Board of Supervisors Adjourned Meeting (Budget Work Session #5)   3/17/2020

Good afternoon.

I'm going to call the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors to order for our March 17, 2020 work session, which has been amended.

Thank you, Officer Jason Freistat for being here and for staff who are in.

The first item is a resolution confirming the County Executive's declaration of a local emergency.

So moved.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Ms.

Thank you, Board.

So moved.

Ms.

Ms.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Thank you.

And then the next one is an emergency ordinance to extend certain deadlines in county code chapter 15 taxation.

Does this one need some comments, Greg?

Because the executive summary and the ordinance were not finalized until around midday, I just do have one slide.

This is an emergency ordinance and its sole purpose is to extend the application deadline for those who want to apply for the tax exemption for the elderly and disabled.

The reason for the extending the deadline to May 16th is to

to ensure that the application pool does not feel

Finance staff, a significant number of them are working from home right now.

So to relieve the applicants of this burden, the deadline would be extended to May 16th.

We do anticipate that we will come back to the board with a regular notice

ordinance between now and then.

There are also some other deadlines, particularly in Chapter 15, the tax chapter, that we may be coming to the board as those other deadlines may come up.

I just have a question about, I'm sure we'll put this on our website and everything, but do we have a way of actually notifying the people that have received this?

And I also, if Doug is coming up, have another question.

Oh, okay.

I got this question earlier today.

It's the same if you're renewing your application.

You're just mailing that in as usual.

I'm not fully familiar with the process.

But we will get information back to everybody.

Here she comes.

Hello.

Honorable board members, I'm Jen Lin from the Chief of Revenue Administration.

This is for the renewal of the application.

And that's the reason we can contact the folks who have been in this program before.

Right, we have lists for people who hasn't filed that we can go out.

I will say that when I was talking to someone this morning who has a lot of contact with the elderly through her church and I got the question of

If you mail this in anyway, just kind of some confusion about why we're doing it.

She was concerned that people were expected to come in for some reason.

Right, so we have two different groups.

This is a three-year cycle, so for those who have been approved at the beginning of the cycle, they can send in a recertification, just one sheet that they just sign it.

and then we just entered the information in.

And another group is once you pass the three year, every three year cycle in there, at the beginning of the cycle, which is this year, they have to send in all the financial documents based on their, it could be their change of their income, it could be change on their assets, so that's why.

And some of the senior folks likes to bring in their information.

Yes, we only send it to the folks who are on the renewal cycle.

When they're up for a full renewal application, we send those folks a different type of communication.

For the recertification, just within the three-year cycle, we send a different batch.

Okay, and so we'll get this communication when it's finalized.

of the board so we can talk.

I'm just asking for it so that when people call and have questions and confusion, we can answer it.

I think referring them to the GIN would be the best thing to do.

Don't try to answer those questions.

The dates right now is all still April 1st.

That's why we're proposing this to extend it.

I'm fine.

Thank you.

Yes, you have.

You've answered it beautifully.

Other questions?

Very good.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Before we go to a motion, I have a comment.

It wasn't per se a question.

In addition to everything else that county staff and the county attorney's office needs to do right now, adding an additional thought I recognize is complex.

But I presume that staff will be looking to compile a list of similar deadlines that we may need to take some sort of ordinance action on to provide additional leeway for our citizens in light of the present situation.

I also recognize that there will be some expense incurred each time we have to do a mailing and the amount of that expense will vary depending upon the number of individuals who have to be notified.

So the sooner we can identify these sort of deadlines and the delays that we may want to impose, I think the more efficient and less expensive this process can be.

where we have authority.

We're getting some questions from some departments looking at the things that the county executive can do as director of emergency management administratively.

There are some things that would require an ordinance change or we just can't do at this point.

Thank you, Mr. Campner, and I know you've already been very proactive in seeking guidance on flexibility that the law will allow as well as Mr. Richardson County staff has been doing the same thing to the betterment of our community.

Thank you.

Is there a motion to adopt the ordinance?

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Aye.

Mr. Galloway?

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Very good.

And to our first discussion item, number five, this is the COVID-19 planning and preparedness update.

So thank you for having me today.

I'm delighted to see the plastic bags and the chairs and the so few people keeping with both the president's and the governor's request to keep our meeting size down.

So thank you.

Just a quick update on where we're at in the state and in the United States.

Currently, we in Virginia are aware of about 1,020-ish tests that have been conducted.

We have 67 positives spread across the state.

As you all are aware, we had our first positive here in Charlottesville.

There have been two deaths of individuals who had contracted the COVID virus.

A number of measures have been put in place at the state, including the restriction on gatherings and encouraging people to stay home.

In the United States, they have 4,200 and change positive cases with 75 deaths.

All states are reporting cases except West Virginia.

The District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S.

Virgin Islands have all also had cases.

Here in our state we do have clusters of cases that and you can see the map with the numbers on it on the VDH website.

Just scroll down to the Corona page at the bottom and it'll have all of that clusters in Fairfax and in James County right now.

So that's where we're at with regards to the number of cases.

That webpage will be updated at noon, but it does have a little bit of lag because our case here wasn't reflected until today.

So I would just ask that you, they're working pretty much flat out at the central office and they're the ones who update it.

Pretty close.

If I could have my one slide.

I have just one.

I just brought this one slide and I'll walk you through it.

And this is from the Washington Post, but they shamelessly stole it from this research article that was published in 2007 that looked at the impact of non-pharmacal interventions on the 1918 flu death.

and what you see are two curves, one for Philadelphia and one for St.

Louis and the first dot on each of those curves indicates when the first case of the Spanish flu was detected in that particular city.

So you can see in Philadelphia it was detected in early September and then the second dot on the curve line is when they put into effect many social distancing, things like closing theaters, closing churches,

asking people to stay home, closing restaurants and bars, all of the things that we're doing right now.

And you can see that Philadelphia waited about two weeks before they implemented their social distancing and they had a huge spike in the number of cases of the 1918 flu.

St.

Louis on the other hand had their first case to October 5th and two days later they had locked that city down.

And what you see is a dramatically different curve here.

And so I have these posted all over the health department now because the motto is be like St.

Louis.

So non-pharmical interventions clearly are effective.

Having people distance each other, stay home, don't go to crowded places, avoid that contact so we do not spread this virus.

It was effective in the 1918 flu death and we don't have any reason to think it won't be effective in this one.

But people must participate in this.

So we really need people to stay home.

We particularly need people who are in the high-risk groups.

People who are older, over the age of 60 to 65, and people who have chronic medical problems or who are immune compromised.

They must stay home.

If they get this virus, they are at a very high likelihood of having a significantly bad outcome.

So I am delighted that, for the most part, people are abiding by this.

I think everyone takes it quite seriously.

Schools are closed.

University is closed.

I've seen many, many restaurants that have their lights turned off and are closed or are moving to a takeout only model, and I applaud them.

I absolutely recognize the economic impact of this, and I hope that when it's done, we will all go out and patronize all of those restaurants again.

But right now, to be like St.

Louis, we need everyone to stay home.

Questions?

Supervisor, who would like to start?

The one that I'm hearing from people is what is the criteria right now in this area for getting the test?

What I'm hearing is that they've been traveling, have a fever, have a cough, have symptoms, but they're told unless they have had contact

with an individual that's tested positive, they can't get tested.

So could you just explain the current?

Right, so it has changed like most days.

We have very limited numbers of tests.

So testing is the biggest bottleneck.

We have not solved the testing problem and we keep running up into shortages.

this week it was a call for anybody have swabs to do the test because they were running out of swabs to do this.

And you have to remember that our supply chain is global and we get many of the things that we need from overseas and some places are also having their own outbreak and so obviously it's taking a while to catch up to that.

So at the state level, you cannot get tested unless we approve it, and the criteria really are symptoms in contact with an individual.

There are commercially available lab tests.

LabCorp and Quest both have lab tests available.

They are also suffering from shortages and we were actually checking today to see if we at the health department could get some tests because we were trying to figure out, because we know it's a bottleneck in the community, how can we solve this?

And we were told that they could ship us LabCorp, some tests, we already have an account with LabCorp, they could ship us five.

I was on a teleconference with the CEO of Mary Washington Hospital because I am also covering that health district right now.

And he said on that he can get 10 from Quest.

That's for a major hospital.

So that gives you some indication of the bottleneck of the testing.

And we really need to get more access to testing.

And everyone is saying that.

We say that to elected officials all the way up.

They've got to solve the supply chain.

and so I know people are frustrated and I know they're anxious and I know they're scared and our best advice is that if you feel like you have traveled or been to a high-exposure area to just stay home.

Just do that 14 days of isolation.

If you begin to have symptoms, contact your doctor.

People should be tested for the flu because it is still flu season despite how lovely and warm it is outside because we want to make sure it's not somebody just

Just, who has a case of the flu, that would also require them to stay home.

And then there is a number of other respiratory pathogens that individuals can get, and there is a panel that physicians can do called an RVP, respiratory viral panel, and we would ask that they do that as well.

And then if both of those are negative, then if people are symptomatic, we can certainly discuss whether it would be appropriate for the state to test them,

or whether they want to use one of their own testing.

In addition, I will just say, in addition to the limited number of actual tests, a lot of physicians will not test because they do not have the protective gear for their staff to test.

There is a huge bottleneck of appropriate safety gear and that would be the N95 mask

and face shields.

We are working to try and relieve that and I know hospitals are as well but at this point in time we have a limited supply and they're really preserving them for those high-risk procedures where there's a significant aerosolization which would result in significant risk to the healthcare provider.

So there are bottlenecks in a couple of different places.

We continue to try and work through them.

Acknowledging the reality of what you just said, my next question may seem somewhat foolish, but we should also be working on trying to get community testing centers, which I've heard discussion of.

Right, so at this moment, UVA does have a testing site.

My understanding is that you have to be a UVA patient to utilize that, and they have pretty strict criteria, because again, they also have a supply issue.

I have heard, but I have not had it confirmed yet, that Martha Jefferson, Sentara Martha Jefferson here in town will be setting up a drive-through testing facility in their covered parking lot.

They have done this in three other centeras over in the Tidewater area where we're having a cluster right now to open that up.

But again, I don't know if that's for people who are affiliated with Martha Jefferson or if it's going to be any community member.

We have discussed at the Health Department what it would look like for us to stand up a testing center.

but if I can't get LabCorp test, because I know I can't access the state for anybody but really the sickest right now.

So if I can't get a reasonable supply of LabCorp test kits, it's not worth the amount of work to go into standing that up to do it.

And so we will continue to monitor it.

I think the resources of the health department are probably better spent in contact tracing and sort of traditional epidemiological duties, but I also recognize this is a huge need in the community.

And again I recognize the supply logistics is a major impediment to virtually everything but we've got several areas in the county that if we could ever get the supplies would really benefit from having a community testing center and I would just hope that the Virginia Department of Health

Right, and we are meeting as a group on a regular basis and I know that they weren't back from that meeting but two of my staff members were there at the incident management team meeting and they were going to float this and there will be representatives from both hospitals there.

and so we'll see if they come back and they say UVA and Martha Jefferson have recognized the community need and they're really just going to expand it to be anybody, even people who don't have a physician, then I don't feel like we can just encourage them to make that available in many areas of the community besides the Charlottesville area.

if for whatever reason that can't happen we are trying to determine whether our resources and that's resources primarily in personnel at the Health Department could be expanded to fill that role.

It's a big drain on our staff and I work pretty close to skeleton staffing as it is.

Other questions for Dr. Bones?

Not really a question, but I think people want a test so that they know if they have to change their life or not.

People have to change their life now.

So you bring up a really great point.

A negative test does not mean that you will never get this disease.

It just means that at the moment that you were tested, you didn't have a burden big enough to be picked up by that particular test.

Could be that you've been exposed and just haven't ramped up enough to

So it also doesn't mean that you don't have to do this.

People must stay home.

I cannot say that enough.

You have to stay home.

You must stay home.

Even if you've had a negative test, that doesn't mean that you won't be exposed to someone else who is not positive.

And the only way we are going to keep from overburdening our hospitals and ending up in a situation where we have to decide who gets that ventilator

is if we flatten the curve so it looks like the blue curve right there.

And that means staying home.

So the testing, I understand people want to be tested.

We would like to be able to test more people because it gives us an idea of what the burden is in the community and it allows us to see where we are on that curve so that we know we can plan when we can loosen things.

But you are absolutely right, it should not change people's behavior.

You must stay home.

And if you're protecting all of those vulnerable people, you're protecting your grandparents, you're protecting your neighbor who's on steroids, you're protecting the lovely woman down the street who bakes cookies for you every Halloween who has COPD.

What can we do to help you?

Because you said the supply chain.

So what kind of pressure as a county, as a board of supervisors, can we do that would help you?

Who do we have to write to?

Who do we have to send nasty grams to?

I don't know.

But who do we have to contact that would help you to be able to get the message across that this supply chain is

One thing that you all could do is you all have constituents that trust you.

And I think going back and helping explain that a test, while helpful, may not be the right thing to worry about right now.

And help people begin to develop connections with their neighbors.

Check on your neighbors.

Make sure they have enough to eat.

I think helping people understand there are things that they can be doing right now that are useful and important to the community would really be a great service.

And I would ask that all of you go out to your constituents and really encourage that behavior.

You don't have to go and visit with them at six feet distance, but if you could just call them or knock on their door and say, I'm just making sure you, you know, I'm going to go to the grocery store.

Can I bring you back anything?

I think just talking to people on the phone because people are really lonely right now too, right?

I think you could certainly help push that decision up.

We certainly do at every opportunity that we have that how critical this is.

I think it's a longer-term issue in regards to how we structure our economy.

So I have one more question.

For those folks who call us, and I'm sure everybody's getting phone calls, if they are sick,

They have been traveling.

They have a fever.

They have a cough.

They're over 65.

They're staying home.

They've already called the hospital over the weekend.

they haven't gotten, they've been told not to go in.

On the, and I tell them please call your PCP on Monday kind of thing, you know, what is the turnaround for the flu test and the respiratory virus panel?

Do you happen to know what that is?

Right, so flu tests can be done in the office.

There are what are called point of care flu tests, and that's what a lot of providers, there's also what we would call a send out, a test that you send out to a lab.

Most PCPs use a point of care, not exclusively though, and they're like in the office while you're there.

So they would get those results right away.

A respiratory viral panel usually has to be sent out to a lab, and I don't know what the turnaround time is.

It probably depends on your lab.

If you do get tested for COVID-19, if you get tested at the state lab, it's probably about 24 to 36 hours before we get the results back.

Depends a little bit on when your courier picks it up, when it hits the lab, when they're batching things.

Certainly 48 hours at the outside.

LabCorp is probably going to be similar, maybe add another 24-hour period to it.

Quest, my understanding right now is that it has to get shipped to the West Coast, so that's going to take it a little longer to get back.

So they're not going to get those test results back immediately.

It is going to take a few days for it to happen.

Thank you.

Other questions?

Your phone must be ringing off the hook.

It is pretty amazing.

And I would be remiss to not mention that we do have a hotline that people can call.

Our number one question is where I can get tested.

And unfortunately for that, we have no great answer.

But that number is probably on your website.

But it's 434-972-6261.

And that's manned from 8 in the morning until 4.30 in the afternoon right now.

Could you repeat that again, please?

434-972-6261.

And 8 to 4, is that okay?

8 to 4.30.

Dr. Bonds, I suspect you will have some general knowledge of this.

If you don't, then no worries.

The way that our hospitals, safety, public safety people, I mean staffing ahead of a crisis is always an interesting piece.

I'm thinking more of hospitals when I ask this question, but when the CDC comes out with protocols to folks like mask usage, whatever else that you use, you were talking about those at high risk of aerosolization, if I said that word.

Aerosolization.

Aerosolization.

So the CDC has a whole series of guidelines available based on what your supply is.

So they have, you have an adequate supply, here is how you should operate, you have a limited supply, here's the next, here's what you can do at this point, and then they have critical supply.

and that's suggested protocol?

It's suggested, but I don't think any hospital infection control would want to not utilize CDC guidelines.

Additionally, the hospitals have other respiratory protection besides N95s.

They have large respirators, probably you can remember, or Ebola.

and they have that which allows you to operate in that gear for a much longer period of time.

N95s are pretty uncomfortable for wear for too long.

UVA is one of two special respiratory pathogen units for the state, so they are extraordinarily experienced with what they need to do for this.

I think here in our community, we're actually very fortunate to have two hospitals and a hospital that serves as a special pathogens unit for the state, one of the two.

Thank you.

I can.

But then I will come right back in once I've sorted out what that issue is.

Thank you, Denise.

Fear is the worst thing.

Fear and anxiety together make us all worse.

If you want to email that slide around, Emily, that would be very helpful to put in our newsletters and things.

That would be a way to get people's attention.

Thank you, Ms.

Chairman, members of the board, Doug Walker, Deputy County Executive, and although that Dr. Bond says that she didn't have a great answer with all the questions we're getting about testing, they have great answers, and we ask a lot of questions.

And I'll say that as she's walking out the room here temporarily, the support that we're getting from the Health Department is extraordinary, and under extraordinary circumstances.

We do rely on them extensively as a source, and you see that in the information that we provide to you on a regular basis.

So I want to give you just a really quick update.

You know and we know that you are receiving updates from us daily, and that's intended to make sure that you are aware of our activities without overwhelming you with everything, trying to pick the most relevant information that we think keeps you best informed about the activities going on, particularly at the county level.

and the coordination that we have with the city and with UVA and with our regional EOC and with the health department.

The value of having different voices come and talk to you right as you get an appreciation or perspective that even as we're focused in on how are we maintaining continuity of services and protecting our staff and delivering services to the public, there's this much larger effort that's going on also.

And you're seeing it both from us as well as in your own news sources.

I appreciate just a few minutes to kind of give you a quick update.

I think this means you probably will also get an update again tonight in writing.

Probably yes, there probably will be an update tonight also.

Okay, so the goals that our group is using as a filter for all that we are doing is to maintain essential services for the public, to reduce transmission among staff, and to protect people who are at higher risk for adverse health complications.

These goals play themselves out in a number of different ways as we do our planning and preparation work and as we implement changes, many of which that you have already seen, including the mitigation strategies with social distancing in this space.

But it is a constant reminder of what it is we're trying to address at our level, right?

In doing that, we're utilizing an incident management team that is part of the incident management system or structure that is typically applied when we are planning for, preparing for, and implementing measures associated with an emergency or a disaster.

Dan Eggleston reminded us that we've never done a pandemic before.

And so even though we have structure and systems and experiences, we have to adapt them as we are adapting to the unique nature of what this means in terms of how we're trying to meet these goals.

There are real people that actually make up the IMT.

This is a few of them working.

We've kind of commandeered a space in this building that we call our war room.

Other meetings are happening in other spaces, but we see we're trying to practice social distancing even in this space, and we are migrating extensively to online tools like Microsoft Teams in order to host larger meetings so that we're not compromising those mitigation measures.

The structure, this is a kind of snapshot of how it's laid out with incident command at the top, but the operational sections, communications, operations, planning, finance administration, logistics, and then branches or subsections

underneath that then kind of ebb and flow.

Some may be created now and then may be reassigned later as the emergency evolves into other phases.

So you'll see that under the sections in green there are individuals.

We're in the process now of assigning a second individual, a backup, right, or a deputy.

for example you see under operations Deputy Chief Childress is our primary Sean Reeves is the deputy so we'll be doing that throughout as we build depth and that is to assure continuity and for a number of reasons including expecting that this could be a prolonged incident and we're going to need some backup and we're working seven days a week it's just not practical to expect one person to be able to carry that through and so this is

pretty typical in this structure.

I just want to give you a snapshot of how we are structured.

The planning effort, the ongoing situational status, you experienced some of that just now with Dr. Bonds.

We also are getting updates from the health department, from our partners in the region, from the CDC.

We are forecasting future needs and actions

through development of plans during a specific operational period.

We just initiated a new operational period this afternoon that will run through Friday.

Typically our operational periods for emergencies may run for a week.

We've shortened our time frame just because the things are changing so fast that we want to make sure that we are not overextending our planning and being most relevant.

So we did that planning work today.

to help guide our work for the next couple of days and then we'll reevaluate at the end of the week.

Tracking regional COVID type emergency calls.

This is a collaboration between all of our emergency responders in the region.

Just sharing information through the 911 center about the types of calls that they are responding to in the community.

Informed by intelligence and CDC guidance, this is making sure that we're sourcing all of our information we're putting out

relying most heavily on the health department but other intelligence that we get, for example, a press release went out this afternoon from the governor's office, information we get from the schools about changes that they're making and so intelligence comes from a lot of sources that we are relying upon when we put out our own information or amplify the information that we are receiving.

Learning from case studies of other communities, Seattle, King County has been a valuable resource for us in understanding how

how they responded with very late notice of their circumstances so that we can avoid some of what they've experienced.

New Rochelle, New York has some pretty robust planning documents that we're reviewing.

So just two examples of how we're trying to use experiences from others both in what they're actually experiencing and in their planning work to help guide our thinking as we make decisions and deploy measures.

A continuity of operations is a significant part of our goals, as you saw, is maintaining essential services.

In our building, you've seen some changes very directly here, limiting visitor access to the lobbies to the extent possible.

The social distancing measures in this meeting, of course, but also in all of our other engagements using the customer service tables in the front, encouraging web and phone services, and the extensive signage for hand washing and sanitation.

Those are a few of many measures that we're trying to deploy.

For our staff, we have already directed employees that have already demonstrated that they can telework from home to do so for the foreseeable future.

Are these employees essential or not?

Regardless of how they fit into a category, I don't mean that not employees aren't essential, but there is different categories.

If they can work from home, they are now working from home.

directing high-risk employees who self-identify using the CDC list of factors to telework or be placed on leave.

That is consistent with our principle of trying to protect those that are most vulnerable.

Developing employee roster for essential services to manage continuity of operations so we know all of our resources that are available.

For example, an employee who is not at risk

may not have the ability to work from home, may not be what's considered an essential performance function, it might be repurposed to do work that otherwise someone else might have to do.

And so having that roster enables us to use all of our available resources to the best of their ability so that we can maintain our continuity of operations.

The Be Well employee resource for support, that's through our HR department, making sure that employees know with the most up-to-date recommendations on how to self-care, actively monitoring state and federal level actions,

We're seeing that real time.

You probably are as well.

Mr. Price, I can finish.

I see you have a question.

I think I'm almost done, so we'll do that.

I can see you want to ask a question.

I think I'll get done, and then if that's okay, we can finish up.

in the community.

Again, you may already have seen these.

I'll just touch on them.

The school's creating lunch distribution throughout the county.

The county and the city social services departments collaborating on human services activities.

And at this point, they're keeping the parks and the trails open for public use.

In the public safety and human services arena, our 911 center is doing additional screening for callers for 911 services to help our first responders know more about what they're facing when they arrive on a scene.

and so depending on an answer to a question, it might prompt other questions.

It's not definitive or diagnostic.

It is intended to provide more information so our first responders are aware.

If a call comes in as a shortness of breath, for example, that might then prompt more questions that help our first responders know how to anticipate what they might encounter when they get to the scene.

the implementing common protective measures to ensure well-being of public safety personnel that is looking across our entire service delivery model with the city and the county and our volunteer and career so that we are deploying protective measures for our first responders uniformly, equally, in a way that is consistent or aligned with what our hospitals expect when we are delivering patients to the hospital.

and then ensuring elderly care facilities have mitigation measures in place.

You may have already seen some of this already.

To the best of our knowledge, and Dan has more information on this, that all of our nursing homes have either severely limited or prohibited visitation altogether as a way to further protect that most vulnerable population.

Regional collaboration is extensive, including our regional operations center.

There are three emergency service functions in our regional EOP that has been activated, public health, human services, and donation volunteer services.

There's a joint information center, often called a JIC, that has been opened so they can coordinate messaging out to the region for consistency purposes.

and we have daily calls with the city and the county leadership and emergency management staff so that the goal being that we are not, one's not getting ahead of the other.

So we can kind of talk a little bit about what we are thinking, what we're expecting and so to the extent then that we can be aligned, we think that that's a better message for the overall community so that we're not sending a mixed message.

That's it for the slide show.

I'm sure there are things I could have said and didn't.

There are others here with a lot more information than I have.

I am curious to see what Neil tweets out for his hashtag seats available.

That could be very interesting.

We don't want to encourage people to come though.

Thanks.

Mr. America?

Thank you.

I sense that we have barely had the beginnings of the medical component of this pandemic while we are already experiencing significantly the economic impact of it.

That is in this current operational period as a task to be completed.

Some of that has already occurred.

Whether it's on the list or not, you see under operations Heather Childress and Sean Reeves.

That's a, Heather is the primary, Sean is the back, and this is that, under operations, that green, the green box in the top.

My top left is I'm looking at it.

Both of them participated in our incident management team briefing this afternoon as a shadowing.

Heather's been more involved.

Yes, every space.

I'm using that as an example.

Other questions for Doug?

Just a comment to ask about what the bench looks like is a really appropriate question.

And Mr. Walker, I have that question, but underlying it is supreme confidence in the county staff.

From the time I moved here, we could not be better served than with the people we have right now.

And I'm not at all surprised that you had the answer to that question.

I have one question.

What I can say is that our priority, that is a conversation that is ongoing unresolved with how it is that we address employees' pay, recognizing the conversation is happening in a lot of different places.

What we're focused on is can they work from home, can they not?

Do they fit into an essential category or do they not fit into an essential category?

Are they high risk from a self-reported high risk standpoint based on the CDC guidelines or are they not?

that roster helps us then determine how we can best deploy our human assets, right, our resources.

So what we have done initially is to send people home who can work from home.

And so they're working.

They're not on any kind of leave status.

We have not, at this point, differentiated between, that I'm aware of, between salaried and hourly, or part-time and full-time, or seasonal, temporary, and permanent.

We will be getting there because we're very, very sensitive to the impact this has on our employees and their ability to deliver services also.

But we just haven't clarified exactly how we're going to address the economic, the personal economic aspect of that.

As you know, we do provide leave, but not every employee may have adequate leave to cover them.

and I did see the notice that the park bathrooms were closed.

I kind of cringe to begin with because then people can't wash their hands and use the bathroom but I do understand that there's an awful lot of people out there looking for things to do and an outdoor activity looks pretty reasonable right now.

But was that really to protect the people who have to clean the bathrooms?

Many of them only have one stall, so it's not like there's a huge number of people coming in.

Sure.

The parks are getting extraordinary use, and we think that that's great.

There's not a lot for people to do, and the fact that we have these park resources is a great way for them to get out and socialize.

We hope they're still practicing social distancing.

We hope that they're still trying to maintain some buffer, but we're delighted they're out in nature.

The heavy use of the bathroom facilities is causing a significant burden on our staff to keep them clean to the point where we're satisfied that they're sanitary.

Candidly, and I hope this particular point doesn't show up in the press, but who knows, we can't keep them stocked with toilet paper.

So you've made your own trip, perhaps, to wherever you buy your groceries and have had that dilemma.

Well, we have that dilemma, too.

And so that is a practical concern, is that there may not be toilet paper resources available in those bathrooms for them to use, and we can't keep up with it.

and I just have one more thing if I just want to say while I've just so everybody knows this isn't a question this is a information the everybody's looking for things to do and the SPCA actually if you don't get their newsletters they actually were

had a very very large number of people come over the weekend because everything else I guess was closed and it's entertaining to go see the little dogs and cats and so they've had to go to appointment only just to protect the people who come there and also their staff but they do want everybody to know that the patent services are still open and they request that people

call first, but if you can't, they'll still be available.

If you find a lost animal or an abandoned animal, you can still take them over there.

And with that, I was just over there, but those of you that read the newspaper, and I know we always read the Daily Progress every day, all of us.

Especially Allison's stories.

Especially Allison, that's top on my list.

But those of you who get newspapers, the SPCA would love to have those when you're done because they use them for the kittens and the cats, you know, in their cages.

So that would be a good thing to do is collect that and drop them off.

Wonderful, that's good to know.

I would pile on briefly about the bathrooms at the parks and ask you to ask people to think about other solutions than locking the door, such as big publicity that says bring your own toilet paper and take away your trash.

That's a simple thing people can do, but to go out to the woods and leave something out there is not the right answer.

and people have got to have someplace to go to do something useful because the fear and anxiety part is what's really making people worse, I think.

And so I really hope you will think again about doing that because the minute that email came out, I got several phone calls this afternoon going.

This is the wrong way to do this.

I mean, the places that have composting toilets, I mean, lots of people go to the bathroom without toilet paper.

You know, it's not the end of the world.

Well, it's easy enough to stick something in your pocket when you go, too.

I mean, having a head is always good.

So I hope that that's a solution that will be considered going forward.

I don't know if this is the time to talk about what other things we have authority to do because I've been sending all of you senior staff repeated emails about that rather than waiting around for the state who seems to have been very slow.

I mean that curve up there that Denise brought, I mean Virginia did all the things wrong that Philadelphia did as far as sitting on their hands.

Only yesterday and today have they really stepped up to

to do things.

So do we have authority to require other things under your emergency powers for businesses, for example?

And I'll just give a couple things as examples and then we'll go from there or you can postpone it until later if you want.

So employees are not being given the option of not coming to work unless their business limit is five, the cases locally have to be

distinguished.

That's a very large employer and health employer in our community.

And so older employees who have just by their age are at risk are still being told they have to come to work and are still treating people who are severely elderly.

So that's a concern that I hope someone at that place will sort out.

But do we have the ability to emphasize to our local businesses, follow the leadership of some of our local businesses who have already made the right choices and do this because

I don't think we should be leaving it up to people to make up their own rules.

And I'll give you one little example from a friend in Arlington.

Yesterday, Arlington had nine cases.

Today, they have 13.

And the local analysis from their health people was Arlington had done nothing to stop their pub crawls, which are very popular among all the folks up there on the weekends.

and so now they're paying the price.

They have 200,000 people in Arlington.

Fairfax has over a million and they have 14 cases because they have been much more proactive about doing whatever they can do to squash this party behavior that seems to be going on and certainly what's going on at the University Corner last weekend, so according to the state news anyway.

So I just hope that we will be able to figure out some other things to do because I think the better predictability that is created locally, the less anxious people will feel and that will help them to comply with more restrictive behavior, et cetera.

And we know we're expecting a lot of people, but to just, I think we're leaving some gaps that I wish we didn't have to leave.

and I think that Dr. Bonds and or Greg Campner can speak to what authority we at the local level have to mandate changes in business practices.

You may have already seen that the governor has now mandated that restaurants limit their in-facility service to 10 patrons or less.

All of the services have been mandated to be seized except for

We were aware yesterday where D.C.

and Maryland actually mandated the closure of bars and restaurants and those types of facilities all together.

We talked about that at our IMT and of course without that

without the governor taking action.

We're limited to what we can do other than to encourage.

So the situation has evolved and so perhaps Dr. Bonds and or Greg can talk more specifically.

I will say and you heard a little bit earlier from from the county attorney that there is there's a whole effort on our in our work

around what can we and what can't we do with respect to the regulatory environment that we're in, deadlines that are set.

Some of it may tie to land use cases that have to be heard or else there's some consequences and we want to try to delay them a bit.

There's a number of different examples of how we're trying to use what authority we have, either regular legislative, administrative, or emergency authority, or state enabling authority, or state action to see how much latitude we can gain.

I'm going to start by saying I'm not a lawyer and legal is not my area of expertise.

I will say the state is aware that there are considerable legal issues and they have stood up a legal team as part of their ICS structure.

and so if there are specific questions I can help push those up to be discussed and they will try and come up so for example this morning on a call that we had at the state level I mentioned that it's going to be very difficult for counties to meet their budgetary deadlines given the restrictions

Here in Albemarle, the Daily Progress publishes on a daily basis, but for example in some of the outline areas, they may only have one publication and it may only publish once a week, and so pretty soon if you start canceling meetings, you're never going to make that budgetary deadline.

So they are aware that this is going to need some guidance on a higher level, and if there are specific issues, I can push that.

With regards to closing all restaurants down, I don't know if you have that authority.

I would look to your legal guidance to do that.

I will say as this meeting has been going on, I've gotten questions from the city about whether that is something they should be doing.

And so I would encourage the city and the county to work together because it's very confusing for individuals to say, but wait, that restaurant's open and yours is not.

It has, as I'm sure we all are aware, huge ramifications economically.

A large number of our citizens work in the restaurant industry.

They're already being hit pretty hard and many of them are hourly and don't have any leave at all.

So I think the governor is aware.

I certainly am aware of the economic issues and the impact it would have on citizens.

On the other hand, we know that social isolation works.

And so if people stay home, we are much more likely to keep that curve where we need it to be.

So I think there are lots of things that have to be worked out.

I don't know that I am wise enough to have all of those answers.

I think at a local level I would really plead for people to stay home.

Pick up, take out?

Absolutely.

Once a week go to your favorite restaurant, pick up some takeout and take it home with you.

And have it at home with your family socially isolated.

or buy a gift certificate so that you can go and have dinner at that restaurant or eating establishment when we're on the other side of this issue.

So there are certainly some things that people can do.

The board and the county do have various pieces of enabling authority to take certain measures under the board's express police powers the board does have the power to adopt an ordinance establishing quarantines of people and not relevant here but also animals under the emergency services and disaster law which is the

statutory scheme that authorizes the governor and board or the county executive to declare state or local emergencies.

In Albemarle County, the county executive is the director of emergency management, has the authority

to do a number of steps, probably the most extreme of which include restricting sales and services within Albemarle County.

That can reasonably be interpreted to include closing stores and restaurants and things like that.

That's probably the furthest

furthest that the director can go under that enabling authority.

There are a lot of administrative things that the director can also do internally to accelerate, for example, procurement to get supplies and things like that, food for the residents.

Under the statute, that is the centerpiece of our

request for an advisory opinion to

because even this meeting doesn't qualify under the new Governor Sanders, which is 10 participants.

Sure.

It can be crafted in a number of ways to fit the particular situation.

Not to continue to talk about this because we could probably pick out various organizations, but I did receive and it was just one email of concern that the churches were still holding large masses and groups of people were coming into the churches.

We have sent out guidance and I have spoken with some faith leaders.

We are entering a season of very significant holidays for a number of faith-based groups.

But again, they need to move to an online.

I think that their parishioners and members of their faith-based organization

can be reaching out to vulnerable people to really fulfill that need, but yes, they need to stop meeting.

And I understand how devastating that can be for some people, and I would urge them to think of some alternative way to fulfill that need for spiritual guidance and fulfillment that doesn't involve meeting in a large room with lots of people.

We are living through a very difficult time and we have never experienced this before and there will and are a number of sacrifices that people need to take and they must take them now.

We can only stem this if people do not

Yeah, I think one of the things that slowed down some of the community organizations who still wanted to meet was that their meeting places were fine, were closed, so that made that stop, but you're absolutely right.

And when I was little, church was on the radio, and it worked just great.

Other questions at this time?

I think just one of the things that I keep hearing and of course I keep correcting and I'm sure everybody is hearing this and keeps correcting it, but the absence of tests keeps making people think that it's not here yet and one of the reasons why I would like to see tests come is just to prove that it's here

so that people understand that it is.

And it's a very hard concept for people to get.

So it is here.

We do have a case.

And I think the press release indicated that we thought it was due to travel and our subsequent investigation says that that's probably not the case.

The timeline doesn't work out correctly.

So we don't really know where that case is.

So that indicates that there might be community spread.

We don't know for sure because we are still trying to track down contacts and figure out what that is.

Contact investigation just takes time, even in the circumstances.

So that's one bit of information.

And the other bit that I will say is Dr. Anthony Fauci who is the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Immune Diseases.

I think I've got that right, has said that with any novel disease like this, you are always behind the curve.

You are always behind where you think you are.

So we're behind.

There probably is cases in our community that we just haven't detected yet.

And we need to act like that's the case.

We need to act like there are cases in the community and we need to distance from each other.

We don't need to panic.

This is not the time to panic, but it is the time to be prudent and to stay home and to wash our hands a lot and to look after our vulnerable citizens and take care of each other.

So I really cannot encourage people enough to just follow the guidelines, stay home.

You know,

Order War and Peace.

If you always wanted to read War and Peace, now is the time to read War and Peace.

Break out the board games in your home and take up Marathon Monopoly again.

I mean there are lots of things, and this is a real opportunity to sort of reconnect with all of those things that we used to do when we didn't have tons of places to go to.

So people should look at it as an opportunity to connect with their family.

And when you can, absolutely get outside.

An afternoon in the sunshine in your backyard or in your neighborhood park properly distancing from other people.

is a great way to make yourself feel better.

And I would encourage people to do that.

But yes, we don't need testing to know that it's here.

It's here in our state.

It's here in our community.

All of us have a long list on the refrigerator that we try not to look at, but now is the time to do it for sure.

If I could just add one more thing.

A friend in Colorado sent this.

One of the leaders in Grand County was quoted saying this, it will be impossible to know if we overreacted or did too much, but it will be quite apparent if we underreacted and did too little, and the consequences may very well be dire.

And that was in response to citizens out there trying to rebel against the more draconian rules that they were using, and I thought.

I'm ready.

All right.

If no other comments or questions there, then we will move to our budget schedule and emergency contingency update.

Who's taking the lead?

I don't see the name that's written down.

I guess while Jeff is setting up, so Greg, the Monday Tuesday outcome from the Attorney General did not happen.

Yeah, the formal request was submitted around 2.30 p.m.

Monday afternoon.

These typically would take at a very minimum, we're talking

probably weeks, although this one does have a particular urgency to it.

From last week, which we were trying to pile on to.

Okay.

Now, and the opinion request actually went to the

Chief Deputy Attorney General, contacting Phyllis Arrico at VACO.

She recommended that we email it to the Chief Deputy and also to the State Solicitor General.

So, I think that this particular request, combined with Delegate Sullivan's, combined with Senator Norman's, I don't know if you all saw his request for the Governor to

bring the General Assembly back into special session to talk about two or three items, one of which was looking at the burdens on local governments to conduct their business under, for example, the Freedom of Information Act in light of the guidelines that are being produced.

So I think this will get

But tomorrow, we're just going like this.

This is our plan for tomorrow.

Yeah, OK.

Too bad.

Thank you, Mr. Board Chair, and thank you members of the board.

I'm with Lori Aushaus.

I'm Jeff Richardson.

I'm the county executive.

Lori is our manager of the Office of Budget and Management for Albemarle County.

I wanted to take some time this afternoon, Mr. Chair, and do appreciate the board.

I do want to take a second and thank this board for your responsiveness over the past week both individually and as a board.

As the staff has been working, as you would expect,

diligently since last week and through the weekend and I believe at some point in time over the weekend this board was engaged on a number of issues and at a number of levels individually trying to help us figure out a consistent messaging to our community

as we moved into this week and we began to look at the direction that we were getting from our health director, our regional partners, our state officials and it became pretty clear to us that we needed to rethink

our agendas for this week.

This ordinarily would be really the, we would be at a heightened level of public participation.

We would be at a heightened level right now with our budget process.

As you know, this, Lori and I rolled the budget out to this board on February the 19th, so we're approaching one month.

Under normal circumstances, you would be voting on the budget on April the 20th, which is about 35 days away.

and so now one of the things that we're looking to do today with this consistency and messaging to our community is we are delaying further public budget work but we're delaying further activity on the public budget process in order to be able to extend our schedule and we're focusing on ensuring more time and that would be for a continued examination

of our region's economic condition tied back to this budget process.

Also to extend public participation within the framework of our county's health crisis.

And it's a national health crisis and so you've just went and spent the last hour plus with our local and regional officials talking about that.

So today, let's see if I can forward this.

Yeah.

So today's topics, we will be recommending a revised fiscal year 21 budget development schedule.

We will be spending some time with this board today talking about our emergency contingency reserves and that will be focused primarily on the current fiscal year.

And then the last thing that we will do is we will talk about a meeting summary, next steps.

We will ask the board to consider action on the revised fiscal year 21 budget schedule.

and then certainly be here to answer any questions that the board has and any other topics or issues related to the budget.

We'll do our best today to give you meaningful information or go back and work on this and report back to the board.

Thank you.

I'm going to talk about, we're going to talk about three things today.

And when we were thinking about the budget, the things that came to mind were time.

First of all, we need some time.

Things are changing very dramatically, daily, so how can we stretch our time out on our budget process?

We also thought about what are the tools that the board can use and staff can use as we work our way through this process.

And the other thing we just wanted to touch on is our resiliency as a government financially.

So I wanted to start with tools, and there are obviously lots of tools we can think about, but the ones that came to mind for me was, first of all, the budget is a tool, and the budget is a plan.

The budget isn't your actual funding, it's actually your plan for your fiscal year.

So that's one tool we have as we think forward to fiscal year 21.

and we're also currently in a budget.

We're in a time frame until the end of fiscal year 20.

And the second thing I wanted for us to think about is the tool of appropriations.

And that's an extremely important tool for you as a board of supervisors.

You grant the authority to spend money.

So you can adopt a budget, which is a plan, but when you adopt your resolution of appropriations and your appropriations and budget amendments along the way, you are authorizing

granting authority for people to spend money.

So you can spend, we usually appropriate annually.

So we do a resolution of appropriations at the beginning of the year for the whole year.

You can do it differently.

So as we're thinking about being very flexible and nimble as we go into this process of a lot of unknowns, you could appropriate quarterly or you could even appropriate monthly.

So you can manage your appropriations to help us work through this process depending on what comes.

We've even, you can even de-appropriate.

So you could say, okay, we appropriated a half a year of funding, we see things are not going the way we want them to, we can actually ratchet it back as well.

And the appropriations is what really controls spending.

So you think of the budget as one tool, planning, you think about appropriations

is actually controlling the spending.

And then the last thing that you have as a tool or we have as a government is budget management.

So our office, the Office of Management and Budget as well as departments, we manage expenditures and you can manage it based on your actual receipt of revenues.

So you can watch how the revenues are coming in and you can actually, even if you appropriated or gave us the authority to spend more, we can watch that and we can pull back as a manager, as the management of this county.

So I want you to keep those three tools in mind because I know we're talking a lot about the budget, which is a plan, which is very, very important, but also think about the other tools we have as we move forward.

So this is a busy slide.

It's got a lot of information on it and we're going to try to slow down and go through this because it's our goal, as I said earlier, it's our goal to elongate our budget process.

It's our goal to slow the budget process down.

I used the word earlier to delay based on where we are right now.

I've shared with board members individually that I thought we had the ability to do that.

We've been working with the county attorney.

We've been working with the finance department.

I failed to mention Bill Latire is also here this afternoon and appreciate him and his work and his tremendous staff.

but we're trying to elongate this process in order to be able to give the board as much time as possible to consider the things that you wanna consider given the conditions that we're currently working in and also to keep our public involved but also appropriately engage them based on the circumstances that we have.

So what you have in front of you right now is after today, and I'll remind the board and you know,

that today was originally scheduled as an add-on work session.

March 17th was one of our work sessions, one of our budget work sessions that had been held whenever the schedule was first adopted.

We did trigger that several weeks ago with a need to add items to the work session.

Those have been delayed.

and so the next time on the current schedule that we're scheduled to be together on the budget is April the 13th and that is a public hearing on the tax rate and the fiscal 21 budget.

We're recommending no change.

The recommended revised schedule would be no change.

And what this does is it would be a scheduled public hearing, as has been advertised.

We will be working between now and April 13th to identify ways for the community

to participate remotely.

We'll also, as you know, that's approximately four weeks from now, and so we will have a lot of time to determine where we are with our current health issues to be able to determine what is effective and what is reasonable, what is safe on April 13th.

This would just be a public hearing on the tax rate

and the FY21 budget.

The tax rate, as you know, you set the ceiling on March the 4th and you set that ceiling at our current tax rate.

So I would remind the board that as we move forward into the budget process, when you have discussions and consideration on the tax rate, you're looking at the current tax rate or if the board so chooses to discuss something other than the current tax rate, it would be downward only.

Okay?

All right?

And so we are revising three dates.

The first is the Board of Supervisors setting the calendar year tax rate.

And we are revising that for your consideration from April the 20th to April the 15th.

The reason for that suggested change is this is a regular meeting.

April 15th is a regular meeting.

So we would be moving three meetings into two.

We would be

This is a regular meeting.

and it reduces the need to schedule an additional meeting, in this case the 20th.

And all you would be doing on the 15th is adopting your tax rate.

Then I would point to the board that we are holding between April 13th and May the 14th, we are flagging that additional work sessions and additional public hearings can be identified and will be identified

for the board to discuss the budget, to work through budget items that you currently are looking at and you're wanting more work on, you're wanting more options delivered to you because right now what you've got is a recommended budget

you set the ceiling at your current tax rate but a number of you publicly in your work sessions and privately you have discussed that I'm still wanting to look at alternatives in some way or form to the manager's recommended budget and that's the process and that's how that goes.

So between the 13th of April and the 14th of May

At this point, we would like to provide you with that window for additional times.

It says to be determined.

So our suggestion is that we adopt this schedule with the three changes and that we hold and do not identify the work sessions or the public hearings until we know more.

moving forward.

That's almost a month away.

Then we would suggest to the board that you adopt the fiscal year budget instead of April the 20th, you push that back to May 14th.

And that was some work that's been done with our finance department, with our county attorney, with our school division, and for legalities, and Greg can provide some details, but for legalities, we need to go ahead and we need to adopt the budget on May the 14th.

This meets the deadline in terms of our ability to approve the school's budget by May 15.

and we also need to give, I failed to mention that on the April 15th of setting the tax rate, we need to do that in that timeframe so that our finance department has adequate time to get the finance, to get the tax bills out.

So we've got some things around the April tax rate deadline and then again on adopting the budget in May.

Then finally, on June the 3rd, we would set that date and that is a regularly scheduled meeting for this board.

That's when you would appropriate funding.

And this, as Lori covered, this provides legal spending authority and you can do the full year or you can do a partial year.

We could go later than June the 3rd.

We hope we don't have to because of the work that's involved with the staff to get that to July the 1st.

So I would be asking, and we can do this at the end of the meeting, Mr. Chair, I would just ask the board to consider changing those, and those three dates under the current schedule are marked out, and to replace the calendar year tax rate, setting that, replace that, and do that at your April 15th meeting.

Adopt your budget.

Right now we would suggest that you do that May the 14th.

We flagged about one month between the 13th and 14th, April 13th and May 14th for work sessions, additional public hearings.

That would be at the board's discretion and with some staff input.

I think it would be, I think it would be advantageous if we stopped because this is a lot of information and allow the board to certainly confer and ask any questions that you have of staff.

And Lori is here to help me.

Greg Campner's here.

So if we could stay and then we there'll be more to come so we can just stay focused on the budget development schedule first.

I think it makes a lot of sense because we can adopt the tax rate and then come back later and figure out what is actually going to be in that budget.

That's the whole idea because we're not in the position right now to have a lot of meetings and a lot of discussion and we're up against deadlines.

I do also and thank you very, very much.

The only thing that I'm a little bit confused about is what it would look like your statement can appropriate annually, quarterly, or even monthly.

That change that you are not necessarily suggesting, but you're saying this is an option, if we couldn't meet or we couldn't discuss the budget or we couldn't end up having one of these

work sessions because things are happening fast and we're unable to do it.

Can you just say a word about what that would look like to appropriate like quarterly, just a little more explanation about that?

Yes, ma'am.

The appropriations is a really important tool you have, and it is the tool of authorizing spending.

So even if we approve the budget, and we have to think about a lot with the budget, right, with how everything's changing right now, we have to be very thoughtful about what is fiscal year 21 going to be like.

there's a lot of things we have to consider right now so even if you approve your budget and we find out that we are still not sure about some things you can appropriate instead of appropriating money for a full year so your full large budget you can appropriate in chunks so you can say as a board even if we approve the budget and we say this is the best budget we believe this is the way the future is going to be you can say you know what let's just appropriate the first six months of that and see how it goes

and then if something changes or we're not sure about the future right now, then you can appropriate another set.

What I have in mind, and you could do it in a lot of different ways, and we'll look to Greg for any specific legal questions, but you could say, for example, I'm going to run a Department of Social Services, and I know this is what it costs them for the year, but because I'm not really sure how the year's going to go, I'll appropriate their first six months.

and then we'll watch how it goes and then if we have to do something different a little later we could we could slow something up or do something different so it just gives you additional controls and it doesn't and the other thing you have to know that even if you did appropriate and we see situations are changing we will manage the money to the actual revenues so as a budget office and your departments we will monitor what we're doing along the way as well so

I guess one of my confusions is that one of the things we're doing is we're hiring more people.

Like we're hiring two more police officers and we're hiring, and that doesn't sound like something that you can stop.

And of course an awful lot of our

revenue goes to paying salaries.

Yeah, those are great questions, and I think those are some of the conversations we should have through the budget process and through some of this between April 13th and May 14th, have more of those discussions, because also you can time things.

So for example, there's been years in the past that we have said, yes, we want to hire two more police officers, but we want to wait till the end of the first quarter.

So you can manage a lot with time.

So time's really a tool that we have right now.

So you can have something in your budget, but then when you actually appropriate or when you actually do something can have some time elements that can be very helpful for us.

It does, but I'm thinking that these work sessions that we may or may not have, depending upon the advancement of our health crisis at this moment in time,

I guess I was thinking that the appropriations quarterly or something like that would occur in the absence of those work sessions, but you're combining them and not necessarily making that a, you're saying no, we could do that if we're worried about our revenues coming in, which I'm sure everybody is worried about our revenues coming in.

It's more directed, this change in appropriation is more directed at matching revenues rather than decision making.

I understand that I'm just trying to understand what the purpose of nothing written in stone statement is and is that the absence of being able to make a decisions because we're not having meetings or is it the insecurity of not knowing what our revenues are going forward

I guess, and please continue asking questions if I'm not making it clear or not answering correctly, but in my mind the budget's a plan.

You do the best you can.

You project your revenues, you have revenue forecast, you project your expenditures, you do all you can and you're looking into the future and it's a plan.

Thank you.

I guess triage-wise, I like the idea of the phased appropriation because it forces decisions to be made before the money goes out.

So my understanding, and please clarify if my understanding was right, we would not be making any capital investments until after those work sessions happen, whenever they happen.

It could be September.

and so in my mind, I don't want to be galloping into any new spending until we have sorted out exactly where our future lies but that means DSS and ACPD, those things have to have funding, period.

So I'm way back in my 2008 rabbit hole right now and so I think it's just remarkable how quickly things changed where we were

jumping up and down six weeks ago about how great this was going to be.

And everybody in the back of their mind knew this may not last.

So for other reasons than just, you know, it was a bubble back then, it wasn't a health crisis and now we're in a new spot.

So I appreciate that and I think we will have the, figure out how to have the time to have those decisions about what's the right way to go forward.

I think when we have our conversation about the emergency contingencies moving forward, we're kind of diving into that before we've had that explanation.

So I think you're bringing it up will help as we start looking through how do you as an organization manage through both with contingency funds, how you appropriate, when you appropriate.

So I think that's coming in the next couple of slides.

I do have just one quick question.

I noticed that May the 14th is a Thursday, which is just a little unusual for us.

And I guess that that was, obviously you all knew it was a Thursday.

So that's deliberate, just pushing it out as far as you can, I guess, is all it is.

Yes, driven by the school's and I guess having it as the very last possible date.

Yeah, they have to do that.

And that's fine.

And that's a week in between our regularly scheduled Board of Supervisor meeting.

It's just unusual.

I was just pointing it out because most people tend to think about us as meeting on a Wednesday and this particular one is a Thursday.

Brief question back to the timing of annual, semi-annual, quarterly appropriations.

I mean, we make amendments to the appropriations all the time.

If it's less than 1% of the budget, we don't have to have a public hearing.

If it's more than that, we do.

That's exactly correct.

That's a really great point in that tomorrow you'll be having a budget amendment.

So when we bring those what we call appropriations to you, appropriation requests, we are making adjustments almost monthly to our budgets.

A lot of times you get a new grant, you have to appropriate it.

Just the only thing that was in my mind that I forgot to say was for new initiatives to all of our recipients they need to be aware that those things may not get appropriated on the first of July and to be thinking about that as well.

I really appreciate that.

Should we move to the next item?

Yeah, I'll go ahead and continue on here.

Remember at the very beginning we talked about time and we talked about tools and we also talked a little bit about resiliency and I just wanted to point out, thanks to this board and boards previous, we have very sound financial policies in this county.

We have policies that have this in mind.

You have to be thoughtful that things can change.

We're in something we've never been before, but we know as people who work in budgeting that things don't always turn out as you plan.

So you have to have reserves, you have to be very thoughtful for things like this to occur.

So you have established reserves and contingencies.

You have experienced board members and staff members.

We've been experienced going through the Great Recession.

We've seen situations like this happen before where we had a certain budget and then all of a sudden we had to continue to change how we move forward very dramatically.

And so we do have some of that experience, some of us here in the county and others of us in other jurisdictions.

So I think that'll be helpful for us as we maneuver through this time period.

Also, when you have a triple A bond rating, one of the things they look at is not only your experienced staff, but they also look at your policies, they look at your activities, they look at how you're set up for these types of emergencies.

And so those are just some things just to think about.

I know we're in uncharted territory, but we do have some of these things going for us as a government.

I'm going to go ahead and move right into the emergency and repurpose reserves.

Just going to slow down a little bit on this chart.

You have some of this information you've seen a couple times when we were doing the five-year financial planning and then early on in our budget process.

And I've organized it just a little bit differently and I want to start at the top line.

and if you remember we have a fund balance at the end of the fiscal year so every time the year ends we have an audit and in that audit they look at our general fund fund balance and we we have that moment where you just kind of freeze things and you start talking through what is it that we have on hand what is it that we have to hold by policies what is some some unobligated fund balance that we can use for other purposes

So this is kind of all related to that audit and to that fund balance.

So these funds that I'm talking about right now are funds that you have available to you right now.

They're available.

This is not part of the future budget.

This is actual funds that are available as of our last audit.

So the very first line up there that we have called Unobligated Fund Balance, as we were working through the Fiscal Year 21 budget work sessions that we had to date, we've been talking a lot about there's some funding available one time that we could do different things with.

and so what we've done is we went through those charts and we said of all these funds that we had talked about that we could use for some one-time costs we believe there's 3.2 million dollars there that we could repurpose if we need to.

We had a plan, we were thinking about different things to do in fiscal year 20 and 21 with it, but it's reserves and contingencies that could be refocused if we needed to.

And we would bring back the details of that to you, but we just wanted you to know we have that.

The second thing we have is the one, and that would be the first place we would go for some emergency reserves if we need it.

The second one we have is the 1% stabilization reserve.

This is a board policy.

This was put in place after the Great Recession.

We reserve 1% of our general fund revenues for one-time emergencies, unanticipated expenditures, to meet our current level of services, or to offset any revenue fluctuations.

That's about $3 million as well.

and then we also have the 10% unassigned fund balance reserve.

This is primarily for cash liquidity purposes but also could be used for major emergencies.

We would not go to that until we would go through other activities and what I want to say even before we would hit these reserves, we would be managing and we are already thinking about expenditures and revenues even in our current budget and watching those very carefully right now.

So the first thing you do as a budget office, you start managing through it

and then you also have these reserves if needed.

Supervisor Price?

Yeah, I do.

Lori, thank you so much.

There's been a lot of talk among our communities over the last few weeks about the county having a big surplus.

I don't necessarily see the funds that we've got as a surplus so much as these reserves, contingencies, and things like that.

And I see it as exceptionally efficient financial management for us to finish the year not in the red and to be able to maintain that superior financial ranking that the county has got.

but anytime there is unexpended money, if I'm using the right terminology, I understand that there will be people who will say within the community, well, why don't you spend it on this?

But some of those expenditures are not one time.

For example, Supervisor Palmer mentioned that the proposed budget as we received it had two additional employees for community development, two additional law enforcement and as we all know,

There is a big discussion within the county about the manning of the Stony Point station.

But employees are not one-time expenses.

They are recurring because once you've hired someone, they're not just there for a year and then that then becomes a continuing expense.

There was a lot of different phrases you used as you talked about that so I may not hit all of them but the one-time money versus ongoing is very important in local government budgeting.

You should use one-time money for one-time occurrences.

That's just a principle of sound financial policies for governments.

And then if you what you call ongoing money, which is something that you know is reoccurring year after year, that's the money you put towards ongoing expenses and salaries and personnel is considered an ongoing expense.

So that's basically the difference between those two.

In this particular situation,

Okay, and if we don't have these reserves and this contingency, then what is our impact?

If you didn't have reserves, you would have to cut services quickly, right?

Revenues and expenditures have to balance, so you'd have to be doing things very rapidly.

Well, I think it's important to note that

We are not liberal in any stretch projecting revenues and our expenditures.

I mean if you have a, we in years past have had 14, 10, 12, 14 million dollar surpluses.

One of the reasons we went to doing our revenue update closer to March was to have a better piece of that.

So you're not underestimating what your revenues coming in are.

But it's the same thing projecting out what you think your expenditures are going to be.

We're a AAA bond rating because we are fairly conservative in that.

And each year we look at, well, how did we do last year?

If Steve was here, he'd be telling us about we were within a percent of this, and how does that match up?

where that complicates it is that turns into one-time monies.

But if you're having a $14 million surplus, you didn't do a good job programming monies for the ongoing expenses in that year.

So you want to make sure you're doing a good budget process so that your surpluses are giving you some cushion, but not necessarily giving you so much so that you, in my

and so on.

to me is suggesting we're doing a better job of projecting the revenues out.

We're doing a better job of programming them the correct way, which it does mean additional staff a lot of times, and for good reasons that we all, I think, have a chance to speak to.

And Chair Galloway, thank you.

I think what you've just expressed is the underlying point that I was trying to get to, that the county over the last few years has dramatically improved the financial management, both in terms of revenue expectations and expenditure expectations, and now we are at a much smaller delta

which gives us better financial management, but it's important that we maintain some of these reserves and we're thankful we've got those right now with what we're getting ready to face.

And I guess I have to add one thing to that.

As a percentage of the total budget, this is very, very small.

You're never going to get it exactly right.

So if we hit it right on the mark, we would be doing it wrong.

I'm sorry because we would, you know, we wouldn't have

In that respect, I don't think it's any different than the average taxpayer who has some variability on their income each year trying to calculate what should your estimated withholding be so that at the end of the year you're not owing money, but you also don't have too much money coming back as a refund that you could have used during the course of the year.

but you want to make sure I mean my standpoint is always I'd rather pay a little more in advance during the year so I get a refund than get hit with a tax bill because that tax bill hits you two years in a row for the last year because you got to pay taxes and then you have to increase your withholding for the next year so with what the county is doing here with our financial management you have protected us from running into the deficit last year that we have to pay for and now the risks that we're facing with the economic situation today.

I'll just add a little bit from 2008 because of the fiscal management even that far back that Albemarle County was able to face and handle the falling revenue and the dramatic cuts from state revenue that happened very abruptly with attrition but other counties who didn't have those reserves had to lay off huge numbers of people which was even more destructive to their local

The economy.

And so preventing that is a really important thing for consistency and keeping our skilled staff and people who we want to retain here.

Even the most conservative former colleague of mine said one percent is

absolutely the minimum you should have for reserves.

And we are below that because if we have a $400 million budget and we're looking at $36 million here, I mean, we're pretty close.

So I always defend the reserves thing because without it we would be cooked.

And there's so many things we cannot control that even though we can anticipate as well as we want, it's still not gonna be all the answers.

Thank you, Supervisor Mallek.

And this probably doesn't take into account, I mean, you're focusing on reserves set aside for boards consideration.

This doesn't even take into account reserves you have in departments like fuel reserves and all of that.

I mean, we've got tremendous amounts.

I mean, that's just proper.

Yes, sir, that's correct.

And this is a focus on current year, fiscal year 20, as Lori said, audited what we know today, and I just applaud this board and staff coming out of the recession 2012-2013 with that 1% stabilization fund.

That was a brilliant move by this organization and very

disciplined to do that.

That's easy to say.

It's very hard to discipline yourself to grow that by one percent.

And in this case, the board did it.

And now we're in a spot where we we we should we should be very, very happy that we have as an organization stayed true to that.

So that's about six million dollars, Mr. Chair and members of the board in our current year as we continue to monitor.

So with

We'll move to the next slide and so we're going to summarize where we are at this point.

We don't want to leave today without the board approving the amended budget calendar.

We'll go back to that if there are questions by the board whenever the board is comfortable making that motion and taking that action.

I want to go back and tie back to Mr. Walker and the staff's work as well as Dr. Bonds and again we can't thank our health department enough but our focus has been over the last week three items maintaining our essential services to our public that is critically important that we can continue to evaluate

our staffing levels, our staff rosters, the health of our organization and so that gets me to the second bullet and that is taking steps to reduce transmission of COVID-19 to our staff because this is a marathon not a sprint and we know that we're going to be in this new normal for some period of time and then third is protecting our vulnerable populations and the regional collaboration that is existing already

Mr. Walker and his team have been steadfast in working back through the appropriate channels that are in place already with University of Virginia, the city, the health department, our regional key regional and state partners.

So that's what we're focused on coming into today.

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to put in front of you a strategy to delay.

The final three points that I would put out in front of you are that we're continuing to monitor our current year revenues and our current year expenditures.

So, as you know, we have travel restrictions.

We will experience hiring delays.

which will create lap salaries and there will be other savings on the expenditure side as we move into the last quarter of the year.

So while we don't know how much on the expenditure side that that will generate, that it will generate some additional savings.

On the revenue side, our staff is working diligently to try to figure out what this means for this community in the last quarter of this year.

Staff will evaluate fiscal year 21 revenue projections.

These are revenue projections that this board has seen previously, and we have built and modeled our budget for next year with our balanced budget that we put out to you in February.

We had solid revenue projections.

The chair mentioned that we went back and checked in on that and made some technical adjustments.

We will continue to monitor those revenue projections and we're going to go ahead and begin to conduct scenario modeling that would reflect economic conditions, a variety of economic conditions between now and the next time that we get together.

Thank you.

The next thing that I would tell this board is that staff will continue to evaluate communication strategies with the board given the COVID-19 situation.

One of the things that you, everyone, have done when I've talked to you in the last week, you have said, what can I do to help?

You being available for us to talk, we may need to speak to board members as we continue to evaluate all of these bullets with communication strategies, the work that lies ahead of us with additional budget work sessions, with public hearings.

Again, I know the board has some focus and concerns on several things in the budget that we may have in there or we may not or you may want to see different variations or alternatives to consider.

Staffing, fire department staffing in the rural areas, a number of things that you've talked about in terms of what you'd like to see in terms of alternatives.

We're continuing to work on that as we also do our scenario modeling and we continue to look at our projections.

So we can stop here.

I'll be happy to answer questions with Ms.

Awe's house.

And then before we, once we get your questions answered, you do have one item of business to take care of today, sir.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Ms.

Aye.

All right, very good.

It was kind of part of the budget calendar process as we figure this out.

Is Emily available?

Sorry to put you on the spot, Emily.

I'm sorry to interrupt.

Would you wait so I could speak with you after the meeting?

Thank you.

I know we've done creative things for the public hearings and for different meetings like that.

There were questions coming I received about tomorrow night in the 6 p.m., which is not matters not listed on public hearing.

Are we somehow set up to allow for people to participate beyond just sending us emails in that public comment or can't or maybe looking to April 1 or something?

So Emily Kilroy, the Director of Communications and Public Engagement.

We are evaluating a couple different options.

We wanted to see where the budget calendar landed and to figure out what our next step should be.

We certainly are able to accommodate something for the new budget calendar.

So I fully expect by April 13th, we'll have a good solution in place.

We've been spending a lot of time over the past several days just trying to figure out how to focus on continuity of operations for the core functions.

And so for tomorrow, we don't have a great technological solution in place.

We can look at some things that we could probably implement pretty quickly.

I spoke with the deputy clerk yesterday about we could have people, we could set up a designated place for people to write in public comments that we could read aloud into the record.

I think the main message for tomorrow night is if you feel compelled to be giving us budget comments that tomorrow at 6, you don't have to feel pressured to come speak in public to do that.

We've just now built in extra time to participate.

We'll have alternative means in place for you to speak specific to the budget so that those who were maybe feeling compelled to speak tomorrow night on that item can write us.

Certainly, in our communications to this point, with respect to this week's board meetings, is that we've reduced and modified the agenda items to remove those items that we felt like didn't have a mandate or a timeliness to them.

To just pull those off, we knew we had a lot of people who would be coming to speak to the draft climate action plan, for example.

that's been pulled from the agenda in order to not compel people to come here and then also to not take action on things that people feel really strongly about providing public comment on.

So that's been one strategy.

And then the other is we've been messaging that there will be changes.

There was a statement from Chair Galloway over the weekend asking the county executive to bring forward a new budget schedule.

We'll send out another message this evening saying that the new budget calendar has been adopted.

and really that folks will have ample opportunity and very well advertised opportunities to speak on the budget as it moves forward on the adjusted time schedule.

It may be very helpful that people can be advised that there will likely be changes to what's being considered in the budget and they would be better able to respond once they know what those might be proposed.

So it's often when something might be changing it's good to wait and see what the changes are proposed before you unload on everything because you may be

Absolutely.

Well, I think for tomorrow, if anything we can do to encourage people to stay home and to share, as you already mentioned, they can email us individually and say, please read this.

I mean, we can do this.

And even with a telephone available or something for people, because there are lots of people who don't have email.

If the news can carry that they can certainly call their supervisor and or call and leave a message on a particular number, then that would help reassure people that they can say something.

and some there may be some things tomorrow night where people do need to say something but it doesn't mean that they're going to be ignored if they're not in the room and that's really important to to keep because 10 people you know we basically if we're meeting the governor's guidelines we don't have space for people to come unless they come in one at a time or something like that it's it's complicated

And we don't want them lining up in the hall.

We do not want them coming in and standing around.

I mean, that makes everybody worse.

And all it takes is one.

So we just have to be careful.

All right, thank you.

Other matters from board members?

I just want to express great appreciation.

Mr. Richardson, Ms.

All's house, Mr. Walker is not here, Mr. Campner.

I have endeavored not to pepper you with endless emails given the work that that y'all are engaged in right now.

But you have been very responsive.

And all of the questions that I had about today's meeting were addressed in those presentations.

And I'm just deeply appreciative for your dedication.

Thank you.

I just wanted to ask Emily will something be going out under email specifically regarding public input tomorrow so that people don't have to read all the way down you know for the email that you know just one thing saying we're encouraging people not to come tomorrow night but to give input and we will be revising the budget but just gonna look possibly different from what we have now

Yeah, absolutely.

And you know that's a really good point, Bea, because I think, Allison, I'm looking at you, but one of the things that I've been telling people as they've been emailing and calling me is sign up for a-mail.

Because if you sign up for our a-mail, you're getting our

I recognize that not everybody has the internet and not everybody can do that but a good portion of our community can and it's one way to understand what's going on and what we're doing and how things are going to be scheduled and the changes.

And it's amazing how many people that do have access to the Internet still aren't even aware of email.

Diantha, that's a great point.

That just raises Emily.

You know how all of these meetings, we can broadcast them?

Do we have the capability of streaming messages for the county to be able to just you know just you know like a newsreel almost of information that people on the TV is there any oh no that's all done through the internet right so it's not through the TV never mind yeah we do podcast these and people can go in and watch them at their leisure you know again they have to have the access so they that's right they do

The one thing that I'm a little bit worried about with everybody working from home, we have a lot of people on DSL and we already have a lot of people that complain that about 7 o'clock at night when everybody gets home, different areas don't get good enough bandwidth to download things and to actually watch anything.

Well, I'll tell you this experience, this terrible experience we're going to go through in this country is going to show many people what we lack

and our infrastructure issues.

And I am, and I'm going to stop because I know we need to go home, but I am appalled that we have 30 million children in this country who can't eat sufficiently when school is canceled.

That is, we should be ashamed of ourselves.

Other items?

They're doing a wonderful job, but what we have allowed to happen in this country, and I'm sorry, Ann, I didn't mean to interrupt you, because I didn't want it to seem as if I was criticizing the schools.

I know you were.

I have a question for Emily also.

A-mail.

We are doing excellently in our engagements this week on social media channels as well as Amaral County News.

If you are a recent subscriber and you are listening to this stream right now, I apologize for the number of messages we are sending right now.

We don't normally send quite this volume, but things are rapidly changing.

And so it's hard to talk to all of you at the same time.

It's a rapidly changing situation and we're trying to get messages out as timely as we can and there's a constant decision-making process of should we hold this and wait for something else or should we just send it so that we can get that word out quickly so if folks feel like we're doing it wrong I apologize and look forward to your feedback later.

I did get really good response from the pulling off your most day before yesterday or whatever it was that I put in the newsletter and people were just

Oh, this is so great, but I had to change it three times because that's how quickly things were changing and I didn't want to send it and then have to do.

So, but don't hold back on the messages.

I think single topic short messages are far better than one long one every five days because otherwise people again to feel more isolated.

I have one completely different non-virus or anything else to put on the list for later, but I did ask, John Ouelcaro shared with me

the design plans.

He and I were talking about the Boys and Girls Club, which I know is not on our agenda for the next month or sometime.

But anyway, I said we were talking about the slope and all that kind of thing.

And he said, well, let me send you the plan.

So he did.

And I will forward that I got today.

I will forward them to.

Well, you got them already.

OK, good.

We received them last week.

Fantastic.

We have them.

Okay, good.

And the plan was for the school division, I think that they were planning to show us actually, if they'd had their presentation like we planned, they were gonna show everybody that.

Anyway, the question was about the slope and I sent it to Trevor and I said, could an engineer's eyes look at this and give me some feedback on whether this is good or not?

And he said, if the board was interested in learning that, then they could ask,

Jeff to ask our engineer to have a look at it themselves.

So that's what I'm raising right now.

I do not remember getting those plans.

No, they were sent out with the packet.

They were actually attached to the packet that was sent out with the Boys and Girls Club and everything, because I was looking at it.

We all got them.

It's just that.

You probably assumed that it was stuff you'd already seen, but that design, and they were great pictures.

They were in color and beautiful.

We all got it.

Very good.

We could resend it.

I don't want to misstate that.

Claudette, that's right, right?

Mr. County Executive, any matters?

Did I get an assignment from this board regarding the plans for the Boys Club, Girls Club?

This might be something I need to look at.

That's fine.

Because I'm not real clear what that even means at this point.

If that's since we had the luxury of coming back here tomorrow, we can.

Again, a thank you to this board for your time over the last week, your interruptions that you've taken on a regular basis at nights and on weekends.

Our staff is going to stay focused on maintaining essential services to our public.

We're continuing to take steps to heed the advice of our medical professionals on reducing transmission of COVID-19 to staff.

And again, thank you to Dr. Bonds

She's currently serving two regions, and she's finally going to get some lead up on that this week, but she's been burning the candle at both ends.

We're also focused with our work that we're doing, and most of our staff stepped out to move back into our incident command meetings.

this evening that will continue.

We're focused on protecting our vulnerable populations.

Thank you to Ms.

Price for asking the question about developing redundancies with our staff because that's critical that we do that.

That as administrative staff, as we begin to merge more closely with our public safety officials, they are trained for emergency management situations and the administrative staff have had a little bit of a step up to do in order to be able to keep pace and to be able to handle day-to-day operations.

I would ask this board to remain patient with our staff.

If you need things on a day-to-day basis, do not hesitate to contact me, Trevor, Doug, certainly Emily, anyone in the county executive's office.

And if it's of an urgent nature, we'll get back to you very fast.

And as things change with us, we will be continuing to evaluate communication strategies with this board.

Please read carefully the things that we send to you.

We'll try not to burden you with too many things, but we are trying to stay effectively connected with this board on a day-to-day basis.

As all of you know, most of us carry our cell phones seven days a week, and if you need something, we're going to try to get to you as quick as we can.

The questions that you have, we may push this back to the entire board because it's oftentimes helpful with individual board member questions to share the information with all six members, and so we'll continue to do that.

So Mr. Chair, that's all that I've got except that I'm so proud of my staff and I appreciate this board's support of our staff because one year ago today was Selection Sunday.

One year ago today at six o'clock was Selection Sunday.

It's when the NCAA brackets came out.

Three weeks later, this community was riding a high with the University of Virginia being crowned the Men's National Basketball Champion.

One year later, we're in a very different spot, but our community is prepared for this.

We have an outstanding public safety relationship with our key partners, and we're going to do our best work.

Thank you.

Okay board, we will, if there's no other matters, then we will adjourn to March 18th, 2020, 5 p.m.

Gonna do it.