Yeah?

So when the end year variance is published in our surplus, is that included in the other $300,000 or is it in two years?

How would that

Yeah.

So Rick, what you're suggesting is at least advertise this, which gives us a month, essentially, to roll that out.

We can always go down back to where we were.

anything I think to 1.5 would go down rather than go up.

Plenty of increase in taxes.

I'm not advocating for that specifically, but a 4% increase, which means that a lot of people are paying a lot more than that.

Supervisor Albemarle?

I certainly have for years supported trying to get more into capital so that we can do more, but I'm hearing from many people whose assessments, because 4% is an average, there are many, many that are 5 and 10 and 15% increases, and this would be an even greater burden for them.

They're going to have enough of a capital

If there's a majority who will be determined to really raise it,

then that's one thing, but to put it out there and then have people get all upset when there really isn't that full blown support to pass it in the end and it seems I only want to ask the questions that I think are really valid to be acted upon.

I'm very concerned about

the perception that there's tons of money and we're just spending money without the proper planning and there have been hiccups along on our holding processes in the last year that have raised a lot of concerns and I want to make sure that we have the staff capacity and everything laid out to make sure that we're not building things that have to tear them down.

So that is a concern when there's the perception that there's just a lot of money lying around ready to be spent.

So I would prefer to be much more deliberate about this.

I have a very hard swallow when the proposed budget was offered by the county executive with the increase.

I understand that it's one that was adopted by the referendum, and we unfortunately pushed it away for a couple of years.

A story that makes people mad, but it's the truth, and that's what we have to work on.

I'll throw it in there.

I don't think I've said anything yet.

Just ask questions.

You know, I'm with Ann on, I get why we're suggesting this, because we need it, and I'm certainly very aware of the Scottsville and Red Hill issues, so I'm kind of torn here.

But then I have to think, is this something I would really vote for in the end?

And I don't want to put it out there if I'm not going to vote for it in the end.

So that's what I'm struggling with.

is when I go out there and hear from folks about this.

So I guess I would refer to one of the thoughts because I don't think I would go through to it.

Well, just by my kind of keeping tally here, that would be three against going above one and a half.

I think any motion to go above one and a half failed.

Right, I'm putting something out there as a proposal, as I proposed earlier, just to have a discussion about dropping

I'm threatening motherhood and apple pie in America, but I think it's important in my role as a supervisor to raise questions and come up with alternative scenarios and look for ways in the best interest of the taxpayers to deliver the most cost effective government to them.

Be mindful that every dollar we buy

So are you in favor of your proposal?

What I wanted was to have a fuller discussion of actually if we went to that scenario to determine how we would do it with these projects and when they could then be funded in what I would call as Yancey's Orphans.

The consequences of Yancey being closed and its impact on both Red Hill and Scottsville.

The amount of money that would be generated and the benefit that would accrue to the school division

I understand the argument, well, we're not going to go that way and why even do it, but we haven't really researched it.

I'm just raising the question in an alternative way of looking at it.

So you didn't answer the question.

Well, we can either take a vote or we can, Diantha, do you have anything to add?

My thoughts are that the, I mean the one and a half to me, I wish that I sort of regret this not getting programmed closer to when the bond referendum passed.

Kind of looking back to my

It sounded like a good idea to me last year to continue and to do what we did.

I'm not second guessing that, but at this point I am second guessing and regret that maybe that should have been pushed down another year.

I think that already folks are forgetting that that one and a half cent was approved in a vote.

The lowest polling precinct in the county approved it as over 60%.

It was like 60.2 at the lowest voting precinct.

So really the conversation should have been us discussing should we be raising it the 0.5.

over that one and a half.

And it gets lost.

The conversation that Rick's trying to suggest we have is getting lost.

That one and a half really did pass with voter approval.

That is a good way to put it.

I haven't had enough of the time to even ponder it.

Going to the tax rate, well, I appreciate the concern of getting folks concerned if you don't have the willpower to go ahead and go through with it.

It would be putting a lot of people through a lot of angst that might be unnecessary, and I don't agree with that sentiment.

Ned, I don't disagree with you.

It's why I'm sort of quiet.

I do really agree that looking back, I don't think I would ever again agree to put off increase that we based from a referendum because it has been lost in the community.

And I understand why.

I mean, I get why it was easy to do that.

But when I look at my numbers for that referendum, I had two precincts that passed over 80%

and my lowest was almost, was 69%.

So my Jouett district overwhelmingly passed this advice and I look at the numbers.

But I do think that because we put it down the road, it's hard for people to wrap their heads around it.

They think we did that to some degree because they heard about it and then now we're having a problem.

And it does cloud the issue.

I'd have to really think seriously about the two.

I'm not saying I'd take it off the table completely if we supported it.

It would be interesting and I would like to hear the reaction from the community if they knew it was all going into the CIP.

I do agree that it doesn't look like to me there's interest at the end of the day and I understand.

I think it's a great record.

I'm glad you brought it up.

I think it's a good thing to think about.

That is the, and certainly what we're demanding, as well as, Bill's back here to my right, he can talk to me too, but I think we're really focused on

after two years of delaying the 1.5 cent tax rate increase, it was really looking at the

revenues, pay as you go, our debt service, our ratios, and really looking at it in terms of is it prudent to recommend pulling the trigger on the 1.5 cent tied back to the 2016 referendum?

And Bill, is there anything you would add to that?

So we did not do the modeling of Supervisor McKeel

to look at scenarios like what Supervisor Randolph discussed, and that is accelerating over and above the 1.5 for the purpose of looking at some additional needed infrastructure funding in the five-year plan.

And so we just did not do that.

Bill, can I ask you, if this is not one to answer on the spot, if the point five that generates that extra five, we've looked over the next five years and seen what it's going to take.

We continue with the CIP projects that are planned, the water stuff that Rick brings up, future projects, all of that.

Five million now, that headway that it created, does that give us a significant different outlook, or is it just something that would give us a little bit of extra?

Well, I can quantify it this way.

0.5 cents would generate a little more than $5 million over the course of five years.

So that's about a million a year.

and, of course, that would then have to be applied to pay debt service or to directly fund projects in cash.

If you did most of it in debt service and you borrowed over a 20-year period, you could add approximately $10 million in projects.

That just gives you, again, that's real generalized.

would really make a difference in our capital improvement order.

Having said that, to raise it that much in this year and then have the political lift next year to do a 1.5 would concern me because then if next year went back to a 1, it's been off and on, if you follow what I'm saying.

Well, I guess, yeah, I'm just worried that if we get a 2 this year, then next year we'll be looking at reducing that 1.5 and then we're back to where we are right now.

For the most part.

And it's a heavy lift, I get that.

Very heavy lift.

We all have had a chance to speak on it and I still see it's pretty free even if I'm looking at that in the most positive way, cleanest way.

I don't know if anybody is interested in switching from their view.

I agree with what Diantha just said.

It's a tough lift for next year knowing we're going to do one in five.

And we don't know if there's going to be an increase in assessment, but there's a pretty good chance that we're going to have an increase in assessment.

I'm concerned about that.

So I guess we're ready for a motion, Chair.

Well, we might not have the votes for this.

All right.

Do I read this whole thing?

I move that the board average house following rates for public hearing for 2019 tax year 0.854.

sorry, .854 of assessed value for real estate, public service, property and manufactured homes, 4.28 per 100 of assessed value for tangible personal property, 4.28 per 100 of assessed value for miscellaneous and incidental tangible personal property

Rebecca?

Ms. Mallek?

Yes.

Ms. McKeel?

Yes.

Ms. Palmer?

Yes.

Mr. Randolph?

Nay.

Yes.

Motion carries.

Okay, so here's your next steps on this slide.

If you would like to have any more work sessions on the budget before the public hearings, we have some placeholders on the 26th and 28th if needed.

If not needed, the next time we'll be working on the budgets, April 9th, there'll be a public hearing on the proposed budget and a public hearing on the tax rate with April 16th as the time to set the tax rate and approve the budget.

So, Ned, for me, we don't really need these work sessions, do we, on the 26th and the 28th?

I'd rather concentrate on my town halls and get from the public and see what's happening between them.

Yeah, they're there, I think, at this point, if anything unexpected pops up.

I don't think either is going to be needed at this point.

I mean, I'm talking something happens out of all and catches us all off guard, might pull us back in, but there'll be plenty of time I think in the

Is that okay?

That way we can at least clear our calendar for one.

The downhill halls for me begin this Thursday, March 7, Brownsville cafeteria at 7 p.m., followed on Saturday by the Whitehall Community Building at 10 a.m. that Saturday morning, followed by Monday, March 11, 7 p.m. in the northern part of the district in Broadus Wood cafeteria at 7 p.m.

I'll mention that yesterday at the UVA Rotunda was the service for to officially declare for Almonte County, we haven't officially done it yet, but it was announced that we were adopting Freedom and Liberation Day as March 3rd and Siri read the proclamation in a very

The participatory way for the audience there that got everybody involved, which was great.

The people that were there got a small bottle of the dirt that was taken out of the ground when the construction began for the slave memorial that's going to be on campus.

Many speakers, lots of it very educational.

It was also kind of a religious service too.

We didn't go outside for the commemoration or for the inauguration of the memorial because of the weather, but there was a wonderful woman there that described how originally the Board of Visitors didn't want to have

It's quite a while ago and how over the decades or years that she worked on it and got the consensus and she was really appreciative that the community has grown so much.

and I'll just mention one more time that don't let the opportunity go by to go to the Jefferson Theater on Sunday at 7 o'clock this Sunday for the Almore High School Jazz Band Fundraiser.

And it will be a great concert.

No.

But you do get information on the website.

The UVA Working Group report's recommendations came out.

And that report is available.

And it was really a fascinating report.

I would urge everybody in the community to take a look at it.

It's available.

I think we may have sent it out by email.

It might be a really interesting report if we could just to send out my email for the community.

And tying into that, I want to thank everybody at this table and everybody who came to the transit partnership work session around transit.

I know it was a late night.

But if you look at that working report, the recommendations, it ties into the work we're talking about.

So it's all connected.