Board of Supervisors Joint Work Session w/ CIP Oversight Committee and School Board   5/9/2019

So welcome to everyone, staff, public members from the public, everyone that's here today.

Those from our CIP oversight committee, Bruce Johnson's here.

We have representatives, let's see, our officers with us today.

I saw Lieutenant Terry Walls in the back and Officer Profitt.

Is that?

Oh, there you are.

To her left, we have Dr. Haas and Mr. Richardson.

We have, of course, the supervisors, school board members, planning commission members, and then our representatives from the clerk's office, Jennifer

Johnston.

Johnston.

God, Jennifer.

I'm blanking.

I just walked out of my car.

So this afternoon, we're here to work on the CIP process.

We will, after a brief opening remark, I will turn it over to Jono, who will talk about today's outcomes and the agenda.

But I'd like to present just a brief recap as to what brought us here today.

So obviously in Almar County, we work together with the school board.

and the Planning Commission and school division staff and our county staff to develop our capital improvement plan together.

And I think we have done this fairly well.

We believe that we can learn from the past and transform how we work together in ways that will improve both our collaboration and our processes for the benefit of the community.

As background, in the spring of 2018, after the normal CIP development process had ended, we held nine additional meetings to further discuss our needs.

We prioritized our CIP in consideration of our policy and our affordability constraints.

We also spent a great deal of time discussing whether or not we would be pursuing a potential bond referendum for school and quality of life projects at that time.

In September, the school board and board of supervisors came together to debrief on what had occurred, and we vowed to increase our communication.

while we acknowledge that the school boards provides needs based requests and the board's role is to balance the budget.

We also began to discuss the value of public private partnerships to assist us with meeting the capital needs of the county in the future.

This past November we had a joint board meeting as part of our regular fall long range financial planning and we continue to discuss public private partnerships.

In January, the oversight committee recommended that the two boards, along with additional members of the CIP oversight committee, meet together earlier in the CIP development process this year to reconceptualize how we plan for both the capital and our operating budgets.

conduct shared visioning and share our priorities.

In March, the Board of Supervisors agreed and directed staff to plan today's joint meeting.

And there you have a recap of what brought us here today.

I'll turn things over to Chairman Elcaro, who will overview the desired outcomes for today's meeting.

Thank you, Ned.

Again, this is the kickoff to the next development process.

Together, our desired outcomes today are as follows.

We'll continue efforts for the two boards to work together and build commonality.

We'll re-conceptualize the way the county approaches capital planning.

We will understand the current state of the CIP.

We will identify affordability constraints in the context of growth and needs.

This includes determining a maximum equivalent tax rate for planning purposes,

and hold some initial brainstorming conversations about items such as funding options, tools, and alternatives.

And lastly, we'll consider adoption of the PPEA guidelines.

I know that at a staff level, schools and local government staff are working hard to change from a transactional relationship to a transformative one, thanks to the leadership of Mr. Richardson and Dr. Haas.

I hope that we as boards can make that commitment as well.

Good afternoon.

My name is Rosalynn Schman.

I'm the chief operating officer with the school division.

I will be joined by Lori Allhouse, director of management and budget, and we'll kind of do a handoff meeting together.

Before I get into the agenda, I wanted to share a visual.

We came across this graphic when searching methods for having a better group conversation.

We thought it was symbolic for not only this meeting but this development process we're about to embark on.

When we come together as a group, we hope it's to close.

And by close, I mean to align, to agree, and to come to action.

You can't do that without a strong opening, without time to explore, and those processes to explore.

So I hope we just keep this visual in mind and have what we're hoping is a pretty action-oriented meeting.

Here's our agenda.

We have two hours together.

We will start off previewing a re-envision development process.

Lori will go over our current state of our CIP.

We will spend the bulk, probably over an hour, with lots of time for discussion in that third item, which is the affordability constraints in the context of our capital needs.

Before we get to the first item, I wanted to frame some timeframes.

When we talk about CIP, there's different versions of it.

For the purposes of today, when we say the current CIP, we're referring to the time period that encompasses the FY20 capital budget that the Board of Supervisors has recently adopted.

So that five-year timeframe is from FY20 to FY24.

That's our current CIP.

As we said, this is a kickoff for a development period, so that moves that period one year forward.

So when we say planning or a development process, that's referring to the five-year timeframe from FY21 to FY25.

You also hear us say a seven-year plan.

That is for purposes of financial modeling as projects, most notably the courts, have impacts that go beyond that five-year timeframe.

So the first item we want to do is preview a proposed new CIP development process.

Before we do that, let's just frame ourselves of what the old process was.

You should be familiar with this flow chart.

The beginning is generally a wide net all call for projects.

The result is this enormous list of projects that are all equal in detail and specificity

that large list churns through staff committees, TRC, FRC, remember all those acronyms, oversight, etc., before entering and that list gets dramatically cut down before entering into the general budget cycle before the Board of Supervisors.

It's a very cumbersome process and it ballooned as

Chairman Galloway alluded to earlier, ballooned this last year into 11 meetings at the very end of the process around affordability, potential referendum, etc.

So a missing step from this process is that board discussion at the beginning, that initial starting point kickoff, which brings us to today.

This process is based on feedback from multiple stakeholders.

It's based on the recommendation of the oversight committee.

When I say preview, we're going to go over it at the beginning of this meeting, but we're going to ask for action at the end.

This is just to give you your roadmap so that you understand the significance and the purpose of this meeting and our overall vision for the CIP development.

The CIP program is a joint program, and so we are striving for a process that is joint throughout.

As we mentioned, this is our kickoff meeting.

It's a joint meeting.

It's our starting point.

It's our affordability discussion.

We'll also have a discussion on financing options.

After today, we will part ways temporarily.

Each board will have an opportunity to discuss their priorities.

So for the school division, this won't look much different than previous processes.

You will receive your recommendation from your Long Range Planning Advisory Committee.

Then you'll have a work session in August which allows you to prioritize.

It's my understanding that for general government this will be a little different.

This year it will be staff recommendations, but in the future you may consider a similar model from the long-range planners.

It has served us well.

It's an opportunity for you to have a work session that really does a deep dive and allows you to prioritize your projects.

After that process is complete, we'll come back together and have a joint meeting in September.

That meeting is an opportunity to have a sharing of each entity's priorities.

That was feedback from one of your previous joint meetings is needing more opportunity to have dialogue and understanding of what each other is working on.

We'll have a follow-up on the strategies discussion.

In October, we're having something called a CIP Advisory Committee.

It's going to be very similar to the oversight committee.

We felt like that, the makeup of that committee was strong.

It's two representatives from the school board, two representatives from the board of supervisors, a planning commission member, and a community member.

The work of that committee is re-envisioned a little bit.

With the discussion today around a max equivalent tax rate, they will be empowered to produce scenarios and options for the boards to consider.

In November, you'll have a third joint work session.

This is a work session you normally have around operational five-year needs, and this is an opportunity to have your capital discussion in the context of your operating discussion.

After that, a recommended five-year CIP would be developed, and ultimately in April, you would adopt your capital budget.

So that's a proposed roadmap.

Again, we'll discuss it at the end.

We just wanted to put this meeting, this kickoff meeting, in that context.

Hello, everyone.

Thank you for attending this really important kickoff meeting.

So we thought before we start, it would be good for us to just take a moment, and this will be a moment for you to provide some observations on what we're calling the current state of our current CIP.

And the current CIP is that time frame that Rosalind mentioned to you earlier.

It's the one that we're working with today.

And those of you on the Board of Supervisors, on your executive summary you had a list and it's also in our proposed budget of all the projects kind of in a more graphical way like this.

But we decided to put it together more of a picture way for this conversation.

So the current state of the CIP from fiscal year 20 to fiscal year 24 is a $207.6 million CIP.

The importance about this chart that I'm going to share with you is when you see things that are colored in in the lines, that means they're funded, and when you see

a box that doesn't have color in it, it means it's unfunded and it's just for displaying purposes.

This is illustrative, it doesn't include every single project, but it gives you kind of a, it's a neat way to just sit back and look at your CIP in its entirety together and we found it really interesting at the staff level to do this and thought you might as well.

I'm going to start with the bottom.

I'm going to build it up from the bottom up.

As you know, over the years, through the recession, and pretty much how we operate in the county, which is different than some organizations, is we make sure our maintenance and replacement projects are funded.

We take care of the buildings that we already have.

This is a very important component of our CIP.

We have funding in it year after year after year for both schools and local government to replace our school buses, to take care of technology, to take care of our buildings, to make sure our fire apparatus is replaced on a schedule.

So that's kind of what I've been calling kind of a drumbeat of your CIP year after year.

So that is fully funded as you can see on this graphical chart.

The other thing that's included in this CIP is High School Center 2 and also the Courts Project.

So you can see up there kind of some timelines.

These are timelines on when the funding is planned to be budgeted in your CIP.

So you can see those at the top.

The other thing that you have is some additional funding for the school board to make some more decisions on.

If you remember when we went through all those 9 to 11 meetings in the spring and summer last year, there was a conversation of an additional $12 million for the schools to have some conversation, make decisions on.

So that is also in the CIP.

Again, as I mentioned before, the blocks that are empty are not in the CIP, so I'm just showing this as an illustration.

Right now the elementary school capacity is not in the current CIP, and the school renovation modernization is not in the CIP.

But you do have the $12 million as that placeholder that we talked about before.

So you can kind of see, again, what's in and some of the areas that's not in.

We put $6 million towards quality of life bike ped projects, so that comes in in fiscal year 21.

The transportation leveraging project, which we've been doing is transportation revenue sharing is what it used to be called.

That is budgeted in 20 right now.

We do have some carry forward money that's still available, but you can see there's no additional funding being put into transportation leveraging program from 21 on.

The ACE program is funded at $500,000 per year through $23,000.

You have $6 million for parks and rec quality life projects currently budgeted in the first year, but you can see to fully address our parks needs and the planning for parks, there's no additional funding in your current CIP.

Water Resources, we have a bridge year budgeted in 20.

We had it in 19 and in 20, but you can see there's no additional funding for the Water Resources program on an ongoing basis at this point.

We put $50,000 for evidence storage study.

Those of you on the oversight committee might remember we had a lot of conversation about this.

This is associated with public safety, but we do not have the funding in the CIP to build it.

So that just shows you what's in and what is not on that one.

And then this is just the last item I just wanted to mention.

We do have a $2 million reserve for advancing strategic priorities.

It was put in the prior year and it shows up in fiscal year 20.

And this was a placeholder that the Board of Supervisors put in place for as they were building their strategic plan a couple years ago.

So that's it in a nutshell.

There's lots of other small pieces here and there, but these are the kind of some highlights of your CIP.

I just have a clarifying question.

Sure, sure.

So this is showing us the current state of what's budgeted 20 to 24.

Obviously, CIP projects are multi-year, so that project, this would be to the left of the 20, right?

What was funded by the referendum was two years worth of modernization and we're very grateful for the impact that it has, but it's a small sliver in the needs of our 25 facilities.

And you said that you did have another 12 million set aside for that.

Did I hear that right?

So in the current CIP there's a placeholder of about 12 million.

We didn't want to get too in the weeds today with it.

You'll receive an amendment request from the school board when they have prioritized that.

That 12 million does not address all of the elementary school capacity needs nor all of the modernization needs.

But this blank place right here, I'm sorry for so many clarification questions, I just want to make sure I understand.

Yes.

Lori, could you please explicate under the high school center number two, the asterisk says estimated tax rate includes operational support for center two.

Certainly that's a great question and I didn't highlight, there's a couple little asterisks on the bottom.

I know it's kind of hard to see for the audience here.

But as you can see on fiscal year 21, he's referencing that 2.3 cents estimate on the tax rate, 0.8 of that.

is estimated for the operational costs associated with opening Center 2.

Oftentimes when we do our CIP planning, when there's a large impact from operations, we want to make sure we take that into account for our fiscal planning.

So if you're building something that will require some operational costs that are higher than the more routine operational costs, we plan that in.

So when we say there's 2.3 cents associated with CIP, it's important for us to point out it's not all CIP in debt.

So from the standpoint of the public, what they would be looking at in fiscal year 21 potentially is another 1.5 cents dedicated exclusively to the CIP.

But in this case, all of that money dedicated to the CIP would be utilized for high school center number two.

And then there would need to be a 0.8 cent tax increase that would be dedicated on the government, I mean on the school side,

for the increased operational cost for the school division to open the second center.

So let me just make sure.

I think you're right in part, but I think the total, the total 2.3 includes the 0.8.

So it's 1.5 that goes to the capital and debt program and 0.8 that would be operational, but all associated with this capital program.

It does make sense, but as I said earlier, generally speaking, the CIP is not used for the operational side of the equation.

It's really an investment in bricks and mortar and or furniture in the case of modernization within a school.

And so I just wanted to make sure that that was very clear here that we're looking at fiscal year 21 to add 0.8 cents on an operational side that will be dedicated out of

the tax increase that's presented as a capital increase.

And that brings up a good point as to why we think it's important and I know the oversight committee thought it was important to start thinking about capital and operating together because even though they influence each other so it's just an important way for us to start moving forward to think about it together.

Great question.

The thing that confuses me is, as you look at this chart, there's very little expense in FY22 and very little in FY24.

Is that what you're projecting?

That's basically it.

I'm going to look around.

and Tia, she's nodding her head.

Yeah, the maintenance replacement is, we are basically, at least historically, been a really strong maintenance replacement CIP and adding projects, new projects and new initiatives are not on a regular basis.

So it's an important approach that we've been taking towards our capital program for many, many years.

One quick question Lori, and that is

By the end of fiscal year 20, will we have, other than courts, will we have constructed the things for which the referendum in 2016 was passed and for which we've given budget now?

Thank you.

You're asking about the status of the 2016 referendum.

At the conclusion of this summer, the majority of them are complete.

We will have two or three minor renovation ones the following summer, but 95% of them will be complete with the opening of the western edition.

Okay.

That brings up a good point about CIP is that there's carry forward, there's projects that we might have started prior to 20 that are still underway.

So this is just looking at the current state of the budget for the 2024 forward.

Lori, actually just one other question I have.

If we assume a single penny in the fiscal year 21 budget will generate approximately $1.9 million, rounding it off at $200,000 either way, then 0.8 cents would represent $1.52 million.

We're not proposing that the Point 8 is coming from the capital program.

It's associated with the capital program.

It's an impact based on the capital building that we've built.

We have done some of this in the past where we have actually made sure that the public and people know if there's a capital project that's being done that will have an implication on an operating cost that's over and above kind of unusual operating costs.

As our financial modeling, we really want to model that in to make sure that we don't leave that out.

I feel a little uncomfortable thinking that it's going to take 0.8 for operating that center.

I think that 0.8 of additional operating costs might include that center and other additional operating costs related to the growth of the county.

Because in theory,

even though new resources will go into that, that'll reduce resources in our current high school so that it's not, you know, we have a certain amount of extra maintenance, but I don't see the .8 on the tax rate from that center.

I can speak to the estimate we provided on the operating impacts.

When we open a new facility, there's some overhead costs.

So a director, a nurse, a lead custodian, a no way.

So there's a whole slew of overhead costs.

This is not impact of teachers or anything.

Those will follow students, but there's some overhead.

That's why we've had previous conversations of why we expand schools versus build new.

Yeah.

Right.

So let's clarify that we're not taking money out of the CIP.

which is what I think your question was.

And I heard the first answer is yes, in a way.

And I think it was just a little, it was just the way it was stated.

But we're not taking money out of the CIP to fund this operational.

Yeah, that's what I was asking, but I do look under the current state of the CIP on this graph, and it shows fiscal year 21, 2.3 cents, and then it says with the asterisk, estimated tax rate includes operational support for center two.

So anyone casually looking at this presumes

that all 2.3 cents is going to be incorporated in CIP.

The 0.8 of that is going to the operational side.

That's not currently in the budget, so that's all new revenue that needs to be generated.

That's why I'm driving this.

I don't perceive it that way.

I perceive it as that is a proposed tax increase put upon the taxpayers.

How it gets parsed out, that's

or a supervisor's decision.

Okay.

Now, if that's the case, that's different than what we've talked about earlier.

Then it's 0.8 cents that's going to be generated for operational side, and then there's going to be a need to dedicate additional 1.5 pennies on the capital side, which suggests to me that we either take that 1.5 pennies

out of existing funds in the CIP, but given everything else we have in the CIP, the likelihood is not strong that we will be, or a future board will be in a position to do that.

And in fact, then what we're really looking at is another 1.5 cent increase just for the CIP.

That's what I was trying to get clear here, that we, to cover the 2.3 cents here,

So I'll try again and then we can continue on with this or I can send something out to everybody as a follow-up.

But this 2.3 cents is a planning number based on modeling of the total tax rate increase that would be necessary

1.5 of it for the capital and debt part and 0.8 was based on some initial numbers that came from the school division that was for the operating costs of Center 2 after it opens.

And of course, they're all based on timing of when it opens and what's needed and more scrubbing of the numbers, so it's an initial planning number.

So there's nothing over top of that.

Is that fine?

That's clear now.

Now we're clear.

Thanks so much.

It's an important item to get cleared up because we are going to talk about affordability in a few minutes and that's an important part of the first part of the slide.

So now we're going to move into a very important part of this conversation, and this is the affordability and capacity considerations.

And as Rosalind pointed out, what we're trying to do with this new look and new way of how we work together for the CIP is what if we had the affordability conversation first,

instead of at the very end with all the extra meetings and say what is it that we think for modeling purposes and as we start out the door, what is the affordability comfort level and then move in through the cycle so that's not done at the end.

So it's kind of switching it to have this conversation early and having it together.

So what are some considerations that we all have?

And one, we know that the county's growing, so that's something that we're all mindful of.

I know the school's thinking capacity, and we're thinking about a lot of things on the general government side to do with growth.

We have operational five-year financial planning we do every fall, and we want to think about that.

We don't want to think about CIP without also thinking about operations.

We want to think about what we call our debt capacity and our debt.

We have debt policies in the county that are set by this county that we have to keep a really good eye on.

And then we want to think about our taxpayers considerations and that's something that we're kind of term the term we're using is affordability.

So quickly, these are just a couple quick slides.

You can see that the county's growing.

This is a slide from Weldon Cooper that shows by 2045 we could have 148,000 in population.

So that's just an indicator that we're viewed as a county that will continue to have growth.

These two slides are slides that were shared in the fall.

The one on the left is the school division's five-year financial forecast that we all looked at together back in November.

And you can see on the operational side that there's a potential gap when you get out to fiscal year 23-24.

And my understanding is that slide does not include all the schools' initiatives.

That was basically the schools sharing with us what they're seeing just with their general operation and their capacity based on growth.

And then on the other side of the slide, it's called general fund, but it's the general government also looks at our operational costs, and we do a five year financial plan and

balance the first two years as an exercise.

And again, these are all based on assumptions and five.

And then you can still see that we see a gap in the out years as well.

So we think it's important as we think about capital and as we move through this process together that we think about capital and operating together.

So if you're thinking about potential cost implications for capital, that we're not we're not forgetting that we have an operational side as well to the House and that they should be done and thought about together.

I added this slide.

This is a slide that the Board of Supervisors saw very recently in their capital work session.

And it's, you know, we think about capital, but we also, you know, capital is very much why we have some debt in the county.

So I just wanted everyone to see this slide to talk a little bit about how we look at our debt.

And so basically, if you look, and this is all still around your current CIP, if you look at the top box on the left,

We have some existing debt on the books from past capital projects.

And you can see that's at the end of fiscal year 18, it was $192 million.

And then in this capital's current state that you just looked at, we're projecting some new debt associated with it based on our debt ratios and based on our modeling and planning of an extra $165.6 million.

And then you can see we're also retiring debt.

So in the left box at the bottom, we're going to retire over those next five years, $117 million of old debt.

So we have existing debt, some projected new debt, some retiring debt.

And then you can see at the box there on the right, of looking at 19 to 24, we'd have about $239.8 million in debt.

And that's for both schools and general government.

Those are just the preliminary slides as we move into this affordability conversation that you're going to have.

And we've planted in two parts.

And so the first part would be, I'm going to go over a slide with you in a moment, and we're calling that providing direction on the maximum equivalent tax rate.

Now, we're saying it's tax rate, but it's an equivalent tax rate.

It's just for planning purposes, how much additional resources would be required.

based on our current modeling.

And so we're using a tax rate equivalent just so that we can all look at it in the same way.

And we're gonna use a conversation called Think, Pair, Share.

And what we're gonna ask you to do is sit with a person or persons next to you and talk a little bit about this chart I'm gonna share with you.

Talk together and then at the end of about a 10 minute conversation or so, then one of the people in your group

We'll lean forward into the mic and share where you think that we should be for planning purposes.

So that's kind of how we plan this conversation to occur.

Once we get past that part of our conversation today, we think it's important to do an initial brainstorm

on funding tools, options, alternatives.

What are other things that we can do?

I know the oversight committee had some ideas as part of their conversations during this last cycle of what are some other things we can do?

It's not all about tax rate, right?

There's other things that we talked a lot about, public-private partnerships and a lot of other things.

So just a moment for some more brainstorming on that.

And that would be the second part of this time together for conversation.

So I'm gonna start with part one.

And so this is gonna be animated in, but you have a copy of this in your slides in front of you.

We're calling it, our board of supervisors are familiar with this, if they remember back to those multiple meetings that we had, we did kind of a chart like this, and we're gonna show you three scenario levels of funding.

So the one on the left here, and this is just a starting point, so I wanted to refer to this, remember we just talked about the current state,

current five-year plan at $207.6 million.

The estimated pennies on the tax rate, we're talking here a little bit of a range.

It does include the 0.8 again in that number.

So you can see that, and we did also footnote it on this.

and I wanted to mention the bottom footnote on this page is really important is that this is based on modeling scenarios.

We're going to talk seven years now instead of just five because we know the courts come in towards the end of our five year and we just didn't want to leave that out when we start thinking about debt.

So we're going to be showing you a seven year picture here in a moment.

And our modeling scenarios have assumptions in them.

So we assume timing of when we go out for debt.

We assume what equity requirements do we mean.

And what that means is how much cash you have to have.

Do you borrow at 93%, you borrow things not at a complete amount, some things you want to pay cash for, and you have to have a cash component to your CIP.

We look at interest rates.

We look at out-year projection costs and more.

So there's a lot of assumptions built into this model.

If you change things a little bit here and there, you could change how this plays out on your bottom line.

So just wanted to share with you that there are assumptions in here that could affect the outcome if you moved projects up and back and forth and do a few things.

And those of you who've been with the oversight committee are aware of when we model that we have a lot of assumptions built in.

So there's your current state.

And now we're going to share with you what a level one state would be.

And this is a seven year picture again.

We're looking at 27, 21 to fiscal year 27.

And we said, well what if, these are what ifs when you do scenario modeling, what if we added three million a year in each year?

just like for the drum beat.

Remember I talked about that?

What if we did that?

That's why I turned to 21.

So, additional 21 over seven years, we're talking about a 227 project costs, $227 million, and there's your range of about three to five cents on the tax rate.

Level two, same time period, seven-year time period.

And this is, what if it's 61 and not 21?

And it's not, you know, what would that take?

And based on the model, it would be 4.5 to 6 cents in an equivalent tax rate.

and then the last level, which puts us right up against our debt capacity.

We've talked before about we have policies on debt capacity.

This kind of hits your capacity out in one of the out years on one of your board policies.

So if you added, and again it's 101 because remember we started with that 21 in the first year.

So what if you added $101 million over the next seven years over your current CIP?

That would be a 5.5 cent to 7 cent range based on our modeling.

So that's the different scenarios that we have for you today.

What we'd like you to do is to

We have you seated by magisterial district.

And so what we like is for the school board and board member of the magisterial districts to talk about this together for a while.

This is the think, pair, and share.

And so pair up, think about this, share ideas, talk about the levels, talk about our current state of our CIP and things that you're seeing.

and then we would like someone after about 10 minutes of conversation and someone will call you back to the mic and someone from that pair of two will speak to where it is that you think would be something for planning purposes we should start out with.

Here on my left we'd like Ann Mallek to to work with Mr. Buyaki and Mr. Dill so that you would share there because we didn't quite have

Everyone.

And then we have At Large.

And we thought the At Large member of the school board could work with a planning commission member so that that would work.

So are you ready to have a conversation amongst yourselves?

Technical question.

I thought I understood it, but now I'm not so sure.

The estimated pennies on the tax rate, that gray bar, blue bar.

It's the total over the seven years.

Total over the seven years.

You caught me up later when you said add $3 million per year times seven years, and I went, whoa, wait a minute.

Okay.

Just one other question.

Yes, ma'am.

Yeah, our model takes that into account and takes it out.

Okay, thank you.

So we're not talking the 2 to 2.5 in 2024 that's already in here because we already did the 1.5 this year.

Yeah, it starts off with your current tax rate.

So you already had did 1.5.

Levels 1 through 3 incorporate the 2 to 2.5 and then you're suggesting in those.

That's right.

It's not an addition to over that.

Correct.

So when we come back you just want us to be able to tell you which one of these.

One, two, or three that we feel comfortable with.

That's the goal.

Now the idea though is that when we report back, if four of us say level two, we're starting to build a consensus for planning purposes of what to take forward.

This is not just a, I mean this is a, this is going to drive planning.

And I will state that I know that the Board of Supervisors is used to having the conversation around the tax rate.

But what we were hoping is to bring in school board members into that discussion so that you can provide input into what you would be comfortable with as a school board member when you're having that conversation about the tax rate increase.

And it's a chance to give input, obviously, on that.

But again, it's not an intellectual exercise.

Thank you for the additional information

I'm sorry.

and relate them directly to what additional capital projects they would prefer.

We probably have a, and that's a good question, usually we work in, what is it, either 1.8 or 2.6?

What amount of assessments?

Hey Lori, can you, what do you have in your planning to increase assessments?

1.8% assumed, 1.8% increase in assessments.

So there is there is a lot of

and almost anything for me.

First off, I guess I'd like

We'll see how we compare it to other countries.

So it would be useful to them to have in progress.

You know, like a new elementary school.

Like about 18 million, 15 to 18 million.

Probably a whole lot more than that.

So this gets us one new elementary school.

Yeah, right.

We would have to count that in, but I would probably end up with additions being needed at some of the urban rings, well, maybe not the urban rings, but out in the western end of the county.

But then, since we sought to pride ourselves, if we didn't have these people representing the county.

Alright, so thinking about social issues.

Alright, so maybe what we might need, like a Crozet edition.

would it be that 2024 up to 2.5?

I think it's going to be that if we hit high school so we can save a lot of money.

But maybe to think about the projects we would need would be probably at least expansion in process.

Probably modernization at some of the other schools like Stone Robinson, maybe one or two others that would need some modernization.

But Scottsville will be there too.

And then maybe even Red Hill.

Red Hill has some renovations.

So between the three, the main three schools.

This is where we wanted, we're currently covering that point in the budget.

So we're just saying $13 million, what an inflation factor.

All right, so then thinking about... Well, then we added seven million for anything else.

So we'll take it to twelve.

Okay, so we're at twenty-five, we're at thirty million right now with the RTP.

Yeah, that doesn't include parks.

Are you close to ready?

I'm not sure it's helpful.

Okay, so for purposes of time, over here to the left, if we want to start, we have two folks that could come forward because we have two magisterial districts represented here on the left side.

I think we are.

I think first I'd like to say I think this format is pretty good.

It's a chance to talk.

about concerns and issues that

issues and concerns that we have and share that out.

Ten minutes doesn't seem to necessarily be enough time to really get deep in the weeds and probably need more time.

So that's some feedback to share and it's probably something that needs to be a deeper ongoing conversation.

frequently when we get together to talk about these kind of issues.

I think we kind of came up that we wanted to have a cautious approach, make sure that we're completing projects on time, potentially within budget, and not do too many projects at once that we can't oversee and complete.

The FES capacity to make sure that everything is done just right is really important.

When citizens see redos, they get really, really concerned about our management and how we have to do things over to get it right.

Sorry about my voice.

That's good.

Okay, thank you.

So we concentrated on more like what kind of tax increase could we stomach over seven years, and I think that was just, you know, what I thought we were sort of trying to do.

And so over the seven years,

The total of the lower end of the green, the 4.5, was kind of where we ended up and I think my school board member and I agree with that and I don't know about Bruce.

The lower end.

The lower end, the 4.5.

And we really concentrated on what we thought people could handle given the 2.5 cent, excuse me, 2.5 cent increase in the assessments is built, a 2.5%, I guess, increase in the assessments is built into the model.

We don't know what that's going to be, so we have to be very cautious about that.

But I certainly I think we would all agree about Ann and Jason and Norman's comment about going slow and making sure we do things right.

Okay, let me ask a question back to you for clarity.

If the range is 4.5 to 6 adding 61 million and level 1 is 3 to 5 cents adding 21 so you're suggesting adding the 61 but not going past the 4.5 so it may be that it takes a little more than that so are you all comfortable with level 2?

Looking at this right now what we're comfortable with you could say is the low end is the 4.5

We can't do it.

We're not doing any range with you.

We're not playing range.

And I'm a little confused because I see the first group and the second group are actually, I'm just not sure I understand what the mission is because it looks like to me that Ann and Jason and Norman's group said that

We have what we have now and they wouldn't add anything else for the next seven years, period.

Is that the intent?

I don't think it was that hard and fast.

It was more as the beginning of the discussion, but we would be towards the lower

Then I'm misunderstanding what you're saying.

Yeah, I don't think we... Because we all thought that's what you were saying was you were happy with where we are.

then the current.

But over the next seven years you wouldn't add anything else at all.

Well, I don't want to speak for everyone.

But maybe it is.

Okay, I'm just trying to figure out what we're all doing.

and I think Ann and I thought rather than coming up with a specific number that we would compromise by just saying, you know, let's be reasonable, maybe a penny or two along the way.

Ann, what do you?

Well, under the box of current CIP is a 2.5 cent increase over above where we are today.

That's what, am I saying that right, Lori?

Yeah, I mean, you're talking about a half penny over five years each year is sort of the bare minimum that would be what I'm seeing in that darkest box, the green box.

I have a question.

On this chart, I was assuming with the

Those were the projects that were funded.

Before we move on, I just want to be clear, what we were thinking was we already did 1.5 this year, we're going to do 2.3 next year, and then what do we want to do after that, and we were being very conservative after that and saying more like two more cents, but let's see how, you know.

The only problem I have is when you're doing pennies,

if you don't indicate the level that you're supporting, then we don't have a clear idea of what the additional resources are that are gonna be generated.

So, no criticism, but when you say 4.5 cents, that could be in level one, because level one has a range from three pennies to five pennies.

Whereas level two, and that only generates 21 new million dollars over seven years.

but level two could have 4.5 pennies and that could generate at the end of that scale at six cents, 61 million over seven years.

Current.

You're totally settled into the current way.

And again, we were narrowing this because we had 10 minutes and there's a lot of unknowns and I personally don't like the model as well as Jason does, but so that's why we just sort of said, okay, well, let's see what we can stomach.

So I think we had unanimous comfort with level one.

We had unanimous discomfort with level three.

And then two of us were beginning to, or had some comfort with level two, and one did not have any comfort with level two.

So that's kind of where this group fell.

I would allow, or obviously let Jono and Katrina speak for themselves.

I was also number two, and it's not from a desire to tax and spend, but I'd rather start higher and work our way down.

I think there are a lot of figures in here that with economic growth, with real estate value growth, what the assumptions are for that.

And so I don't know if there would be enough impact to look at number two.

and say, does that take it from four and a half to six cents down to two and a half to three and a half cents?

Or does it take it to four to five and a half cents?

I mean, I don't know.

I would want some more certainty because I mean there's overlap here it seems like you could get have a tax rate that's like 4.5 and only get 21 million yes so more certainty around right what is really the difference was in separate ranges yeah we talked about that ourselves too but this is how the modeling showed us

Okay, the Jack Jouett district.

We looked at the number of unfunded projects and gifts and see getting by with level one.

and we were thinking more of we're going to need $60 million worth of projects over the next seven years that $20 million above what's been funded is not going to cut it.

Actually, I mean, Steve's being very conservative about it, that we looked at feeling that we're probably the number that's needed.

out there.

It's not a want.

It's a need based on growth and capacity issues in schools that we're looking somewhere on the spectrum between level two and level three, that it's somewhere around maybe greater than six cents, but it may be less than

7 cents, you know, it could be 6.2 cents over that time period, fiscal year 27.

To be realistic, if we're going to keep up with the level of expectations for

facility enhancement, recreational, and actually what we did, we didn't even include parks and recreation.

We came up with $53 million essentially putting some money in there, $5 million for the RTP over the next seven years that that would become a much more viable entity and address transportation issues in the school division as well as in the community and affordable housing.

but we came up with a minimum of 53 without recreation even entering into the discussion.

So I'm looking at Mr. Galloway as our chair.

I'm hearing a lot of level two as far as more people saying level two than other ones as a larger group.

Well it was fair that three groups said two for sure.

There looked to be some overlap from a fourth group into at least possibly skirting into this bottom half of level two.

And a group, I don't know if they have some comfort going into, well they don't have comfort going into level two if that's not the right way to go.

From a magisterial district that's a three for sure, one getting there, two no.

I will say for us I did not understand this overlap.

You know, I mean, I don't know what to do about the overlap.

What does that mean money wise?

And maybe you explained that when we started, but I didn't quite get that.

What we need to provide to staff is that idea so that they can plan.

If we had all come back and said, oh, no, none of us are going over level one.

Well, then that

puts them right into the policy line of what they're going to be planning for.

If there's enough of us with some comfort level with two, they can at least plan for that.

No decisions are being made.

Please, nobody go out of here reporting we're setting tax rates today and things like that.

This is all the planning purposes behind it.

And if there was no monies or different decisions made like John was speaking to within the current budgets, then it would mean this would need to happen to the tax rate.

But that's not that's not crystal.

That's not clean.

We give you a funnel at least.

The input of the, how wide the funnel is at the top is what we're kind of suggesting today.

I'm gonna just take a quick look to my staff and others out here.

I'm seeing some positive nods.

All right, I think that gives us some good direction to get us started on the modeling parts of it and be ready.

And again, this is different and we are switching it.

This was a huge, multiple, multiple meetings at the end of the fiscal year 19 process.

This really gives us some guidance up front so that we don't just model all the way every project that comes through so we think about

some constraints up front.

So I think this was really helpful for us and I'm sorry you didn't have more time to talk.

Well, there will be obviously more time as we go forward with things to discuss this as we start to, you know, we kept hearing the word political will at the regional housing summit as well.

But, I mean, the political reality will start to play out as we move through the budget decision, as everybody starts to set their priorities, what are the actual projects.

So we'll see how that comes to play.

And this board will have a different board the next time we make final decisions on monies.

So it'll be interesting to go.

I would like to thank everybody from both the supervisors and the school board though.

This is not, I mean this is not an easy thing to just throw out there and to do, to quickly do on your feet and to have some conversation with.

So we didn't, frankly didn't know how this was going to, how you all were going to react to it.

Two quick comments.

Perhaps a next step would be to say play it out as a scenario if it were level one, two, or three.

What could you get for that?

I know the last group to report was talking about parks and recreation, certain amount of school needs.

This is a little abstract without knowing how it aligns with what you could obtain by doing that.

That's the first comment.

Second comment is, I suspect the board has seen this, I don't know.

that everyone has would be the benchmark against some other communities.

Where might we be headed even longer term as growth takes place?

How do we compare to other communities in our area?

Great observations.

We used to have one for just the tax rate, but not how they do capital.

Oh, okay.

We actually don't have that in this particular budget year, but we've done that in the past and could share that information.

Just that this was a good process for kicking off what we're trying to accomplish here and to get commonality in conversation among the magisterial districts and the supervisors.

It would have been helpful to have ranges for the unfunded projects.

Everybody needs to be on their mic more.

I know I was just chiding someone else for not speaking to their mic and there I am.

The comments made early on about how challenging it is sometimes to differentiate the operating versus the capital investment.

An example of that is the school division built out rented space for our first center and that was not out of the capital budget.

that was a cost savings for us.

We didn't have the capital to do something, but that sort of, that build out wasn't strictly, you know, it was all done on the operating side.

One slightly off-topic idea, but it really impacts where we can go, is there are other parallel tracks that I hope we will make some progress on this summer and fall about programs that might allow tax waiver and extra assistance for our very elderly folks who do not right now qualify for our really great waiver program.

but there are many who are just outside.

Anybody without a mortgage, anybody with a small tiny pension, even $50 a month, they do not qualify.

So if we can figure out a way legislatively to improve that for the lowest income folks whom we have who are living independently now on their little houses they built 50, 80 years ago, then this will make many more things possible without driving them wholesale out of the county.

I was just going to kind of add a little bit to what Bruce said as far as knowing how much another penny or half penny would buy that it's not only within the school budget but it's we're trying to figure out you know our highest priority was climate change and sustainability what are the

It's a start.

We're getting to brainstorming.

It sounds like you're already talking about some other ideas like what else can we do and it isn't all about the tax rate as you all know and you've all brought up examples and the oversight committee brought up examples too.

It's like what else can we do?

What might we do?

And so we have some time left on the agenda for just a quick brainstorm of ideas and this and you won't know all the details about all of these things.

These are things that like what is it that

you feel like we should, you'd like to learn more about?

You'd like us to explore a little more?

And we can't do everything, but what is it that you'd like maybe some more focus on that might help us with our capital, meeting our capital needs?

And what we've started out with, and I'm going to go to the next slide here.

is a process, we have a list, and I'll go back to this, we have a list of ideas that have been brainstormed so far, and some of you that have been here for a while probably have seen some of these things before, but what are some general things that we have heard along the way that board members and others have brought up, like what if, what might we do, what can we do differently?

and we also have a few question marks up there because we know the list isn't complete but so I'm just going to read through them and then what we're going to ask you to do is I'm going to go back to the prior slide here is that we're going to first look at this list and then ask you to add any initial you know brainstorm ideas hey what about this what about this and meanwhile we're going to have folks here from the school staff they're going to be taking down notes and we're going to get it all on a flip chart

And then after we brainstormed some ideas, you will have an envelope and I think the envelope is going to be passed out to you soon.

Rosalind's got the envelope.

You will have an envelope that will have dots.

Many of you know how we do some dot voting.

The dots are a little bit different in that

Your green dot has three points, your yellow dot has two points, your blue dot has one, and then you have a black dot that's a non-starter or do not discuss it anymore.

We don't think that this is what we'd like you to pursue if you want to use it.

You might just say, no, this is a non-starter for me personally, or you might not want to use that, but we just thought we'd give you that option as well.

So let's look at this list.

that we've started with.

The one on the left top, promote shared legislative priorities.

I know we've done a lot of this in the past, I've been here for a while that we've talked about shared priorities, but what if, what if we really go strong together and maybe bring others along with us on some different types of maybe options from the General Assembly that might help us with not having to always rely on the tax rate, for example.

So that's one idea on the left top block.

Next to it, we said, what if you could establish service districts?

We've had some conversations with the Board of Supervisors on what's called a service district.

They're a district of the county where they can have a different amount of funding that the community can decide on or it could be identified for some new things.

So there's some ways, instead of thinking about the county as a whole, you might think about county's ability to maybe do something different with your service districts.

The next one is something that we've talked about before and it might be something that you want to consider giving some of the conversation you just had.

Do we want to go for another referendum?

If we want to do it, planning is a very important up front as you all know for some good timeline to work on that correctly.

So that would be something we'd like to know if you're interested in more conversation about that at this time.

reduce operating budgets.

You only have so much money overall.

We have a formula that we shift new revenues from capital to operating budgets.

Do you want to consider any changes there?

You may not or you may.

The left bottom was extend, expand grant funding.

I know the schools and local government both do a lot of pursuit of outside resources to help pull off things and we've done some great things with grant funding.

Do we want to collectively really start working on what other resources can we bring in?

The next one is prepare a plan for downturns.

Build a reserve.

Business cycles aren't all linear.

You know that we have cycles.

Do we want to spend a little time with this capital budget to start thinking about building reserves, do some savings for projects?

Next box, consider leasing facilities instead of building more.

It brought to Ms. Acoff's comment earlier, what if you leased and didn't have to build?

Should we think about doing that more?

The next box, review prioritization of maintenance and replacement funding.

This one came from the oversight committee.

That was a recommendation that they put on the table.

Should we review that and look at that again?

In the left bottom box, we will have time at the end of this meeting for you to consider.

We've had several conversations jointly about the public-private partnerships and should we encourage the use of that as we move forward.

And now I'm just going to say we have some question marks up there.

I'm just going to make a comment.

Are we doing that?

Well, we were going to fill in some question marks.

Mr. Colazar mentioned he had two to add in.

It was sort of a clarifying question slash comment.

One is increasing funding or investing in solar power for our schools with a relatively short payback period from energy savings.

So that would be in one instance it would be increasing our capital funding but with the short payback period I think it would be

And the second thing, and this considers preparing for a downturn, is could we sell excess land that we own to generate funding for capital projects?

Okay, ending the revenue sharing agreement.

I'm sorry, what was that?

Where you can have, I'm not sure what the right name for it is, but if you could have your land that you aren't paying taxes on because of maybe some type of purpose that's been deemed for that land.

Land use.

Land use, okay, that's it.

But that's what, I wasn't sure about the name of it.

Lori, one I would say, I don't think the county has ever gone out with a capital dedicated tax increase except this year and therefore establishing the argument with the community

as to why there is such a wide range and depth of capital needs within the county across the spectrum, school division, parks and rec, police, fire, etc., and therefore really communicating on an annual basis where those tax pennies are going and what projects are therefore getting funded.

I think we've blanched from trying to make that argument and yet everyone understands when you look at all the growth curves that continued population growth here is inevitable.

It's inexorable.

Just piggy-dacking on to what Mr. Randolph has said, and what we had discussions about repeatedly in our CIP Committee, Oversight Committee, was making the argument that why we are so far behind on so many of these capital projects, that we have been significantly underfunding capital since the Great Recession.

and we need a strategic plan and articulate what that plan is to even catch up and otherwise it just seems like we're just repeatedly overspending but that argument that we have not funded, we've added a thousand students in our school division

and we have just recently finished the one edition in a decade, well actually since 2006, 1990s.

And I agree with that, with both what Dr. Akoff and Mr. Randolph had to say, because I've always been a believer that price is an issue in the absence of value.

and if we're not communicating what the value is that would be provided and especially as we're a growing community then price is always going to be an issue and I fully agree with what Supervisor Malek said about the program for the

Leswelloff, and I fully agree with that.

But looking at the main body, if you will, of the community, I think that there has to be that communication.

I think we should evaluate as we're looking not just at the financial cost of buildings and just investments in general, but the sustainability aspects of it, too.

We're all for sustainability, and we seem to all be for building a lot of buildings that are going to be forever, 24 hours a day, require heating and cooling and cleaning and maintenance.

Right, which is a minor thing which you agree, Steve, to say renewable energy rather than solar specifically.

Solar technology is something that's there now with a three, four, five year payback period.

So Lori, all I would add, if everyone's there, is that I would recommend we go back in 2015, we had our Citizen Resources Advisory Committee study that was done, and as people were making comments, I was scrolling through.

There's a lot of the same comments being brainstormed here that were in some of their tier one findings.

So there are other items in that tier one findings, which I thought that was a well done study that was presented back then.

The bond referendum, talk of the first bond referendum came out of that, on the heels of that study.

I would highly recommend we go back and scrutinize those, especially the tier one suggestions, and they broke it down by strategies, revenue generating tools, and process tools.

service district would be an example of a process tool.

The revenue generating tools, some of it's limited by the state, same with some of like emissions tax, cigarettes tax, things like that.

But I think there are things in there that we could look at.

Investment of funds is one that's there.

Over and beyond encourage use of PPEAP3, I'm reminded as there

The first item on their Tier 1 strategy was economic development.

And that is an effective strategy for our county.

Pulling that off is really what's going to keep us at the lower end of those ranges that we saw on the previous chart.

So all of us making sure we don't get pigeon-holed, I'm one of the biggest fans of trying to develop and get use out of PPEAs and P3s as much as possible, but it is a subset of a bigger strategy that we all have to not lose sight of.

And then the other one, up here we have reduced operating budgets, but we have, and the county executive in his current plan has business process optimization as a strategy that we are going to take on over this next year.

And frankly, sometimes that can mean, really, and Trevor, where's Trevor?

He always reminds me of this.

It's not necessarily the losing of staff.

but it is changing of positions.

And if you can optimize some positions that you don't need the human touch for and move that human touch over to another piece that allows you maybe to take on a different operating burden.

So finding those type of process optimization could help us with capacity as well.

So reduce operating budgets to me just sounds like cut, cut, cut.

But it's really about effective use of what your operating budget is.

They suggested in the study to get a third party to do an efficiency study.

I think that the county executive's current plan looking at this type of business process optimization is the right one.

and I think we're going to be able to find some capacity there that will help with this endeavor as well.

But it's important when we put this up for consideration and brainstorming that we use the language that we're using in our current budget and our current and our other meetings.

And then did we talk impact fees?

Did that come up when I was looking at my...

Okay, good.

And just to kind of piggyback on that, Ned mentioned economic development and that gets back to the communication piece because we still have a lot of pushback from our community on economic development.

And I think communicating what we mean as a county around economic development and what we're talking about

I have people say to me, oh, Diantha, we just don't need more and more shopping centers.

Well, that's not exactly what we're talking, I mean, it's just, so that education.

The other thing, and I have to see how I can phrase this when we're talking about communication, I really think we need some communication around our rural area and our development area.

communicating why someone that lives in the rural area and says they're on a well and they're, you know, they're on septic, why it gets back to education about the common good and we're all in this together.

and while you may be in the rural area, you still drive in and ride on roads in the urban ring.

Just trying to figure out how we get back to that common good sense rather than just pitting people against, well what do I get for my money?

I'm sorry, Liz, but I think I probably said enough.

Just a quick comment on that.

What I always tell people is that if, and not to bash any other county, but if you lifted up your rural 10 acres and put them in Buckingham, they would not be worth what they're worth in Albemarle County because of all the improvements, the schools, et cetera.

and so that's my standard line when I get that and I'm sure it's most people's standard line but it is a fact.

The other problem though is that they have to pay the taxes on that and we've been talking about trying to do something as Ann suggested

for many years, and it's only recently that we've been said there might be some way to get around that, but I haven't seen that yet.

I just

I want to say a few things.

I'm struck by funding tools, options, and alternatives as our title here.

And like they did in the 2015 study, they put these in different categories, which is ridiculously important.

I do get what people are talking about when they're scared of economic development and I do think that we as a board went through a very careful process where we're not trying to necessarily encourage population growth with our economic development.

We're trying to increase tax revenue per acre.

by doing the Rio 29 plan and all the infrastructure improvements.

And I think that I know a lot of people who have been complaining about it for years that are now coming around to it.

They just hope that the board will be consistent and that we'll stay on this course of how we define economic development.

I wanted to say one thing, which I'm sure everybody on this board knows on this dais, but when we had the Stantec, it was for public, when we had the Stantec study and we had their presentation to us, they were very clear.

One of their first lines was a lot of local governments think a PPEA slash a P3 are a funding source.

and please don't think of it as a funding source.

They're not a funding source.

They are an option.

They're a tool.

They're an alternative.

So in this title up here, that's where they're supposed to be.

So the things that we had said of

you know, where to put the stars.

I don't know if we're gonna talk about that.

I just want to say a couple more comments.

Established service districts.

We've talked about that before.

It's wonderful, but again, where's the political will?

There's all kinds of issues with it.

When we did the North Point sewer project, we put a service district on all of the new homes going into a portion of that.

in order so that their connection charges are higher than your connection charges outside of that.

And that was an example of how to deal with growth and not spread that over all the rate payers, but do it with that.

We've talked about putting a service district around the growth area for transit and sidewalks and things like that, but then we get the pushback of people are gonna move out into the rural areas if you do that.

because then you're raising taxes on just all the urban folks.

And that's not fair because the rural people come in, you know, and they use the services, et cetera.

So I just, when I look at this thing and I think of what can we really do, I like

considering leasing facilities instead of building more, quite a lot.

I know the schools have been wonderful about embracing that, and I think that's a particularly good thing on this list.

And of course, promote shared legislative priorities is a no-brainer, but I don't know how far we're going to get with it.

Okay, I've been told a little time check behind me here.

So are you ready to, and this is initial brainstorming, it's not that we're gonna do every, you know, it's just like what is it that collectively we're seeing as the might have something that you might all collectively want us to altogether maybe work on more than others.

So back to the exercise.

Roslin's going to pass out an envelope to you.

And in the envelope will have these dots.

Okay she's going to have a chart and everybody gets to stand up and take your dots to the chart and again this isn't it's almost like our other conversation it's not a end conversation it's a beginning conversation of things that you collectively you know and they're weighted right the three points two points one point so it's kind of a weighted program like what do you think you'd like to learn the most about or you think might be something that might be again it's tools

To Ms. Palmer's point, it's tools, options, and alternatives.

But it just gives us a chance to just take it a little bit further so when we start thinking about our next steps.

So you have your envelope.

Oh, yeah.

Well, it's not a bad idea.

That one's nonstarter.

Nothing.

Oh, where's the chart?

So do we have to put the chart up?

Blue is one.

And three is our highest.

It looks that way.

Yeah, that makes sense.

You guys can count?

We use all of these.

Okay, so what are we going to do?

We're letting the rough floor down.

In the meantime, the Scottsville and Jack Jouett districts isolated in the soundproof booth off stage.

We will bring them out in just a second.

What did I get out of this two-hour meeting?

You don't have it yet.

Life is good.

That's right.

There's a circle there that you're doing what I was trying to do and it's impossible.

Yeah, we should just continue to lease everything and reach a point that we own nothing and yet we pay an astronomic amount every year for our lease.

We aren't?

You can hear us?

Oh, boy.

And we're going out over the airways?

Yes, sir.

Oh, boy.

Yeah, yeah.

You're right.

I'm just trying to figure out where I would be on these.

It's the service districts really scares me.

and then my poor people would be paying for it.

I mean, they give us our more deadly ones.

You know, that was fine, and I'm happy with why they give.

But, you know, try getting them through our lodging houses and our stores.

it's got the sticker things in the back of it so you'll have to jump that out if you don't want to

I'm not kidding.

The picture has a leak.

You did this?

We took a picture and we'll distribute this.

I don't think, I may have not captured the last couple dots on there, but just the intent of this was some weighted, so quick math.

The top three were utilize general obligation bonds, consider leasing facilities instead of building more, and encouraging the use of PPEA, and we combine that with economic development.

I think it's also noteworthy to state that the most black dots were on that selling land.

Okay, so what we're going to do with this is the next time we get together in September, we will spend, we'll revisit again and spend some time on those higher ranked.

Again, we'll take a picture and put that out and we as staff will digest a little bit too.

So the last two things we have to do is get some consensus on next steps and process and then the PPEA guidelines.

So a little tight in time, but as I mentioned at the beginning, I gave you a preview.

Here again is for discussion.

If you agree with this general process, next steps would be for the boards to work independently and prioritize those projects.

and then we would come back together as a joint group in September.

We would be able to share those priorities.

We would have a follow-up conversation on that exercise and those particular strategies that we discussed.

And we would also revisit the max equivalent tax rate conversation again with some feedback that you had about we're going to get more granular as we go.

So parts of those.

So for instance, we do not re-envision convening the TRC again.

That's a lot of staff time and a lot of details that we're hoping gets fleshed out more in that capital priorities phase of the discussion.

At any point these boards can utilize that committee.

We're all

You know, eager and ready, but we're hoping that the priority conversation would serve that purpose.

So I'll go ahead and respond to that question.

We have so many projects that have already been submitted.

I'm talking about new projects only.

I understand the old ones are done.

So we're thinking that in general there probably won't be a lot of new projects other than ones we know associated with our strategic plan or some of those things.

We won't have a call out to departments this year.

We won't have the general call out that we've done in the past, but do it a little more strategically is how we're envisioning it this year.

This is our first year doing it a little bit different.

We see that it'll probably be modified after this year as we move forward.

Main thing was affordability constraints first and then look at it through what are the projects that we've already been really trying hard to get done and we don't really have them on the table yet.

I would just elaborate on that as well.

That October box I think is at a conceptual level right now.

More detail than in the past.

So, with respect to Bruce's question, what's the Planning Commission's role in this?

And you said you're looking for feedback.

I guess I would like them to have a role in this, for sure, personally.

Especially, I mean, they are a planning commission and this is a planning process.

and I don't know if Bruce wants to, Bruce could you say a little bit about your ideas on that?

I could see that being a behind the scenes activity, not necessarily to modify this chart, but to continue at an appropriate juncture to learn what the items are that are being considered.

We're, for instance, the Pantops Master Plan will include a list of capital projects in all likelihood.

And we're acting on that in just the next few weeks before sending it on to the board.

So certainly, any time that this can come to the Planning Commission,

coordinate the land use decisions, the growth decisions with the capital needs and consequences of those.

Well, it's possible that you could work it into

We do a joint work session in November.

That's typically when the Planning Commission gets it or deals with it.

You could also have what the Planning Commission normally does and we could

I mean, it might be an unruly meeting to incorporate the Planning Commission into the joint work session, but it could also be some variation of that where you have a representative that the Planning Commission chooses to come give the PC comment at that joint work session.

Bruce is more here as a member of the oversight committee, I believe, than the Planning Commission today, but is that right?

What I'm saying is that they do what they've been doing.

The touch point has always been November.

All I'm saying is that as opposed to change it, not have them change, don't do anything differently,

It's just the touch point with the board can happen in that joint work session.

So I'm not asking for a change in their process.

Do what you do.

But now we have a chance that, which I don't believe they've done, they haven't come to that joint work session in the past.

So now it's an opportunity to bring the PC voice right to the table when the next one of the times these two boards meet to discuss this.

Yeah, my only suggestion in going back with them is that they may have some thoughts about how they have had trouble, you know, maybe thoughts that they could get involved in the process where they felt left off in the past.

And I just thought it would be nice to hear from them.

Not that I have any problem with what they're saying just to add, just to have their thoughts.

We don't have to act on them or anything just because they may see places where we haven't thought of that they need to get involved or would help the process to get involved.

So in light of time, what I think I'm hearing is I'm not hearing any resistance in that June-August activities.

OK?

Good afternoon, Bill Latire, Chief Financial Officer.

In the 30 seconds we have left, so just as a reminder, we talked, as you remember, in September at length about the potential opportunities under PPEA.

The next step in the process was to adopt a set of guidelines, and I've shared a draft with you all by email.

These guidelines have been reviewed by our legal department.

Largely mirror images of what the state requires under the code to enable procurement under the PPA guidelines.

We have prepared resolutions for you all to approve.

I do understand that the school board may want to defer on this and have a second meeting to consider these, which is fine.

There's no urgency in doing this today, certainly.

We talked about this at the last joint meeting and

If I remember, I'm just trying to remember that conversation, but doing this would not obligate us to anything.

It just opens the door for information and opportunity that we could then choose to take advantage of or not.

And if I remember correctly,

I thought we saw or heard or somebody at that time went over some examples of other communities that had already had this in place and maybe even a few opportunities that had came about because they had this in place.

Am I misstating?

That's my memory.

So I would be very interested in getting something like this in place.

It just gives you that tool.

That's exactly right.

And we need to start somewhere and just go into the General Assembly and what we've been doing in the past

hasn't moved us off the needle very much, which is why we're having these conversations right now.

That's right.

So instead of doing two separate guidelines, we incorporated them all into one set of guidelines that requires both boards to approve it.

And I like that a lot because that seems to have one document, it's simpler.

I think the only thing that came up was that the school board's accustomed to taking, having an agenda for information and then the next one is the action item.

Yeah, I'm comfortable with this coming to the board after the school board.

But it's been a long time since we talked about this, so I would hope that this would go to the school board fairly quickly and not wait months and months and months.

Excellent.

It's the end of our agenda.

We appreciate it.

I know staff felt like this was productive.

Well done, Rosalind.

I'd like to extend the opportunity.

Mr. Richardson, do you have any comments that you'd like to make about today?

Not that you need to.

I'm just offering you the opportunity.

We have to go into closed meeting, I know.

But first, let me just reiterate what I said earlier.

I appreciate any time that these two boards can get together, especially with focusing on something as important as the capital improvement program.

So I appreciate your time and efforts today and the again, the the willingness to work through the exercises that we had planned to get your feedback.

So thank you for that.

I agree.

This is a great start.

I move that the board go into a closed meeting pursuant to section 2.2371A of the Code of Virginia.

Ms. Palmer?

Yes.

Ms. McKeel?